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8 min read

Meditating on violence

Violence is inherent to life - and a lot of movies. Yaroslav Walker asks if it has to be accepted, as he reviews Creed III, Scream VI and John Wick 4.
In a boxing ring, an umpire stands between two boxers who stare hard at each other.
Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors, and Tony Weeks in Creed III.
MGM.

In March I watched a lot, A LOT, of violence. For me this has been a month of cinematic punching, stabbing, shooting, grappling…and its all been a bit exhausting. Oh well, let's get cracking with Creed III. The ninth instalment in the Rocky franchise has the temerity to exclude Rocky himself! I’m tempted to end the review there. No Stallone, I’m going home! It is a shame, and his presence is missed, especially when the Creed films have always felt a little like repeats of the Rocky Balboa saga. Creed III is somewhat of a mish-mash of Rocky’s III and V, and there’s nothing thematically new in this film.

So, it’s a little unoriginal and quite disrespectful to its origins…and yet I did enjoy it. Michal B Jordan makes his directorial debut, and he delivers a perfectly serviceable boxing film. Jordan’s Adonis Creed is living a perfect life: he ends his boxing career on top, has a beautiful wife and child, is running his own gym, and has found success as a boxing promoter. His idyllic life is interrupted when a figure from his youth returns, and Adonis realises that the one fight he can’t win is with his past. There are secrets, there are betrayals, there are home truths delivered and personal growth achieved; and of course there is a training montage and a climactic fight.

The plot is decent (if derivative), though rushed towards the end, and the script is solid. The performances are all fine and familiar - Jordan simply is Adonis Creed - with Jonathan Majors and Tessa Thompson being standouts. Thompson plays Adonis’ wife with a long-suffering air that subtly draws you in to an emotional dynamic that is fracturing. Majors is superb as Dame, the long-incarcerated childhood friend of Adonis’. He has the brutal physical presence needed, with his sudden, cautious, and jerky movements always reminding us that he has just come out of prison. His face is permanently set in a posture of desperation: desperate because in his eyes we see a terrifying combination of broiling rage and a deep, sad longing for love and support. Every second he is on the screen is a masterclass in building tension.

Jordan’s direction isn’t perfect, and he does indulge himself a little too much. He has spoken in interviews of his love for anime and how that has influenced his visual style (with some shots being homages to famous anime scenes). One moment in particular – where the crowd disappears during the climactic fight, and it is only Dame and Adonis in the ring sparring and raging – is just distracting and took me out of the drama of the moment. I can see what Jordan is trying to do, the innovation he thinks he is reaching for, but it fell a bit flat for me. Overall, its fine… quite fun even, and elevated more than it deserves by Jonathan Majors (he’s been doing that quite a lot for mediocre films lately). Buuuuuut…I stand with Rocky. You can’t do a Rocky film without Stallone, and no matter what anyone says this is indeed a Rocky film.

3 stars.

Scream VI

A woman concentrates as she pauses at gate in a set of tall railings.
Courteney Cox in Scream VI.

Scream VI was next. I know the question you’re asking: ‘Why do we need a Scream VI?’ Indeed. We don’t. We didn’t need a Scream 2! The original Scream was perfect and singular. It was a glorious satire of slasher tropes, done to perfection by a master of the genre. It was witty, gritty, violent, and hilarious. IT…WAS…PERFECT! To say that the steam has run-out by Scream VI is an understatement. It’s a limp and lifeless excuse of a film, trying to ape a satirical edge; except now it has decided to turn its satirical edge on itself. Now it is the tropes of franchises, and especially the Scream franchise, being dissected, except the scalpel of wit being wielded is so dull and uninspired the film is killed by blunt-force-trauma.

Perhaps to try and overcome this, the kills have now become unreasonably brutal (far too much so for a 15 rating). The camera seems to linger on the wounds and the pain inflicted with an adolescent glee that is deeply unpleasant. There are a few enjoyable and tense set-pieces (one involving a ladder precariously perched between two high-rise windows), but their impact is undercut by the film’s general awfulness. The cast is hamming it up to a ludicrous degree, seemingly without any sensible direction. The returns of veterans Courtney Cox and Hayden Panettiere are welcome until they try to deliver their lines…and who on earth thought they could make a Scream sequel without Neve Campbell!? You can’t do Rocky without Rocky, you can’t do Scream without Sidney!

1 star.

John Wick 4

A hero and armoured opponent stand ready to fight.
Keanu Reeves in John Wick 4.

Finally, I settled down to what I knew would be a comforting friend of a film: John Wick 4. The man in black, all long hair and long stares, gun-fu and jiu-jitsu, is back…and he bored me, a little. I’m so sorry to say it, and I will force myself back to the cinema to see it again to make sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood, but I really did get bored. When John Wick hit the screens in 2014 it was like a sucker-punch. It was a bonkers B-movie coming out of nowhere, that built up a bit of pace and then went hell-for-leather, and it was glorious to behold. Director Chad Stahelski’s Hollywood career had been as a stuntman and stunt coordinator, and he brought all that knowledge to create a gorgeous, gory ballet of hand-to-hand combat and frenetic gunplay saturated in neon and drowned in darkness.

It was, like Scream, a perfect one-shot. It gave us an iconic laconic Keanu Reeves performance, magnificent action, and a beautifully compact story that alluded to a larger world of assassin culture but left it for the audience to build this world in their imagination. Three sequels later and I find it all a bit of a drag. Everything is pumped-up, everything is bigger, everything is louder, and more and more people get shot… yet it’s all a bit repetitive. Every set-piece is the most fantastically choreographed dance, but they drag on too long. The assassin world has been built with a ludicrous operatic grandeur, but that takes some of the imaginative fun out of it for the audience. I’m not sure anyone really needed more John Wick in their life.

On the plus side: it looks gorgeous, it is shot masterfully, Reeves is spectacular and looks like he’s having the time of his life, and his interaction with Donnie Yen (himself on superb form) is joyous. On the downside: it is too long, it is too repetitive, and I’m not really sure what Mr Wick is doing any of this for anymore. The beauty of John Wick was the simple motivation: revenge for a murdered dog. By John Wick 4 that narrative simplicity – the real strength of the franchise – has disappeared. I did have a good time to a degree; every twenty minutes or so I’d get sucked into a set piece and marvel and what Stahelski and Reeves are able to accomplish, but then it would very quickly fade and I’d be bored again. It gains points for excellent (if far too brief) usage of Clancy Brown and Hiroyuki Sanada… Hiroyuki Sanada is enough to see any film. It loses points for Bill Skarsgård’s performance (a rare miss from him) and the Scott Adkins fat-suit…when you see it, you’ll know. The film is like junk-food: an initial rush followed by a bit of queasiness. But Reeves, Yen, and Sanada raise the standard…oh, and Ian McShane!

3 stars.

A mildly disappointing month, and at first I wondered if it was the sheer amount of violence I’d watched. Sporting violence, murderous violence, balletic violence…was it all a bit too much? The more I’ve reflected the more I think this can’t be the case – I blame my disappointment, now, on franchise fatigue. It can’t be the violence, as violence is a vital part of the Christian story. As I write this review the Church is about to enter Passiontide: the last two weeks before Easter, where we meditate on the final days of Christ’s life. Violence - the violence of Jesus’ arrest, scourging, and crucifixion - is an essential part of the story. The horror and pain of Jesus’ Passion must be meditated on, because only then can we see the wonderful and transformative power of God, who raises Christ from the dead.

Violence is an inherent part of the Christian story: Cain and Abel, the wars of the Israelite Kingdom, the oppression of the Jews under the Roman Empire, the Passion of Christ, and the fact that from the beginning of the Church to the present day there are Christians made into martyrs (those who dies rather than deny the faith). Violence and death are not some things that can be avoided, and we shouldn’t try. We ought to face up to the difficult truth that we live in a world that is often violent and painful. When we do, we begin to see those serendipities that reveal the ultimate truth - a life of pain and struggle is not our ultimate destiny.

Violence and pain, and ultimately death, are those things which God’s goodness and love will overcome. Every wrong is an opportunity for forgiveness. Every tragedy is an opportunity to show love and charity to one’s neighbour. This is not to diminish violence and tragedy, but to recontextualise it, to transfigure it. This is what Christ does on the Cross - he takes death and transfigures it into eternal life. This is what was so depressing and dissatisfying about the violence in Scream VI: it was meaningless, and for its own sake. In Creed III the violence is for sport and for the resolution of tension, and in John Wick IV the violence is a performative dance more than an actual assault, but in Scream VI its just there to leer at. Christianity accepts violence as a fact of the world, but never a fact in itself and for itself. Violence and pain are not to be ‘accepted’ - like all aspects of creation, good and bad, they point to the deeper truth that God is always working to save the world that He created in love and to bring it to Himself. This is what we can see in the aftermath of violence. This is what we can see in the aftermath of the Cross

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The rights and wrongs of making money with meme coins

When does investing become speculating, or even addictive gambling?
A montage shows Trump with a raised fist against other images of him and the phrase 'fight fight fight'.
$Trump coin marketing image.
gettrumpmemes.com,

Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs may have driven sharp swings in global financial markets, but his actions in markets a few months earlier were in some ways even more peculiar.

On the Friday before his inauguration as the 47th US President in January, the Republican surprised many with the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin, described by its website as “the only official Trump meme”. The cryptocurrency token, in which Trump’s family business owned a stake, initially soared in value to more than $14bn over that following weekend. 

Then, on the Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own memecoin, $MELANIA, which reached a value of $8.5bn. Even the pastor who spoke at the president’s inauguration subsequently launched his own memecoin. 

For those wondering what exactly a memecoin is, you are not alone. In short, they are a form of cryptocurrency - an asset class that itself has attracted plenty of questions about its substance and purpose - representing online viral moments. They have no fundamental value or business model and, according to the US securities regulator, “typically have limited or no use or functionality”. 

Donald and Melania Trump’s coins subsequently plunged in price, but still have a value of around $2.5bn and $214mn respectively, according to website CoinMarketCap. 

There are plenty of others in existence. PEPE, based on a comic frog, has a value of around $3.6bn; BONK, a cartoon dog, has a market cap of $1.5bn; and PNUT, a reference to a squirrel euthanised by authorities in New York and about which Trump was allegedly “fired up” (although doubt has since been cast on the president’s involvement in the matter), is still valued at around $174mn, despite having fallen sharply in price.  

Dogecoin, seen as the world’s first memecoin and originally created as a joke, boasts a market value of around $25bn. (There are other memecoins which may not be suitable for these pages). 

Some people’s willingness to buy an “asset” with no use or fundamental value may seem strange to more traditional investors. But it can be viewed as just one manifestation of the speculative investor behaviour evident since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and, indeed, at times throughout history. 

The price of Bitcoin recently rose above $100,000, despite many investors still viewing it as having little or no value (in 2023 the UK’s Treasury select committee described cryptocurrencies as having “no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good”). In early 2021, shares in GameStop - a loss-making US video games retailer that some hedge funds were betting against - rocketed as much as 2,400 per cent, as retail investors piled in, many with the aim of inflicting pain on the hedge fund short sellers (in that respect at least, a highly successful strategy that became the subject of the film Dumb Money). The huge rise in AI and other tech stocks in recent years - until the recent tariff-driven volatility - has also been described as a bubble by some commentators. 

Whether or not such episodes can be compared to infamous bouts of speculative mania in history depends on your point of view (and often can only be judged with the benefit of hindsight) - be it the 17th century Dutch tulip bulb mania, shares in the South Sea Company in the 18th century or the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

But it does give rise to the question of when investment should start to be described as speculation or even as gambling? And what are the rights and wrongs of any of those activities? 

There can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources... 

Gambling can be thought of as risking a stake on, for instance, the result of a game of chance or sport in the hope of a bigger payout. While often the result is purely down to chance, in some cases a strategy or an element of research (for instance of a horse or football team’s form) can be used. Investment, in contrast, tends to involve purported economic utility and assets believed to have some sort of underlying value, and holds the hope of future profit (although there are also plenty of bad investments or those that have gone to zero). While an investor must be prepared to lose their entire stake, in some cases such an event is relatively unlikely (for instance, if they buy a fund tracking the performance of a major stock exchange). Speculation is harder to define, but is generally seen as shorter term than investment, with more chance of a bigger gain or loss, and dependent on price fluctuations. Rightly or wrongly, the term has a more negative connotation than investment. 

One writer who explored the ethics of these activities was Oswald von Nell-Breuning, a Jesuit theologian and economist who served as an adviser to the Pope and who was banned from publishing under the Nazis. 

While he found that “one general definition cannot capture all the nuances” of speculation, he identified two different types of speculative activity - one that was purely trying to make a profit from financial market trading, and one based on trying to create a viable business. (See this article in the Catholic Social Science Review for a fuller explanation of Nell-Breuning’s views on speculation). 

As the CSSR article shows, Nell-Breuning found that there can be positive effects from speculation - one might think of better liquidity and price discovery in a market, while, in commodity futures markets, speculators allow producers to hedge risk. 

But he also argued that there can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources away from production. 

And whereas gambling typically takes place within a circle of players who have chosen to take part, speculation, he wrote, can affect a greater portion of society - for instance, if it affects the price of shares or bonds they hold. 

The Bible - on which Nell-Breuning’s faith and analysis was based - does not take a prescriptive approach to such activities. But it does provide some interesting guidance.  

An entrepreneurial approach to business and investment is applauded, for instance when the writer of the book of Proverbs (traditionally believed to be King Solomon) praises the virtues of “an excellent wife”. These include investing in a field and using her earnings from business to plant a vineyard, and feeding her family from her gains. 

Jesus tells a story of a master who, before going on a journey, gives his property to his servants, each according to their ability. To one he gives five “talents” (a large unit of money), to a second two and to a third servant he gives one. 

The first servant trades with his talents and makes five more talents - a 100 per cent profit - and is applauded by the master on his return. The second servant also trades and similarly makes two more talents and is again applauded. 

But the third servant, being afraid and believing the master to be “a hard man”, hides the money in a hole in the ground. He is condemned as “wicked and slothful”, and told that he should at least have put the money in the bank. 

While Jesus’s story may primarily be about how we view God’s nature, how we use our God-given abilities and whether or not we can take risks in faith for Him, it is also hard not to see investment and indeed wise speculation as being virtuous activities here. Putting the money into a bank account is, in this story anyway, more of a fallback option. 

But the Bible also warns us against putting money above all else in our lives. The love of money is, famously, a root of all sorts of evil, while we are also told to be content with what we have, and that “wealth gained hastily will dwindle”. 

Nell-Breuning similarly warns that a “get-rich-quick” mindset, when this is placed above all else, can be harmful, and advises caution in situations where the lure of big profits can lead the speculator into market manipulation or fraud. 

After all, both gambling and crypto trading have the potential to become dangerous and damaging addictions needing treatment. 

Ultimately, Nell-Breuning struggled to come to a simple conclusion on the question of whether speculation, in and of itself, is morally wrong. It is, he wrote, a judgment call for those involved. 

When making such decisions ourselves, his - and the Bible’s - warnings may be worth bearing in mind. 

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