Click here for further Lost thoughts from me if you’d like. It’s a full-fledged post of its own, right smack-dab in the middle of one of our best comment threads yet.

SPOILER ALERT FOR BOTH SHOWS, SO UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN ALL OF BOTH OF THEM, STAY AWAY IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU

Okay, you knew this had to happen once you saw what went on in the Lost finale. I came thisclose to promising a separate post on this topic in my Lost thoughts last night, and when I woke up this morning multiple people had already asked me to do so. Like I said, you knew it had to happen.

I think there are two big differences between the two finales, both of which were a mainline hit of mysticism.

First, the mysticism of the Battlestar Galactica finale tied in directly to the show’s central driving conflict and overarching mythology. The “God” we hear about here was the one responsible for such major mystical mysteries as Gaius Baltar’s visions of Six (and Caprica Six’s visions of Gaius Baltar) and Kara Thrace’s strange resurrection, and is the “truth” behind the bowdlerized judgmental monotheism of the Cylons and the more humanistic but still off-model polytheism of the Colonists. In Lost‘s case, while it does seem like the Island is the world’s most direct manifestation of the force for good behind the flashsideways afterlife, that’s a link in a much more general sense. It seems like any group of people who were tied together by anything would have ended up in much the same place; moreover, the Island plot is resolved without requiring any knowledge of the show’s conception of the afterlife, if that makes sense. The afterlife ties things together emotionally, not narratively, whereas in BSG, it’s linked directly to the big plot questions.

The second and more damning thing for Lost is that its conception of spirituality as articulated in that final sequence is awfully banal: The afterlife is a place generated by the force of goodness behind all major religions where you reunite with your loved ones, atone for your sins and shortcomings, and find true happiness before achieving literal enlightenment. Generic New-Age self-help stuff–whoopedy doo! By contrast, the “God” of Battlestar Galactica embraces its own sneer quotes and acts in morally dubious fashion in order to push humanity and cylonity (?) through a series of cycles of genocide and rapprochement for reasons still unknown. The God of BSG is a weird thing whose role in the finale is still haunting and challenging me today, whereas the creators of Lost could have just mailed every viewer a copy of The Celestine Prophecy and been done with it.

Actually, now that I think of it, the God of BSG is a bit like what we thought about “the Island” when we believed it was the source of all the manipulative goings on, before Jacob and the Man in Black entered the picture–a near-omnipotent force that’s probably ultimately a force for what we’d consider “good” but which on the way there does all sorts of heinous shit for reasons we can’t begin to comprehend in the moment.

Finally, I’ve always found it super-stupid to object to genre fiction simply because you discover its conception of the supernatural doesn’t jibe with your own: I read people saying things like “The Exorcist isn’t scary to me because I’m not Catholic” and simply can’t fathom how crazy that is. You don’t find many mackerel-snappers more lapsed than me but I still get the chills when they chant “The power of Christ compels you!” So it’s not like I’ve got beef with Lost for having a relatively upbeat view on spirituality whereas I tend not to. But I do tend not to. I find the atheist/anti-mysticism apoplexy over Lost‘s finale–seriously, people were losing their shit on Twitter–as silly and funny and pathetic and small-minded as I did when it happened at the end of BSG; that said, my hunch is that if there is a God then he’s a lot more like the vast and cool and unsympathetic entity running the show in the BSG universe, or like “the Island” or like a one-man Jacob/Man in Black mash-up. I figured I might as well cop to that.

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* Hmmm, I dunno. Honestly I had to take my cat to the emergency vet tonight and that situation is far from resolved so I don’t know if my head’s in the game, really. I do have two major thoughts.

* I think the main thing I haven’t wrapped my head around just yet is the disconnect between the flashsideways and its resolution and anything having to do with the Island. I mean, yeah, on a certain level that stained glass window is telling us that the Island is connected with whatever spiritual whatsit is in charge of whatever afterlife they went to. But it’s not a specific connection as best I can tell. It’s sort of like, I don’t know, if at the end of…I don’t know, Road House? If Dalton defeated Wesley and saves the town and avenges Wade Garrett and all that stuff, and then also he goes to Heaven. Like, the actual resolution of the show doesn’t really have anything to do with the resolution of the plot. So I’m gonna have to wrestle with that some.

* I don’t really mind, in the end, all the loose ends. I never thought I’d mind the various dotted-I crossed-T loose ends like who shot at the kayak. And I’ll live without some of the “we thought this was gonna be a big deal in the early seasons but then we went in a different direction” loose ends like WAAAAAAAAALT!!!!! I’m not thrilled, but I’ll live. But what I’m really okay with is just how much is an out-and-out mystery. Why did Ben and Widmore have their falling out? Why was Dogen so important? How did the Monster swoop in to manipulate the Others without Jacob stopping it> When the hell did the Island get overrun by Egyptian architects? How long was Mother around? Et cetera et cetera et cetera. I am pretty much fine with not having any idea but what I myself can deduce and infer and other words of that nature. I totally don’t mind looking at the show like you looked at the Star Wars franchise after Return of the Jedi. What were the Clone Wars? How did Yoda train Obi-Wan? Why did Darth Vader turn on the Jedi? Where’d the Emperor come from? What was up with Boba Fett? Folks, are you better off knowing those answers?

I would love, love, love to see a Hulk vs. Superman fight done with the intensity of that fight from Deadwood. You know the one.

(Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Zak Smith ought to be making all fantastic-fiction writers raise their respective games.

* Ron Rege Jr. joins What Things Do! And with one of the better Ron Rege Jr. comics you’re likely to see.

* More like this, please, Dave Kiersh!

* Another new Josh Simmons comic!

* Cute idea. Would have been cuter if they’d gotten A-listers to do all of them instead of admitted rush-jobs, but still cute.

* Real-Life Horror: Bagram is the new Guantanamo.

* Okay Internet, you’re definitely right about this one.

* Finally, this is your last chance ever to join our weekly Lost thoughts discussion and speculate about what might happen next; after Sunday night, there are no more nexts. Please stop by then, too, and we’ll hash out the whole damn series together!

* Go support Team Comics Comics!

* It’s an interview with Grant Morrison. Money quote:

I tend to only read comics written by friends or people I’ve known. And I’m not a great comic reader. I get a bunch of DC stuff sent in a box every month, and I’ve got a friend in town who runs a store, and he gives me stuff every now and again. But I’m not a big comic reader, so I tend to read people like Warren Ellis or Alan Moore. People I’m familiar with, or that I’ve met, or that I’m friendly with. Like Mark Millar or whoever. It’s more on the basis of who I know rather than who I like. 

(Via JK Parkin.)

* I’m actually dreading the conclusion of Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it.

* Hey, wanna by some pages from Ron Rege Jr.’s masterpiece Skibber Bee Bye? (Via Tom Devlin.)

* It’d be relatively easy to believe that the notion that comic shops with creepy stuff on display or creepy people in their employ are a barrier to female readers was some kind of Comic Shop Guy-style self-loathing comics-community stereotype, but no, it’s true, they’re a barrier to female readers as Hope Larson’s survey of some of them confirms. My wife and I haven’t gone to many comic shops together, but I can tell you that the creepy one–the defunct Village Comics–is the only one she ever talks about. Bad impressions last, and a few topless Nazi women in a display case at the checkout counter can go a long way toward making someone never want to visit any comic shop again. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* This Ken Parille piece on monologues, soliloquies, and thought balloons vs. speech balloons in Daniel Clowes’s Wilson is really worth considering when reading that book.

* Topless Robot’s Merrill Hagan returns to the Disturbing Moments in Kids’ Movies well with predictably unsettling results. Points of interest: The Flying Monkeys get their due; “Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother?” beats the death of the squeaky shoe; at least one moment cited is genuinely emotionally devastating rather than just scary (“Arthax, you’re sinking!”); and Jesus Christ, that scene from Superman III where the lady gets sucked into the computer and turned into a cyborg is like something out of Hellbound: Hellraiser II. That scene scared me so badly as a little kid I wouldn’t go into the TV room alone in case the TV switched on by itself and showed me that scene again.

* It’s like “Xanadu” meets corpse paint meets vampires meets the video for “Call On Me” by Eric Prydz. Goldfrapp are great.

* “Likable characters are for weak-minded narcissists.”–Daniel Clowes. That quote just really needed to be present on this blog. (Hat tip: Matthew Perpetua.)

* Frank Miller is totally blogging on a regular basis. That’s so awesome. I can’t find an RSS feed but there’s gotta be one, right? (Via JK Parkin.)

* Recently on Robot 6:

* Neato Monster Squad art;

* and the comics arguments you never want to hear again. So far, I think I agree with the listing of almost every such argument in the comment thread.

* Am I crazy to think that the guy suing Heroes for ripping off his dopey comic may have a case?

* Now that’s shelf porn. I think the most entertaining shelf porn is the sort where you can’t imagine living the life that would lead you to compile this particular shelf-porn configuration but find it hugely impressive nonetheless; that’s certainly the case for me here.

* I can’t really imagine that anyone reading this blog has any interest in the music of Eric Whitacre, and it’s not like I’m gonna front and say I know a whole lot about contemporary choral music–my knowledge and fandom begins and ends with Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen–but the guy is stupid talented and makes the most heartrendingly beautiful music I’ve ever heard. He’s forming his own ensemble and recording a complete choral works album with them, which is terrific news and will serve as a great gateway into his stuff for interested parties beginning this autumn. In the meantime, I think you can listen to everything he ever wrote on his site; start with “Lux Aurumque.”

* Speaking of music, boy, did I ever need this new Underworld song.

Back by popular demand! SPOILERS for Monday’s season finale, so watch out.

* I stopped writing about Gossip Girl after it returned for its third season’s back half because, frankly, I was a lot less entertained by it. First off, I hate to be one of those people who turns against a show when it’s not even on, but I think that endless hiatus between the two halves of the season really hurt the show’s momentum in and hold on my mind, if not the larger pop-cultural hivemind too. The thing about Gossip Girl is that it works in, what, three-episode arcs? So unless you’re super-invested in whatever cliffhangers you have before a hiatus, it’s not like there’s some over-arching narrative that will pull you back in when it comes back.

* My biggest problem with this season is easy to pinpoint: The constant, purposeless lying by everyone to everyone about everything. Who slept where, who’s going to what party, who’s applying to what school, who’s sick, who’s healthy, who’s having an affair, who’s in town, who’s out of town, who’s a long-lost parent, everything, all the time. And since every lie is inevitably exposed within two episodes of its initial utterance, it’s all so pointless! I joked to a friend that you could replace pretty much every script this season with the sentence “Look, I was gonna tell you…” It’s simply impossible to get very invested in characters who lie all the time, to the people they love, about things they easily could have–and ought to have–told the truth, with ultimately no payoff for having lied.

* It didn’t help that in service to this constant-lying pattern, Serena and Jenny in particular became almost unwatchable. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two of them were put in more and more revealing clothing as the season went on: Without Blake Lively’s thighs and Taylor Momsen’s jailbait cleavage, I think most viewers would have just checked their email every time those two amoral idiots were on screen. It’s not so much the amoral part that irks–on a show starring Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf, how could it be–it’s the idiocy. The dopey duo’s backing of Serena’s evil deadbeat dad’s play to break up Lily and Rufus was the icing on the cake of a season’s worth of moronic decisions that constantly hurt the people they cared about for no good reason.

* A related problem is how repetitive the show got. When your M.O. is “Have Character A lie to their significant other Character B about Life-Goal X,” that’s bound to happen. But even in terms of the specifics, this season saw two long-lost parents return to the lives of two characters, only for them to discover they had ulterior motives, only for us to discover these people had hearts of gold way down deep anyway, only for them to leave Manhattan. That’s an awfully weird well to draw from twice in one season.

* But I have to give the finale props, since it basically dropped a neutron bomb on the unsatisfactory status quo. Serena breaks up with Nate, and good riddance because she doesn’t deserve him. (Look at that guy, he’s a god walking among mortals.) Jenny’s reign of dumb terror is over and she’s off to the sticks, Serena’s sophomore year style. Dan’s ready to ditch the insufferable Vanessa and their joyless relationship, which started in a threesome with a movie star and quickly devolved into constant attempts to undermine one another’s college career, for another shot at being Serena’s human legwarmer. Nate’s playing Dick Grayson to Chuck’s time-lost Bruce Wayne, inheriting the Mantle of the Bass. Blair and Serena are off in Paris, mutually free of commitments for the first time, which really is just as cool as they seem to think it is. Lily and Rufus seem okay, and I’m glad because enough drama between those two already. Georgina and her amazing changing haircolor are pregnant, probably not with Dan’s lovechild but whatever, we can play along for the episode and a half tops it’ll take them to reveal he’s not the daddy. Chuck gets gunned down in Crime Alley, surely soon to be born again as the billionaire crimefighter he already more or less became this episode. Eric remains adorable and decent, and because he’s a young gay man he’s never going to get any on-screen action.

* So, I guess the whole sexual-assault thing is forgiven and forgotten, huh, Jenny? I’m actually a little disappointed in Chuck’s deflowering of Jenny. I know they were both supposed to be totally depressed and miserable at the time, but it would have been extra-delightfully perverse if they’d, you know, enjoyed it.

* That and the bogus gunshot/pregnancy cliffhanger’s aside, it was a fine clearing of the decks, with some fun, intense, ultra-dramatic confrontations and hook-ups and break-ups. It’s sort of like Gossip Girl Season Three Part Two was “Dark Reign,” the finale was Siege (with better fight choreography), and now hopefully Season Four will be the Heroic Age.

S

SPOILER ALERT

* This was pretty much the episode that the people who didn’t like last week’s episode wanted instead: Following the various bands of characters around as they drop exposition on one another on their way to getting where they need to be, physically and mentally, for the finale. Indeed, I’ve already seen a couple of things from nerd-friendly mainstream-media people that indicate, in spoiler-free fashion of course, that this was a whoo-boy episode for them.

* Me? Other than voicing my sinking suspicion that I’m never gonna see Walt again goddammit, I don’t have a ton of stuff to say about this episode. As a discreet, hour-long unit of television, I prefer last week’s intensely acted, emotionally violent, “Long ago there were two sons” creation fable. Now, obviously at this point in the show, and for several earlier seasons besides, none of these episodes are really just a discreet, hour-long unit of television, so that’s probably neither the fairest nor the most germane standard to hold it to. Still, that’s where I’m at.

* So what did I like about it? The violence, mainly. Not ashamed to say it! I’ve written about the appeal of violence on the show before–I remember mentioning it in my thing a few things back about how I like this show as a narrative genre drama, and all that entails, rather than as some kind of elaborate crossword puzzle. But I think it was last week’s episode that really crystalized that this is a show about violence as much as anything this side of Deadwood. With a few exceptions, it’s about how the Island took people who’d made choices that hurt people emotionally, or fallen victim to choices that hurt them emotionally, and gave them choices that could lead them to hurt people or be hurt physically. It’s about murder as much as a superhero comic is about the big fight with the supervillain. In this case the supervillain is the Monster, and watching him murder his way through Richard and Zoe in no-nonsense split-second fashion now has all the weight of that shot of the Man in Black gripping his game box in the middle of his leveled village and seething with insane rage.

* Plus, Ben finally gave Widmore his comeuppance. Because this show is rivaled only by Gossip Girl in its infatuation with characters who lie all the time, I’ve got no idea whether we can believe a word Widmore said in this episode regarding turning babyface, but I did at least think he and Ben would forge a tenuous alliance. I thought so right up until the moment Ben apologized to Widmore for leading the Monster to him–I really assumed Ben had quickly conspired with Widmore to lead Fake Locke into a trap and blow him up with the C4 or something. Anyway, I think the presence of the Monster sort of distracted from the potentially epic feel of a final Ben/Widmore showdown, but in a way, that’s probably how it should be. Ben’s not an epic-confrontation kind of guy. He’s more a “shoot him repeatedly when he’s not looking” kind of guy. As with Widmore’s supposed switch to the side of the angels, I have no idea if Ben’s (presumably final) heel turn is for real or a ruse, but that’s certainly the fun thing about Ben.

* Well, it was Jacob’s cave, how about that.

* Hey, wait a minute, Fake Locke got Ben on board (maybe, at least in theory) by promising him the Island. But our cliffhanger ending was Fake Locke telling Ben he’s going to destroy the Island. If I were Ben I’d get nervous at this point, especially standing right next to that well.

* One thing I’ll say for all the chess-piece movements in this episode is that the final confrontation ought to be fairly clear-cut at this point, simply because there are so few people left. You’ve got Ben and the Monster, you’ve got Jack and company, and Miles and Desmond and Claire are out there someplace. I suppose there are still Widmorian scientists on Hydra Island, but I can’t see that making much of a difference.

* Sinister Sideways Omniscient Desmond is a scream. Man, he took Dr. Linus down like wo. It was nice of him to involve Ana-Lucia, although I was hoping for Mr. Eko.

* Sideways Rousseau cleaned up good! Love her love connection with Ben.

* I wanted to write out a couple of things here because I can’t remember if in the past I’d only written them in comment threads. First, everyone convinced me last week that I was wrong about the Monster’s origin–it’s not just some independent Monster mimicking the Man in Black, it’s the Man in Black trapped in Monster form. That was confirmed by Jacob last night, so good call, everyone.

* Second and most importantly, I no longer think that the flashsideways characters will have to choose to sacrifice their happy lives in order to stop the Monster in the real reality. I think their happy lives are their reward for having stopped the Monster in the real reality. The flashsidewayses are the show’s happy ending. Sideways Desmond’s mad scheme to show everyone the other reality isn’t an attempt to get them to relinquish the sideways reality, it’s a way of drawing their memories of their Island-influenced lives into their current lives, so that all of that will still matter, but now they’ll be able to move past it.

* Why could no one on the Island have babies? Why was Walt a big deal? Why did the Others act like murderous assholes all the time if they were working for semi-benevolent Jacob? Why did Ben and Widmore have their falling-out? What was up with the Cabin, the Temple, Dogen, the ash, and other apparent Monster-containment devices? Will the elusive #108 ever show up, or was that just Desmond all along? What were the rules that bound Jacob and the Monster, or Ben and Widmore, and were they really rules that couldn’t be broken, or were they more of a guideline than a rule in the grand Venkman tradition? See you Sunday!

* Recently at Robot 6:

* Wizard ends it Charge of the Big Apple Brigade against the New York Comic Con but still schedules shows around it sniper-style;

* storybook drawings of R-rated movies;

* and three art-heavy reviews I liked a lot. Hmm, I wonder what it says that I liked these reviews in large part because of their well-chosen art, but virtually never include art in my own reviews. I think it mostly says that scanning is time-consuming and there are no scanners on the Long Island Rail Road.

* Hey, it’s a movie about a British Cold War-era submarine getting attacked by a giant squid. Apparently. It’s all rather oblique. Still, you know me and sea monsters. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Until you’ve bought and used a lawn mower on your own yard, you’ll never understand.

* Only two more episodes to go, so please check out last week’s Lost thoughts and then join us tonight for more!

[Noah Berlatsky:] I basically agree that saying, “Well, Clowes’ character shouldn’t talk about Dark Knight because Clowes was involved in a lousy movie,” seems ridiculous. I do have some sympathy with the irritation Abhay expresses. Which is, there’s a default stance in certain regions of lit comics land which is basically: “life sucks and people are awful.” Which I think is glib and overdone and tedious, a, and which, b, can be made even more irritating by the fact that the people promulgating it are, you know, fairly successful, and (what with various autobiographical elements thrown in) the result often looks like a lot of self-pity over not very much.

So…I’m wondering how strongly you would push back against that characterization of lit comics in general…and also whether you feel it is or is not ever appropriate to think about a creator’s biography in relation to his or her work in that way.

[Tom Spurgeon:] At this point I wouldn’t push back at all against the stance that says the default mode in lit comics land is basically “life sucks and people are awful” because it’s no longer an argument I take seriously. I don’t think it’s true by any reasonable measure and I’m done with entertaining the notion until someone presents the argument in a much more effective or compelling fashion than what always sounds to me like some angry, lonely, re-written Usenet post from 1997.

—Tom Spurgeon, in an interview with Noah Berlatsky

Honestly? I made a point of going to see the restored, virtually complete edition of Fritz Lang’s Expressionist science-fiction masterpiece Metropolis at least in part because I saw freaking Clash of the Titans in the theater. It always bothers me when I come across a comics blogger of obvious talent and intelligence who nevertheless limits himself to writing exclusively about new genre releases from mainstream publishers; why should I settle for being that comics blogger’s cinematic equivalent? Iron Man 2 can wait; Iron Maria calls.

I’m glad I went. This thing’s a hoot and a half. After watching its two and a half hours’ worth of dystopian retro-future allegory, I’m at a loss to tell you how many of its seminal images I’d half-remembered from seeing the truncated version back in college versus how many of them had simply been passed down through films and film buffs across the decades like tablets from on high. It strikes me that the achievement of Lang, writer Thea von Harbou, cinematographers Karl Freund, Gunter Rittau, and Walter Ruttman, and a small army of designers and special effects technicians is not at all dissimilar from the mad inventor Rotwang whose mechanical seductress brings the stratified society of the titular city to collapse, or from the ancient builders of Babel whose titanic Tower serves as the movie’s allegory-within-an-allegory. Not that Lang and company’s creation lead to disaster, of course, but simply that they used all the tools at their disposal to bring a product of imagination to life. Metropolis is nothing if not a monument to imagination.

There’s an almost Kirbyesque quality to the images here, a carved-from-the-heavens-themselves feel that gives you a frisson of awe and familiarity when you see the most memorable of the lot. The back-and-forth movement of the workers at their posts. The vision of the factory as a pagan idol devouring human sacrifices. That unforgettably pointless-looking task of frantically moving the hands of the giant dial to and fro. A frightening tableau of the Seven Deadly Sins, with Death at the center, staring the camera down. The unmistakably feminine Machine-Man rising from her pentagram-bedecked slab, her hips swaying erotically. My personal favorite this time: The nightmarish vision of an underground city illuminated solely by gigantic banks of florescent lights in what passes for its sky–as relatable and horrible a vision of a workaday hell as you could likely conceive. It’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t even feel like the countless filmmakers and artists who’ve subsequently referenced it are ripping it off–they seem like transmissions from the collective unconscious. It shows you things you’ve never seen before, even if you’ve seen them a million times.

I think a lot of credit also must be given to the actors. That’s sort of a weird thing to say of silent cinema, where generally speaking we sort of overlook the dated, hammy acting style in favor of the image, or the message, or what Film X says about Weimar Germany or what have you. But Metropolis is at its most alive when the frame is filled with lead actress Brigitte Helm in her dual role as a saintlike activist and her sinister, leering robot doppelganger. In the former role, her fundamental goodness is driven home by the sort of unselfconscious close-ups no one really does of actresses anymore except maybe David Lynch; it’s easier than you’d think to believe that one look at her as she crashes the upper class’s private Garden of Eden with the children of the proletariat is enough to send scion of privilege Freder head over heels and love and cause him to upend his entire heretofore unexamined worldview. But it’s as the robot Maria that she really lights the screen on fire: She’s a winking, grinning, laughing, writhing, clutching, oozing, convulsing parody of female sexuality at its most wanton. Whether she’s vamping it up in pasties for a hilariously horndog audience of aristocrats or going the full Mrs. Carmody and whipping the enraged workers into a killcrazy frenzy, you can’t take your eyes off her–and indeed, the film frequently depicts her audience as nothing but a sea of swaying eyes, riveted on her every wriggle. It’s some for-the-ages stuff.

Gustav Frohlich’s Freder has a tough act to follow in that regard, and he’s more what you might expect if you’ve seen any silent movies, but I think his fits of ecstasy and agony–that’s basically the only two settings he’s got–properly convey that he’s a good soul caught up in a corrupt system and genuinely, if naively, wants to change it. His father, played by Alfred Abel, is far more fascinating a figure than you might expect: He does the steely captain of industry thing, but there’s something sad-eyed about him, as though his inhumane system has seeped into his pores and slowly poisoned him; he looks like a cross between Peter Cushing and Nestor Carbonell.

In terms of the added material, recognizable by its scratchier grain and smaller aperture, the standout stuff is the addition of a pair of subplots. The first involves Georgy, the worker with whom Freder, changes places in order to gain entry into the world of the workers; and the Thin Man, a strikingly lupine spy/enforcer sent by Freder’s father, city honcho Joh Fredersen, to keep Freder under wraps. Though it never really matters much in the grand scheme of things, Georgy’s abandonment of Freder for the lure of the red-light district available to the rich and the Thin Man’s menacing treatment of Freder’s confidant Josaphat add a further look at the decadence of Metropolis’s ruling class and another entry in the film’s series of standout performances via actor Fritz Rasp respectively.

The second added subplot gives an almost Lost-like wrinkle to the partnership-cum-rivalry between Fredersen and Rotwang. When Fredersen visits Rotwang’s lair to suss out his workers’ potential plans for revolt, he stumbles across an eerie shrine to his own late wife Hel. Rotwang believes Fredersen stole her away from him and resents him for siring the son, Freder, whose birth caused Hel’s death; in the end, Maria’s rampage, whatever its allegorical significance in terms of Fredersen’s desire to create an agent provocateur as a pretext for moving against the workers, was really an attempt by Rotwang to double-cross Fredersen and bring the whole city crashing down–revenge writ large. Some of this material was present in the original version, but the Hel statue and its attendant dialogue give it new force. The subplot further drives home the movie’s repeated motif of how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, from the decadent Club of the Sons where the patriarchs’ spoiled trust-fund babies make sport to the climactic flood that almost wipes out the children of the absent, rioting workers.

That big flood climax gets a lot of added material in the restoration too, and that’s actually a shame; the most striking visual there, that of saintlike activist Maria rallying the children to her as the flood waters surround them, was already present, so most of what you’re getting here is just extra shots that drag out a fairly quotidian action spectacle. It’s not until things get mano a mano again–the workers capture the false Maria and she’s burned at the stake, laughing all the while; Rotwang captures the real Maria and forcers her up the stairs of a cathedral bell tower, where her attempt to escape leads to a run-in with the giant bell far above the ground that I found frightening even today; and Freder and Rotwang duke it out on the roof of the cathedral as his now-repentant father looks on in horror–that the film recaptures its mythopoetic mojo. Even if the ending is infamously idealistic and unrealstic–which it is, eliciting chuckles from pretty much any given audience–it too feels like something told around a campfire rather than whipped up to boost UFA’s bottom line.

And none of this is to say that the film’s self-serious. It takes itself seriously, yes, but it’s also very funny. You have to love the way the Maria-bot ends up being used: “Okay, we’ve created this lifelike simulacrum of our enemy in order to replace her with it and destroy her cause forever–but first, ROBOT STRIPTEASE!” I’d imagine Freder’s insouciance and Mariabot’s vampiness were funny to the audiences of the day just as they are to us. And even though the workers’ characterization as a barely controlled force of nature is unflattering to their half of the Marxist equation just as the upper crust’s characterization as the “Head” is unnecessarily complimentary, it’s still darkly entertaining to watch them rage, revel, and then rend their garments in despair at regular intervals.

You shrug off the slow parts and revel in the grandeur, to the sounds of a score by Gottfried Huppertz that references everything from Dies Irae to the Marseillaise. It’s a big, beautiful, intoxicating movie.

Great job!

* Here’s a fine Charles Hatfield piece on Blaise Larmee’s lovely Young Lions, strategically illustrated in case you want to see whether this is your kind of thing.

* Speaking of strategically illustrated reviews, you’ve gotta check out Noah Berlatsky’s piece on Junji Ito’s Uzumaki. He takes the Men, Women and Chainsaws stuff a little far for my tastes–I guess it shouldn’t surprise longtime readers of mine that I might feel that way–but any art-heavy close reading of that unbelievably creepy snail sequence is worth your time. (Via Brigid Alverson.)

* It’s been way too long since I saw In a Lonely Place. I’ve got a copy on VHS someplace, I know…

* I know the feeling Tom Spurgeon’s talking about in his piece on the coming Big Two digital-comics apocalypse. I’ve got an interest in following superhero comics on a monthly basis but very little in buying them in serialized installments, so timely digital release of the weekly books with a subsequent release in trade paperback would siphon money out of me without breaking a sweat. I’m sure I get way too caught up in “Why haven’t they put their comics for sale online yet? Don’t they see what happened to the music industry???” and pay way too little attention to “For all its flaws, the Direct Market is what keeps the industry afloat–I sure hope the advent of digital comics doesn’t wipe it out!!!”

* Elsewhere, Tom reviews the Alex Ross art book Rough Justice. It’s a good review to read if, like Tom, you’re sort of on the outside of the Alex Ross Phenomenon looking in, or if you like books named after surprisingly good late-period Rolling Stones songs.

* Johnny Ryan gets scarier and scarier.

* Speaking of scarier and scarier, god only knows what Josh Simmons cooked up for the latest Cinema Sewer and Sleazy Slice.

* A preview of Ross Campbell’s Shadoweyes! You know what? I’m not 100% sold on this style–not the figurework so much as the way the direct-to-tablet art looks. We’ll see.

* A Mike Mignola Batman variant cover? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* A list of Metropolis-indebted movies with no Tim Burton Batman? For shame, Matt Zoller Seitz, for shame.

* Recently on Robot 6: How the heck did the Red Hulk use Thor’s hammer?;

* and superheroes and atheism, two great tastes that might taste a little weird together, when you think about it.

* It’s funny because it’s true.

* Chris Mautner interviews Dan Nadel about Art in Time, his new collection of off-the-beaten-path old comics with genuine personal style. I think the most interesting part of the interview is Dan’s argument that, for all intents and purposes, a lot of this old material will only get one shot at being anthologized or collected, so it matters whether those collections are any good.

* Sylvester Stallone says there won’t be a Rambo V, for real.

* David Brothers rounds up a bunch of hilariously candid DC and Marvel “exit interviews” from creators who’ve wandered off the reservation in the process. Actually, I’m not sure if Mark Waid and Joe Casey were ever on the reservation. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)

* Now this is a Siege.