Our Hero Shall Return(Charles E.J. Moulton) Our Hero Shall Return

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Cinematic Philosophy
By Charles E.J. Moulton

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At the heart of creativity, we find the spiritual wish to narrow emotional experience down to a single moment. Mona Lisa's smile, God creating Adam, Rick saying goodbye to Ilsa at the airport, Jack holding Rose at the front railing of the Titanic, Forrest Gump offering a stranger a box of chocolates, Sally's fake orgasm, Lady and the Tramp's spaghetti kiss at Tony's restaurant, John Wayne's walk, Ursula Andress rise from the ocean, Norma Desmond's announcement of being ready for her close-up, Gene Kelly's rain dance, Luke destroying the death star, Charlton discovering the Statue of Liberty on the beach, Marilyn Monroe's windswept dress, Indiana asking his Dad not to call him Junior, Rhett Butler not giving a damn, Moses parting the red sea, E.T.'s flying moon bike, Janet Leigh's shower, Darth announcing he was Luke's father and Rocky climbing the steps.

Human fascination with moments in time has been around forever. An ancient Egyptian story, whose papyrus is now at the British Museum, tells of the moment when a famous Egyptian prince, a baby, is greeted by seven sacred heavenly cows. The Navajo myth of beings inspired to fly when seeing the dragonfly take off for the first time is just as inspiring as Romeo kneeling at Juliet's balcony.

The novel "Ulysses" by James Joyce from the year 1920 describes, in 732 pages, one day in Leopold Bloom's life. John Hughes film "The Breakfast Club" from 1985 takes place in one single day in the life of five Illinois high school students.

What about you? What if one day in your life, maybe today, maybe every day in your life, was a movie? Would it be a first part or a sequel? Would you be stuck in a version of your own "Groundhog Day" or cause you to sing Dinah Washington's "What a Difference a Day Makes"? Cause you to celebrate your "Independence Day"? Live your "Longest Day"? Would you at the end of it utter: "Tomorrow Never Dies"? Or would you sing a version of The Beatles "Yesterday"?

What would happen if you changed your entire perspective about life?
See it all like an adventure? Would it be easier for you to cope with the hard times? Falling in love, as Cornelius and Mrs. Molloy sing in "Hello Dolly!", only takes a moment, but persevering through the hard times will give that love its necessary depth. After all, you can only feel the true strength and glory of love if you have withstood the pain of suffering and survived.
Would you dare to be your own life's director? Star in your own cinematic adventure? Be the hero, the heroine, the baddie, the trickster and the mentor all in one? Would you wait for those bad feelings in your heart and head to vanish before you decided to be happy or would you just go for it and be happy anyway? I mean, you see your life from the inside out anyway, so it's just a slight shift.

What about the title of your life's movie? What would it be? Who would be the stars? The extras? The lighting crew? The producers? Who would be your best boy? Who would be the worst boy? Who would write the music?

And if it is a sequel, is that bad? Do you have to fight to be taken seriously in your own right? Or is it okay for you to be "Second Hand Rose"? There's more to a sequel than meets the eye, after all. In a way, our lives play out like sequels to the previous day. Do we want to change that? Maybe. Maybe not.

The problem might be that we think we have to live up to expectations in our life's movie. So we compare our lives with our past. In that chapter, I was this, now I'm that. My past was better. How do I get back to living the first part of my life? Why am I living in my own sequel? So when we complain about the cinematic sequels and how bad they are, we just can't let go of the original and realize the present version of the same story can be cool, too. We compare.

Our parents, our professions, our bosses, society's expectations turn us into B-movie stars in our own follow-up. We act like primadonnas or shy youngsters, cool cats or hot rods according to what co-stars we work with. "He thinks I'm that, so I must be." But does he really? Or am I just trying to live up to the expectations that I think are there?

The extraordinary guitarist John Mayer illustrated this by saying: "The difficulty of life comes from the conflict between how something seems and how something is. Your panic often comes from how something seems. All you gotta do is find a friend and ask him how it is. He will say it's alright."

One acting teacher of mine said: "Ordinary people in ordinary life are the best actors. They just don't know it yet." A normal situation recreated on screen will get an Oscar. Make it believable and people love you. They say: "Yeah. I know that. That's me."
Art is putting your heart on an objective screen and turning it into therapy. Creativity heals.

We need not live up or down to expectations. We are originals in our own right. We are sequels to our parents at the same time. Our job as souls and individuals is to fuse our individuality, our now, with our own past and our own future. We are bridge builders that are forced to take the past and turn it into the now, inspiring our surroundings to go beyond comparing us with our ancestors, but actually see us as the pinnacle of all that has gone before us.
If we believe the angelic world, they see us on this Earth plane as pioneers steering toward a better future. We are the boats that rush through the water, our angels our aiding foam tracks and the wind beneath our wings. For a soul to incarnate here takes massive amounts of courage. This workshop is work. Lots of work.

Look at the three letters NOW.
They also form the word OWN.
They also form the word WON.

We won a sperm race.
That's how our incarnation began.
Go ahead.
Pat yourself on the back.
You rock.

The little guy, the second guy, he can come first. But was his road not worth the while? In a previous life, he was the master and his master was the apprentice. The apprentice can become the master. He doesn't have to be compared to his own master anymore. And he can start by regarding sequenced art according to its own premise. The smaller guys were him once. The little kid on the corner can give you one word that will answer all your life's questions. An angel will give him the energy to tell you that. If you are the sequel and the original at the same time, you are also the now, the past and the future at the same time. So where's the comparison? Why compare?

"But being famous must be cool."

Is it? Many famous people see lies being printed about them because the magazines want to get rich.
They get used and raped and called names. Female actresses get type cast because they're pretty. Studios won't give them good leading parts because audiences don't go to see female action heroines. Or so cowardly producers think. That was an actual situation that had Andie Macdowell turn down a film. Misogynistic moguls will trigger feminist stars. We keep chasing luck until we discover luck is inside us.

"Oh, I could have been in Hollywood today if it hadn't been for that event."

Are you someone's sequel? Did your Mom miss her career and want you to take over for her? Or did she forbid you to take over for her because your talent made her envious?

"My Mom wanted me to be a lawyer, but I've hated being one all my life. Actually, I wanted to be a painter."

What we don't know makes us make up shit that lures us into panic. But it's the unknown. The unknown, however, ceases to be scary once we realize that energy follows attention. The master can convince the apprentice to rest.

I will illustrate this further by a simple sentence: what lies beyond. It isn't scary. It doesn't have to be. In fact, what lies beyond is so supercool you would be dancing if you knew it. This discrepancy between is and how it seems is the reason for every story and every story is an original in its own right, regardless of its own past. We dig into past and find our future in there. That's how we learn to live in the now.

Anakin Skywalker leaves home to find his heart, finds darkness instead and dwells inside there until his own son leads him home to the light where his heart was all along.
That is Star Wars I - VI in a nutshell.
How did it seem and how was it?
Anakin's suspicion lured him to the dark side. His trust got him home. Are you like Anakin or like Luke or both?

It's an age old, very human urge to reach beyond the confines of what we can see or detect it with the naked eye. So we dig until we find the core. But if there is more to find, we keep digging.
If we find an inexhaustible goldmine, we will dig forever.
According to Gregg Braden, quantum physics tells us that the search produces the outcome, but that is another matter entirely.

I went to see Disney's "Jungle Book" at the cinema in Gothenburg, Sweden, with my grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell in the 1970s and she just loved the way Balloo danced. I loved that she loved it.
The story of the misplaced Mowgli caught between the jungle and civilization captured my imagination. The time with grandma was lovely, so I, too, had the best of both worlds in one Whitney Houston-like moment in time.
I bridged my own gap.
Like that Buddhist philosopher once said:
"The most honorable bridge you can build is the bridge to yourself."
So, naturally, when I found a kids book named "Jungle Book: What Happened Next?" in a book store a week later, I jumped at the chance and bought it.
Did Mowgli come back to the jungle? Did he bring his girl with him?
Did civilization live in harmony with the jungle at last?

Journalist Benjamin Lind remarks on the extraordinary timespan that James Bond has captured the imagination of his audience. In 2023, the franchise has been around for 61 years. How long can it go on? For how many centuries? There are still movies about Jesus, Buddha, Ulysses, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. So who knows?
What keeps Bond alive is what keeps anything alive.
Change.
Transformation.
You never know what Bond will do next. You never did.
He was the suave Scot with the raised eyebrow and the slightly misogynistic charm. He was the straight forward Australian with the unhappy future. He was the humorous Brit with aristocratic attitude. He was wounded Welshman with righteous indignation. He was the worldly Irishman with perfect timing. He was the angry North Englishman with the broken heart of solid gold.
Like us, Bond always changes.
Strictly speaking, "From Russia With Love" is a sequel of a six movie contract. Once Roger Moore's James Bond in "Live and Let Die" took off in the cinema at London's Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square on July 4th, 1973, it was obvious Bond was not dead, but became immortal. Was that obvious to everyone when "From Russia With Love" came out the Bond sequel?

Accordingly, sequels should not be compared to the original. They can be and should be variations on a theme. That worked for Liszt and Mozart. It would be highly unfair to the actors and the crew of sequels to compare their work to the original. And yet we do. We think it ludicrous to even doubt comparing a sequel to the original.
But is that not just a prison of the mind? We think our thoughts are our own, but they are preconceived notions from our mothers, fathers, grandparents, partners, friends. What do we truly think? Not what are we supposed to think? Are our thoughts us? Or our feelings?

Let sequels be a vehicle for change. See the deep in the small. See the huge in the minuscule. If atoms are atoms, if all energy connects, we are all one being anyway and the chances that we can find God anywhere is huge. You are surrounded by angelic energy right now. You are an angel. All of it is at your grasp. Be guided by your heart.

If we think it impossible to change our minds, then I invite you to an experiment.
Pick a sequel. Regardless of the quality or status, try to eliminate all comparisons to any previous story or what it supposed to be. Stay neutral, tolerant, friendly, interested. What if it didn't have a first part to live up to? What if you did not have a first part to live up to? What if you were born yesterday evening and your first full day was today?

Imagine if "Son of the Mask", or "The Mask 2" as it is sometimes called, would not have been a sequel or a follow-up to a famous hit. That would have meant that no one would have compared Jamie Kennedy's performance as Tim Avery to Jim Carrey's as Stanley Ipkiss. Maybe Alan Cumming's extraordinary interpretation of the Mischief God Loki would have been more appreciated. If the story had no first part to live up to, the story itself of a wild Mask Baby reminiscent of Baby Herman in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and a pinch of Yosemite Sam could even be considered ingenious. But the sneers are preprogrammed because of the comparison. Jamie Kennedy is no Jim Carrey, but Jim Carrey is no Jamie Kennedy. Who are we to say who is better?

Those are acquired opinions.

In the end of "Son of the Mask", it is the chaotic cartoonist Tim Avery who learns a valuable lesson, as we find out in the following scene:

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Little Alvie, Tim's son, is forced to choose between his own father and the heavenly rebel Loki who hates his own father, the God Odin. But Loki just wants to misuse the boy in order to get back at his own Dad.

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Tim Avery:
Alvie, look at me. It's Dad. No more superpowers. I know at first I was kind of a jerk, but I didn't know how to handle a son. But you helped me grow up and I wanna repay you by helping you grow up. I love you.

(Alvie finally chooses his own real Dad.)

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The God Odin
(coming off his throne):
Loki, you're in every sense a failure.

Loki:
Well, you sort created me to be a failure so I kind of lived up to your expectations.

Odin:
Loki, you brought me much pain.

Loki:
Right back at you, Dad.

(Odin swings his weapon to hit his son. Tim intervenes.)

Tim:
Hey, hang on just a minute, Grizzly Addams. I don't know just how things work in the God world, but you're his father. He's your son. And even if you banish him, he's still going to be your son. There is nothing more important in this entire universe than your relationship with your family. Especially if you're immortal. You're like a thousand. He's 800. So you might as well get things right now and enjoy the rest of your eternal life. Here's the thing: just take the mask. Okay? Loosen up.

Odin:
Come on, son. Let's go home. God speed.

Loki:
Maybe I can help you patch up things with Mom?

Odin:
Don't push it.

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That's Greek drama at its best.
A mortal guiding the Gods into the light. Did you expect that from a little known sequel? If you realize you can find spiritual gold in secret places, how do you know that homeless bum won't help you find the road to your highest dream? Anybody can be the savior. Anyone the culprit. You be the choice.

You have a choice here.
You can either jump onto the sociological mainstream opinion train and say it's Hollywood nonsense or you can actually take these words to heart. Does it really matter where the truth comes from if it helps become a better person? Here's a guy who used to be a chaotic mess and now defends his family, even tells Odin to patch up things with his kid.
Do you get better than that?

Basically, it is the story of the lost son returning back home. Darth Vader left home in Star Wars I to find back home in Star Wars VI. The Evil Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter) in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" felt betrayed by her own sister's lies in the first film, only to let go of her own tyranny once her sister (Anne Hathaway) begged of her forgiveness in the second round, "Through the Looking Glass".

We are basically always telling the same story over and over.

So it is not necessarily what we see, read, hear or experience that matters, but how we perceive what we see.

Mario Puzo gives Lex Luthor the wisest line in his script for "Superman" from 1978. "Some people will read War and Peace and think it is a simple adventure novel. Others will read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and uncover the secrets of the universe."

It is easy to assume that things are how we think they are until we look below the surface, as these possible versions of realities might show you.

Hitler might have started his rampage against Judaism because of one simple patronizing comment made by one single arrogant art professor back in 1908. If no one took him seriously or even laughed at his pain, he might have felt no one took him seriously. That might have turned an already choleric and hypersensitive individual afraid of the dentist into a homicidal maniac. You know how you feel when you mean something seriously and another person laughs at you. It hurts you at your core. What Hitler did was very, very twisted, no doubt, but it began with a single patronizing comment. Could that be true? If so, should we not be more careful what we tell each other?

Investigators from Sweden have formed a theory that Jack the Ripper might have been a delivery driver from Whitechapel named Charles Allan Lechmere who killed his victims on the way to or from work. All of the murders were on his route. If it was who they think it was, he was a psychologically severely abused man from a broken home. According to research, Charles was treated badly at home by all his women which might have resulted in a twisted misogynistic attitude. It might have escalated into the violent murders. Why? Because no one listened to his inner pain. These were ludicrously viscous crimes made by a man totally caught in his own irrealistic fog of hatred. It had nothing to do with anyone, but it became the end of the world for many.

According to grade school history books, Marie Antoinette was a frivolous Queen who overspent the country's budget and told the population to eat cake if they didn't have bread to eat. The reality was that she was the shy, unprepared, youngest, forgotten, fifteenth daughter of a rather relaxed and rather happy Viennese court, save the fact that her Mom, the Empress, was a bit of a bitch. Marie Antoinette's marriage to an even more shy French prince was a panicked political attempt to fix a broken relationship between enemies in an envious Versailles court that loathed her Austrian countrymen and gawked while the teenagers were unable to make love, probably hoping they would fail to prove how stupid Austrians were. The prince was shy and the princess was scared.
She escaped the palace into her own fantasy world. The quote about the cake was from a book she was reading. The country was bancrupt. The rest were lies made up by her enemies. When hatred erupted into cataclysm, no one dared to work out a solution. They just screamed at each other. The loud screams became supposed truths that no one dared oppose. The French Revolution still has negative effects on modern society.

These anecdotes remind of how important it is to be kind and tolerant. One word can change a person's life.

But events can also have positive effects.

Einstein received his theory of relativity, by angelic inspiration as it were, sitting at his desk at the patent office in Bern. Luther had his idea for the 95 theses sitting on the toilet. George Lucas named his hero Indiana after his dog.
Archimedes thought up his universal principle in his bathtub.
Are you sure the day in your life that will turn into a movie will not bring you revolutionary ideas?

To make my point, I will include Dr. Ellie Arroway's monologue from the movie "Contact". She tries to gather official funds to research for extra terrestrial life and the gremium calls it science fiction.

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"Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history."

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As my father loved to abbreviate: Y.N.K. You never know.

So, basically, this is not about sequels. It is about us bridging the gap over our snobbery into realizing we are more similar than we think. Our arrogance tells us we aren't. Our judgment fools us to believe we are enemies. They said Bond would never last. That Astaire couldn't dance. That Marie Antoinette was the enemy. That Mozart composed too many notes. That the internet was not going to last. That a war was necessary. They even crucified Jesus. No. We crucified Jesus.

Am I going off the deep end? No. But just think of it. If all these people had given changes a chance, trusting their present, the gift of their now, instead of what they thought they were supposed to think, maybe Astaire would have got an earlier chance, Mozart would have lived longer and Jesus would have been able to perform more miracles. Maybe six million jews would have survived, five Whitechapel women would have lived to see the 20th century and Marie Antoinette would have married her Axel von Fersen.

What would their sequels look like?

Sequels require work.
What we have to remember is that sequels have a hard act to follow. The original hit was mostly so groundbreaking that a follow-up has to summon quantum leaps to outsmart the outcome.

But is the road the way?
If the soul is eternal, it chooses to come here to learn. Do we have to follow in other people's footsteps or can we embark on new ground, boldly going where no one has gone before.

What does the three act drama tell us about this?

The second act of the classic structure drama is when the things are at its climax, where the hero or heroine is being tested, where the story really kicks off. For a few cinematic franchises, sequels have become true trilogy masterpieces filled with Shakespearean depth and surprising complexity, fugues improvising on the theme of the original. Back to the Future II and the The Empire Strikes Back are examples of examples of virtuoso variations on this theme.

But even if the film sequels to popular hits are not brilliant crescendos, there is often more to find there than meets the eye.

I fell in love with Michelle Pfeiffer on August 27th, 1982, about a week and half before my 13th birthday. The movie was "Grease 2" and I thought she was the cutest thing on the planet. Even my Dad loved the movie, so I kept pushing Michelle, telling everybody how cute she was. He boogied down the street to the number "Reproduction" that turned the high school senior class of Rydell High into a proverbial sexplosion. The greatest number to me, though, was the gorgeously staged "Score Tonight" in the local bowling alley with T-Bird Boss Adrian Zmed hitting his belting 3rd falsetto C. High honors stuff directed by Grande Dame Patricia Birch of "Stepford Wives" and "Big" Fame.

No wonder. I had already fallen in love with Olivia Newton-John four years earlier in the original installment. Interestingly enough, "Grease" had its Swedish premiere a few after my 9th birthday and I saw it on September 30th, 1978. I boogied down the street after seeing that movie. Believe me, I really got on people's nerves about that film. I walked up to famous people and asked them if they had seen it. I saw it ten times in the cinema. As far as I was concerned, both flicks were equally good. After all, the chicks were equally gorgeous in both films. Even my dear wife still calls Olivia Newton-John my secret girlfriend.

There are sequels that top "Grease 2", though.
If the sequel is the rising apprentice to a master's original, what then is "Back to the Future II"? When the hero has already returned to the present with his prize, but is forced to return to save his future kids, what can we say if he accidentally invites future enemies to give past racing information to the past? The hero is forced to go to the same places he visited the first time and stop his enemies from attacking two versions of himself. It all ends with his master being sent back to the Old West. Rarely has a sequel topped the original. As I write this, the fugue of Lully's "Alcidiane" Overture is playing in my earphones, which brings me to the quote made by TIME Magazine about "Back to the Future II": "A brilliant fugue improvising on the themes of the original." Does that make director Robert Zemeckis a cinematic Mozart?

If the "Back to the Future"-trilogy is a fugue and the "Star Wars" Saga an opera, the original "Planet of the Apes"-series could be deemed as a symphony.
"Beneath the Planet of the Apes" was partly designed by Charlton Heston to put an end to the franchise and kill his own character. He just did not want to do any more Ape flicks. But his decision to have screenwriter Paul Dehn write the end of the world into the film ensured its immortality by creating a vicious circle that made the story at all possible. Karmically, it proves that fate had always meant for the films to be done. The apes that escape the apocalypse into the past make a baby that starts that new ape world to which Charlton could escape in the first place.
Sorry, Charlton!
Movie 4 to me remains the most sociologically threatening film with its accurate depiction of the Watts Riots of 1965. Science fiction can issue serious social critique in Hollywood and get away with it. Who takes monkeys seriously anyway? In turbulently segregated America in the 1970s, that movie was a very clear jibe at official politics and no one noticed.

If we are dealing with the groundbreaking technical achievements of "Terminator 2" or John Woo's lusciously red flamenco staging of "Mission Impossible 2", sequels have the potential to surprise. Surprising his audience is also Tim Burton's speciality. He flabbergasted everyone in creating not only Michelle Pfeiffer's wickedly luscious Catwoman but also Danny DeVito's weird human penguin in "Batman Returns". Comics, as we have seen in Spielberg's marvelous interpretation of the TinTin character, can be famously artistic. Christopher Reeve's lovely sensitivity in "Superman 2", where he chose to give up his superpowers in order to enjoy mortal love wowed. That made me want to be Lois Lane. That "Shrek" was meant as a brilliant parody of the Disney mainstream must've been obvious to everyone early on. Its deeper meaning with the face of true love not being the slim Hollywood Hollywood like model figure of Cameron Diaz but the sympathetic ogre is a beautiful touch that is quite charmingly reinterpreted in the second installment.

If we write spin-offs, fan fiction, sequels, radio plays or paint fan art about our favorite characters, we are just imagining what they would be doing otherwise. Would Luke Skywalker have a drink with Miss Moneypenny? Han Solo race with Indiana Jones? Hercule Poirot play cards with Harry Potter? You be the judge. Just remember this: if the past is the original installment of your life, make your future that brilliant sequel of your history that improvises on the first part like a marvelous fugue.

Be your own version of James Bond.
Live your own adventure.

Don't wait for the feeling of joy to arrive. Crash through the pain and be happy, anyone. See the light and search for those immortal words:

To be continued ...

Our hero shall return.

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