It feels like every once in a while, some new horrifying detail about Donald Trump’s presidency is revealed even though we’re getting further and further away from it. The latest revelations that came out today (through leaks of Bob Woodward’s new book Peril) certainly fit this trend. It feels less than surprising, but still disturbing, that officials in the Trump administration worried that there was a risk of a right-wing coup after the election. Meanwhile, it turns out the real reason that Pence didn’t go along with Trump’s push to refuse to certify the Electoral College votes was because… Dan Quayle convinced him he had to certify?!? (Maybe he does deserve more credit than being the lowest-ranked leader in Civilization’s scoring system…)
What strikes me as the most frightening revelation from these leaks is that there were not only fears that Trump would start a nuclear war, but that officials within the US government – namely Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley – actively worked to prevent this from happening by circumventing US nuclear launch authority. What seems to have happened is that Milley believed Trump’s mental state declined after losing the 2020 election and would potentially start an unprovoked nuclear war with China, which only became worse after the January 6 Capitol riot. In response, Milley did 2 things. First, he spoke with his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, on both October 30, 2020, and January 8, 2021, to reassure him that “We are 100% steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes” and “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” (Aside from this not being the kind of thing you say about a healthy democracy, it seems oddly reminiscent of the phone call scene in Dr. Strangelove.)
Secondly – and this is even more unusual than a top military official assuring a foreign counterpart he’ll call ahead if they attack – Milley also reportedly took steps to keep Trump from ordering the use of nuclear weapons. While meeting with senior officers to review formal launch procedures, Milley urged them to make sure that he was personally involved in the launch process, and even asked them to explicitly agree to this. Milley also spoke with Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the riots and agreed with her that Trump was “crazy” (and earlier reporting confirms that Pelosi spoke to the Joint Chiefs about keeping Trump from using nuclear weapons around this time).
This is a pretty shocking development in the context of how US nuclear launch authority works. The system, put simply, consists of the president ordering that nuclear weapons be used. There’s no second official whose consent is needed, or laws restricting when nuclear weapons can be used, despite what movies and TV may show (though other countries do have restrictions in place). Essentially, the only check on a US president’s ability to use nuclear weapons is… that they win an election. This is already pretty scary in general just because of the nuclear weapon context, but it gets way worse when you consider just how gung-ho Trump has been about threatening other countries with them (something that I and many others predicted back at the start of his presidency). Who can forget his threat to subject North Korea to “fire and fury” if it kept threatening the US back in August 2017?
Milley’s actions here, however, seem to be an incredibly unusual breakdown in civil-military relations in the US. The only comparable case that I can think of is back during the Nixon administration (because you can’t discuss Trump without a comparison to his predecessor in sleaze). During the final days of the administration in 1974, then-Secretary of Defence James Schlesinger gave orders that if Nixon wanted nuclear weapons launched, nothing was to be done without him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger being consulted first. Schlesinger and Milley seem to have been motivated by similar concerns, as the Watergate scandal was plunging Nixon into depression and pushing him to drink heavily, to the point of his making passing remarks about how easy it would be to order the use of nuclear weapons. But even then, Milley’s actions stand apart due to his being a military officer: as Vipin Narang has pointed out in the past, refusing to carry out a legally ordered nuclear strike would be mutiny. Sure, Milley’s actions may seem justified in this case, but it could set an unfortunate precedent for US military officers to try and push back against otherwise lawful orders in the future.
It’s hard to see how Milley can continue in his current position as Chairman with these revelations (there are already calls for him to resign or be fired), but the story also highlights just how dangerous existing US nuclear launch authority is. For the past 75+ years, the US has essentially had its nuclear weapons on a hair trigger so that it could rapidly retaliate against nuclear attacks by enemy states, especially the Soviet Union, with the president’s unilateral authority playing a key role. This may have worked during the Cold War, but even then there was always the risk of nuclear weapons being used because of misperception or plainly irrational decisionmaking. Nowadays the need for the decision to be made quickly is gone, and now the US approach is stuck with the pitfall of giving a single fallible person – who isn’t even guaranteed to be mentally stable – the ability to have thousands or millions of people killed with absolutely no restrictions. This approach’s days may finally be numbered thanks to recent legislative efforts, but with the state of US politics these days… well, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Nuclear war is a funny thing – there’s a ton of research about how to avoid it and what would happen, but it’s ultimately theoretical and (to many) abstract. At this point, pop culture has arguably been at least as effective as academic research (if not more so) at conveying that nuclear weapons are a Very Bad Thing (when they’re not being used as a deus ex machina or are just straight-up magic). Movies, TV shows, and video games are arguably the most effective at this: while there are plenty of good books out there describing the horrors of nuclear war, it may not have the same punch as actually seeing those on the screen in front of you.
The problem is that, since nuclear weapons have been around for almost 76 years now, there is a lot of media out there featuring nuclear weapons/war/post-apocalyptic settings. This also means a huge range in quality between “very good” and “this is so bad that I almost wish the flash from the bomb would burn out my retinas to spare me from this” (I’m looking at you, The Sum of All Fears). Some media also do a better job of accurately conveying the effects of nuclear weapons and war then others, but what does so may not be readily apparent to casual viewers. And of course, there’s always the rare combination of “very accurate” and “this is so dull, why am I putting myself through this?”
The following list is my attempt at giving the highlights from these mediums. Specifically, it’s more from my own experience, since there’s way too much out there for anyone to actually watch or play. This means that some classic nukes movies/miniseries like On the Beach, WarGames, Threads, and The Day After aren’t here because… well, I haven’t watched them yet (though in terms of reputation alone, these are worth watching… though you may need a strong stomach for Threads and The Day After). Additionally, I’m also only including media where the role of nuclear weapons is explicit: Mad Max: Fury Road and The Road, for example, don’t make it here because their post-apocalyptic nightmare worlds aren’t specified as being the result of nuclear war (but you should watch them anyways). For each piece of media, I’ll provide the name, release year, and a few comments about why they’re worth looking at.
Movies/TV
Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, 1954)
This one might be a surprising choice to some (whereas people who know me are unsurprised and rolling their eyes as they read this). After all, the Godzilla franchise is known more for actors in goofy monster costumes duking it out and smashing a disturbing number of pagodas than for any relevance to nuclear deterrence. While that’s true for most of this franchise, the original 1954 movie is very different, being more of a horror movie where the titular monster is meant as an allegory for both nuclear weapons and their victims. (It says a lot that Godzilla’s trademark appearance was deliberately modelled after the keloid scarring on victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.) Where other monster movies (including virtually all the sequels) have reveled in the spectacle of cities getting trampled, Godzilla instead focuses on the horror of the situation, including the fate of victims in the aftermath, and uses visuals inspired by Hiroshima. Parts of the movie haven’t aged well – some of the editing seems rough, and the once-impressive Godzilla costume now looks incredibly cheesy – but that’s pretty excusable considering this is a mid-1950s movie on a limited budget, and is effective even today. (Skip the 1956 English version Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which uses a rushed dub and censors all the nuclear themes.) This used to be hard to track down, but in the past few years it’s had a restored DVD/Blu-Ray release as part of the Criterion Collection, been made available for streaming on the Criterion Channel, and can even be purchased digitally. I’ve written more about Godzilla and nuclear deterrence in the past, which you can find here.
I Live in Fear (Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
This is a somewhat obscure film, which is especially remarkable considering that director Akira Kurosawa is considered one of the most important filmmakers ever (having made classics like Rashomon and Seven Samurai and inspiring a few small-time filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola). But I Live in Fear is worth noting as one of the earliest movies to tackle fears of nuclear war, with the plot centering around an elderly factory owner’s fear of nuclear annihilation pushing him to move his family to safety in Brazil. What results is a debate as to whether who is more insane: the old man for his paranoia of nuclear war, or the rest of society for choosing to live with the fear of nuclear weapons. It may not rank among the best of Kurosawa’s work (admittedly an incredibly high bar), but the debate over how fear-inducing nuclear weapons should be and the strong acting makes it worth watching anyways.
Dr. Strangelove or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Who would have thought that the most accurate movie about nuclear deterrence ever made would be a mid-1960s satire, much less managing to also be one of the best comedies ever made? Stanley Kubrick’s story of an insane Air Force general (the name Jack D. Ripper hardly inspiring trust) deciding to pre-emptively send nuclear bombers towards the Soviet Union does the seemingly impossible in taking actual nuclear deterrence theory and strategy from the time and making the sheer insanity hilarious. Virtually everything in the movie is representative of nuclear thinking at the time, including the idea of an automated doomsday device (which the Soviets eventually made, albeit a less terrifying version) and a cobalt nuclear bomb that would make the atmosphere too toxic to support life (still theoretical!). But while its contemporary Fail-Safe plays it… safe… Dr. Strangelove instead goes for the absurd with over-the-top characters like General Turgidson, Major “King” Kong, and the titular ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove, gleefully over-the-top lines (the War Room line alone making this worth a watch), and a cavalcade of sexual metaphors ripped from early deterrence scholars. (The last one may, admittedly, be a turn-off for some.) Despite being almost six decades old, Dr. Strangelove is still uncomfortably accurate… and a blast to watch.
Crimson Tide (Tony Scott, 1995)
Crimson Tide stands out among the other movies on this list as being more grounded and serious (in that it isn’t wholly comedic and has no giant monster suits). The conflict between a nuclear submarine’s commanding officer and his executive officer on how to interpret their orders to launch in a crisis situation may not seem as exciting compared to other potential nuke-based plots, but it proves to be incredibly tense. It’s helped by being based on a similar situation on a Soviet nuclear sub during the Cuban Missile Crisis, lending the whole situation even more credibility and driving home just how easily things could spiral into disaster (which sums up nuclear deterrence pretty well, actually). Like the other movies here, parts might be a little dated now, but the important parts have withstood the test of time. Plus it stars Denzel Washington and Dustin Hoffman! It’s hard to go wrong with any movie where those two are the leads.
Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, 2016)
The exception to the “every Godzilla after the first is about monsters smacking each other and wrecking Tokyo” simultaneously goes back to the franchise’s roots of nuclear allegory while modernizing itself with parallels to modern nuclear disasters. What results is a film that strikes a balance between political satire (the subtitle gag of increasingly long job descriptors is especially fun) and horror on par with the original. No punches are pulled in making the titular monster into an even more grotesque representation of the bomb than ever before (without spoiling anything, I’m pretty sure that a) jaws should not move that way and b) a mouth should not be there). The sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons is again put front and centre for viewers by torching and irradiating Tokyo… but now in color! (And yet somehow director Hideaki Anno took on this project as a comparatively light-hearted break after his past few movies. Different stroke for different folks, I suppose…) Some parts are more open to critique – in particular, the somewhat aggressive Japanese nationalism feels tailored to more conservative audience members in Japan than anything else. It’s still a worthwhile watch for a range of audiences, from those who want a more modern nuclear allegory to those who just want a man in a rubber suit to smash models of Tokyo. (As with the original, skip the English dub, which settles for merely OK instead of hilariously bad or actually good.)
Chernobyl (Craig Mazin and Johan Renck, 2019)
Chernobyl may not be a miniseries about nuclear deterrence or war, but it does a superb job of showing their effects via the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. What starts off as a healthy city surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant soon drains away to become a ghost city that’s as disturbing as any post-apocalyptic fiction (complete with radioactive hotspots that are fatal just to approach). The depiction of excess radiation’s effects on the human body are also gruesomely accurate, culminating in episode three’s stomach-churning portrayal of the final stages of acute radiation syndrome, which manages to avoid venturing into the realm of tastelessness. There are plenty of historical liberties taken, but they don’t really hurt the overall quality of the show. (Also, it’s endlessly fun to hear people who are ostensibly Ukrainian and Russian speaking in British accents.)
Video Games
Wasteland 2 Director’s Cut (2014)
Wasteland is one of those video game series that’s been enormously influential but largely invisible to mainstream audiences, being one of the first games to have a post-apocalyptic setting (maybe even the first?) all the way back in 1988. While it feels pretty janky by modern standards, the setting is pretty cool, balancing a Mad Max-style post-nuclear war world with a hefty dose of wackiness, thanks in part to graphics being so primitive that the writers went for silly descriptive narration instead. After getting a spiritual successor in Fallout (see below!), a proper Wasteland 2 came out in 2014 (with an updated Director’s Cut the following year). Now equipped with more manageable gameplay, voice acting, and proper graphics, it’s possible to see post-nuclear war Arizona… although the difficulty still means you’re going to die a lot. Well, either that or the glitches will get you. It’s still worth playing, though. (And yes, you can set off a nuke… it’s just that you’ll be at ground zero when you do.) Wasteland 3 is pretty good too… I just need to get back to trudging through Colorado’s permanent nuclear winter at some point.
Fallout series (1997-present)
OK, you’ve probably heard of Fallout at some point considering how popular it is (Fallout 3 is even on display in the Smithsonian!). The post-apocalyptic RPG series had a few entries in the 1990s as a turn-based series that combined the seriousness of a planet savaged by nuclear war with 1950s-style mad science (complete with Super Mutants) and some black comedy (seriously, about 50% of the population consists of cartoon villains). It was then retooled into the first-person Fallout 3 (and shifted from the West Coast to DC), which is when things really started blowing up. Pretty much all the games are fun to play while reinforcing the core message that Nuclear War is Bad. Ok, maybe Fallout 76 isn’t very good… and lets you launch ICBMs?! *hurls non-existent disc away.* There’s a reason that game horrified experts in my field (and not the right kind of horror that other games discussed here inspire).
The real peak of the series is 2010’s Fallout New Vegas, which focuses much more on how society rebuilds itself in an irradiated nuclear wasteland and gives you the option to side with several factions according to your own beliefs or take over on your own (although if you side with Caesar’s Legion, you’ve got some issues). Or you could always just wander the Mojave and fight giant irradiated scorpions and the occasional Deathclaw with that Fat Man tactical nuclear warhead launcher you’ve been lugging around, I guess.
Metal Gear Solid series (1998-2015)
Of all the series discussed here, Metal Gear Solid involves an incredible amount of pain-staking research about nuclear deterrence and just about anything else. How many games about giant robots that can launch nukes would take the time to include accurate details like the START II arms control treaty, the use of Permissive Action Link systems on nuclear warheads to prevent unauthorized use, and nuclear proliferation in general?! Later games built on this even further, with MGS 3 using its Cold War setting and use of obscure details like the Davy Crockett recoilless nuclear gun to the fullest (true story: I first learned about it from this game), as well as Peace Walker revolving around flaws in nuclear deterrence theory. This isn’t even getting into the non-nuclear stuff, like MGS 2 (2001) accurately predicting the influence of memes on society, the rise of increasingly extremist views in American politics, and governments using the Internet to spy on their citizens. (Hell, 2013’s Metal Gear Rising even predicted a presidential candidate with extreme views who uses “make America great again” as a slogan… although at least Senator Armstrong didn’t use bone spurs to get out of military service.)
Somehow this is all combined with a patently insane plot involving (among other things) cloned supersoldiers, cyborg ninjas, psychic powers, and nanomachines, strong anti-war themes, and excellent stealth gameplay… and IT WORKS. (It shouldn’t be possible to feel invested in characters with names like Solid Snake or Big Boss). Admittedly, the plot can get too insane at some points (nanomachines seem to explain every weird thing that happens), and the depiction of female characters is… not great. But this franchise is a must-play if you have any interest in nukes (or considering that some games are unavailable due to being on old platforms, at least a must-watch through YouTube). Although now that the franchise is gone, I guess I’ll have to move on to creator Hideo Kojima’s new game Death Stranding. It doesn’t seem as realistic, though, since you’re playing as a deliveryman in a world where an invisible threat forces everyone to stay inside or wear protective equipment, all while emphasizing the importance of human interaction… wait a minute, this came out in *2019*? Dammit, Kojima, stop predicting the future!
DEFCON (2006)
DEFCON is probably the most unique game on this list, being a strategy game where you don’t control any troops directly or even see them. Instead, your goal is to build up your defences and missile arsenals for an inevitable World War III on a map that looks like it was ripped straight out of WarGames. Even though it looks so abstract, DEFCON arguably captures the horror of nuclear war better than almost anything else on this list. Because the game strips down human lives to pure numbers, it becomes easy to slip into the mindset of trying to get a high score by wiping out more of your opponent’s citizens than they do to you without even considering the number of megadeaths involved. In the process, the player ends up embodying the attitude that was played for laughs in Dr. Strangelove… only this time it’s cold, clinical, and depressing (unless you learn to stop worrying and love the bomb, that is). It’s not for nothing that it’s sometimes referred to as “the scariest game ever made” and is treated by nuclear weapons experts as a fairly accurate simulation.
Metro 2033 Redux (2010)
Metro 2033 stands out from the other games on this list in two ways: first, it’s actually based on a Russian novel, and second, it was made by a Ukrainian development studio. This gives it a totally different perspective from the others, as it takes place in a post-nuclear apocalypse Moscow where people survived by taking shelter in the metro system (since various stations were designed to double as shelters in a nuclear war). Things feel even more dire than in Fallout, since it’s dangerous to go above-ground without heavy protection, military-grade bullets are so rare that they serve as currency (forcing you to decide whether you want to be able to fight off bandits effectively or be able to buy vital supplies later), and everyone generally seems miserable. And that’s without even getting into the horrible mutants and seemingly supernatural phenomena like ghosts (which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t actually result from nuclear war, but eh, video games). If you ignore the latter (and the various bugs, which apparently got ironed out in the sequels), it’s a good way to experience a more Eastern European-tinged take on life after nuclear war… at least until the mutant rats get you, anyways.
Bonus: Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).
“Hang on a minute,” you might be thinking, “2020 was an awful year, but I don’t remember North Korea nuking the US!” Well, no, they didn’t at least not in reality, but they did in this speculative fiction novel from the bygone year of 2018. What sets it apart from other novels about nuclear war is that it’s actually written by an expert on nuclear non-proliferation, which shows in the level of detail throughout the book (check out Jeffrey Lewis’ podcast Arms Control Wonk if you’re interested in learning more about proliferation and deterrence). The result is a plausible scenario for limited nuclear war breaking out between the US and North Korea that zigzags between dark comedy and sheer horror (though the… odd… dynamics of the Trump administration date the book slightly). Your mileage may vary as to whether this seems better or worse than the actual 2020…
… Wow, I really AM bad at posting regularly on this blog, aren’t I? Last time I wrote something on here was back in April 2020, when I wrote about Kim Jong Un’s mysterious retreat from the public eye (turns out that he’s… well, not healthy, but still alive and ruling, anyways). That’s already a big enough posting gap by the standards of any normal year, but 2020 (and 2021 as well, so far) has been far from a normal year – last April feels like 5 years ago now!
So what exactly have I been doing since the last time I posted here? Well, I finally defended my dissertation back in December and officially completed my PhD, which is definitely something. Seriously, at some points it felt like I would never finish, to say nothing about the… interesting… process of actually defending the dissertation and then revising it. (I’m going to have to write a whole post about that at some point – given my current rate of posting, I should be getting around to it sometime in 2027). I’m pretty sure I’m still processing the fact that I’m officially Dr. Haichin now after 5 and a half of years of doing a PhD (not to mention the fact that I’m officially done being a student for the first time in my life. Time for a minor identity crisis….). Not sure at this point what I’ll be doing in the future academically, since the academic job market wasn’t exactly booming before 2020 struck. Plus I need to work through a year’s worth of burnout (yes, I somehow managed to go into 2020 already feeling burned out from writing a dissertation, though oddly it seems to have led to my holding together relatively well while being isolated… no, I don’t understand it, either). One thing’s for sure, though – I’m definitely going to try to keep up with publishing, and that means trying to get my dissertation published as a proper book instead leaving it in its current form as a dual paper block/anti-burglar device. Considering how long this takes, though, we’ll all have to settle for a link to the dissertation itself, which conveniently was finally posed online last week.
Besides wrapping up a massive multi-year project (seriously, this thing was over 400 pages long!), I’ve kept busy in other ways:
I finally got a job working for the government! Sure, working at Elections Canada isn’t exactly what I expected when I started doing a PhD on nuclear deterrence, but it feels like doing something so different has been a great way of letting my brain re-adjust, and it still ties in with the whole regime type angle I’d worked on in my research. Plus I’m working with a good team, it’s still security-relevant work, and… I’m making money for a change? Definitely a big adjustment from PhD life, where finances consist of watching your bank balance steadily tick downwards over time instead of seeing some kind of gain. (Also cannot say enough good things about working 9-5 instead of the ill-defined “forever hours” of academic life. Just have to learn to not feel guilty when I’m doing not-work things…)
I watched a lot of movies in 2020. No, seriously, I mean a lot. Thanks to the pandemic, of course, this also meant that I was watching a lot of stuff at home instead of in theatres (well, OK, except for 1917 and Tenet, but the former was before everything went pear-shaped, and the latter was a combination of really wanting to see a Christopher Nolan movie in theatres, almost nobody else going to theatres on Labour Day in Ottawa, and plain old hubris). As it turns out, this was possibly the most appropriate year to re-watch Shaun of the Dead (twice!), and it’s even more fun doing so with friends over the Internet (turns out that the foolishness of going to the Winchester and waiting for everything to blow over is even more apparent in a year when going out in public was a risky endeavour). Plus it was a great opportunity to catch up on some classic movies I had missed (can you believe that I somehow never watched Casablanca or Titanic until last year? Me neither!) and re-watching some old favorites (I still can’t say whether Alien or Aliens is the better movie, just that they’re both required viewing for everyone). Most of all, though, I cannot recommend doing group movie nights with friends online enough – it’s a fun time for everyone AND you get to watch a movie. (Also, Contagion basically called all of last year, except for that glaring weakness of “what some leaders are horrifically incompetent?”)
I somehow managed to keep to my annual reading goal! Yes, even with having to do a lot of writing, I still managed to hit my usual goal of getting through 50 books cover-to-cover. Admittedly, there was a fair bit of re-reading (like some of the movies previously mentioned, World War Z makes for some appropriate pandemic reading), but there were also a bunch of thick new reads as well. As it turns out, reading The Stand is a good way to make a pandemic seem… less terrible than it actually is (COVID is very bad, sure, but Captain Trips is way worse). Plus some books that I had been waiting to come out for years were released at last, which was pretty nice.
Anyways, I’ll end this post here, since it’s already a massive wall of text, but readers should expect to see a little more content on here once in a while now that I don’t have PhD stuff looming over my head (which should make all 5 or 6 of you happy).
It’s not every day that a head of state appears to vanish off the face of the earth, much less a military dictator with nuclear weapons. But that seems to be exactly what’s happened with Kim Jong Un, the 36-year old (maybe; we’re not sure if he was born in 1983 or 1984) Supreme Leader of North Korea, at least as far as anybody outside of North Korea’s leadership can tell. So far, North Korea seems to be chugging along as normal, or at least as normal as you can get when you’re a self-isolating totalitarian state in the middle of a global pandemic. The lack of information has led to a lot of speculation, however, including the possibility that Kim’s disappearance is due to his being gravely ill or having secretly died. The latter, while a little out there, raises some important questions about the North Korean succession process and what that means. Long story short: this is a rare instance where (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) the murderous dictator dropping dead isn’t a desirable option and would likely lead to what could charitably be described as Bad Things happening.
This whole furor kicked off back on April 15, when Kim Jong Un didn’t make a public appearance. This was particularly odd, since April 15 is the Day of the Sun, which celebrates the birthday of his grandfather Kim Il Sung and (since the government’s legitimacy is based almost entirely on a cult of personality surrounding the Kim family) is the most important holiday in the country, with Kim Jong Un having made an appearance every year since he took power. In fact, it was so unusual that it immediately kickstarted speculation that something was wrong, which isn’t wholly without precedent – when Kim Jong Il didn’t show up for the holiday in 2008, it turned out to be because he had suffered a major stroke. None of this was helped by the fact that the North Korean government refused to comment, and nothing fuels wild guessing like an information vacuum. Additionally, Kim is not what you could describe as the healthiest leader around – as Anna Fifield explained in her book The Great Successor last year, he “looks like a heart attack waiting to happen,” since he smokes like a chimney, has a highly stressful job (yes, being a dictator can be hard work too), and qualifies as extremely obese due to weighing around 300 pounds while being 5 feet and 7 inches tall. (Also, you should probably read the book anyways, if only for the sheer contrast of murderous dictators and quirky habits like an Eric Clapton obsession and a love of basketball – read my review here.) There’s a reason he’s nicknamed Kim Fatty the Third, after all.
By April 20, the Daily NK – a South Korean news outlet run by North Korean defectors – was claiming that Kim had received major heart surgery and was recovering outside of Pyongyang, citing “multiple unnamed sources” (later revised to one unnamed source, which always helps to inspire confidence). This sent the rumor mill into overdrive, with CNN soon reporting that US officials believed he was in serious danger after the surgery, though the US and South Korean governments reported that they hadn’t seen any unusual activity that would indicate this. Then TMZ, that bastion of reliable journalism (for those of you who can’t tell, e.g. Donald Trump, that was sarcasm) decided to report on April 25 that Kim was reportedly dead, citing a post on Weibo by someone claiming to be working at a Hong Kong news outlet. In other words, TMZ essentially claimed a head of state had died on the basis of “hey, this guy on Facebook said it, so it must be true!” (There’s a reason I’m not linking to that bilge.) The following day, the South Korean government spoke up, saying that Kim appears to have been at his private resort at Wonsan (because of course the dictator has his own beach resort) since April 13 and still seemed to be alive, probably just to avoid the pandemic. It’s always possible that there’s a coverup going on, of course, but the only way we’d really know is if the North Korean government announces that Kim has kicked the bucket (which they did fairly quickly for his father and grandfather).
This weird pandemic interlude brings up some interesting questions, though: what happens when Kim Jong Un actually does die, or at least if he’s too unwell to give orders for launching the country’s nukes? It’s important to point out that legally, the only person in North Korea who could actually do that is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), who is… Kim Jong Un. Beyond that, we don’t really know what kind of nuclear command and control structure North Korea has, which brings up some problems. As Vipin Narang and Ankit Panda have pointed out (and they’re far from the only ones), North Korea’s security situation is bad enough that they have every incentive to launch immediately if it looks like the country is being attacked – even when that isn’t actually the case. This setup also means that if something happens to Kim Jong Un, it’s not clear who would actually have the authority to stop a launch. Presumably, Kim’s putative successor would have that authority, except…
We also don’t know what the line of succession in North Korea is. The immediate answer would be Kim Jong Un’s kids, except a) we don’t actually know how many kids he has (the general guess at this point is three) and b) they’d be 5 years old, tops (and not even a dictatorship with a cult of personality will give a 5 year old nuclear launch authority… I think). The next best guess after that would be his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, who also serves as First Deputy Director of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) Propaganda and Agitation Department and seems to have a good relationship with her brother (unlike half-brother Kim Jong Nam, who got a bad case of VX nerve agent to the face in 2017). She has the advantages of being a Kim and having good connections in the government (yes, dictators can’t just rule by fiat, they need supporters who’ll do things for them in exchange for rewards – it’s a whole thing), so it’s plausible that she becomes Kim the Fourth. But she runs into a whole other problem: she’s a woman in a highly patriarchal society (because of course the dictatorship is also sexist), which would make it difficult for her to have the same level of authority as her brother does (at least, not without a lot of purges, which is de rigeur for new dictators anyways).
That leaves the option of a whole bevy of KWP and KPA officials, but that runs into the whole other problem of their not being Kims. The government’s legitimacy up to this point has been based on the Kim cult of personality, and that kind of falls apart when the head of state is no longer a member of the family. It also would mean a potential succession crisis, with officials forming factions and jockeying for power. This is already a pretty bad outcome for any state, but it gets exponentially worse when you take the country’s nuclear weapons into account, since you’ll almost certainly have generals competing for control so that they can sell them or to continue using as a deterrent, which raises the possibility of their being accidentally used (aka, the point where I’ve been accused of being overly pessimistic by some, but frankly nothing involving North Korea and nukes inspires optimism). The best outcome in that situation is that you end up with a civil war in North Korea that ends with someone new taking over, and the worst is that the whole thing collapses in the infighting. Nobody wants that, since it means loose nukes and North Korean refugees attempting to flee into China (because crossing the DMZ minefield to the south isn’t really a viable option). South Korea would probably be obliged to follow through with unification at that point to assure stability, except they probably don’t want that because it would be an absurdly expensive process, and China doesn’t want that because it would mean a US ally right at its border.
All of this, of course, doesn’t even take into account the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, since it would almost certainly lead to the virus spreading even more (despite North Korean claims that they have no cases, since that’s about as reliable as a Weibo post). Overall, it’d be… messy. It says something that the best case scenario here is that the horrible dictator stays alive and well or, failing that, that his sister (who in all likelihood is just as ruthless) takes over in his stead.
Wow, uh, the world sure has changed a lot since the last time I posted something here (has it been almost 4 months already?). A couple of months ago, the main story was that the President of the United States was going through the impeachment process (and avoided being removed from office despite blatantly violating the law thanks to the Republican majority in the Senate). Now so much has happened that early February feels like a year ago. We’re now in what’s probably the biggest international crisis of my lifetime… hell, probably the worst one since the Second World War. In just a few months, the novel coronavirus has infected over 650,000 people worldwide, as well as killing over 30,000 (as of the time of writing). That it’s spread so much is a testament to not only how easily contagious diseases can spread these days, but also to the political failures of… certain world leaders in trying to handle the issue (disbanding the National Security Council pandemic team? Really?).
The whole situation ends up feeling like a real-life version of the movie Contagion, except now Jude Law’s fake news blogger is also the President of the United States. We get to deal with a virus that’s highly communicable (with some estimating that up to 70% of the world’s population could end up being infected) and has a mortality rate of anywhere between 1 and 10%, making it much deadlier than the flu. Nobody knows how long it’ll take to run its course – it could be a few months, or it could well over a year. The sad thing is that experts considered a major pandemic to be almost inevitable, and there have certainly been a few close calls in the past (SARS and H1N1 come to mind), yet most states haven’t really been ready for one and have been caught unawares.
The only thing most of us can do is try to socially distance from each other while treatments and a possible vaccine are being researched in order to halt the spread. For those of us with non-essential jobs, that functionally means staying at home as much as possible except for getting supplies and some exercise… so basically the PhD lifestyle taken up to the nth degree. This will only be sustainable for so long, though: state economies are pretty reliant on people being able to go out to work and spend money, and eventually economies are just going to perform so badly that people will die as a result of that as well. The stock market’s already suffered its biggest drops ever as a result of the pandemic, and we’re only a few weeks in – it’s almost inevitable that we end up in a global depression before this pandemic is over. Eventually, governments are going to have to let people go out again, at least in a controlled manner to minimize further coronavirus spread. Not to mention that the sense of isolation is going to aggravate mental health issues further down the line as well, meaning that there are few real good options in this scenario.
The best thing to do in this situation seems to try to keep busy while socially distancing in order to help pass the time. Obviously, this doesn’t just mean working from home all the time – that’d be unsustainable under ideal circumstances, and the stress of the situation is going to be eating into everyone’s productivity (and people who now have to juggle taking care of their kids at home are even busier). For my part, I’ve been working on my dissertation (albeit much more slowly than before), but I’ve also been keeping busy in other ways. Reading has been a great way to kill time (although reading The Stand might not have been the best idea, if only because a book where most of the world dies in a pandemic is a little too timely now), as has watching TV (for some reason, I’ve never watched Star Trek: The Next Generation until now, and the sense of optimism has been pretty helpful) and just about any other hobby. Exercise – even something as simple as a long walk – is also good, and serves as an excuse to go outside (as long as you keep away from other people!). And of course, there’s plenty of ways to stay in touch with people without actually seeing them in person these days thanks to the Internet and videoconferencing, so social distancing is something a misnomer. Or you could always blog to kill some time (guilty as charged)!
I guess my point here is that yes, this is an awful situation that will cause a lot of pain to a lot of people. It is possible, though, for a lot of people to contribute to stopping the spread of the coronavirus by minimizing their time outside while keeping busy. In any case, don’t be one of those people who assumes that they’re going to be fine because they’re not in a high-risk group and just goes on as normal, or believes that the pandemic is just some kind of conspiracy (I’m looking at you, Jair Bolsonaro.)
Wow, I can’t believe that the last time I wrote something here was last decade (a.k.a. four days ago). With everything that’s gone on during the 2010s, video games were a good way to kill time (and occasionally anxiety). That being said, the increasing demands of university made it a lot more difficult to find the time to play them than it used to be. I still managed to get through a few here and there (and apparently became a Playstation fan in the end? Younger me would spittake at the thought).
As with the top 10 movies list, I followed some rules to help keep this list manageable:
I have to have played and completed the game. This is a pretty obvious rule, all things considered – I can’t really comment on games that I haven’t actually played, regardless of how cool I think they look. I’m also excluding games that I haven’t completed (*looks at Dark Souls and Nier Automata*) because I can’t really assess them properly relative to the others. To even this out, I consider a game completed when I beat the main story – side content and downloadable content doesn’t count towards this.
Only one game per series/franchise. As with the movies, it’d be too easy to flood this list with multiple games from a few series, but that’d make for a pretty boring list. To keep things simple, if there’s multiple games from a given series that I thought were amazing, I’m only picking what I think is the best entry that I’ve played and completed.
Enhanced re-releases are okay, but straight ports from previous decades are out. The 2010s saw a lot of games from preceding decades get re-released. Some of these have basically consisted of taking the original game and sticking it on a new console, but others have been changed so radically that they’re functionally entire new games. For the purposes of the list, I only considered re-releases that had fairly substantial changes made to them.
Below is the top 10 list, in reverse order of preference, which is a mix of release years, genres, and video game platforms. I also mention some other games I played that are similar to these that are also worth looking at.
10. Borderlands 2 (2012)
When I first played the original Borderlands in 2011, the whole thing felt like a crazy idea. Combining a first-person shooter with the loot collection and character building of Diablo? Who thought that would work? And yet somehow it did, with the constant need to level up your skills and get better (and increasingly absurd) guns keeping the whole thing engaging despite the somewhat lackluster and generic plot.
Borderlands 2 ramped things up by fully embracing the silliness. The characters you could choose were wackier than ever (including a futuristic ninja who speaks entirely in haiku), the abilities got more innovative, and the guns were more even more plentiful and diverse (including an entire brand that can be tossed as grenades and a sniper rifle that mocks you for killing everyone you met). But the biggest reason Borderlands 2 makes it onto the list is the comedic tone of the plot and cast. The main standout here is Handsome Jack, who is one of the best villains in the entire medium due to the sheer pettiness of his behaviour putting a lighter spin on the otherwise monstrous acts that he commits throughout the game. Add-ons to the game only made it better, including an entirely new campaign that was added in 2019.
You should also consider playing:
Destiny 2, which recently went free-to-play and embraces a similar loot-em-up approach to the FPS genre, but de-emphasizing the humour somewhat in favour of a science fantasy setting (finally, a game that lets me play as a robot who is also a wizard… in space) and multiplayer raids and dungeons.
DOOM (2016), which rebooted the original FPS by throwing away all the advancements made by Halo, encouraging speed and aggressive tactics instead of caution. Why carry only two guns when you can have all of them at once (and a chainsaw, or failing that, your fists)? Why stop to reload at all? There’s also something to be said about exclusively fighting demons from Hell instead of people – by definition, they’re pure evil, after all.
9. Spider-Man (2018)
This past decade has seen some good superhero games (particularly those featuring Batman), but last year’s Spider-Man was perhaps the best of them all. The fighting felt appropriately fluid, but the real fun of the game was just swinging around a superb replica of Manhattan with one of the best movement systems ever implemented in an open-world game, making it desirable to do every optional task in the game just to have an excuse to keep shooting webs across the city. Add in a plot that manages to put a fresh spin on classic Spider-Man elements (including some of the best versions of the web-head’s classic villains in any medium) and tons of little touches (including orchestral music that slowly kicks in as you start swinging, just like in the Spider-Man movies), and this was easily the most fun I’d had with a video game for 2018.
You should also consider playing:
Batman: Arkham City, which served as an inspiration to not just Spider-Man’s combat system, but that of too many other games to count this past decade. Beyond that, however, it also did a great job making you feel like you were controlling the Bat and included almost every villain and side character you can think of. Developer Rocksteady studios even made sure to bring back actors already associated with major parts, including Mark Hamill reprising his role as the Joker.
8. Persona 4: Golden (2012)
Ah, the Playstation Vita – the handheld console that could have been great, but was quickly abandoned by Sony when it didn’t meet their sales expectations. It had some solid games during its brief lifespan, including this enhanced remake of one of the best JRPGs on the PS2. Persona 4 Golden has all the features that made the original game great, including a colorful cast of characters, a ton of summonable Personas (weird spirits representing aspects of the characters psyches) based on various mythologies, , and a fun combat system that encouraged strategic exploitation of enemy weaknesses while conserving your resources during dungeon-crawling. The story remains a highlight, combining lighthearted high-school antics with a surprisingly dark plot centered around catching a small-town supernatural serial killer. P4G further built on this with more Personas, an expanded storyline, even more catchy tunes, and a ton of quality-of-life improvements that made the game even more enjoyable to play (and considering it can easily take over 100 hours to finish, you’ll definitely appreciate them).
You should also consider playing:
Shin Megami Tensei IV/Apocalypse, which are sequels to the series that P4G is a spinoff from – think a more adult-oriented form of Pokemon based around summoning mythological creatures and demons in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo. Apocalypse acts as a pseudo-sequel to IV with even further refinements, but both games are still enjoyable today – just don’t expect it to take any mercy on you.
7. The Walking Dead (2012)
The first season of The Walking Dead was something of a radical take on the adventure genre when it first came out, as it de-emphasized the puzzle-solving usually associated with the genre in favour of character interaction and choices about how the plot would advance. While the gameplay is fairly simple, what set it apart is the plot, which didn’t pull any punches in depicting the horror of living through a zombie apocalypse and being forced to make decisions that would mean life or death for fairly likable characters. I (and almost everyone else who played The Walking Dead) were especially invested in the relationship that forms between player character Lee and his adoptive daughter Clementine, which culminates in what might be the saddest ending I’ve experienced in a video game (OK, so it made me cry, but you’d have to be real cold to not feel something from this one).
You should also consider playing:
Several other games released by Telltale before they went under, including Fables: The Wolf Among Us, a noir detective story based around characters from classic fictional stories being forced to live in Manhattan as refugees, and Tales from The Borderlands, an adventure game sequel to Borderlands 2 that may very well be among the funniest games ever made.
Life is Strange, which got through some initially clunky writing to tell an interesting story about teenage friendship with a side serving of very dark issues and time travel mechanisms allowing for some major divergences in the plot (including the option to essentially prevent the entire story from happening).
6. Yakuza 0 (2017)
When I first heard about the Yakuza series, I initially thought that it would just be a Japanese take on Grand Theft Auto, complete with unlikeable player characters who only appeared sympathetic relative to the outright monstrous antagonists. I couldn’t have been more wrong, as it instead combines incredibly likeable protagonists (including series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu, who is the world’s worst criminal by virtue of being so nice that he helps out virtually everyone he runs into), a small but super-detailed setting with something new every few steps, and a plot that mixes serious crime stories with absurd sidestories. Yakuza 0, which acts as a prequel, may be the best in the franchise, emphasizing the late 1980s setting with absurd touches (you level up both Kiryu and fellow player character Majima by spending the money you punch out of thugs who assail you on the street on yourself – just make sure Mr. Shakedown doesn’t return the favour!). The absurdity even extends to the gameplay, including Majima’s alternate fighting styles that revolve around the use of a baseball bat or breakdancing, the ability to pick up random objects as weapons (including bicycles, traffic cones, and even oranges), and the sheer preponderance of minigames (including, of course, a karoke rhythm game). And yet despite all the aforementioned silliness, I was just as engrossed by the dead serious main plot, with Kiryu attempting to defend himself from his former Yakuza family after being framed for murder while Majima fights off rival groups attempting to assassinate a blind woman, all of which revolves around the attempted seizure of precious Tokyo real estate. What an experience!
You should also consider playing:
Sleeping Dogs, which is, in fact, basically just GTA in Asia, but has the benefits of a likeable protagonist in undercover cop Wei Shen, a fun combat system that discourages just shooting people in favour of using martial arts, and a fairly unique setting in its accurate rendition of Hong Kong. Despite not selling enough to get the sequel it deserved, it’s still worth giving a try.
5. Fire Emblem Awakening (2013)
Perhaps the Nintendo series I have the fondest memories of (besides Pokemon, like all other ’90s kids) is Fire Emblem, which combined elements of role-playing games with brutal turn-based strategy and outright permadeath for your characters. So when I picked up a 3DS, the very first game I bought for it was Fire Emblem Awakening, which was meant as a potential grand finale after years of poor sales and instead made Fire Emblem into a Nintendo mainstay. The tough gameplay from the Game Boy Advance and Gamecube days was back, but with a new coat of graphical paint, actual voice acting, and numerous gameplay refinements, including the ability to wander around a world map and freely switch the classes of your characters for some wild ability combinations. The characters themselves were entertaining throughout, more than making up for what was otherwise a somewhat novel take on the typical Fire Emblem plot of “fight off the evil invading kingdom, then take on the insane dragon-god with the legendary weapons of heroes of yore.” Subsequent games have further built on this formula with their own innovations, but Awakening is the game that made this all possible in the first place.
4. XCOM 2 (2016)
When XCOM: Enemy Unknown first came out in 2012, it managed to revitalize the then-flagging turn-based strategy genre with a fresh take on fighting an alien invasion with your army of disposable grunts. In the process, I became so hooked that my default reaction to having free time when no one else did was “Well, time to boot up XCOM.” So the announcement of a sequel had me wondering whether it was possible to actually meet the expectations set by the original. It did not; rather, XCOM 2 is so good that it completely eclipsed the first game, and has essentially set a new standard for the genre.
While it maintains a roughly similar structure to the previous game (train your troops and research new equipment as the aliens become increasingly dangerous, all while ensuring you don’t lose all your rookies and satisfy your financial backers), it radically changed up the dynamics. No longer are you fighting off invaders – instead, you’re running a guerilla group struggling against an entrenched puppet government, engaging in a variety of sabotage missions and occasionally fighting off reprisal attacks against resistance sympathizers, all while racing against the clock before the aliens complete their Avatar project and wipe you out. The 2017 War of the Chosen expansion further built on this to the point of almost being another sequel, including the titular Chosen (unique alien units who would develop strengths and weaknesses in response to how you fought them), allied rebel groups, and the ability to create bonds between your soldiers that make you even more frantic to keep them from getting killed. Perhaps the only two negative points I can think of are that a) the plot is kind of generic and b) the game eventually has to end.
3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)
A common trait that other games on this list have is that you’re inevitably forced to fight and/or kill large quantities of enemies, whether they’re common thugs, zombies, demons from Hell, or shadowy manifestations of the human psyche. Deus Ex: Human Revolution stands out by instead giving you total freedom in how you approach the game. Sure, you could fight your way through swathes of mercenaries with an arsenal of futuristic weapons and cybernetic implants, but there’s nothing stopping you from just hacking every computer in sight to get through a level or (as I did) sneaking around and just knocking out the occasional goon to avoid killing anybody and setting off an alarm. You even have the freedom to make player character Adam Jensen go through the story the way you like: there’s nothing stopping you from being a friendly advocate for fellow augmented humans, a supporter for banning those augmentations after being unwillingly upgraded, or anything in-between, with the plot reacting to your actions throughout. The 2027 setting is also amazingly well-done, with every detail of future Detroit and Chinese metropolis Hengsha emphasizing a technologically advanced world rife with inequality approaching the edge of collapse (exemplified with the quote “It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here”). While the game’s ending sadly boiled down to “push one of three buttons,” many of the other issues, including lackluster boss fights, were subsequently fixed in a 2013 Director’s Cut re-release.
Odd bit of trivia: Developer Eidos Montreal managed to release not only this game on my sister’s birthday, but, strangely enough, the 2016 sequel Mankind Divided as well. In keeping with the game’s plot, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a conspiracy here… (Probably not.)
You should also consider playing:
Dishonored, a game with a similar degree of freedom, but replacing the near-future cyberpunk setting with a steampunk fantasy world, including an array of crazy supernatural powers like teleportation, possession, and slowing down time. Sadly, the plot is somewhat less compelling (including a silent protagonist), and you’re often forced to choose between just killing people or condemning them to even worse fates. The sequel reportedly fixed many of these issues and then some, but I haven’t played it, so I can’t comment.
2. Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
Bethesda is well-known for creating huge open worlds that give players almost total freedom, but their plots tend to be somewhat rubbish. Fallout: New Vegas is the big exception here, having been developed by Obsidian Studios, who are known for not only crafting well-written plots and worlds for their games, but also including some of the writers behind the original Fallout games. The result is the best game in the series, allowing you to wander through the post-nuclear Mojave Desert and its various communities (including the titular New Vegas) and doing plenty to endear yourself to them (or being the most evil Courier to walk the wastes and ruining their lives utterly). Want to align yourself with the well-meaning but somewhat inept and imperialistic New California Republic, the ruthless technocrat Mr. House, or the bloodthirsty slavers of Caesar’s Legion? All of these are viable options, as is just striking out on your own and taking over the Mojave for yourself. The game is only held back by a veritable legion of bugs, but it’s telling that it still feels like a worthwhile experience in spite of these and its dated looks, even as new Fallout games have been released. The four add-ons only made the game better, particularly Old World Blues, which added in plenty of ’50s-style mad science for some extra humour.
You should also consider playing:
Fallout 4 has a lot of gameplay advancements and the Boston setting is great, but the plot just isn’t anywhere near as compelling (ultimately pigeonholing you into “Boston’s messiah” and “Boston’s messiah, but kind of a jerk about it”). Still a fun time, if something of a letdown compared to its predecessor. Bethesda’s earlier Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is easier to recommend, as it includes a lot of the advancements made in Fallout 4 while existing in a somewhat more interesting fantasy setting that feels a lot more freeform.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is somewhat more restricted than Bethesda’s open worlds, only allowing you to pick one of two characters and restricting choices within the plot, but it makes up for it with the sheer breadth of things to do by allowing you to explore the entirety of ancient Greece and having a more interesting plot based around a conspiracy to kick off the Peloponnesian War.
1. Mass Effect 2 (2010)
Bioware may have sullied its name with increasingly poorly-received games like Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda, but it produced some stellar RPGs in its time, including the trendsetting Baldur’s Gate series and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (which is the best game associated with that franchise, if not one of the best bits of Star Wars, period). Chief among these in the past decade were Mass Effect 2 and 3, which built on the original 2008 space opera RPG in numerous ways, though my pick here is for 2, which implemented the vast majority of these advancements (while 3 suffered somewhat from a lackluster ending). The original game’s clunky shooter gameplay was completely overhauled so that it felt like a major part of the game, rather than just something to tolerate between the story bits (suffice to say that playing as the superpowered Vanguard class and charging around maps with a force-field and shotgun at high speeds never got old). The plot remains supremely compelling, pushing you to recruit a ragtag group of likeable people from a variety of species for a suicide mission to keep the seemingly eldritch Reapers from invading the galaxy and doing unspecified nasty things to wipe everyone out. Particular highlights include Mordin, the fast-talking geneticist who was involved in some very sketchy government research in the past, returning space cop-turned-space Batman and overall best bud Garrus, and alien super-soldier/immature manchild Grunt, to say nothing of the massive cast outside of your own party.
Literally every decision you make in the game ends up feeling like it matters and does, whether here or in the sequel, allowing you to go good cop, (very) bad cop, or something in between. The suicide mission itself is the most memorable level I’ve ever experienced in a game, forcing you to consider everything you’ve learned about your party members when deciding who takes which role. Do well, and everyone will make it home in one piece; choose poorly (and fail to win their loyalty through the game), and you might end the game with everyone, including yourself, going home in a body bag. I could go on about Mass Effect 2 all day, but I think it suffices to say that it remains one of the only games that I’ve not just strived to reach 100% on, but replayed repeatedly just to see how differently the story can go. Easily the best game that I’ve played in the 2010s.
It’s crazy to believe that in just a few days (as of writing), the 2010s will finally be over. It’s been a pretty wild decade, both personally and in general news – for the latter, often in ways that are less than positive. Thankfully, all of this has been accompanied by lots of great movies, books, TV shows, and video games to serve as distractions from the general craziness. I figured that I may as well make lists of what I thought were the 10 best movies of the decade, with similar lists for books and video games to follow. (I’m not doing one for TV shows, for the simple reason that there have been so many shows that I’ve watched and enjoyed over the decade that making a half-decent list would be nigh-impossible – hell, I can think of at least three from HBO this year alone).
In making this list, I followed two rules to help keep things manageable:
I had to have seen the movie in its entirety. This is a pretty straightforward rule – there’s not much point to talking about movies that I’ve only heard were really good or didn’t actually finish in their entirety.
One movie per series/franchise. It’d be way too easy to just flood a list with multiple entries from a few series, but that wouldn’t really be representative of the decade, and just feels like a cop-out. To keep things fair, I’m only going to take what I thought was the best movie from a franchise this decade, and at most will consider it a representative of the series.
With that out of the way, here’s the list! Remember, this is entirely my opinion, and not meant to represent anything more, so there’s room for disagreement.
10. The Social Network (2010)
The Social Network stands out from the rest of this list in being more of a biopic/drama than the genre fare I usually go for, but there’s a reason for that. It had a top-notch cast giving excellent performances (with Jesse Eisenberg capturing Mark Zuckerberg’s semi-robotic mannerisms to an uncanny degree), a great script from Aaron Sorkin, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed a soundtrack that gets so eerie it almost verges on horror. All the controversies surrounding Facebook in the past several years have only made The Social Network, which shows the rise of Facebook as more than a little unsavory, more relevant than ever.
9. Deadpool (2016)
Deadpool was a movie that managed to go against the odds in not just becoming a critical and commercial success, but in being made at all. Ryan Reynolds is perfect as the title character, infusing every wisecrack with just the right amount of snark, and the movie manages to stay funny for virtually its entire running time, which is no mean feat. The action is also pretty solid, but it falls a bit flat towards the end (due to the crew literally running out of money). Most importantly, it manages to take advantage of that R-rating to go really wild with the jokes. The sequel is also pretty solid, if a bit of a rehash in some ways.
8. Skyfall (2012)
Daniel Craig has had a fairly solid run as James Bond over 4 movies so far, with even the low points (Quantum of Solace and Spectre) being fairly solid films in their own right. But Skyfall may very well be the best of them all. A lot of this stems from the strength of Craig’s acting as a weary Bond who’s ready to call it quits and his supporting cast, including Judi Dench’s best (and final) performance as M, the re-introduction of Q, and Ralph Fiennes. Javier Bardem’s turn as villain Raoul Silva, a menacing cyberterrorist out for revenge and with mannerisms echoing Heath Ledger’s Joker, ensures there’s a constant sense of dread throughout the movie without going over the edge into silliness. The action scenes are superbly directed, including a memorable chase through the London Underground and a final showdown around Bond’s ancestral estate. At the same time, there’s plenty of snark throughout to keep things from getting too heavy, especially in Bond’s interactions with Q.
7. Shin Godzilla (2016)
The 2010s have been a fairly good decade when it comes to giant monster movies: we’ve had Pacific Rim, the 2014 Godzilla reboot, Kong: Skull Island… But Shin Godzilla stands above the rest in reimagining Godzilla for the 21st century. Godzilla himself is reimagined from the radiation-scarred monster of the previous movies into a nightmarishly deformed beast that looks like it shouldn’t exist (that split jaw and secondary mouth on the tail… ugh) and wrecks destruction through Tokyo just by walking around. At the same time, the movie skewers Japanese politics and the lackluster response to disasters like Fukushima mercilessly, to the point of being more political satire than anything else (with a great gag of increasingly lengthy official titles being displayed on-screen with every new bureaucrat who shows up). Shiro Sagisu’s soundtrack, consisting of a mix of original themes, classic Godzilla tracks, and his earlier work on Neon Genesis Evangelion, only amplifies the horror tone with a mix of piano, string instruments, and an outright ominous choir. Shin Godzilla is the kind of monster movie that can be appreciated by not just fans of the genre, but anyone who enjoys political movies as well.
6. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
When this was first announced, I’ll admit I was a little hesitant – another Spider-Man movie with no connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Obviously another desperate cash-grab by Sony! But then I went to see it, and it turns out that this is not only the best Spider-Man movie, period, but possibly one of the best superhero movies ever made. The animation is superb, perfectly capturing the look of a comic book in full motion, and the cast all give great performances. The soundtrack is stellar – even a year after seeing it, my brain automatically associates tracks like Sunflower and What’s Up Danger with Spider-Verse. Most importantly, it embodies the themes associated with Spider-Man while avoiding rehashing the material from earlier movies.
5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
This slot represented the first really hard choice for this list. I obviously had to include one of the 5(!) Star Wars movies that came out this decade, but which one? The choice ultimately boiled down to The Last Jedi or Rogue One, but I ultimately had to go with the former. While Rogue One had an amazing third act in the Battle on Scarif, the earlier parts of the movie were somewhat more generic (but still enjoyable). The Last Jedi, in contrast, was enjoyable throughout, barring the Canto Bight segment (but even that was OK). The cast is just as enjoyable as in The Force Awakens and benefits from the further addition of Mark Hamill as a cynical Luke Skywalker. It not only has one of the best fight scenes in the franchise (Rey and Kylo vs. Snoke’s guards), but keeps a wry tone throughout. The soundtrack is stellar as always, and may actually be the best of the Sequel Trilogy. Most importantly, the movie feels a lot more experimental than others in the series, questioning the foundations of the franchise (does the galaxy really need the Jedi, or do they cause just as many problems as they solve?) and going in unexpected directions (let’s face it, most of us were surprised by Snoke being killed off and supplanted by Kylo). The high quality of The Last Jedi only makes it sadder that The Rise of Skywalker does everything it can to backtrack on it, but it doesn’t stop it from being one of the best movies in the franchise.
4. Avengers: Endgame (representing the Marvel Cinematic Universe) (2019)
This was another hard choice to make: I couldn’t pick more than one Marvel movie, but was it going to be Endgame? Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which managed to be a great superhero movie and spy movie? Black Panther, which was an outright revolutionary movie and managed to be the first superhero movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar? Or Thor: Ragnarok, which embraced the sheer silliness of superhero movies by going full comedy? Ultimately, I had to go with Endgame, which successfully served as the capstone of a 22-movie series that spanned over a decade. The core Avengers cast shines here (yes, even Hawkeye/Ronin), as does Josh Brolin’s Thanos, and the script manages to balance the sense of despair that follows half the universe dying with some of the best jokes in the franchise (“That’s America’s ass” shouldn’t work on paper, and yet it somehow does). The final battle is a highlight, somehow making sure that everyone has a major role (and bringing back the entire cast in what might have been one of the best scenes I saw in a movie in 2019). By all rights, this is a movie so ambitious that it could easily have become a 3-hour slog, but instead it’s one of the best movies of its genre. The only downside I can think of is that it’ll be borderline incomprehensible if you haven’t seen the other MCU movies – but then again, would you start watching a TV series by jumping straight to the series finale?
3. Get Out (2017)
Talk about coming out of nowhere: who would have thought that Jordan Peele, who was best known for his comedic work on Key & Peele, would be able to make one of the best horror movies ever, much less on his first try as a director? Yet somehow he did, taking all the expectations from comedies like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and extending them into the realm of horror while still cracking wise (including somehow making the TSA sympathetic). The result is a spectacularly scary and funny movie that also provides biting social commentary about how African-Americans are treated in ways that you wouldn’t expect. This is the kind of horror movie that anyone, not just fans of the genre, will be able to appreciate, with more nuance to uncover on every subsequent viewing.
It’s crazy that Inception came out all the way in 2010, and yet it’s still one of the best and most innovative movies to have come out this past decade. The concept of robbers breaking into people’s dreams to steal (or, in this case, plant) information may seem absurd at first glance, but Christopher Nolan manages to make this work by making it into a heist movie with strict rules about just how the dreamworld works. It’s also a rare movie in that it assumes that the audience will be smart enough to figure things out with minimal explanation beyond the basics. The crazy special effects (all done practically!) and the iconic Hans Zimmer soundtrack (including the ominous horn sound that you hear virtually everywhere and the use of slowed-down versions of Edith Piaf’s “Je ne regrette rien”) help to further reinforce the sense that reality is a bit… off in the dream sequences. This becomes further apparent in the action sequences, particularly the zero-gravity hallway fight. Add in a star-studded cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe…), and this is the kind of movie that most people would only dream of making.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Everything about Mad Max: Fury Road is near-perfect. The movie’s plot of a group of women trying to escape from a brutal warlord in a post-apocalyptic world only feels more relevant as time goes on thanks to its well-done environmentalist and feminist themes (is it any wonder that the hollow militaristic posturing and misogyny of Immortan Joe seems a little close to a certain American president?). Director George Miller also manages to convey this with relatively little dialogue, instead relying on gorgeous cinematography, practical effects (including the iconic flamethrower guitar), and great performances by Charlize Theron (the real star of the movie) and the rest of the cast to elevate what could have been a generic chase movie into a work of art. As always, the soundtrack makes the movie even better, with Junkie XL’s use of heavy guitar riffs and percussion giving the whole thing an appropriately intense heavy-metal feel while being somewhat reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s scores. This is, without a doubt, what I think deserves to be considered the best movie of the decade.
Finally, some movies that I considered for the list but ultimately didn’t make the cut included (in no particular order):
Warning: Here there be spoilers for all Star Wars, including The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to go in without preconceptions, don’t read this blog post!
Well, we’ve finally reached the end of a long road: after a whopping 42 years (!?!) and being bought by Disney for $4 billion, Star Wars has finally wrapped up its trilogy of trilogies (so… an ennealogy, I guess?) with The Rise of Skywalker. J.J. Abrams and the cast had high expectations riding on this one: beyond Star Wars being one of the biggest media franchises ever, they had to try to placate the fan rage from 2017’s The Last Jedi while bringing the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion. The question is, did they manage to pull an Avengers: Endgame, where all the existing plotlines were wrapped up in an emotionally satisfying way, or would they pull a Game of Thrones and stumble on their faces right at the end with unexplained character decisions and a loose adherence to the bounds of space and time? From my perspective (and I say this as someone who’s been a Star Wars fan since seeing the Special Edition releases as a 5-year old, but also loves The Last Jedi, Rogue One, and other efforts to spice up the franchise with new ideas), The Rise of Skywalker end up leaning more towards the latter in that it wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been, but it definitely could have gone a lot worse.
Rather than assail you with more walls of text like the above, I’m going to break this down into what I thought were the pros and cons of the movie so that you can actually read what I’m writing without your eyes bleeding from the strain.
PROS
The acting: Say what you will about the story and writing of The Rise of Skywalker (and I certainly will in a bit), the work put in by the cast is definitely a strong point. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac keep up their strong performances from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi here, and we finally get a chance to see the chemistry from all three being together in a scene for the first time. Adam Driver similarly continues to shine as Kylo Ren, striking a balance between imposing galactic conqueror/evil space wizard and really angsty dude that works despite the fact that these don’t really seem to go together. The returning cast from the original trilogy is great as well (despite the obvious limitations of Carrie Fisher having died about two years before this movie came out): Lando is as slick as ever, and Harrison Ford’s surprise scene late in the movie was great. Anthony Daniels’ performance as C-3P0 deserves special note here: this is the most prominence everyone’s favorite protocol droid has had in the movies since Return of the Jedi, and he manages to strike a balance between comedy and drama throughout. And of course, Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine performance is just as fun and over-the-top as ever before (because if you’re going to play an evil wizard, you may as well turn that dial right up to 11).
The music: The soundtrack is always a strong point in Star Wars, but it was especially important to get it right in The Rise of Skywalker, since this is John Williams’ last time composing for the franchise. And get it right they did, since this has some of the best music in the series, with a mix of both returning themes from previous movies and some solid new ones. I especially liked “Battle of the Resistance,” which gave the final space battle a similar feel to the setup of the last fight of Avengers: Endgame, as well as “The Force is With You,” which mixes together Rey’s theme, the music from the big Emperor scene in Return of the Jedi, and the Rebel theme from the original movies into a track that elevates an otherwise somewhat disappointing final confrontation (though it still doesn’t match Episode I’s “Duel of the Fates”).
Special effects: Not much to say here – one of the consistently strong points of the new Star Wars movies is that the special effects have been top-notch, thanks to an emphasis on practical effects supplemented with some CGI. The final battle over Exegol and the Rey/Kylo duel in the Death Star wreckage were particular highlights here, with the latter striking a good balance between the flashy lightsaber battles of the prequels and the slow and grounded duels of the original movies. Unlike the prequel trilogy, these will likely still look good years from now.
Cute stuff: Again, the sequels have been good at cranking out cute characters with appeal. There’s plenty of BB-8 as before, as well as a brief return of the Porgs. We also get two surprise contenders in the form of tiny droid expert Babu Frik and D-0, aka what you get when you stick a hairdryer on a wheel and give it a stuttery voice and the name of an over-the-top anime villain. They don’t match up to the all-encompassing adorableness of Baby Yoda, but is there anything that can?
Fanservice: The Rise of Skywalker is basically Star Wars fanservice in the form of a movie, which can be both a good and bad thing (more on the latter further down). Callbacks to the previous movies are everywhere, which only makes sense when this is meant to be a grand finale (with my personal favorite of these being that Luke finally gets to lift his X-Wing out of the water with the Force). But that’s just scratching the surface, as elements from TV shows, video games, and even comic books from both the Disney canon and the old Star Wars Expanded Universe are referenced throughout the whole thing. Personally, I enjoyed how there were elements from Knights of the Old Republic (the GOAT of Star Wars games, no debate) and the Dark Empire comics (which dealt with… Palpatine coming back from the dead with a world-killing fleet, a massive Star Destroyer with a Death Star laser, and even more lightning than ever before).
And now for the bad:
CONS
Too much stuff for a 2-hour movie: This is pretty self-explanatory. There is A LOT going on in The Rise of Skywalker: we have Rey completing her training as a Jedi, the discovery of her heritage as Palpatine’s granddaughter, Palpatine’s return, the journey to find the Macguffin that will lead the Resistance to Exegol, a final confrontation with Kylo Ren and his redemption, the showdown with Palpatine… This wouldn’t be such an issue if it weren’t for the fact that the movie is around 130 minutes long (plus credits), which isn’t really enough time to fit all this in. If we go back to Endgame (again), that movie showed that audience would be willing to see a blockbuster finale to a major franchise that lasts 3 hours in droves, and it worked to its benefit by giving plenty of time to both character interactions and the plot. In Star Wars, this abundance of plot means that there isn’t much room to breathe, and we’re left jumping between planets at a dizzying pace.
So much left unexplained: This issue follows from the movie being overstuffed, and is one of the big issues that hurt Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Right off the bat, we’re told that Palpatine is back, but we never get a good explanation as to how this happened. Did he just plain survive getting thrown down the Death Star by Darth Vader (which would explain the rotted look, but then how did he get away before the whole thing exploded)? Did his ghost come back and possess a clone (but then why is he rotting)? Who exactly are the Knights of Ren supposed to be, in the end (and why were they hyped up so much before when they went down like chumps)? Where did Palpatine’s Final Order get the resources to build a massive fleet of Star Destroyers with planet-killing superlasers without anybody noticing? Who are all these people that Palpatine has in his sinister underground lair (I guess there’s a Sith cult going on)? Why does Threepio have a built-in prohibition on translating the Sith language? Why is Palpatine able to use the Force bond between Rey and Ben to drain their lifeforce to heal himself, and how exactly does this make him strong enough to create a fleet-wrecking storm? Why does Rey deflecting Palpatine’s lightning end up disintegrating him when Mace Windu doing it in Revenge of the Sith just left Palpatine super-shriveled? You get the point – there’s a lot that just happens during the movie with no clear explanation for the audience (and if it shows up in side-comics or books or what have you, that’s not really good enough, either).
The fake-outs: On two occasions in the movie, we see OT characters apparently bite the dust, only to discover that these were just instances of J.J. Abrams going “Psych! Got you good.” While the Threepio one makes sense (we’re told that R2-D2’s backups of his memories might not be reliable, so there was a chance that it would work out, and some good laughs result from this in subsequent scenes), the one with Chewbacca just makes no sense, since there’s zero indication that there was a second transport besides the one that Rey accidentally fried with Force lightning. It’s not like it serves to build much tension for the audience, either, since we find out almost immediately after that Chewie’s fine. It just ends up feeling like a cheap way to play on our emotions (unlike Leia’s death, which sticks and is actually fairly well-done).
A lackluster final battle: Put bluntly, I felt really unimpressed with the big confrontation between Rey, Ben, and Palpatine. This was meant to be the climactic battle between good and evil for the franchise, and earlier movies have had epic final battles (the Anakin – Obi-Wan duel and Palpatine – Yoda Senate brawl from Revenge of the Sith, as well as the Luke – Darth Vader fight from Return of the Jedi, stand out here). What we got instead was Palpatine draining the life from Rey and Kylo, throwing the latter down a pit (which was admittedly an appropriate call-back), then having his own Force lightning deflected back into him by Rey. Considering the environment of the underground layer, why not at least have them use the Force to throw things at each other? And if Rey is being aided by the spirits of past Jedi, why not make that more explicit by having them show up on screen instead of making it seem more metaphorical? (Hell, considering the Dark Empire references, why not have the Jedi ghosts help out by dragging Palpatine into the Force like they did there? That would arguably be a much more dramatic end to the whole thing.) Maybe the budget for the movie ran out or they wanted to cut down the running time?
Backpedaling on The Last Jedi: Look, I get that there’s a lot of people who didn’t like The Last Jedi – in some cases, for fairly understandable reasons (not everyone wanted the basic assumptions of Star Wars to be questioned, and that’s fine, and even I’ll admit that I’m not a big fan of the Canto Bight segment in practice, even if I liked the concept). But there’s just as much critique out there that basically boiled down to “I don’t like change,” which is somewhat ironic considering that The Force Awakens was largely criticized for aping the original Star Wars movie. There was also a lot out there that was outright misogynistic, racist, or both.
So naturally Disney decided to curry favour with whiny Internet fanboys by trying to reverse elements of The Last Jedi. The idea that Rey wasn’t related to any particular family, and that anybody could tap into the Force? Not anymore – now the explanation for her powers is that she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter! (Admittedly, I guessed at something like this after Last Jedi, so I can’t be too mad about this on its own.) The introduction of Rose Tico as a prominent Resistance member? Well, Internet fans hated her so much that they bullied Kelly Marie Tran off social media, so let’s only give her 76 seconds of screen-time! And so on. It feels like Disney was afraid that similar backlash to this movie would hurt its profits – nevermind that it’s released multiple movies in 2019 alone that have grossed over a billion dollars, and Star Wars is likely to continue the trend. It just seems… cowardly.
And finally, it’s too safe: This is the dark side of fanservice – it’s good to have lots of references to past works in the franchise when you’re doing your grand finale, but it shouldn’t keep you from trying to do new things at the same time. The problem with The Rise of Skywalker is that in trying to avoid controversy, it ends up just mirroring the plot structure of earlier Star Wars movies, especially Return of the Jedi. Yes, you’ll avoid controversy, but it also makes the movie a lot more predictable and ends up feeling uninventive. Endgame (last time I reference this, I swear) did a much better job of this – yes, there are callbacks galore to previous Marvel movies (even Thor: The Dark World, a movie that I only remember for that one gag they pulled with Mjolnir), but the plot as a whole was original enough that it stayed interesting.
Overall, The Rise of Skywalker is an enjoyable enough movie, but there are clearly a lot of issues with it. It’s better than the first two prequel movies and Solo, and probably ties with Revenge of the Sith in my personal rankings, but it still doesn’t match up to the original movies, Rogue One, and the other sequel trilogy films. It still ended up being a better series finale than the final episode of Game of Thrones, though, and I certainly wouldn’t call it a terrible movie (Cats already took that slot for 2019, natch).
… Although who am I kidding, I’ve already pre-ordered my copy anyways – I’m too much of a fan to avoid giving in to the Dark Side at this point.
Finally, a day where I planned to slow down and actually managed to do so (only two museums, as promised)!
This morning was fairly quiet, as I just sat and did some reading; somehow, despite the book being a humorous novel focusing on a bunch of elderly Swedes, it still ended up involving North Korea, nuclear weapons, and deterrence theory (in a funny way, thankfully, and with much fun being had at the expense of Kim Jong-Un and Trump). This is what my life is like now, I guess? As it turned out, this wasn’t even the last time today that academia would rear its head during my leisure time…
Soon afterwards, I decided to go walking around the area near the hostel. It only took a few minutes before I stumbled upon Ford’s Theatre! (Best known for being the place where John Wilkes Booth decided to politely express disagreement with Lincoln’s policies by shooting him in the head and running away). Not much further away, I discovered that Otakon, the big (nay, biggest) anime convention this side of the Pacific, was taking place just a few blocks away from the hostel as well! This helped explain why I was seeing so many people in costumes that I didn’t really recognize. I decided against going because while I am a big nerd, I’m not that big a nerd. (It has nothing to do with my not having even a geeky t-shirt to wear, I assure you).
Instead, I did the very cool thing and went to the nearby Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery & American Art Museum. (This is not helping my case). It ended up being an overall more interesting art museum than the National Gallery was, with the focus on American art making it feel more distinct. I especially enjoyed seeing all the presidential portraits, even if most of them were pretty similar in style. Good thing Obama’s portrait managed to stand out! (Michelle Obama’s was also a highlight, but for some reason her portrait was on a completely different floor. Weird.)
After a few hours in the Portrait Gallery, I hopped on the Metro to head over to the International Spy Museum. The museum turned out to be much busier than I had anticipated: I arrived there at around 3:30, and the earliest tickets available were for 4:45 that afternoon. To kill some time, I decided to go look in the museum’s bookstore, since it was right there anyways. It was in there, on one of the shelves, that I spotted academic material that I would never have expected to see in a museum:
Copies of International Security! Yes, it seems that even in touristy areas, there’s no escape from the long arm of academia. Shocking indeed!
Anyways, the Spy Museum itself was… okay. There’s a lot going on in there, and there were some interactive parts to keep people engaged, but it suffers from a bunch of issues. To begin with, its main focus was on espionage relating to the US, so more from the American Revolution onwards, especially the Cold War (though there was some material from other countries and time periods). The crowds were also an issue: it was a pain actually trying to get around the place because there were just so many people around, often blocking access to the items on display. It was a fun time, but considering it’s one of the few museums in DC you have to pay for, I’m not sure it would be one of my top recommendations.
Oh, and I managed to get what amounted to a free dinner when the restaurant I ate at forgot to actually get my food made for a while. So that’s a nice bonus, I guess?
It’s not every day that a head of state appears to vanish off the face of the earth, much less a military dictator with nuclear weapons. But that seems to be exactly what’s happened with Kim Jong Un, the 36-year old (maybe; we’re not sure if he was born in 1983 or 1984) Supreme Leader of North Korea, at least as far as anybody outside of North Korea’s leadership can tell. So far, North Korea seems to be chugging along as normal, or at least as normal as you can get when you’re a self-isolating totalitarian state in the middle of a global pandemic. The lack of information has led to a lot of speculation, however, including the possibility that Kim’s disappearance is due to his being gravely ill or having secretly died. The latter, while a little out there, raises some important questions about the North Korean succession process and what that means. Long story short: this is a rare instance where (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) the murderous dictator dropping dead isn’t a desirable option and would likely lead to what could charitably be described as Bad Things happening.
Warning: Here there be spoilers for all Star Wars, including The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to go in without preconceptions, don’t read this blog post!
Mark's Policy Musings 