No Country for Old Men - "What You Got Ain't Nothing New."

I was a guest on my friend Robie Malcomson’s podcast, Knowing You Know Nothing, (click the link for the episode) this week to discuss No Country for Old Men. As usual, to prepare for the podcast I wrote an article before we recorded. So this article will be a bit more rambling than usual since it’s kind of serving as my notes for the podcast. But I think most of my stuff is rambling, so this article is probably just like all the rest...but with a bonus podcast you can check out.

“What You Got Ain’t Nothing New.”

No Country for Old Men is mainly about an aging lawman struggling to accept what the world has become. Of course, it’s not just people in law enforcement that struggle with the changing world; it’s all of us. For me, I remember it happening pretty early in a sports-related way. Whenever I went from one level to the next (like junior high to high school), I would think, “Man, they have it so much better than we had it.” It was essentially the “back in my day” bullshit we all grow up hearing. 

Things do change over time, but that doesn’t mean they are worse. If I checked game tape on basketball over the past few decades, the style of the play would be different, but not worse. A lot of this type of complaining is technology-based. As people age, they tend to prefer the more comfortable method they use for communicating and whatnot, so they’ll talk about the “simpler” times before everyone had a phone in their pocket.

Ed Tom in No Country certainly yearns for the simpler days of the past, as the film begins with his narration about how some sheriff’s didn’t even pack a gun. In his mind, the past was more peaceful, but now, with the drugs and everything, the world has become much more violent and confusing. It’s not until the end of the film that Ed Tom realizes that it’s not so much the world that has changed; it’s him. His uncle, Ellis, sums it up far better than I can: “What you got ain’t nothing new. This country’s hard on people. Can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

Ed Tom finishes the film by recounting a dream he had about his long-dead father passing him on horseback and knowing that his father would be waiting for him ahead. I always thought that dream meant Ed Tom had accepted that he had aged beyond this world and felt comforted knowing that his father had gone through the same thing and would be waiting for him. His final line, “Then I woke up,” signifies that he’s at least aware of his situation now and has found a little peace in a hard world.

Accepting the chaos and Chigurhs of the world is something everyone throughout time could benefit from. When I was outlining this article, I thought I would focus on how crazy the world is right now and write about how this film can help someone realize that the world has always been crazy and chaotic. I still believe that, but I think focusing on that would defeat the point. It would assume that the world now is more chaotic than it’s ever been, and while that might seem like it’s the case, I can think of plenty of other historical events/time periods that would make the world feel less certain than it is today (the Holocaust, slavery, 9/11, JFK assassination, the Civil War, etc.). And I find it silly and disrespectful to try to compare horrible events to see which one is worse. 

Yes, learning the same lesson that Ed Tom learns in this film would be beneficial for a lot of people right now, but it would also be beneficial for a lot of people at any time in history. We all need to accept the title of the film and realize that this is not a country, or world, for old people. There are children growing up right now (my own two among them) that don’t see this current world as chaotic or different, even. This is just the world to them because this world is for them. Talk to them in twenty to thirty years, though, and they’ll probably tell you about how this chaotic world of ours right now is much simpler than the bullshit happening to their world in the future. And if I’m there to talk to them about it, I’ll just remind them of the lesson I took away from this movie: the world may change a bit, but people have and will always suck.

The Terminator, as Directed by the Coen Brothers.

It really hit me watching No Country this time how similar it is to The Terminator. The easy comparison is that Chigurh is machine-like and lethal like the Terminator and Llewelyn is the scrappy Kyle Reese, doing all he can survive.

There are certainly plenty of thematic differences between the films, but the long segments of tense cat-and-mouse interactions along with the scenes of preparation and self-surgery are spot-on Terminator. It makes for an interesting watch, seeing how the Coens would’ve made The Terminator.

As far as Chigurh as the Terminator goes, I actually think he’s a bit scarier because of his obsession with chance. It’s one thing to be a machine on a mission, but his strange coin flip game is a cruel addition. But then again, death in general is the same. Although I’ve never thought of Chigurh as a simple representative of death, but more as a personification of the brutal chaos of the world. In that way, Chigurh is more realistic. I can imagine someone like him existing, whereas the Terminator is more of a science fiction fantasy.

It’s pretty obvious, and plenty of others have made this comparison (as evidenced by the video below), but it stuck out to me a bit more this time for some reason.

Why Do I Own This?

I own almost every Coen Brothers movie (except Buster Scruggs [which seems silly to own since it’s a Netflix movie] and Hail, Caesar!, which has not grown on me enough yet. I used to be a completionist, which is why I own Intolerable Cruelty. All that written, I’d own this no matter who the filmmakers were. I believe this is easily in the top ten of the past twenty years.

Random Thoughts

I’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times, and this is the first time I noticed that Llewelyn’s first line is, “You hold still,” which is very similar to what Chigurh says to the unfortunate motorist in the previous scene. One is killing a man, the other is killing an animal. I suppose this film is asking if there’s a difference.

Gas station and grocery store scenes in period films always bother me because they rarely get the product packaging right. In this case, the Jack Link’s beef jerky in the background should not be there since the movie takes place in 1980 and Jack Link’s wasn’t founded until 1986. Not to mention that there’s no way the packaging looked like that in 1986. It’s a pet peeve that I wish I could ignore. Who else would let beef jerky take them out of such an amazing scene?

“Age will flatten a man.”

I love how the trailer park office lady says, “Did you not hear me?”

“You telling me he shot this boy in the head then went digging around in there with a pocketknife?”

“Sir, I don’t want to picture that.”

“I don’t either.”

Hotel clerk, incredulous: “That’s got two double beds!”

This is a movie largely comprised of scenes of preparation and tension. Come to think of it, that’s another reason why this movie reminds me of The Terminator more and more each time I watch it.

It’s also an all-time Coen Brothers film in regards to scenes with people working behind counters and desks.

“Is Carson Wells there?”

“Not in the sense that you mean.”

“They torture them first. Not sure why. Maybe the television set was broken.”

“But that’s what it took, you notice, to get someone’s attention. Digging graves in the backyard didn’t bring any.”

“Oh. That’s all right. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”

“It’s certainly true that it’s a story.”

At first, I was annoyed that Llewelyn died off screen. Now I see that the shift in narrative focus is part of the point. People die and the focus drifts to the next person.

I was confused for a while about where exactly Chigurh is when Ed Tom goes back to the hotel. But you can see briefly that the lock to the next room has been shot out, as well. So I believe he’s waiting in the next hotel room and takes off while Ed Tom is looking through Llewelyn’s room.

“I always thought that when I got older, God would come into my life.” I’m not so certain now, but there was a time when I just thought older people were religious because they were old, and that’s what you do when you’re old, and that when I got older I would become much more religious. I’m not exactly old, so perhaps this will still be the case when/if I’m elderly.

The “vanity” line from Uncle Ellis really speaks to me. The idea that it’s vain to assume the world is at its worst during your lifetime is something I use to comfort myself from time to time. When I was little, I used to be very worried about the end of the world (the impending year 2000 was a point of concern for me for a while). Eventually, I came to the realization that this current generation of humanity is nothing special, so why should the world end while we’re here? It’s a bit of a messed up way to comfort yourself, sure, but it works for me. Why would the world end while we’re here? We suck too much for the apocalypse. An apocalypse would be wasted on us!

When I watched this in the theaters the first time, some dido behind me said, “Are you serious?” at the end. Yeah, they’re serious, you fucking moron. Look at the title. It’s called No Country for Old Men, not The Coen Brothers Made a Terminator Movie and That’s All. I hate to claim that someone doesn’t “get” something, but if you watched this movie and came away disappointed by the end, which encapsulates what the movie is actually about, then...you didn’t get it.

Here are a couple paragraphs of notes that didn’t make the cut for the first section, but I didn’t want to just delete them:

This is why we die. If we live too long, this world changes too much for us to handle. It happens sooner for some people. For simple folk like myself, I’m able to step away from it mentally and focus on other things, like parenting, video games, movies, work, etc. Life sometimes seems like one big distraction from the world.

But I don’t believe humans have become worse over time. We just know more things now. I imagine plenty of fucked up terrible shit happened even back in the cave dwelling days of humanity. But all we have to go by are some cave paintings of deer and shit. Now, we can just go back through someone’s Twitter history to find out how big of a piece of shit they are. We’ve always been awful, now we’re just better at letting everyone know, and, worse, a lot of people are proud of it.

..

Arnold Is Back...Sort Of. Schwarzenegger Is Underutilized in the Decent but Disappointing "Terminator: Genisys."

Terminator: Genisys

They definitely relied on this gag too much. This is one of four or five times you see the smile that originated in 1991...

At this point, the Terminator franchise has been rejuvenated more times than Judgment Day has been avoided. The last attempt, Terminator: Salvation, was meant to be the beginning of a new trilogy. It is now regarded a disappointment with the box office and fans alike, so that was scrapped (even though there are people who liked it, like me, and it made $371 million worldwide). Now, with Terminator: Genisys, much like Skynet, they refuse to let the franchise die.

The easy way to describe Genisys is that it’s not as good as the first two, but it’s better than the last two. Simplistic, sure, but it’s accurate, especially since Genisys is a return to the storyline of the original film. Of course, a real assessment is more complicated than that, but to get into it completely, spoilers are involved. So, if you want to watch Genisys completely fresh, stop reading now (although if you’ve seen the previews for this movie, everything mentioned in this review has already been spoiled for you).

Genisys has one of the worst marketing plans for a movie in recent memory. It is revealed, both in previews and articles (like the one I regretfully read in Entertainment Weekly which didn’t even feature a spoiler warning) that John Connor is now a Terminator. Usually when a preview reveals something like that, it means it happens early in the film. But in Genisys, it is a major twist roughly forty-five minutes in. What is truly irritating about the twist being spoiled is that it could have been actually surprising. For some reason, the marketing team thought spoiling a major plot point would drum up more business (it didn’t).

Spoilers aside, Connor as a Terminator is a decent and interesting change to the storyline. Aside from that change, Genisys is much more interested in reminding fans of the past. The main element is the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to his career-defining role. His presence, along with a return to the 1984 setting of the original, should be enough to please fans of the series. Some have complained about the movie resorting to fan service elements, but if you’re a fan, what’s the problem? (By the way, I am a fan, and the fan service did its job; overall, I liked the movie.)

That’s Genisys in a nutshell: fan service. People want to see Arnold in awesome action sequences spouting off one-liners (even though it makes no sense for this version of him to know those one-liners, but who cares?). The action of Genisys is fine, though sometimes it feels too fake (the old Arnold vs. young Arnold sequence comes to mind). There are some standout moments, however (the bus sequence is pretty great). Put simply, it’s a serviceable action film, but not genre-redefining like T2.

The main problem with Genisys is that it doesn’t adhere to the original film enough. In the original, the Terminator was as much a character as Kyle Reese or Sarah Connor. Here, he’s subordinate to Kyle and Sarah, which is a mistake. Kyle Reese was not the main character in The Terminator. He was one-third of the focus. Here, he’s the main protagonist with Sarah Connor the close second lead. Arnold is reduced to being their violent robot butler (I know, I know, it’s “cybernetic organism,” not robot, but I prefer “robot”).

Arnold playing third fiddle is annoying for two reasons. First, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn in the original) is now played by Jai Courtney, an actor who is mediocre at best, and an unlikable husk at worst. Here, he’s mediocre bordering on likable for a change, but he’s no Michael Biehn, and worse, he’s not playing the character like Beihn at all. Kyle Reese went from an intense, jittery time traveler to a milquetoast everyman who seems pretty calm about traveling to a time that should be unrecognizable to him. So he’s not the best character to be stuck following.

Second, this version of Arnold was sent back in the 1970s to protect Sarah Connor and then be a surrogate father to her. We’re shown a glimpse of this in a flashback, but how much more interesting would it have been if the film started there and followed Arnold and Sarah all the way through? On top of that, there’s a point in the story when Kyle and Sarah must travel from 1984 to 2017, and Arnold can’t go with them. So he has to bide his time for over thirty years. Those thirty years would be an interesting movie on their own, but in Genisys, we don’t see a second of it. At the very least they could have done a montage sequence or something. (Perhaps the progression of Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Bruce Willis in Looper could have been mimicked.) It’s just unfortunate that positive elements of the film are overshadowed by what might have been.

The positive elements make Genisys an enjoyable, if disappointing, film. Arnold still inhabits the Terminator effortlessly and makes every scene he’s in better. Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) is an interesting choice for Sarah Connor this time around. She’s a good combination of the original, fragile Sarah and ultra-militarized T2 Sarah. And, despite the obvious setups for future movies (it is never revealed who sent Arnold back to the 1970s, for instance), it is interesting to see where the story goes from here.

The best thing the series can do, however, is end for good once this planned trilogy is over (if the trilogy even happens, that is, since this film isn’t exactly tearing up the box office). The most boring aspect of this film is that it’s about stopping Judgment Day again. Hate the last two movies all you want, but at least they were willing to accept that Judgment Day is inevitable. Whatever happens in the future of this increasingly convoluted time-traveling saga, let it at least come to a true, final conclusion. Let’s just hope Arnold is front and center for that conclusion. 

Terminator: Genisys receives a:

Random Thoughts (even more SPOILERS)

Some people have applauded the film for returning to a more light-hearted tone. While this film contains more jokes than the extremely bleak Salvation, I don't think T2 was as goofy as everyone remembers. Sure there was the smile and all the catch phrases, but Genisys crossed the line with the mugshot scene set to the COPS theme music. 

The Arnold vs. Arnold sequence really disappointed me, especially since the young Arnold in Salvation somehow looked better. Granted, young Arnold is cloaked in shadows in Salvation, but at least they were aware of their limitations. A couple of moments during the fight in Genisys it looked like a videogame.

John Connor as a Terminator is interesting because it takes the ending of Salvation and tweaks it a bit. I just wish he was meant to be a bridge between man and machine (like in Salvation when he get a heart transplant from a hybrid Terminator) rather than just a new tool for the machines. Aside from the initial reveal, the characters seem to have no issue with actively trying to kill John Connor, the man the entire series has been about. The twist is really wasted since John simply ends up being the new, "bad" Terminator. It would make more sense for Terminator John to stay in the future and figure out a way to end all of this rather than go back to make sure Skynet happens. They could have sent back any mimicking Terminator to provide the info to get Skynet going. John Connor isn't the only one privy to that info.

Stopping Judgment Day and Skynet is just stupid at this point. And naming it "Genisys" now is just annoying because every time I type it I have to deal with the computer telling me it's spelled incorrectly. Anyway, remember Terminator 3? The whole point of that movie was that Judgment Day was inevitable, and the reason was because everything is connected now. Destroying a hard drive in some office building isn't enough in the internet age. And they figured that out for a 2003 film, when the internet was not nearly as prevalent. Back when phones were still mainly used for communication. You might think that it was more advanced, but the movie actually has the villain log onto the internet through dial-up. I'm serious. This is why it's so stupid that a movie set fourteen years later would revert back to early 90s T2 logic: just smash it all up, and it will be okay. It's just lazy.

Finally, I think people need to reevaluate the last two movies. They get a bad rap, but at least they were willing to do something different with the series. Terminator 3 was meant to put n end to the Judgment Day stuff, and the character of John Connor was very interesting because it evaluated what time travel and prophecy could do to someone. Who is John Connor without the end of the world? And Salvation was a straight up war film that didn't even feature time travel. John Connor was dealt with interestingly here, as well. Some people didn't believe he was all that great, and he's really only a "prophet" because he's been told everything, not because he's some miracle worker. The films have their flaws, don't get me wrong: until the end, Terminator 3 is just about prevent Judgment Day again, and Connor in Salvation is kind of a screaming lunatic. But they dared to take the series in a different direction, which is more than you can say for Genisys.