A little over a year ago, screenwriter Max Landis (son of famed director John Landis) made a name for himself in certain corners of the internet by launching an attack on Daisy Ridley’s beloved Star Wars: The Force Awakens character, Rey. Labeling her fledgling Force user a “Mary Sue,” Landis argued that all of Rey’s skills and achievements were, in essence, unearned. Now Landis is back at it again, levying similar complaints against the new sci-fi film Arrival. His main critique, once again, focuses on a gendered aspect of a popular film.
Arrival—from director Denis Villeneuve—is currently hovering at the top of the Rotten Tomatoes rankings with a 93% fresh score. Vanity Fair’s critic Richard Lawson hailed Amy Adams in the starring role as “an example of a great, deceptively versatile actress trying something new.” Audiences seem to agree. The film—with a modest sci-fi alien film budget of $50 million—performed better than expected, taking in $24 million at the box office with over half the audience reportedly being male. But the film was such a hit with critics largely because it eschews stereotypical alien invasion tropes, instead taking a fresh, quiet, interior look at Adams’s character and an unflinchingly female storyline involving motherhood. Landis had this to say of that well-received approach:
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He also described the film thusly: “what if you combine Tree of Life and Close Encounters and took out all the fun parts?” Landis did, however, conclude that people should see the movie anyway, calling it “a [sic] incredibly executed original idea.” That endorsement pales in comparison to the enthusiastic stamp of approval Landis gave Boo! A Madea Halloween. Still, it’s worth noting that Landis isn’t writing off the entire film—just the part of the story (without spoiling it for you) that involves mothers, daughters, broken hearts, and tough relationship choices.
In his review of Arrival, Lawson praised the way Jeremy Renner’s physicist character exists largely to serve and support Adams’s linguist Dr. Louise Banks: “He’s mostly relegated to the sidelines, occasionally offering some minor insight but mostly serving as the backboard against which Louise lobs ideas and concerns. Which, hey, that’s a nifty gender reversal for a studio-released film. (I suppose sci-fi has long been better to women than other genres, often pitching them as lone heroes, or sole survivors.)”
It’s a dynamic that isn’t all that dissimilar from the Finn (John Boyega) and Rey relationship in The Force Awakens, and one that takes on an extra level of real-world resonance when you consider Renner was controversially paid more than Adams for his supporting work in American Hustle. To see Renner give the most generous and warm performance of his career in service of her character is gratifying as well as compelling cinema.
And though he doesn’t call Adams’s accomplished character out by name, it’s hard not to see Landis’s critique of Arrival as an extension of his continued attack on Rey, and his history of controversial comments towards the opposite sex. Just as recently as this week, in the wake of the presidential election results, Landis tweeted, “For the record, even in these desperate times of gender war and upheaval where we’ve elected a regressive government: Rey is a Mary Sue.” Just a little salt in the wounds of disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters.
Landis’s anti-Rey crusade—one he manages to kick up every few months or so—was described by director Guillermo del Toro as “sour, self-appointed, evangelical superiority . . . that remains troubling.” And perhaps it’s also sourness of the grapes variety. Despite being handed opportunity after opportunity, Landis’s work continues to underperform both critically and commercially.
None of his last four films—American Ultra; Victor Frankenstein; Mr. Right; Me Him Her—cracked 50 percent percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. The highest, American Ultra, scored 43 percent. And every single one of those films has underperformed at the box office. His recent foray into TV, the much-hyped Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, fared only slightly better with critics and is bleeding viewers. His one well-received effort, Chronicle, didn’t have a single significant female point of view.
Perhaps if he’s so unimpressed with the critically and commercially successful female characters and storylines in genre fare these days, Landis should show us one of his own.
