Originally posted on Facebook on October 15th, 2021
Sorry, this is a long one. No hard feelings if you don’t read this monstrosity. Caution, spoilers are lurking.
In the last few weeks I saw the conclusion of 3 Fictional Stories:
- -Final Fantasy XV, I don’t want to say that the length and depth of the story was disappointing. This game went through a lot of development hell and what they eventually got out was a very good game, just with a bit of missed potential.
- -I watched the gripping 3rd season of Final Space, a show that has me laughing, crying, and on the edge of my seat at all times.
- -and I was recommended to and was finally able to watch the Joker now that it is on Netflix.
I was asked by a friend to express my thoughts on the Joker and it got me thinking a lot about all three of these stories. FFXV saw the protagonist grow up through his destiny to become a persistent, hopeful, and sacrificial hero to save the World from the collapse of evil and darkness. Final Space saw the protagonist dive head first into a journey of pain, heartache, and sacrifice, all for the sake of doing whatever was needed to serve both his friends and his pure sense of altruism. Meanwhile, the Joker was a critically acclaimed story about the eventual destruction of a man’s soul by his environment and the (attempted?) justification of his horrendous actions as a causation of that environment.
It took me awhile after watching the Joker to figure out why the movie did not sit well with me. I have heard the term mental health used a lot when people talk about the story, however framing the story around mental health will eventually pose the question at the end of the film “was Arthur justified for what he did because of what others did to him?”. We might try to agree with Arthur and turn this movie into a “down with the big man and him stomping on the little people” Story, or we could blame Arthur as “He has the power to pick himself up, not care about what others think, and make something of himself”. What hit me later after I was thinking about this film is that there was one key piece of society that was completely absent in any form in that film, Hope. Not a single character in that film ever looked past the society in front of them and believed that it could be better. The social worker was just doing her 9-to-5, his mother was unforgivably crazy, Thomas Wayne was completely apathetic, and Murray Franklin (the late-night show host) was so unfunny he needed to openly make fun of mental illness as a gag. It’s like the creators tried so hard to remove all good from the world that maybe we can justify bad.
My final thought on that movie is that Darkness breeds Darkness.
Meanwhile, the other two stories I watched/played, hope is one of the most major players in the show/game. Both of these other stories had way more darkness. In FFXV the sun disappears and a disease was ravaging the world turning people into daemons. Final Space destroys Earth and slowly picks off each of the characters one by one (oh my heart). However, the stories are so exciting because the hero’s, even though they are grappling with their own turmoil and issues, are ever so persistent in seeing the story out till the end, regardless of cost. They are ever hopeful that there is good (or altruism) at the end of their deep dark tunnel, and that is what guides their actions.
In the end, the Joker kills everyone remotely close to him, Noctis (from FFXV) bonds with his brothers in arms as new family, and Gary (from Final Space) clasps hands with people that go astray.
How does this effect our lives? Well I would ask, which of these world do you think we live in? I see the world of the Joker, Gotham, as what life would be like if Christ had never come to Earth. The people in the Joker are only self-serving, and act more on instinct, like animals. The only gods are the ones that they created and destroyed, like Joker himself at the end of the film. I also see the Worlds of “the Final’s” as one where Christ also did not come and was replaced by a dumbed down struggle between two partisan lesser gods. Good and evil are mostly equal components visibly at war with each other, so it is easy to pick a side and be confident that what you are doing is good. Physically fighting for good is the correct way to act in these worlds.
But God changed everything. Christ gave us ultimate choice, and it is our ability to make choice contrary to our own survival instinct that is the ultimate proof of this gift. Christ gave us the ability to love or hate, hope or despair, give or take, or to fight or die. God gave us the choice love others especially when it is not beneficial to us to do so, that is what makes love Love. Jesus showed this by displaying that he was powerful enough to dominate the World and overthrow the Romans, and then gave it all away to die the worst of deaths. In God’s world, there is no enemy to defeat, only the un-instinctive choice to refine ourselves to not be it. God is love, and wants us to also be love, it’s just being love is inherently hard. So, which one of these Worlds do you believe we live in?
This pandemic is the first time in many of our lives that we have experienced real distress. I joke that I am part of the least resilient generation in human history, because our growing up was at the height of economic freedom before our collective realization of the responsibilities that go along with it. Not many children in human history got to grow up with their only worries a couch and a video game, I am extremely fortunate. But with that comes a poor reaction to stress, and how quickly I can change from my usual decent self to a gossiping snarky cynical monster. We also now realize that our opinions and our choices have vast real World consequences, whether it be global like climate change or supply chain slavery, or local ones like getting into fights on Facebook that hurt more than they should, or deciphering the slew of Internet messaging to try and make an informed decision during a medical and economic crisis (this sentence is meant to apply to everyone, I am not trying to pigeon hole one group of people). We are going to have to use our God given gift of choice more than we have ever before, and our adult choices are way harder to make. I still have a lot of learning to do, but I want to try to always keep a relentless touch of Hope like Gary Goodspeed, or an understanding of sacrifice like Noctis, or a pursuit of expressing real love like Jesus Christ, as much as I know I will fail.
It’s always time to lay our weapons down, even if that means our enemy wins. It’s what Jesus did, and it’s the only way to truly love.
I will close with a quote from my favorite Final Fantasy Hero:
“You don’t need a reason to help people” – Zidane.
