...About That New Ghostbusters Movie

Sony Pictures Entertainment released the first official trailer for the Ghostbusters reboot this week. This film is a terrible idea. Here's an excessively long explanation of why.

Why was the original Ghostbusters good?

Ghostbusters is almost a perfect movie. Of course any discussion of art is going to entail subjectivity, but Ghostbusters is widely acknowledged to be a great movie. Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars when he saw it in June of 1984, declaring, "Ghostbusters is one of those rare movies where the original, fragile comic vision has survived a multimillion-dollar production ... [i]t uses its money wisely, and when that, ahem, monster marches down a Manhattan avenue and climbs the side of a skyscraper ... we're glad they spent the money for the special effects because it gets one of the biggest laughs in a long time." It has a "certified fresh" score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus "an infectiously fun blend of special effects and comedy, with Bill Murray's hilarious deadpan performance leading a cast of great comic turns." The film quickly cemented itself in pop-culture and spawned an empire of cartoon spin-offs and toys.

But is Ghostbusters really that good, or are we just looking back on a cultural icon of the 1980's with rose-colored nostalgia goggles, perhaps exaggerating its brilliance and whitewashing its deficiencies? Well, moviebob took almost 40 minutes to explore that very question, and (spoilers!) the answer is yes, Ghostbusters really is that good.

But what makes Ghostbusters so good? We might sum it up succinctly in three words: Bill Fucking Murray. While the whole cast plays off each other brilliantly, Murray steals the show. Most of the film's memorable lines come from him ("Yes, it's true. This man has no dick."), although every single character contributes unforgettable one-liners ("Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES!"). The film was written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, two comedy geniuses in the prime of their writing and performing careers. Ramis by 1984 had already written several comedy classics (Caddyshack, Meatballs, Groundhog Day, Stripes, National Lampoon's Vacation and Animal House), and Aykroyd had been an award-winning writer and performer on Saturday Night Live as well as writing and starring in The Blues Brothers and Trading Places.

Besides the aforementioned Murray, the rest of the cast is great as well - Sigourney Weaver is the perfect straight character to Murray's insanity,  Rick Moranis is the quirky, awkward accountant neighbor, and even Annie Potts nails the sarcastic office secretary role. The film even has a genuinely unlikable villain in William Atherton as Walter Peck. In short, Ghostbusters is the result of an unrepeatable convergence of writing and acting talent that produced one of the greatest comedy films of all time.

Ghostbusters 2016

So that brings us back to 2016 and to the reboot. I think it's actually more appropriate to question why this film does exist rather than provide reasons why it shouldn't. Who was clamoring for a Ghostbusters reboot without Bill Murray, et al.? Why was this movie even made?  Let's not forget that this experiment was basically run in 1989 with Ghostbusters 2, a decidedly disappointing sequel that was written by and starred the same people who had made the original such a success. Harold Ramis even admitted that nobody had ever intended to make a sequel to the original film, and the writers only agreed after pressure from Columbia Pictures to release a new movie because of the huge box-office success of the original (which has raked in over $300 million.) So the answer to the questions I posed above are, respectively, "no one" and "to capitalize on brand-name recognition and make an easy few hundred million dollars."

It would be naive to think that Aykroyd (who did have a hand in writing the reboot) decided to return to the franchise over 30 years later because he desperately wanted to tell a third tale about paranormal investigations and eliminations, especially one in which he and his talented buddies won't be starring. No, this movie exists for the same reason that the dozens of other recent remakes and reboots exist: as low-risk money-making ventures that will almost certainly cash in based solely on nostalgia for a well-known and fondly-remembered name. Whereas the original Ghostbusters was a film written to make people laugh and happened to make a lot of money, Ghostbusters 2016 is a film written to make a lot of money and might happen to make people laugh. I find that to be a not-trivial distinction.

The sad reality is that a high-concept film like Ghostbusters probably wouldn't get made today. Big studios are too terrified of losing money to take risks creating new iconic films. For every original idea that makes it to the screen there are innumerable cash-grab sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots of successful movies of the past, and it's getting worse. If that seems hyperbolic, take a look at this list of 106 remakes and reboots currently in some state of production. The list includes, in alphabetical order, Bloodsport, Cliffhanger, Clue, The Crow, The Fugitive, Highlander, I Know What You Did Last Summer, It, Jumanji, Kickboxer, Logan's Run, Major League, Memento, The Mummy, Naked Gun, Nosferatu, Police Academy, Predator, Road House, Scarface, Shaft, Short Circuit, Sister Act, Spider Man (again), Stargate, Starship Troopers, Stuart Little, The Ten Commandments, Tomb Raider, Toxic Avenger, Van Helsing, and Weird Science. Remember those? Wanna see them again, with worse writers and actors? Tough shit, because that's what you're getting.

Lest you accuse me of being unnecessarily cynical about the quality of remakes and reboots, I present for your consideration a table of remade films from the past few years, along with the Rotten Tomatoes scores of both the originals and the remakes. See if you can spot a pattern:

Robocop (1987)	88%		Robocop (2014)	49%
Point Break (1991)	68%		Point Break (2015)	9%
Poltergeist (1982)	88%		Poltergeist (2015)	31%
National Lampoon's Vacation	93%		Vacation (2015)	27%
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	40%		Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)	21%
Annie (1982)	50%		Annie (2015)	27%
The Gambler (1974)	86%		The Gambler (2014)	46%
Endless Love (1981)	25%		Endless Love (2014)	15%
Carrie (1976)	95%		Carrie (2013)	62%
The Evil Dead (1981)	88%		Evil Dead (2014)	49%
Total Recall (1990)	85%		Total Recall (2012)	30%
Ghostbusters (1984)	97%		Ghostbusters (2016)	4%*
*author's estimated Rotten Tomatoes score for Ghostbusters 2016

It's nearly impossible to remake an old film and create something that will compare favorably with the original, let alone equal or surpass it. Ghostbusters 2 had the best shot at doing that, having been made by basically the same people just a few years later, and it failed. There's no reason to think that Ghostbusters 2016 will buck this trend - in fact, there are lots of reasons to believe the exact opposite. Let's actually take a look at that trailer.

The Trailer

I've learned everything I need to know about what kind of movie Ghostbusters 2016 is going to be from the trailer. First of all, the text at the beginning reads "30 years ago, four scientists saved New York." That's not even accurate. Winston Zeddmore's character was not a scientist. I mean, I know this sounds pedantically nit-picky, but come on, just replace that word scientists with another word so it's a correct description of the original film. Christ, we're off to a great start. At the 0:42 mark, we see our first gag, which looks like a recreation of the famous scene in the original when our protagonists encounter a ghost for the first time. One of the characters in the new film is holding a video camera as Ray does in the original, and one of the others is attempting to talk to the ghost, as Peter does in the original. I won't recount what happens in that scene in the original (because you already know), so by comparison, here's what happens in the same scene in the new film: the ghost vomits an absurd amount of green ghost barf all over the Peter analog. This is not nearly as smart or clever as the same scene in the original.

The next segment from 0:45 to 1:18 is basically pointless exposition (in a trailer? why is this in the trailer?) about who the Ghostbusters are and why they're involved in this business. They literally say "we've dedicated our whole lives to studying the paranormal," "Holtsman, you're a brilliant engineer," "Erin, no one's better at quantum physics than you," and "you guys are really smart about this science stuff, but I know New York." NONE of this nonsense was needed in the original film. We find out who the main characters are and why they decide to start a ghost-catching business entirely through the visuals and situations, not through painfully obvious exposition in which the characters basically announce to the audience who they are because the screenwriter can't figure out how to get that information across in a different way. It's laughably lazy writing. In the original film, we know that Ray, Peter, and Egon are psychologists because we meet them in a university context. Peter is conducting an experiment, Ray is looking for a video camera and excited about a recent paranormal disturbance at the New York public library, and Egon has a stethoscope pressed to a table at the library. We get that Egon's the smart one because of the way he looks and talks. We assume he's smart enough to make all the complicated ghost-catching equipment because he just looks and acts like a scientist. We find out everything we need to know about our main characters by how they act. In this new film, either the screenwriter is too incompetent to be able to do this effectively or thinks that the audience is too stupid to understand what's going on unless the characters blatantly say what's happening in the film.

1:20 to 1:26 introduces us to the new Ecto-1, which is a Cadillac hearse (as opposed to a Cadillac ambulance) because reasons. Why is this so similar to the original? This was an opportunity to distinguish the new film from the original by choosing a novel and fun vehicle for the Ghostbusters to tear around town in, but instead the film just recycles almost exactly what the original had. It's even got the "Ecto-1" license plate, as if two groups of people would independently settle on that vanity plate designation. Yawn.

1:27-1:33 is the next... "joke" to show that the ghostbusters are neophytes who haven't quite gotten the hang of their job yet. Two of them try to say "let's go" in an uncoordinated way, because that's funny I guess. Do I have to mention how the original film showed the audience that our heroes had no idea what they were doing? All of the scenes in the Sedgewick Hotel are hilarious attempts at figuring out how to use the equipment to catch a ghost successfully, during which they terrify and nearly incinerate a cleaning woman ("What the hell are you doing?" "Sorry... thought you were someone else.") and make such waste of the hotel ballroom that one wonders if perhaps things weren't better before the ghostbusters' efforts. (And before you cry apples to oranges, the cleaning woman scene is in the original theatrical trailer for Ghostbusters.)

2:09 to 2:23 is where I need to bow out. According to yet more staggeringly direct exposition, ghosts have the ability to possess humans. (They do in the original too - remember the keymaster and the gatekeeper?) The trailer decides to show us a completely brainless scene in which one of the ghostbusters is slapping and yelling at one of the other ones who is possessed by a ghost. Screaming and smacking someone in the face. There's no wit or nuance to any of this. It's lowest-common-denominator physical comedy handled in the broadest way possible. I'm done.

CGI

Another point that strongly favors the original film over the remake is the use of special effects. The original Ghostbusters had a fairly large budget - $32 million - and made frequent use of special effects of various types. Some of them are laughably bad, like the poorly-animated clay terror dogs, but most of the time the effects are practical rather than computer-generated, and they look (mostly) real. The film was even nominated for an academy award in 1984 for visual effects. There are multiple shots of CGI ghosts in the Ghostbusters 2016 trailer, and they all look like bland, fake computer renderings. We're so spoiled by ubiquitous computer-rendered special effects these days that we've become completely apathetic about them. Special effects don't have the ability to dazzle the audience anymore, not like the scenes with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man did in 1984. The budget for the new Ghostbusters film is reportedly $154 million, but nobody is going to be impressed by the visual effects in the new film. Paradoxically, the practical effects of the film 30 years older are more believable and impactful than the renderings of today's most powerful computers. Not only are they real things, but the actors in the scene can interact with them in a believable way. As powerful as CGI has become, the technology limits creative possibilities in some cases rather than expands them.

Nightmare fuel for children in the mid-80's

And Finally, for you SJWs

You might have noticed that I've made it this far without mentioning that the main characters in the 2016 reboot are all women. That's for good reason, namely that the fact that the main characters are women is irrelevant to the quality of the movie. People on the Internet™ are making quite a fuss about the fact that the film has been remade with an all female cast, as if that's somehow interesting. As if there exist actual people who will not go see a movie simply because it stars [insert minority] rather than land-owning white males aged 18-34. This is absurd. Equally absurd are the people labeling every criticism of this new film as brash sexism and misogyny. This is the same sort of repugnant nonsense that George Lucas tried to peddle when nobody would distribute his pet project Red Tails, a terribly-written film about the Tuskegee airmen in World War II. Since it featured a primarily black cast, Lucas hurled accusations of racism at Hollywood in general for not wanting to distribute his film, when in fact executives who saw it more probably just noticed that it was awful and didn't want to pay to promote it. As others have already pointed out, it's rather convenient to remake a film with a cast of any minority group and then simply cry bigotry in response to any criticism. I'll state it plainly: Ghostbusters 2016 should be judged on its artistic merit, just as any film should, and nothing else. It doesn't get points simply for including women, nor does it get to duck valid criticism about what appears to be a shallow film with more style than substance. Not liking a film with women in it and not liking a film because it has women in it are different things. Stop with this.

And In Sum

Is it unfair to judge a film so harshly based solely on a 2 minute trailer? Yeah probably. It's my blog, fuck off. Regardless of how the actual movie is, though, the fact remains that the motivations behind its creation are questionable at best and shameful at worst. If feminists would like a legitimate gripe about this movie, it should be this: that this cast of presumably talented women is wasted on a cash-grab remake of a comedy Goliath it can't hope to replicate instead of creating something memorable, iconic, and new. There can never be another Ghostbusters, and that's not the fault of any man or woman.

Reflections on a Brief Nepali Sojourn

Travel is my raison d’être. Vagor, ergo sum, to personalize the Cartesian cogito. I don’t like the word “wanderlust” – it drips with a sappy, romanticized sentimentality – but I can’t deny that most of my intervacationary time is spent searching for my next destination. The highly scientific process: open a web browser, load Google Maps, look around to see if anything catches my eye. That’s how my most recent journey began, one that took me to the bustling Nepali capital of Kathmandu for three frantic but memorable days.

Why Kathmandu? To be completely honest, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s appropriate to echo the sentiments of those who climb Mt. Everest (which is, of course, in Nepal) who confess to undertaking the perilous ascent “because it’s there.” The facts were simply that I had five free days over Chinese New Year and had never been to Nepal. Flights and hotel booked, done. My due diligence consisted of reading the wikitravel page for Kathmandu to make sure that I wouldn’t be kidnapped or murdered during my stay; safety confirmed, I had all the requisite knowledge before departure.

Kathmandu is one of those places that doesn’t seem real – a place most of us have heard of but certainly never seen, a place that exists on maps and occasionally on CNN news reports, as when earthquakes reduce to rubble what had been slightly better arranged before. Kathmandu, Khartoum, Karachi – surely these aren’t actual destinations; they’re impossibly distant, incomprehensibly foreign. The reality of the 21st century is that they’re not, though. To get to Kathmandu, you just get on an airplane. A big one, made by Airbus or Boeing, with giant turbines fixed to its wings. You take off from one country and land in another, as you would, and the other happens to be Nepal. If you learn but one thing from all that I’ll scribble here, let it be this: you can go to Nepal. You can go anywhere.

Spinning prayer wheel beneath a colorful kalachakra

So off I went, not knowing much about where I was going or what I might encounter when I got there. It’s funny how we romanticize places we’ve never been, and I’m sure you’ve got some conception of what Kathmandu looks like, as I did, even if based on absolutely nothing factual. Whatever I expected, that’s not what it was, and I struggled with that throughout the trip. I should say at the outset that the way I saw Nepal was surely not the way to see Nepal. I was gone for five days, two of which were dedicated almost entirely to travel, as I wasn’t able to get direct flights between KTM and HKG. (One does exist, a 4.5 hour direct flight by Nepal airlines, but they don’t run it every day.) I spent effectively two and a half days exclusively in Kathmandu, by myself, with no planned guides, no set itinerary, no local Sherpa to guide me. This is actually how I prefer to experience a new place – just dump myself into it and see what happens – but I have to admit that you could probably have a much better experience in a place like Kathmandu with slightly more structure, more planning.

So, what happened? Well, let’s make one thing clear from the outset: Kathmandu is an abject shithole. I say this as a simple statement of fact, not intending it as pejorative. Nepal is a dreadfully impoverished country, and Kathmandu, though the capital of the nation, is not insulated from that grim fact. Certainly much of the disrepair is the aftermath of the earthquake, but it’s not as though Kathmandu was Shangri-la a year ago. The streets, with the exception of the largest thoroughfares, are dusty, undulating clearings of stones and mud, traversed by as many stray dogs, cows, goats, and chickens as cars or people. This is the developing world, where many people earn around $1 US per day, cannot read or write, and don’t have a toilet in their house. The city’s power demand is sometimes twice what can be reliably supplied, so there are frequent blackouts. My (4-star) hotel briefly lost power regularly, so often that there was even a sign in the elevator urging passengers not to be alarmed if the power shuts off while they’re inside, as the generator should switch on within 30 seconds. The airport even lost power for several minutes while I was waiting for my flight home, and nobody seemed to notice or care. And this is the capital city of a sovereign nation. Even as a denizen of Hong Kong and accustomed to the occasional day of less-than-mountain-fresh air quality, I found the turbulent mix of dust and exhaust in some parts of the city to be overpowering. Add in the incessant blaring of car horns (a necessary tactic in a city with no traffic lights) and various pungent odors from nearly every single thing everywhere, and Kathmandu is a complete and unyielding assault on both senses and sensibilities.

Emaciated cattle and burning garbage: a Kathmandu story

The harsh economic reality intrudes even more personally in a place like this, and this more than anything soured my Nepali experience: the shameless and unending pursuit of my money. I understand that this is inevitable in a place as poor as Nepal, as dependent upon tourism for survival. And that is what most Nepalis are simply trying to do – feed themselves and their families. Places like Kathmandu are rife with scammers, although I hesitate to use such a strong word. I was well-aware of things like this before I arrived, having experienced similar situations in Thailand and Cambodia, and my general cynicism and distrust of other people keeps me safe in strange places.

This is a fairly main street.

I had no illusions about the intentions of the friendly Indian guy who purposefully caught up to me along the busy street and started making casual conversation. I was evaluating the situation as we talked, trying to figure out exactly where this was going. Raj, as he called himself, was an Indian from Delhi living in Kathmandu, going to art school and working as a shoe repairman to support his family. I can’t confirm that any of that is factually true, but the details don’t much matter here. He very kindly offered to show me around the area, which I was almost obliged to allow, since I didn’t really know where I was going at that very moment and had no real excuse to refuse his generosity. So he led me around, very genuinely interested in who I was and why I had come, all the while showing me various monasteries in the area, explaining the minutia of Hindu traditions. I knew he was going to want something in exchange for all of this, and in the end he had a reasonable enough request – that I help him buy some food for his family. Fine, I thought, because he did actually show me around for a while, and I learned and saw more with his direction than I would have without. So he leads me to a little corner store and makes a modest pile of basic necessities – rice, milk, oil – which I’d have no problem subsidizing for him. The shopkeeper punches some numbers on a calculator and shows it to us, and I nearly laugh out loud. 6,000 rupees, or nearly $60 US. I immediately understand what’s going on and start trying to figure out how I can get out of this gracefully. Fortunately I didn’t even have that much local currency on me, so I had an easy time not forking over that ridiculous amount. Raj points out a nearby money-changing location, but I politely declare that I’ve helped him enough (having handed over a fraction of the total, at this point basically just to be able to leave) and scampered off rather unceremoniously. If you haven’t discerned from the context how this scheme works, basically the local dupes a tourist into paying severely inflated prices for food products, which the local then returns to the shop later for a cut of the profits.

The White Gompa, one of the places Raj showed me

I say I hesitate to call these things scams, although I have to admit that they fit the definition well enough. I do believe that Raj is in a position where this kind of behavior is necessary and not done with malice, although I could be being too kind. Two things really bother me about this. First, the inherent deception involved. I would have no problem entering into a legitimate (if informal) business transaction: you offer to show me around the city for a while, I give you a reasonable amount of money. That’s a mutually beneficial exchange, and in the end that’s how I treated it, although I’m sure Raj and the shopkeeper were hoping for a more favorable outcome. Second is the general assumption that I as a Westerner have so much money that I’ll gleefully hand it over. I encountered this sentiment throughout my time in Kathmandu: the locals all seem to assume that $20, 30, 40 US is an insignificant sum to me, and I’d part with it without a thought.

This turned out to be systemic: there’s a $25 visa fee to enter the country, high admission costs for tickets to the main tourist attractions (which are free for locals), surprisingly high taxi fares (a taxi shouldn’t cost me more in the developing world than it does in Hong Kong, surely), et cetera. My tour guide at Pashupatinath temple casually informed me after our journey around the site that the typical tip for his services is 2,000 rupees ($20 US), "although many people decide to give more." This was after only about an hour’s guidance and on top of the $10 cost of entry to the site, the main temple of which is closed to non-Hindus.  Even taking a photograph of someone carries with it an assumption of a small cash donation, which offended me as a photographer even more than as a tourist. (And explains why I have no photos of the brightly-painted Hindu holy men at the temples – I couldn’t fucking afford it by the end of the day.)

Pashupatinath temple, a very holy Hindu site

I should stress that the Nepali people are not all scammers. Most operate as legitimate and licensed tour guides and rickshaw drivers, but the sales pitches are constant, and they don’t abate at a polite decline. By the end of the second day I was so irritated that my preferred answer to the ubiquitous strangers beginning their pitches with  “where are you from?” had deteriorated from “the US” to “what do you want” to finally “fuck off.” It pained me to be rude to people who are (most of them, I want to believe) just trying to make an honest living, but being constantly hounded absolutely did not endear the city to me; in fact it often prematurely chased me out of places where I might otherwise have preferred to tarry a bit.

If I had to summarize my collective experience navigating Kathmandu by myself, largely on foot for the better part of three days, in one word, I’d call it uncomfortable. I’ve wandered countless cities by myself, even desperately poor cities like Manila and Siem Reap, but never with as much stress and irritation as I experienced in Kathmandu.

Still, it certainly wasn’t all bad. The city was a rainy, muddy mess the first few hours of my first day, but the weather quickly improved and was beautiful for the majority of the trip. Kathmandu is surprisingly mild considering its location in a valley in the Himalayas; in fact it was even slightly warmer during the day than it was back in Hong Kong during my trip. The highlight was unquestionably Kopan Monastery, which I visited during the afternoon on my last day before flying home. It’s well outside the city and situated atop a hill, far away from the choking dust and overbearing cacophony of the crowded city streets. Neither photos nor a description will suffice to reproduce the experience there. I can declare without hyperbole that it’s the most peaceful place I’ve ever been, no doubt augmented by its juxtaposition with the plangent untranquility further down the hill. There was nearly no one there (besides the indigenous Buddhist monks), and the view of the surrounding mountains was picturesque, but surreally so – it seemed otherworldly, as though the malignant afflictions of reality couldn’t scale the summit to spoil the natural insouciance flourishing there in their absence. (Am I being too poetic? Look, it was really pretty, ok?)

Kopan Monastery. Tranquil af, you dig?

I would also be remiss if I neglected to mention the state of the religious climate in the region, which is wholly pleasant. Nepal is 80% Hindu, although Siddhartha Gautama himself (known more familiarly as the Buddha) was born (according to legend, at least) in Nepal. Official statistics say that the country is only 9% Buddhist, although with heavy influence from nearby Tibet, Nepalese Buddhism and Hinduism are nearly indistinguishable. There are orthodox (theistic) variants of Buddhism that declare that the Hindu Vedas have no authority, but the multicultural nature of Nepal has mingled religious traditions to the point that it scarcely matters whether a Nepali identifies as a Hindu or Buddhist. Practitioners of each faith are welcome at holy sites of the other, so one generally finds Buddhists and Hindus worshiping together. Nepali Hindus in fact believe that the Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu, so in a sense to be a Buddhist is to be a Hindu as well. There’s a harmony between the two faiths that almost certainly could never exist in the monotheistic world, and it demonstrates the superiority (or at least the utility) of Eastern philosophy over the divisive holy books of the Abrahamic monotheisms. There’s a tremendous amount of sense and practicality in (atheistic) Buddhism, and the proof is in the nature of the people who subscribe to that philosophy. Nepal has problems, but religious division thankfully isn’t one of them.

Playing monklets at Kopan Monastery

This, then, was not what I would call a vacation, but a learning experience, as much of my travel tends to be. Strange as it might sound at this point, I would absolutely encourage people to go to Nepal, although I’d advise against going alone and only exploring Kathmandu or other cities. Nepal’s real charm is in its stunning topography, so a proper Nepalese vacation would include extensive trekking. Still, if you’d really like to sink yourself into the insanity of a place like Kathmandu, don’t hesitate. The political situation has stabilized, and Nepal is not a violent or dangerous place. Look after your money, but otherwise it’s ripe for exploration. Even if for no reason other than that it’s there.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - A Review

It’s been an excruciatingly long wait, but it’s finally here. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is showing in theaters, and I’ve seen it, and this is what I think of it, just a few hours later.

[This will be REPLETE with spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film, take heed and go no further.]

If you’re just reading to find out if it was any good, if you should go see it, I can answer those questions up-front: It was good, and you should go see it.

The Big Picture

It’s hard to know exactly where to start and how to talk about everything going on in this film, from the appearances by the old characters we know and love, to the new characters we need to like for the film to work, to the story, to the comparisons with the prequels – there’s a lot going on here that needs to be unpacked and examined. I’ll start with plot and themes.

Thematically, The Force Awakens is a Star Wars movie. It’s a very safe script, in that almost everything that happens in the film is an echo or a reimagining of something that happened in the original trilogy. Broadly speaking, TFA is the story of a poor girl from a desert planet who unwittingly gets involved in the conflict between The New Order (the artists formerly known as the Galactic Empire) and the Resistance, who are the current iteration of the Rebel forces, now protecting the newly-reestablished Galactic Senate. She realizes along the way that she’s particularly in-tune with the Force, and she has a confrontation with a powerful dark Jedi at the end. There are plenty of sub-plots and other details, but the main plot points feel very familiar.

I hesitate to decide whether the similarities are just what they need to be, or if perhaps JJ Abrams and company should have taken a few more liberties or creative twists with the story. I mean, at the end of the film, the Resistance forces literally attack and blow up The New Order’s latest Death Star. In speculating about the plot of this film before it was released, most of us dismissed the idea that the bad guys would be dumb enough to build a giant moon laser for the third time, but there it is. What’s that famous quote about the definition of insanity?

At the heart of it though, this latest film is about the conflict between good and evil, the light side of the force and the dark side, and that’s really what Star Wars is about. So the story is easy to follow and as inviting and familiar as a warm blanket, but what about the characters?

The Old Faces

Most of the hubbub about this new film has centered around the fact that Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill have returned to reprise their roles as Leia, Han, and Luke. This was the most potentially disastrous aspect of this new film for me, because a bad Star Wars movie with these beloved characters would be an unforgivable cinematic transgression. (We can largely write off the prequels because we basically didn’t care about any of the characters, so nobody important was totally ruined.) The original cast is used sparingly in TFA, and by necessity. It’s been so long (30 years in movie time) since Return of the Jedi that it wouldn’t make any sense to have Leia, Han, and Luke running around like they did decades ago, so their roles are much more subdued.

Han features most prominently (and Chewbacca, of course) of the returning cast, but even he’s really only there to help fill in the story gaps and explain to the new characters (and to the audience) what’s been going on for the last 30 years. We do get to see him and Chewie flying around in the Millennium Falcon again, and they both do a fair amount of blasting storm troopers. Harrison does a convincing job of recreating Han’s snarky scoundrel character, but it’s not nearly as intense as it was in the original trilogy. This is completely understandable (and consistent with a character now about 70 years old) if slightly (and unfairly, I admit) disappointing. 

Leia is barely in the film at all. The only thing the plot really needs her for is to explain that the new villain, Kylo Ren, is Han and Leia’s son. Most of those two characters’ screen time together involves them discussing their son, so they’re basically just there to deliver exposition so the audience knows what’s going on. Leia is only in a few scenes and even then really just standing around talking to other characters.

Luke is in the film even less, although most of us expected that given the nature of what we knew of the story and the fact that he was almost entirely absent from any of the teaser trailers. It turns out that Luke was entrusted with training Han and Leia’s son in the Jedi arts, but Ren (Ben to Han and Leia) turned to the dark side and apparently murdered all the other Jedis-in-training. Luke feels personally responsible for this and goes into exile; much of the driving force of the plot involves trying to piece together information about his location.

The only scene in which Luke actually appears is, incidentally, the most powerful scene in the entire film, the final scene. Rey treks up a stony mountain island in the middle of the sea to find Luke, who turns around and unhoods himself as Rey offers him his old lightsaber. I think I nearly exploded at this point from the sheer gravitas of everything that was happening in that scene. In fact I think I may have actually died and am not even actually writing this right now.

Apart from those big three, there is a brief cameo by Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and R2-D2 gets some screen time (and vitally involved with the plot) at the very end. On the whole I would say the original cast members are used tastefully and believably. The film obviously can’t lean too heavily on them, because this isn’t a stand-alone sequel to Jedi, it’s the first in a new era of Star Wars films. The focus of TFA is really on the new characters, and the movie lives or dies based on how we respond to them.

The New Faces

This is another area where so much could have gone wrong: who will be the new heroes and villains going forward, and who will play them? The plot is driven along almost exclusively by two new characters: Finn, a disillusioned New Order storm trooper who deserts the only life he’s ever known, and Rey, a lowly scavenger on a planet called Jakku, which is indistinguishable from Tatooine. Their paths serendipitously cross on Jakku after Finn and an escaped Resistance pilot (Poe Dameron) crash on the planet on their way to recover valuable information on the location of Luke Skywalker. The New Order is also after this information, and everyone flees the planet when the bad guys come in with guns blazing.

Finn’s character is believable enough, although the only back-story he really has is what he tells to his new friends: he realized while fighting with the other storm troopers that it simply wasn’t right, so he fled. He’s not a Jedi, although the trailers (and movie posters) offer a bit of a red herring in showing him wielding a blue lightsaber. Actor John Boyega, whom I’d never seen nor heard before seeing this film, does a good job. (He’s a Brit but does a very convincing American accent in the film. I was surprised to hear his UK accent in interviews.) Finn is a likeable character, and it seems that he’ll figure heavily in the plots of future films.

Rey is easily my favorite new character. I mentioned before that she has obvious parallels with Luke, in that she’s basically a poor nobody on a desert planet but becomes the eventual hero. Just as we see Luke grow stronger with the force in the original trilogy, we witness Rey discovering this ability in herself. There are important differences, though: whereas Luke was a bit of a helpless farm boy who was destined to become a Jedi because of who his father was, Rey is a total badass from the beginning. The SJWs will love her (actually no they won’t; they’ll find something to criticize about her character) – she’s a very strong female character who doesn’t need anybody’s help. In fact, the script almost beats us over the head with this, as she’s unimpressed with Finn’s constant checking up on her. [To comic excess: in one scene, Finn has just been knocked to the ground by an explosion and asks Rey if she’s ok once he collects himself.] For me, most of the oh hell yes moments in the film were when Rey was discovering how powerful she can be. Case in point: the scene in the Kylo Ren fight where she retrieves Luke’s lightsaber from the snow with her mind as Ren is trying to do the same thing – she already fights with a confidence that Luke never really shows until the very end of Jedi. Daisy Ridley, another unknown actor to me, does a great job with this role too (and gets to keep her accent, unlike Boyega), and I’m absolutely on board with Rey as the new hero of the franchise.

So the good guys are great, but what about the bad guys? For TFA to work, it needs a strong villain character for all of us to hate. In the original trilogy we had Darth Vader, who was basically evil incarnate, and later the emperor, who was also an impressively unlikeable asshole. Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver, who has apparently been in some other things that I haven’t seen) is the new menace, decked out in decidedly Vaderesque garb. He has a scary mask that distorts his voice when he speaks through it, a menacing, hilted red lightsaber, and an exclusively black wardrobe clashing against the brilliant white of The New Order troops. This isn’t a coincidence, of course; Ren is Han and Leia’s son, and Darth Vader is Leia’s father, so Ren is Vader’s grandson, though Vader died before Ren was born. Ren keeps Vader’s charred and melted mask on-hand for inspiration, and he clearly wants to be just like his evil grand-pop when he grows up. However, whereas Vader’s character only became nuanced and complex in Empire and Jedi, Ren has obvious conflicts from the beginning, revealed to us through his interactions with Rey in particular. He’s not the intimidating, sinister juggernaut that Vader was when he first stepped terrifyingly onto the Tantive IV at the beginning of the original film. (How’s that for an obscure bit of original film trivia?) He’s emotional and shows weakness, and his character arc will be interesting to watch in future films.

I should also say something about BB-8, the adorable little rolling droid that’s already become something of an icon even before the film’s theatrical release. BB-8 is used almost identically to how R2-D2 was used in the original films. They have similar playful personalities, feature prominently in the plot by carrying important information, and are used frequently as comic relief. Just as the droids were endearing characters in the original trilogy, BB-8 is likeable without being overly pandering or insultingly cartoonish (cough Jar-Jar cough cough).

Fan Service

I don’t think I’ve adequately explained just how many scenes and bits of dialogue echo the original trilogy. While I appreciate that JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan were doing this intentionally to give the fans things to cheer about (and we did, over and over), the number of references to the old films is rather striking. Here are the things I can explicitly remember after just seeing it once; I’m sure I’ve left several out:

• Desert planet (Jakku and Tatooine are basically the same)
• Referring to the Millennium Falcon as junk (“garbage”)
• Cantina scene with weird aliens (although in TFA it’s not on Jakku)
• “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
• Finn accidentally activates the holochess board on the Falcon
• Making the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs
• An evil Jedi wearing black, a mask, and with a red lightsaber
• Assault on a planet-sized, planet-destroying super weapon
• A ground team disrupts shields while x-wings attack
• Someone mind-grabbing a lightsaber stuck in snow
• A father-son confrontation
• Rey uses the “Jedi mind trick” on a storm trooper like Obi-Wan did
• The New Order looking for a droid carrying important information
• Han asks about a garbage chute and trash compactor
• Finn mans the gun on the Falcon and shoots down TIE fighters

Besides these very specific echoes, most other locations are similar to those in the originals. I’ve already mentioned the desert planet, but there are also scenes in a snowy environment, and the Resistance base is on a verdant planet like the moon of Yavin in the original film (or Endor, for that matter.) There are also scenes in an interrogation room and the New Order leaders speaking to the new equivalent of the emperor via hologram. The scene between Han and Ren feels reminiscent of Luke and Vader after their duel in Empire: both characters are in a precarious position high above a chasm and the good character ends up falling (although Han is dead and Luke goes willingly).

The Death of Han Solo

The only potentially “shocking” moment in TFA is Han’s death, although it didn’t come as a shock to me. Harrison Ford has been suggesting that Han’s character be killed off since back in the original trilogy days, so in that sense it’s not out of nowhere. I wasn’t sure that Abrams would have the temerity to do it, since Han is such a beloved and important character. The way it was done, though, is perfectly acceptable: Han is killed by his own son, who is also supposed to be the main villain of the new films. Everything about the scene suggests that Ren not only will kill Han, but must in order to establish his character. The two enjoy a seemingly genuine moment before Ren ignites his lightsaber while both of them are clutching it, impaling Han before he falls to his unceremonious death. This probably should be shocking, but at this point Han’s secondary role in the plot was well established, and the story needed Ren to do something utterly execrable in order for the audience to hate him sufficiently. Ren’s killing of Han takes care of these various needs in a way that seems organic to the story, so it works. We as an audience did at least get to enjoy some nostalgic moments of Han flying the Falcon and laying waste to storm troopers before his end, and I’m grateful for that. It looks like Luke will have a larger role in the next film, so it was time for Han to step aside, one way or another.

Pacing, Script, Tone, Other Film Jargon

Although it’s difficult for me to look at TFA as a film (because it’s STAR WARS and may as well be real events affecting real people to me), I can try to apply some critic-sounding language to it. In general I thought it was well-paced; it never drags or becomes tedious or boring. Exposition is minimal and only stated bluntly when the audience simply can’t get much-needed missing information any other way, as for example when Han and Leia talk about how their son became an evil jerk. Tonally it’s very similar to the original films, in that it’s a mix of action and excitement and occasional serious character moments with some comic relief sprinkled here and there. As I’ve said before, TFA feels like a Star Wars movie, and I think that’s largely due to the similarity in tone.

The script is fine, if imperfect. There were a few scenes in which the dialogue felt a little clunky, a little awkward and silly, but this was almost exclusively whenever anyone was talking about the Force. In the writer’s defense, the Force is an inherently silly concept, and it must be difficult to write dialogue about a magical energy that some people can control with their minds without sounding silly. It’s not as though every single line in the original films is a gem either, so it’s not a huge problem. The plot is believable enough, easy to follow, and rewarding for the audience.

As far as the direction goes, not much else needs to be said: JJ Abrams knows how to make a movie. It looks fantastic, even the CGI bits, which were used (thankfully) with restraint. The film was shot in various actual locations using actual sets and practical effects, much like the original films, and it feels real. It has plenty of action sequences without being a schlocky mess of explosions and sword fights; in fact, there’s only one lightsaber fight in TFA, keeping very much with the tradition of the original trilogy, and it is entirely in service of the plot.

Criticisms

TFA is not a perfect movie. Although my impressions of it are overwhelmingly positive, there were a few things that bugged me. First of all, it doesn’t appear that Kylo Ren wears a scary mask for any reason other than that he wants to be like his idol, Darth Vader. Ren takes it off several times during the film and seems to have no practical need for it whatsoever, and it’s never explained why he has it. I’d also like to know, while we’re on the subject, how exactly he came into possession of Darth Vader’s charred and mangled helmet, since Ren wasn’t even born when Vader died. Who kept that thing around?

Ren’s first scene in fact is with a captured Poe Dameron, who doesn’t seem particularly impressed or intimidated by him. Poe makes light of their confrontation and completely dissolves any tension that had built up around this dark figure. I’m not sure if that was handled properly, although it does establish Dameron as a bit of a rogue and Ren as less imposing than Darth Vader. Perhaps it works, but I did question the use of humor in that particular scene.

The assault on the latest Death Star seemed a little hastily developed, although if I think back to the original film, it’s largely the same. There’s only something like two hours in movie-universe time between when the Resistance discovers that the New Order has this terrifying weapon pointed at them and when they destroy it, and all of that seemed to unfold rather quickly. There are also the usual “it’s a movie” coincidences putting important characters in the same place at the same time, and the eventual meeting of Rey, Finn, and Han and Chewie is eye-rollingly coincidental.

I also thought the movie should have ended right after R2 and BB-8 put their map pieces together to reveal where Luke is hiding, since that would set up the action for the next film – finding Luke. Instead, the film goes on a few minutes longer to show Rey walking around a remote rocky island only to find Luke and present him his old lightsaber. This actually turned out to be the most emotion-stirring scene in the entire film, but it seemed like something that might have worked as the driving force of the next film instead.

Highlights, Final Thoughts

I didn’t even make it through the opening title crawl without tearing up, and I was routinely dabbing my eyes under my 3D glasses throughout the film. It’s a serious nostalgia trip, and of an intensity I’ve never experienced before. If Star Wars has been a big part of your life as it has of mine, watching this film is an emotional experience. The first memorable moment for me was when Rey and Finn are running for their lives on Jakku, looking for anything for Rey to pilot to get them away from the attacking New Order forces. Rey suggests a fast-looking craft ahead, while Finn suggests a different ship off camera; Rey dismisses his choice as “garbage” (my Spidey sense begins tingling). As Rey’s choice explodes in front of them, she acquiesces to the “garbage” ship instead. The camera pans over to reveal the Millennium Falcon, and I basically die. Everyone in the theater cheers, and I want to pause the movie so I can go cry for 15 minutes. Ditto any moment where an old character is revealed, even though Han and Leia’s first scenes aren’t really all that dramatic. I immensely enjoyed Rey discovering her power, and her duel with Ren is fantastic. The scene at the end with Rey holding out Luke’s lightsaber for him as he slowly turns and reveals his face is possibly the most powerful scene in a Star Wars movie (although I’ll note that I'm too young to have experienced Vader’s “I am your father” bombshell in theaters).

The highest praise I can give Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that it’s worthy of the Star Wars name. It has an uncontroversial script, a good balance of old and new characters and story elements, and it looks and sounds absolutely amazing. I’m going to see it again, and then again, and then again.

Christianity, The World's Most Falsifiable Religion?

I find myself not writing about religion very often anymore mostly because I’ve got the gist of Christian apologetics at this point and am rather bored by it, so I’m much less often inspired to respond to something I read. Still, something extraordinary does occasionally drift by, like this article from Michael Patton, Th.M., (presumably not the Mike Patton from Faith No More) entitled “Christianity, The World’s Most Falsifiable Religion.” It struck me as odd that someone with a background in theology would write so confidently about the historicity of the core claims of the Christian faith. Then again, the major endeavor of Christian apologetics is to attempt to muster up some kind of argument other than “you just need to take it on faith,” even though most believers would not cite “the overwhelming persuasiveness of Christian apologetics” as the reason for their belief. Apologetics is not for convincing nonbelievers, it’s for reassuring believers that they have legitimate, non-laughable reasons for the beliefs that they already hold, beliefs that don’t actually have their origins in the cosmological argument, or the teleological argument, or the moral argument, or the [insert apologetic du jour] argument.

Here is Patton’s thesis:

“Christianity is the only viable worldview that is historically defensible. The central claims of the Bible demand historic inquiry, as they are based on public events that can be historically verified. In contrast, the central claims of all other religions cannot be historically tested and, therefore, are beyond falsifiability or inquiry. They just have to be believed with blind faith.”

The TL;DR version of my response: No, Christianity is not historically defensible. Its claims, like those of all other religions, are not falsifiable, and you do just have to take it on faith. Here’s the long-winded version:

What is History?

To explain why the claims of the Christian faith cannot be investigated historically, the first thing that needs to be done is to define what history is, and just as importantly what history is not. (I’m borrowing heavily here from the work of Dr. Bart Ehrman, New Testament scholar and historian.) History is not the past. History is what we can show probably happened in the past. This is not a trivial distinction; there are things that certainly happened in the past but cannot be shown to have happened with any high probability. For example, there is a factual answer to the question “What did Benjamin Franklin eat for dinner on October 23^rd, 1778?” Unless we’re fortunate enough to discover Franklin's journal meticulously detailing his prandial selections on that day, we have no method of seeking the answer to this question. So although the question asks about a particular event in the past, it is not a historical question – it can’t be investigated historically. Let’s look at the claims of the New Testament and determine if they are historical claims, i.e. claims that can be investigated historically.

History as a Genre

Not every piece of writing that talks about the past is historical. “History” is a specific literary designation, and any writing deemed to be “historical” must meet certain criteria, just as any writing claiming to be satire or science fiction or biography must meet certain criteria. So, what exactly is history? The word itself comes from Herodotus, the 5^th century BCE Greek writer commonly referred to as “The Father of History” (an honor conferred upon him by Cicero, no less.) Herodotus begins his famous work with the immortal words “Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε,” “This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” The Greek word whence comes our word history means an investigation or inquiry. In this hugely influential work, Herodotus establishes many basic features of the genre of historical writing. First of all, he clearly identifies himself by name and place. Second, he often gives multiple conflicting accounts of a story and identifies to which people each perspective belongs. In the case of events he didn’t witness himself, he tells the reader where he got his information and reports it neutrally, inviting the reader to decide which side is telling the truth, if any.

Thucydides, Herodotus’ 5^th century Greek contemporary wrote a detailed history of the war between Athens and Sparta as it was unfolding before his very eyes. His methods are even more mindfully scrupulous than those of Herodotus, and he tells us explicitly in Book I, section 22 how he gets his information:

“And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.”

Thucydides’ work is also noteworthy for his inclusion of long speeches, about which he gives the following disclaimer in the same section:

“With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.”

So, history as a genre was established more than four hundred years before the New Testament: a transparent inquiry into events by an author who identifies himself, dutifully reports on sources, and declares any biases. It should already be clear that the writers of the gospels make no effort to be historical in their approach to narration. But wait, there’s more!

Investigating the Historical Past

Having established what historical writing looks like from its ancient roots, we should mention what modern scholars of history look for when trying to determine what probably happened in the past. The most important resources in investigating the historical past are primary sources – first-hand accounts reported by people who witnessed the events. Historians want not only primary sources, but multiple primary sources that were created independently of one another, are consistent in their description of the events, and have no obvious bias in reporting. How do the gospels of the New Testament fare as desirable historical evidence? Let’s find out:

Are the gospels primary sources?

The stories narrated in the gospels are not eye-witness accounts and don’t even claim to be. Even worse, the original autographs of all New Testament books are lost. The earliest texts of the gospels we have are copies from a century later or more. Historians don’t know what the authors of the gospels originally wrote because the original texts don’t exist.

Are the gospels multiple independent sources?

Well, kind of. Multiple? Yes, technically. Independent? Definitely not. The first three gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) are plagued by a troublesome debate known as the synoptic problem, a veritable cluster-fuck of scholarly confusion as to where the hell the writers of these books got their information, because large parts are repeated verbatim across the three books, and the authors never mention their sources.

Are the gospels consistent in their descriptions of events?

When was Jesus executed? Mark (14:12, 15:25) and John (19:14-16) can’t agree on the hour or the day. Did Jesus carry his own cross, as John says (19:17), or did Simon of Cyrene carry it, as Mark (15:21), Matthew (27:32), and Luke (23:26) say? Were the women watching the crucifixion from far away, as Matthew (27:55), Mark (15:40), and Luke (23:49) say, or were Jesus’ mother Mary, her sister, and Mary Magdalene close at hand as John (19:25) says? What were Jesus’ last words before dying? Did he say “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as Mark (15:34) and Matthew (27:46) report, or “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” as Luke (23:46) reports, or “It is finished,” as John (19:30) reports? That’s just a small selection of the inconsistencies in the crucifixion story alone. The gospel writers don’t tell the same story about anything.

Are the gospels unbiased in reporting events?

The gospels are stories narrated as if factual with no attempts whatsoever at impartiality. The authors of these books were 1^st century Christians who already believed these stories and disseminated them for the purpose of converting people to their religion.

So, the gospels display precisely none of the characteristics shown by actual writers of history, and the texts have none of the characteristics that modern historians look for when investigating historical events. I could stop here, but wait, there’s more!

The Nail in the Coffin (Stone in front of the Tomb?): Miracles

As if everything mentioned thus far wasn’t problematic enough for the historicity of the claims in the New Testament, Dr. Ehrman reminds us of an even bigger problem: miracles. What is a miracle? A miracle is a suspension of the natural order of the world - an event that transcends the very physical laws that govern our entire existence. A miracle is not just an improbable event, but an impossible one. It’s rolling a 7 on a six-sided die, or being raised from the dead, or correctly folding a fitted bed sheet. Historians, as we established earlier, have to try to demonstrate what probably happened in the past. Miracles are by definition the least probable things that have ever happened. Of course they are – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be miraculous. The conflict should be obvious: the least probable occurrence can never be the most probable explanation for anything. Thus, for a historian, no miraculous story can ever be a historical one. This is why history text books do not mention gods, demons, angels, fairies, and hobgoblins when explaining the D-Day invasion, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the French Revolution. Highly improbable explanations have no historical explanatory power.

What About Other Sources?

There aren’t any. Jesus of Nazareth, whoever he was, wrote nothing. His disciples wrote nothing. His contemporary followers wrote nothing. (This shouldn’t be surprising – lower class people in Judea in the 1^st century were illiterate.) The earliest author we have is the apostle Paul, who never met Jesus. Everyone else, including the gospel writers, the Jewish historian Josephus, and the Roman historian Tacitus, came later. There are no verifiable historical witnesses to the crucifixion, to the empty tomb, to the resurrection. As far as historians are concerned, these claims cannot be evaluated, let alone shown to have probably happened.

Conclusions and Caveats

If you're a Christian and reading this (or if you're Michael Patton,Th.M. - Hi Mike!) and frothing at the mouth right now, please note that at no point have I said that the crucifixion, the empty tomb, and the resurrection did not happen. To say that a claim is not historical is NOT to say the event did not happen. Michael's claim is that the Christian stories about Jesus are historical, and I've explained why that isn't true.

I don't personally believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. I'm not even entirely convinced that anything reported about him in Christian texts is factually true, given how powerfully unhistorical they are. I cannot, however, state with absolute certainty that the claims are false, because they are unfalsifiable. The complete lack of evidence to substantiate any claims about Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection strongly suggests to me that the claims are false, but it does not prove that they are false. It could be that there was a 1^st century Palestinian Jew who performed miracles and survived his own murder, just as it could be that Benjamin Franklin had steak and eggs for dinner on October 23^rd, 1778. Both could be facts; neither is historical.