Over the holidays I watched two films that were strongly suggested to me: The Rise of Skywalker and Wonder Woman 1984.

I thought both were pretty good. I don’t usually have a lot to say about movies. I’m not really into them. It’s not my thing to sit and watch a movie. I’d much rather read or play a video game. Most of the time movies just don’t really capture my attention; I can just walk away at any point.

There are exceptions to this of course, but this is what I get about 90% of the time I watch a movie. It’s just really not for me, particularly the recent deluge of superhero films which are like confectioner’s sugar compared to standard films. People who enjoy talking about these movies sound to me like they are trying to be sommeliers  of canned frosting.

However these two films got me thinking about how to represent desire, how we represent desire, and our frustrations with the limits of desire, i.e. that it can only be presented to us, and through us, as human beings. Both films investigate the concept of desire if it were possible to articulate it beyond the “limited” human experience.

I’m not a fan of talking about human experience as limited, unless making a point that we just haven’t been able to imagine fully the possibilities of our limited existence here with one another. There’s an unlimited capacity for people to limit themselves to the “realistic,” which is one of the dark sides of rhetoric and debate teaching. We teach people how to do this to other people for various purposes that we keep off the table for the most part in our pedagogy (and rightfully so; the public speaking teacher probably shouldn’t be offering a crash-course in ethics on the side, although these conversations do come up quite a bit in class if you are doing it right).

These two films really show the limits of human conception as something to be celebrated, a source of strength for human beings (or human-like beings as it’s not clear if either protagonist is a ‘human’ per se). These limits are offered as positive goods through the way the films handle the idea of want.

Wonder Woman 1984 had a very Full Metal Alchemist feel to it where the law of exchange was in full effect. Alchemy, in that anime series, is something that allows for infinite possibility as long as you are willing to pay the price of “equal exchange.” If you don’t offer it up, the act of alchemy will take it – and it won’t be equal in your conception.

I thought the film was very touching on the question of mourning and grief, and how differently everyone handles that. This wasn’t directly explored, but there were little hints here and there about it through the way the film was shot, and what we see Diana up to in the opening third of the movie. She tries to have a good time here and there, but is pretty much obsessed in her work (as a superhero, not really at the Smithsonian). Diana is experiencing melancholy, in the Freudian sense, where she just doesn’t really move past the loss of Steve and is very much committed to the loss, so to speak.

The movie is sort of mysterious for the characters as they try to figure out what’s going on – they don’t seem too bothered by the incredible changes that have happened in their lives until the midway point – but the movie quickly becomes a canvas of the horrors of getting exactly what you want. Wishing for things to be other than they are is to wish for a very different world, and one that might not be comprehensible without the long, slow, uncertain process of moving through it over a period of years. Your fantasy coming true is a nightmare, as Lacan and Freud have tried to demonstrate. Even the big bad guy would rather have his horrifically imperfect life than his every desire coming true on demand.

The best moment in the film is the conversation about flying and how Diana is always mystified by it but Steve doesn’t really think about it much – he just does it because he enjoys it. What I didn’t get is the essential tension (that was unresolved) between the opening sport contest scene and the value of truth as taught to young Diana there, and this scene, that seemed to indicate that truth was a matter of perspective – with the right point of view, flying isn’t a problem. “Truth is all there is an all you need,” seems to be seems tough to accept along with merely adapting yourself to the wind and air – in the first, adapting to the situation is cheating, in the second that’s all there is.

Diana makes the right call and surrenders to Steve’s sophistic thinking and learns to “fly” literally and interpersonally – although the movie didn’t really communicate how she was adapting to the situation of Steve being gone again in that one last scene, but hinted that something was different. It would have been stronger had it been another person she ran into, but wearing that same outfit. Her openness and willingness to engage would have felt more of a change I think rather than more melancholy over Steve rather than the final chapter in mourning his passing. Flying is a very obvious, very telegraphed metaphor for “true freedom” and might have been better used as indicating healthy acceptance for change, loss, and imperfection. This film ran the risk of being like that terrible X-Men film with the blue guy where he tried to eliminate both nuclear weapons and capitalism and was defeated because the X-Men couldn’t imagine having friends or valuable relationships without the nation-state brokering those relationships in some way (particularly Xavier and Magneto, who are not role models of how to deal with illness, trauma, disability, and other such issues that the X-Men purport to address). Instead, the film shows that any counterfactual desire made real also comes with a huge amount of unconsidered difference. Wishing a good into the world comes with wishing all sorts of terrible other things.

Rise considers the tension between what you want to do and what you think your family wants you to do. This is something everyone has had to face multiple times in our lives, so there’s a good connection here. The thing that I was surprised by most in this film was how blatant the film was about indicating that all of these obligations we have toward, for, and about family are from our own mind. We imagine them all, then act on them as if they are real. Both of the main characters here, Kylo and Rey, react differently to their desires, reconsidering what their desire means again and again, only to wind up in the same place. Their final scene together is one curious answer: Desire really just wants to desire. Once you figure that out, you can make peace with it and fade away into obscurity (either very literally or by becoming a moisture farmer).

Rise of Skywalker did show the intergalactic pervasiveness of the Jeffersonian Ideal – let’s build a free and independent government so we can all return to our small farms and work the land, know the truth. Kylo Ren (Ben Solo) shows us that even the most devout Hamiltonian theorist is a human being in the end and worthy of praise for their actions, misguided as they were in terms of power, authority and (shudder) centralized authority.

Rey desires to not desire leading the Sith, which I thought would have been a great plot twist, considering the name of the film and Kylo Ren’s mother – he could have been the Skywalker that the title refers to as he comes to terms with his parental injunction and realizes that maybe dad had it right. That would have been a cool flip, but it was not to be. Rey does serve as a nice character for us to identify with, as we all fantasize about having this sort of terrible power and doing terrible things with it to the people who deserve punishment. She realizes though that she shouldn’t want this, which makes it worse (more desirable). It seems that to become a Jedi you have to realize that you do want to be all powerful, realize that’s not something that you should do (even though you can do it) and by deciding not to do it even though you really want it, you become a Jedi master. This seems to track with why Anakin failed too.

Both films are worth seeing if you haven’t seen them (now I’ve spoiled everything about them sorry) because they give us two pretty interesting models of what our attitudes should or can be when we are faced with a terrible notion: A desire for what we really want in our hearts coming to pass. Wanting a thing is often more pleasurable than actually getting it, and seeing up close what kind of horrible nightmare unfolds once you have what you (thought) you wanted.