Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/07/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-seven-moana/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58562

I will begin this piece noting that I am not unbiased in my thoughts about Moana, as my friend, the Oscar-nominated writer Pamela Ribon, helped write a significant chunk of this film’s story. I found out about her involvement after the fact, namely, by sitting there in the theater watching the credits when the movie was done, spying her name, and saying “Oh, shit! Pamie!” out loud, thereby confusing the friend I went to see the film with. How much Pamela’s involvement in this film raises my estimation of it is difficult for me to quantify, but I can assure you I liked it very much before I knew she was involved with it. So, there, you have my disclosure.

And in fact, I do like Moana very much. It’s my favorite film out of Disney Animated Studios in the last decade, and even (barely) edges out Coco when you include Pixar in the mix (Coco is wonderful, though, you should absolutely see it if you have not). Moana does many things well, both technically and in the story department, but what I like most about it is that, without making an overt fuss about it, it’s the most feminist and woman-forward animated film that Disney Animation has made.

Disney, mind you, has been mining the “girl power” vein for a while, most overtly since the Disney Renaissance era that began with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. The Disney canon is so replete with these characters that they’re even their own marketing category within Disney itself: The Disney Princesses. The problem with the Disney Princesses, however, is one clear enough that Disney itself parodized it in a scene from Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet (written — again! — by Pamela Ribon):

Moana is in this scene, but of all the “princesses” in here (not excepting Venelope!) she is the one whose journey’s intersection with men (and more broadly, with patriarchy) is of a different quality. Men exist in and are even essential to her path through the story, but at every juncture of the story, she is the captain of her own fate. She is continually self-motivating, self-rescuing, and ultimately, the instrument of the story’s resolution in a way that does not depend on a man (it may depend on an ocean, which is never gendered, but let’s not get into that now).

I don’t think Moana, either the film or character, overtly makes a big deal out of any of this — there’s no point where Moana has a story-stopping “girl power” moment, and the only person who explicitly calls out her princess-ness is a dude who does it as a winking fourth-wall crack, and the fact is never really brought up again. Moana’s not rubbing your face in its feminist bona fides. It’s not to say they aren’t there.

In any event, at no point is Moana’s womanhood presented as a disadvantage. She is early on explicitly tapped to be the next leader of the only village on a Polynesian island of no specific provenance (the voice cast of the film is primarily Polynesian, but from varying places in the Pacific: Hawai’i, Samoa, and New Zealand/Aotearoa most prominently). This ascent to leadership is something that Moana accepts with some reluctance, for while her people have lived contentedly on the island for centuries, their antecedents once roamed the waves in big boats, and Moana sees her destiny out there. This fact is a subject of some exasperation to her father, who wants her to focus on where she is.

The issue gets forced when a blight hits the island, killing both the fish and the coconut palms the villagers rely on. This blight, Moana is told by her grandmother, is the result of the trickster demigod Maui stealing the (literal, not figurative) heart of the goddess Te Fiti, inadvertently starting the blight as well as being the cause of the pause in sailing between islands. The good news is, as a baby Moana was chosen by the ocean! For what? Well, as it happens, to leave the island, find Maui, and force him to return the heart of Te Fiti. Simple enough, yes? Well. No.

It does not pass my attention that in this film the initiating problem, and the various obstacles that Moana encounters, originate with men, and the aid and advice she gets is at the hand of the women characters (there is the volcano demon Te Kā, who is coded as a woman, but hold that thought). Again, the film doesn’t dwell on any of this — and both Maui and Moana’s dad have understandable and defensible reasons for what they do — but it’s there. Men in this film, in ways large and small, exist to be routed around and made to understand that they are supporting, not main, characters in this tale.

No one exemplifies this more than Maui, played by Dwayne Johnson in a frankly delightful bit of typecasting. If ever a movie star exuded “main character energy,” it’s Johnson. That same sort of heedless self-regard oozes through Maui, who despite being in exile for a thousand years, settles back into his own internal spotlight the second someone else gazes upon him. That Moana is having none of his guff is neither here nor there to him; she whacks him with an oar with seconds of meeting him and he reacts with mild puzzlement rather than comprehension. His signature song, “You’re Welcome,” is a literal paean to how awesome he is, and it’s perfect that Johnson’s singing voice is, how to put it, deeply imperfect. Maui wouldn’t care if he was off-key. Being on key is for people who aren’t demigods.

But the fact is, this isn’t Maui’s story, it’s Moana’s, and Maui’s journey will be to learn that being of service — the thing he’s always prided himself on — is not about filling the hole in one’s psyche.

Moana’s journey is also one of service — she wants to save her island and her people. She doesn’t know if she can do it, and there are times when she is sure that she can’t, but she is determined to anyway, and besides there is no one else who can do it. She’s learning on the job, so to speak, and what I like about her his that her doubts and fears and acknowledgements of her own deficiencies are right there in her story… and she keeps on regardless, and will do it all by herself if she has to. What saves her, and by extension saves everybody, is her ability to see, not where she has a chance to be a hero, but where she has a chance to heal what has been broken. It’s her story but it’s never been about her, or, rather, just about her.

This is a fairly subtle peace of storytelling — a story where the “big bad” isn’t defeated, or even redeemed, but is restored, from a harm perpetrated long ago. And the hero’s reward? Not riches or fame, or true love’s kiss, or a man in any shape or form. She just gets to go home, with the knowledge there is a home to go back to. This is a hero’s journey, to be sure. But it’s a different hero’s journey than we usually get, and one that I don’t think we often get to see when when the hero is a man. This is what Moana does, that the other “princess” movies up to that point didn’t really manage to do.

(Mulan comes close. But, Shang.)

I think it’s important that, while the film was directed and largely written by people who were not Polynesian, the filmmakers actively consulted and collaborated with Polynesians and Pacific Islanders about the movie, and listened about a number of things, like Maui’s appearance and why Moana wouldn’t be disrespectful regarding coconuts. Likewise, while Lin-Manuel Miranda is the marquee name for the movie’s songwriting, he collaborated with Opetaia Foaʻi, a Tokelauan-Tuvaluan composer and songwriter. I’m not qualified to say that the filmmakers got Polynesia “right” — please listen to others with better knowledge on that score — but at the very least it is good that there was an acknowledgement they were telling a story in a milieu that people currently exist in, and to which they owed respect.

I have not seen Moana’s animated sequel, which came out in 2024 and shoved lots of cash into Disney’s coffers, and bluntly, other than the obvious “for even more money,” I am confused why Disney thinks it’s a good idea to do a “live action” version of the story a mere decade after the animated movie hit theaters (actually, I do have a theory about this — the “live action” remakes of the animated movies serve the same function as re-releasing the classic Disney animated films did before the age of home video: bonding another generation of children to Disney’s character and stories, the better to keep them in the economic chain that continues on to Disney’s theme parks and cruises. Even so). I don’t imagine I will be going out my way to see the “live action” version anytime soon.

But that doesn’t decrease my appreciation for Moana, the original film. Disney doesn’t need me to tell them they got this one right. But they did. Of all the “Disney Princess” movies, this one, in theme and story, is the true queen.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/07/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-seven-moana/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58562

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/06/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-six-trading-places/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58545

Trading Places takes place within the holiday season, with two of the big moments happening on Christmas and New Year’s Eve; does this make it a holiday movie? I suppose it might, although unlike Die Hard and a couple of other films, no one has ever made make a huge stink on the Internet about it. The Die Hard question was solved once they started making Hans Gruber advent calendars, although ironically it is Trading Places that is actually all about someone’s fall, albeit in personal circumstances, not from the top of a skyscraper.

The fall in question is that of Louis Winthrope, a smug young man from old money, played by Dan Ackroyd at his most unctuous. Winthorpe is the classic example of someone being born on third and thinking he’d hit a triple. He’s got a job as a commodities trader at the venerable Duke & Duke firm, has a great townhouse complete with butler (both paid for by his company), and he’s affianced to the sleek-haired Penelope, who looks like she models for the LL Bean catalogue (and as Kristin Holby, who played her, was indeed a fashion model, she may well have). Everything’s coming up Winthorpe!

Until he literally bumps into Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy, in his second movie role), a fast-talking but not especially successful street con. Valentine’s trying to avoid the police when he collides with Winthrope, and he picks up the trader’s fallen briefcase to return it to him. Winthorpe panics because he’s a soft white man, and screams for the police. Valentine runs into the stuffy private club Winthorpe just came out of, and finds himself arrested; Winthrope, who demands to press charges against Valentine, is hailed as a hero by his fellow finance bros.

None of this escapes the attention of Mortimer and Randolph Duke, the heads of the firm. Randolph in particular believes that Billy Ray’s general misfortune is the product of his deprived environment; Mortimer, the more openly racist of the two, thinks it’s due to race. The two make a wager on it: They will raise up Valentine and humble Winthorpe, and see whether circumstances make the man, or not.

And thus does Winthorpe fall, and hard. And equally, Valentine rises, to become the toast of Philadelphia’s financial elite. obviously, Winthorpe and Valentine are destined to collide again later in the film, as the facts of what has happened to them both, and why, come out.

Trading Places is a very funny movie, but there are lots of very funny movies that don’t end up being the fourth-highest-grossing film of their year, in a year that also has a Star Wars movie (Return of the Jedi) and a James Bond flick (the egregiously-named Octopussy). Funny or not, neither the story nor script of Trading Places is so revolutionary or consistently hilarious that in themselves they should have been expected to be near the top of the end of the year charts.

What Trading Places had going for it was heat, particularly in the form of Eddie Murphy. It’s hard for the couple of generations of adults who know Eddie Murphy from the Shrek franchise and/or a run of undistinguished and indistinguishable comedies in the late 90s and early 2000s to really appreciate just how much of a generational talent Murphy was seen as in the 80s, especially in the first half of the decade. He was to comedy what Michael Jackson was to music (a comparison that doesn’t sound that great here in the third decade of the 21st century, admittedly, but still apt). Trading Places got him on the upswing of that, coming in hot from the critical and commercial success of the film 48 Hours, and from him being literally the only reason people watched Saturday Night Live in the early 80s (sorry, Joe Piscopo).

Murphy was so hot in this era that when he branched out into a pop music career in 1985, his (deeply underwhelming in retrospect) song “Party all the Time” actually went to #2, stopped only by the pop behemoth that was Lionel Richie. Not everything Murphy touched in this era turned to gold (see: Best Defense, or, actually, please don’t), but it took a lot for it not to, and Trading Places was more than good enough on its own.

Also! The film was directed by John Landis, who was himself in the middle of a run of remarkably popular films, starting with Animal House and continuing on through The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London, and Dan Ackroyd, while less white-hot than his director and co-star, had seen a big hit in the Landis-directed The Blues Brothers and had residual audience affection from his SNL days. Jamie Lee Curtis, as Ophelia, the streetwalker who takes pity on Winthorpe, was mostly known as a “scream queen” but was ready to show her range, and her body, in this film. Neither were to be discounted.

Basically, everyone involved would have had to work really hard to fuck this one up. They did not.

More than that, it turned out that Ackroyd’s ability to project smarmy self-satisfaction first contrasted and then meshed perfectly with Murphy’s antic hustle, with Curtis’ surprising warmth grounding the two of them. Landis’s direction doesn’t show the hallmarks of greatness here, but with this cast it didn’t have to; it mostly had to not get in the way. The story hits all the marks in Winthorpe’s and Valentine’s respective fall and rise, their eventual understanding of what’s happening, and their decision to set things right — through insider trading, as it happens. What a gloriously ambiguous way to secure a comeuppance!

But the comeuppance is what we’re here for, and it’s what resonantes in the film, first in the Reagan era and now in our oligarch one, and what makes it a fulfilling rewatch.

Viewers coming new to this film in 2025 or later are hereby put on notice that there are several parts of this film that have aged extremely poorly, none more than the film’s fourth act, which features Dan Ackroyd in blackface, sporting a frankly terrible Jamaican accent, not to mention non-consensual encounters with great apes. This is a recurring curse of 80s comedies, where casual racism/sexism/etc is part of the background radiation of the time.

The flip side of this is that some folks might grump that this is why “you couldn’t make this film today,” which is nonsense, and not true — none of the casual racism, sexism, etc is needed for the story, and could be chucked aside for new and better jokes and writing. The intentional racism of the film, in the form of the Duke brothers and their terrible bet, on the other hand, is at the heart of the tale, and is, alas, as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, now that we have tech dudes running around trying to make eugenics happen all over again.

In fact, it might be time for another filmmaker to take a new swing at the Trading Places concept, this time having it take place in Silicon Valley, with the bet makers being tech bros who wager a single crypto coin, or whatever. I think there would be an audience for seeing some of this new generation of terrible rich people getting theirs at the hands of the people whose lives they are trying to destroy. These days, as in the 80s, you would have to work real hard for that not to be a hit. Set it during the holiday season, too. Let these turkeys get stuffed.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/06/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-six-trading-places/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58545

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/04/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-4-defending-your-life/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58514

There are many ways to die in this world, roughly as many ways as there are to live, but there is one thing I know for sure: I do not wish to die the way Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) dies in Defending Your Life. One, he dies on his birthday, which, while it makes for a tidy headstone, is a terrible way to spend the one day of the year that is all about you. Two, he’s just bought a car, and he’s not going to get to enjoy it. Three, he dies listening to Barbra Streisand, and, no disrespect to Ms. Streisand, but there’s nothing in her oeuvre that I wish to slip the surly bonds of Earth to. The last song Daniel hears is “Something’s Coming”; the title, at least, turns out to be prophetic.

And then Daniel is dead, and where he goes is neither heaven nor hell, and not even purgatory or limbo. He has arrived in Judgment City, which looks rather a bit like Orange County, and which processes all the dead of the Western United States. Judgment City has some nice perks, like the fact that humans who arrive there can eat all the food they want and never gain weight, and also it’s the best food they’ve ever had. But there are drawbacks, too, like the fact that everyone has to wear bulky white caftans, and also that one has to make a good argument for how they’ve lived their life on Earth. If it goes well, they move on. If it goes poorly, they go back to Earth. If it goes really poorly, the universe throws them out.

You’re on trial for your life, in other words, and because this way station is both bureaucratic and strangely Calvinistic, there are subtle hints about how your trial is going to go before you even step into the courtroom. To begin, how is your hotel? If you’re at the afterlife equivalent of the Four Seasons, you’re probably fine. If you’re at something like a bog-standard Marriott, it could go either way. If you’re at the equivalent of a Motel 6, get ready to go back. Likewise, the number of days of your life that the trial will examine is a good hint how things will go; the fewer the better.

Daniel, who is a sharp study, immediately wants to know where he falls on the “go on or go back” spectrum, which amuses Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), his appointed counselor. Mind you, everything about the humans coming through Judgment City amuses the staff there; they are ascended beings who use forty to fifty percent of their brains, unlike the humans, who use five percent at most. The staff of Judgment City look at humans like humans look at clever pets or precocious toddlers. They want good things for them! But they’re not going to socialize after hours or anything.

What Daniel mostly gets from all of this is that some people are shoo-ins to move on, and some people are, to put it nicely, going to have to work for it, and Daniel is in the latter category. Daniel was not a bad person on Earth; he was nice enough and well-liked by co-workers, even if he didn’t have a lot of what you would actually call friends. But in Judgment City, there’s the belief that when you use as little of your brain as humans do, you are ruled by your fears, and Daniel… well. He’s very human.

There’s more going on in this movie, including a budding romance between Daniel and Julia, a woman who may be too good for him, the first clue of that being that she is played by Meryl Streep. But what makes Defending Your Life work for me is both the teleology and the philosophy of Judgment City, as laid out by Brooks, who in addition to starring in the film, also wrote and directed it. Brooks has posited possibly the most practical afterlife ever, a fact that I think is easy to overlook as the story chugs along.

I don’t personally believe in an afterlife, but if I were going to believe in one, this is very close to the one I would believe in — not a place of perfect peace or eternal damnation, but basically a performance review to see how you did in the place that best suited your personal development. If you go on, great — the next place has a new set of problems and challenges for you to experience, solve and learn from. If you need more time back on Earth, that’s fine too — like the California Bar, not everyone passes the first time, and there’s no shame (at least at first) going back and trying again until you get it right. Is there a God? Who knows? Judgment City is not here to answer that. What it’s here to answer is: Are you ready for what comes next?

Well, that’s nothing new, I hear you say, that’s just Buddhism with extra steps. And, well, maybe it is, and if it is, then it makes sense that fear would be the thing that reattaches you to Earth, the thing you have to eventually let go of in order to move on. We are at this moment living in an era where large numbers of people are motivated by their fears, and others derive their power by making people afraid of other people, including their neighbors. I think if the afterlife is anything like it’s depicted here, there are going to be a fair number of people who currently live well who, in the afterlife, are going to be surprised to be staying at a seedy roadside motel, looking at a month’s worth of days of their life. At least the snacks will be great.

Brooks may or may not just be giving the eternal wheel of suffering a new spin, but whatever he’s doing, he’s being smart and funny about it. Brooks’ Daniel is a slightly depressed everyman who is more clever than he is good, someone who is willing to settle even when, in his heart, it’s not what he wants. It gives Daniel a sort of melancholy that’s both approachable (you can see why his co-workers like him) and also a lot to deal with (which is why he doesn’t have a lot of friends).

He’s relatable, and I think a lot of us can see at least a little of ourselves in him. As director, writer and star, Brooks only rarely goes for the laugh-out-loud moment in this film. But over and over again, there are rueful chuckles. You’ll laugh with this film, and you might wince in self-recognition as well. Ultimately, Daniel will have to work for his happy ending, and it’s never obvious whether or not he will get it. And that, too, is like life.

Defending Your Life makes me laugh, but it’s also made me think about my own choices and my own fears in this life. I can say that there have been a few times where I thought about this film when I was on the verge of having to make choices about where my own life was heading. There is a scene in the film where Daniel is up for a job, and he wants a specific salary. He has his (then) wife pretend to be the job interviewer, and they spar over the salary he will accept. Then he goes to meet the actual guy, and takes the first number thrown out at him, even though it’s far below what he actually wanted. We see his face when he realizes what he’s done. He let his fear get in the way of what he wanted, and he knows it.

I thought about that scene a few years later, when I was working as a film critic at the Fresno Bee newspaper. At one point, I was up for a film critic job at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, and it came down to me and one other writer. I had informed the Bee that I was up for the job, and they were waiting to find out whether I would take the job or not. If it was offered to me, it would come with a largeish bump in pay, which was something I kind of needed; the Bee was a lovely place to work, but they didn’t pay me a lot and weren’t inclined to give me more.

Spoiler: I did not get the job. When I didn’t, I could have just gone back to work like nothing ever happened, without the raise I wanted and needed. Or, I could raise on a busted flush — after all, the Bee didn’t know (yet) that I didn’t get the job. I went into my Managing Editor’s office to tell him what happened with the St. Paul offer, and the first thing I said to him as I came through the door was “give me a twenty-five percent raise and a weekly column, and I’ll stay.” If he said no, I was screwed, because I had implied I had gotten the other job. But I chose to stuff that fear down, and ask for what I needed and wanted.

Second spoiler: He said yes to my proposal and told me he was glad I was going to stay. I thanked him, went to the men’s room in the hall, slipped into one of the toilet stalls, sat down and had a nice five-minute nervous breakdown before going back to my desk and back to work. I had faced my fear, and I had got what I wanted. And it’s made a difference in how I’ve lived my life since then.

I owe Daniel, and Albert Brooks, and Defending Your Life for that. We’ll see what sort of hotel upgrade that gets me in the afterlife. I’d still rather not be listening to Streisand when I go, however.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/04/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-4-defending-your-life/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58514

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/04/the-2025-whatever-holiday-gift-guide-day-four-fan-favorites/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58499

For the first three days of the Whatever Gift Guide this year, We’ve had authors and creators tell you about their work. Today is different: Today is Fan Favorites day, in which fans, admirers and satisfied customers share with you a few of their favorite things — and you can share some of your favorite things as well. This is a way to discover some cool stuff from folks like you, and to spread the word about some of the things you love.

Fans: Here’s how to post in this thread. Please follow these directions!

1. Fans only: That means that authors and creators may not post about their own work in this thread (they may post about other people’s work, if they are fans). There are already existing threads for traditionally-published authors, non-traditionally published authors, and for other creators. Those are the places to post about your own work, not here.

2. Individually created and completed works only, please. Which is to say, don’t promote things like a piece of hardware you can find at Home Depot, shoes from Foot Locker, or a TV you got at Wal-Mart. Focus on things created by one person or a small group: Music, books, crafts and such. Things that you’ve discovered and think other people should know about, basically. Do not post about works in progress, even if they’re posted publicly elsewhere. Remember that this is supposed to be a gift guide, and that these are things meant to be given to other people. So focus on things that are completed and able to be sold or shared.

3. One post per fan. In that post, you can list whatever creations you like, from more than one person if you like, but allow me to suggest you focus on newer stuff. Note also that the majority of Whatever’s readership is in the US/Canada, so I suggest focusing on things available in North America. If they are from or available in other countries, please note that!

4. Keep your description of the work brief (there will be a lot of posts, I’m guessing) and entertaining. Imagine the person is in front of you as you tell them about the work and is interested but easily distracted.

5. You may include a link to a sales site if you like by using standard HTML link scripting. Be warned that if you include too many links (typically three or more) your post may get sent to the moderating queue. If this happens, don’t panic: I’ll be going in through the day to release moderated posts. Note that posts will occasionally go into the moderation queue semi-randomly; Don’t panic about that either.

6. Comment posts that are not about fans promoting work they like will be deleted, in order to keep the comment thread useful for people looking to find interesting gifts.

Got it? Excellent. Now: Geek out and tell us about cool stuff you love — and where we can get it too.

Tomorrow: Charities!

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/04/the-2025-whatever-holiday-gift-guide-day-four-fan-favorites/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58499