John Wick: Chapter 2

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

** SPOILERS **

BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!

BLAM!
Good dog.
BLAM!
BLAM!
KABLAMMO!

These are the main takeaways from the stylishly redundant John Wick: Chapter 2. Picking up more or less where the original John Wick left off, Keanu Reeves returns as the title character - the world's most dangerous and unkillable assassin/dog lover. Whereas before, John Wick goes on a murderous rampage against the Russian mafia for killing his beautiful, beloved, sweet little beagle, in Chapter 2, it's the Italians who are making life miserable for John Wick. At least they have the good sense to leave John Wick's new dog alone. The Italians aren't about to make the same mistake the Russians did; they'll make all their own mistakes.

Chapter 2 deepens the mythology of the various assassins in the John Wick universe. Basically, there are two types of people in this universe: there are assassins, which comprise roughly 50% of the population of New York and Rome, and there are the regular people who aren't assassins and are somehow completely oblivious to everyone around them who is an assassin, even when these assassins are shooting at each other in full view in shopping malls, subway platforms, and on trains. John Wick limps around New York and Rome covered in blood for the entire movie and no one bats an eye. No one except for the assassins out to kill him and collect the $7-million bounty the slimy head of the Italian Mafia, Riccardo Scamarcio, placed on John Wick's head. John Wick owes Scamarcio a debt when he got out of the assassin's life; now that he's back, Scamarcio comes to collect, blowing up John Wick's house to get him to assassinate his own sister in Rome. Of course, when John Wick succeeds, Scamarcio puts a hit out on John Wick because "what kind of a man would [I] be if he didn't try to avenge [my] sister?" Gotta admire that logic.

We learn more about the network of support given to this wide-ranging community of assassins. Ian McShane returns as the proprietor of the Continental, an exclusive luxury hotel catering to assassins with strict rules about no violence on the premises. McShane's Continental has a Roman counterpart, with all the finest high end perks, like the best tailor for bespoke bulletproof suits, and Peter Serafinowicz as an extremely cultured arms dealer. Hunting John Wick for the Italians are Common, a fellow assassin who's very professional, and Ruby Rose, a sign language-speaking letdown. Rose spends the whole movie pouting and letting John Wick slip through her fingers. When she finally gets to fight John Wick, she barely lasts a minute against him. More fun is a walk on by Laurence Fishburne, who reminds John Wick in a very-meta way that they "met many years ago." Fishburne is in charge of all the homeless people in New York City, who are all, you guessed it, assassins. 

John Wick: Chapter 2 is too much of a good thing, or rather, too much of the same thing. Same difference. Like playing a video game on the Easy setting where your character can't die, John Wick's exciting gunplay and ability to survive numerous point blank gunshots while executing every assassin in his way with deadly precision becomes less exciting the more we see it happen over and over again. By the ten millionth time John Wick gets shot, shrugs it off, and kills an assassin who can't do the same, we've long since gotten the idea that John Wick is un-killable. This, of course, doesn't mean every assassin in the universe won't try when John Wick is excommunicated and becomes the target of a $14-million global bounty, setting up John Wick: Chapter 3. When John Wick snarls, "I'll kill them all!" we don't doubt it, and it'll probably a lot more of what we've seen in these last two movies. 

More alarming is the realization that John Wick's dog may also be a target of this global bounty hunt on John Wick. For while he admirably loves dogs, John Wick is a terrible dog owner. Not only does he make his loyal friend walk alongside him all the way from New Jersey to Manhattan and back (by way of the Brooklyn Bridge; all of the geography in John Wick: Chapter 2 is totally out of whack), he leaves his dog with the Continental's helpful concierge Lance Reddick. John Wick never even gives his dog a name, maybe so he doesn't get too attached? Someone needs to call the ASPCA and get that dog away from John Wick.

Logan

LOGAN

** SPOILERS **

"Goddamn, Wolverine, it breaks my heart to see you like this!" one of the bad guys tells the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and we nod, sadly, in agreement. The tides of time and the perils of a life lived violently have not been kind to old man Logan. Not that the Wolverine has ever had it easy, but his present - our future - is bleak. In director James Mangold's gloriously savage Logan, the year is 2029 and mutant kind has been all but eradicated. We recall that Logan was instrumental in saving the future from becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland of mutants and humans hunted by robot Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. In Logan, a different type of apocalypse (not this guy) occurred, decimating the mutants down to a scant, desperate handful. The X-Men are dead, perished in an "incident in Westchester" (New York, where the Xavier School of Gifted Youngsters was located). The Wolverine survived, as he does, and he spends his days wishing he hadn't.

Logan is a crumbling wreck. His vaunted mutant healing factor has been failing him for years; the result of the adamantium that coats his skeleton poisoning him from within. His claws don't always pop out properly, the scars of a million bullet holes and stabbings riddle his ripped, grizzled physique, and Logan lumbers around with a permanent limp. Eking out a living as a chauffeur (Logan is quite an advertisement for the 2024 Chrysler limousine - that thing can take a beating!) in a Texas border town, Logan, using his birth name James Howlett, drives rich assholes and drunken party girls around by night. By day, Old Man Logan medicates on alcohol and prescription pills, while also taking care of an even older man, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Charles, now in his 90's, is an even more crumbling wreck - the world's most powerful and dangerous mutant psychic mind dying from degenerative brain disease. Logan is aided by a long-suffering mutant named Caliban (Stephen Merchant), but neither seem grateful for the other's company. 

When a desperate Mexican nurse and a silent little girl come begging to Logan, offering him $50,000 to drive them to North Dakota, Logan's dreary existence is upended. The nurse and the girl are being chased by heavily armed shock troops all equipped with cybernetic limbs. When the nurse is murdered, Logan and Charles - two dusty old bags of mutant bones - take the girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), on the lam. It's a road trip that has fatal consequences for just about everyone they encounter. Of course, Laura is a mutant, one of a crop grown in an illegal Mexican lab from the captured DNA of mutants past. And of course, Laura was grown from Logan's DNA. "She's your daughter, Logan," Xavier helpfully spells out. Designated X-23, Laura is also a Wolverine, with two claws in her hands and a claw in each foot. She's a feral, acrobatic, insanely dangerous killer. Just as when we first met Logan he found himself taking care of a young girl, Rogue (Anna Paquin), in the first X-Men movie so many moons ago, Logan brings us full circle. Once more, Logan has a young girl in his care, a reluctant father figure as she puts her tiny, claw-popping hand in his. And, because Logan is basically a disaster, Laura - full of surprises - ends up taking care of him.

For fans of the X-Men movies, Logan paints a depressing future for the mutants. Nothing works out for them, no matter how hard they tried, and it turns out Richard E. Grant of all people is the architect of the end (and the new, terrible beginning) of mutantkind. Logan has a little wink wink fun with the existence of X-Men comics; the "real life" world-saving superhero adventures of Professor X's students have been turned into four color entertainment for children. The greatest tragedy of all is poor Charles Xavier, suffering from a mutant Alzheimer's, lucid only when heavily medicated. His most impressive power in the original X-Men trilogy - how he could freeze time and everyone he wishes in their tracks - is now a terrible psychic attack to anyone in his vicinity when he has a seizure. And when lucid, Charles remembers what happened in Westchester, and why his X-Men are dead. It's also sad and unfortunate that no one in charge of the X-Men franchise will ever plot a noble demise for Charles Xavier. In Logan, the man who once dreamed of and taught his students to fight for mutant coexistence with humanity dies on the flatbed of a pickup after being stabbed through the heart by the third Wolverine in this story, X-24, a fully grown, mindless killer clone of the Wolverine. No eternal flame on Xavier's monument this time; the world's most powerful mutant mind is buried in an unmarked grave off the interstate somewhere in Oklahoma. Is this a better end for Professor X than how he was splattered into Xavier bits and pieces all over crazy Jean Grey's bedroom wall in X-Men: The Last Stand? Your mileage may vary.

In this promised one last ride, Jackman gives his most riveting performance as Logan. Jackman lays it all out there, a weary survivor eternally suffering, always in pain, loathe to give in to his better nature but he will anyway. The R-rating for Logan finally unleashes the primal, bloodthirsty Wolverine a ruthless killer whose primary weapons are six machete blades in his hands ought to be. (Stewart also indulges that R rating, unleashing an eyebrow-raising stream of F bombs we didn't know Professor X had in him.) Director Mangold goes for the jugular over and over, delivering a sprawling, satisfying, emotionally wrenching road trip headlong into doom that only occasionally stabs against the limits of creativity you can have with three Wolverines who growl, leap at, and horribly skewer and dismember people. Blatantly evoking classic Westerns like Shane, Mangold makes sure to strip Logan down to his trademark white tank top and jeans as he fights X-24, clad in a black tank top and jeans - an amusingly nice touch. As Laura, Dafne Keen is a tiny wunderkind. Bursting with magnetic charisma while saying nary a word, Keen's performance brings to mind Natalie Portman 20+ years ago in Leon: The Professional. Keen makes you believe there could be a future for an All-New Wolverine. Logan closes the book on Hugh Jackman's incarnation of the Wolverine in grand style. As a tribute to the enduring awesomeness of the Wolverine and of Hugh Jackman's 17 years and 9 films portraying the most popular mutant of all, Logan delivers a satisfyingly resonant end, and fittingly seals it with an X.

I'm not crying at the end of #Logan. YOU'RE crying at the end of Logan.
I love you, Wolverine!@RealHughJackman @mang0ld @WolverineMovie

— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) March 3, 2017

The Great Wall

THE GREAT WALL

** SPOILERS **

His name is Matt Damon. After years fighting for multiple kings, flags, and nations as a 10th century mercenary, he has come to Ancient China in the time of the Song Dynasty with only one goal: to steal "black powder" (gunpowder) from the Chinese. Then he runs into a million zillion alien monsters attacking the Great Wall of China. So he must become someone else. He must become... something else. It's not entirely out of bounds to see some parallels between Matt Damon's character and Oliver Queen of TV's Arrow. In a way, The Great Wall, a visually spectacular, historical-based action epic by director Zhang Yimou, and the first English language film shot entirely in China, is the best Green Arrow fighting aliens in China movie that could ever be made.

In The Great Wall, Damon and his Spanish compatriot Pedro Pascal (best known as The Red Viper from Game of Thrones) find themselves on the run in mainland China after unsuccessful attempts to steal precious black powder. In their desperate flight, they literally hit a wall - the Great Wall of China, which is under the command of the Nameless Order. The Nameless Order are an elite army charged with guarding the wall and repelling a siege by the Tao Tei, a horde of millions of alien monsters that arrived by a meteorite centuries ago and attack China every 60 years. Taken prisoner and brought to the top of the Wall, Damon and Pascal have prime seats for the attack by the Tao Tei. They distinguish themselves by fighting their hearts out and killing several of the monsters, impressing the Nameless Order's leadership: General Shao (Hanyu Zhang), their top scientific mind who boasts one of the greatest character names ever, Strategist Wang (Andy Lau), and the fiercely fetching Commander Lin (Jing Tian). There's also another European knight in the Wall; Lin's English and Latin tutor Ballard (Willem Dafoe).

Pascal and Dafoe immediately come to an understanding: by working together, they can steal the black powder and vamoose back to Europe and be rich. Damon, however, undergoes a change of heart from his greedy ways, in part because he realizes his amazing skills as an archer are needed by the Nameless Order, but mainly because he has the hots for Commander Lin. Damon is also taken by the breathtaking splendor of the Nameless Order, with their beautifully ornate color coded armor, and their acrobatically ineffective and insane strategy of fighting the Tao Tei: the Order's elite Crane Corps (all women) launch themselves over the wall on bungee cords swinging blades at the beasts. Most are quickly and gruesomely eaten by the monsters. Damon suggests other ways to fight the Tao Tei that maybe aren't as splendidly suicidal and Lin is willing to listen; she's also attracted to this handsome and unexpectedly noble white man.

The futility of the Nameless Order's mission soon becomes evident as the Tao Tei, which are smarter than the average alien lizards, manage to breach the Wall and attack the Imperial City and their boy Emperor (Karry Wang), who's kind of like a Chinese King Joffrey. Damon and Lin lead a stunning and ludicrously dangerous hot air balloon charge to defend the Imperial City, and by this point in the third act, The Great Wall's tenuous balancing act of being an entertaining dumb action movie tumbles headlong into becoming a really, really dumb action movie. The Tao Tei are as derivative from the monsters in Alien, Pitch Black and countless other movie monsters of the sort as you can get, right down to having a Queen. "Kill the Queen!" and they stop the monsters; literally, the monsters just fall lifeless to the ground by the millions. The Tao Tei can also be fought with magnets - a magnet to a Tao Tei is the equivalent of Samuel L. Jackson reading "Go the Fuck to Sleep."

Despite reservations many might harbor, Damon's presence in the movie is not white-washing as he doesn't replace any character who was originally Asian. Nor is Damon a Great White Savior who bails the Chinese out of a terrible mess; Damon works together with the Nameless Order, merely lending his skills as a man who could be the ancestor to the Green Arrow - including trick arrows like screaming sonic arrows and exploding tipped arrows! - to help the Chinese fight these ridiculous and plentiful monsters. Jing Tian's Commander Lin calls the shots in The Great Wall, and Damon gladly serves at her side. Finally, The Great Wall's costumes are magnificent. The Nameless Order are all clad in colorful armor that's a joy to behold. As an operatic ballet of colorful violence against relentlessly attacking alien monsters, The Great Wall is a whole lot of absurd, eye-popping fun.

The LEGO Batman Movie

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE

** SPOILERS **

Batman learns the meaning of family in The LEGO Batman Movie, an absurdly funny, balls-to-the-wall celebration on pretty much everything cool, funny and weird about Batman. Let's face it, there's a lot weird about Batman. Gleefully referencing over 75 years of Batman history, especially all of the previous live action Batman movies and the classic 1960s Batman TV show - all done in the inimitable LEGO style - The LEGO Batman Movie is a loving takedown of the Dark Knight and tries to lighten him up a little. As Batman (who hardly ever removes his cowl and identifies mainly as Batman - Bruce Wayne is just a guy who lives in Batman's attic), Will Arnett pushes his irrepressible voice to its gravelly max as he portrays the most unapologetically idiosyncratic version of the Caped Crusader we've ever seen.

Arnett's LEGO Batman is a swoll alpha-bro narcissist with unlimited billions to spend on the coolest gadgets ("Iron Man sucks!") to protect Gotham City from the scores of super villains trying to destroy it. Batman is totally into himself, but his self-absorbed swagger masks a lifetime of pain and fear of abandonment after (stop me if you've heard this one) his parents were killed in front of him when he was a boy. The LEGO Batman Movie completely understands that Batman, with his cars, toys, and his endless assortment of Bat-branded paraphernalia, is essentially a 10 year old's response to a violent world around him. LEGO is the perfect way to depict Batman's ridiculous excesses to compensate.

The LEGO Batman Movie's heart is in Batman growing to accept that he needs relationships in his life, be it with his long-suffering arch foe The Joker (Zach Galifianakis), who longs for the affirmation from Batman that he is Batman's greatest enemy, to Gotham's new Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), whom Batman totally has the hots for, to his newly adopted son Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), a lonely orphan who needs Batman just as much as Batman needs him. However, Batman is a huge dick, and it takes him the entire length of The LEGO Batman Movie to stop abusing everyone in his life and accept that being Batman alone isn't as fulfilling as being the head of the Batman Family.

A lot of the fun of The LEGO Batman Movie comes from the free-for-all of characters throughout. Batman's entire rogue's gallery is in the movie from Bane, to The Penguin, to Poison Ivy, to Harley Quinn down to the deepest cut C-grade baddies like King Tut and Condiment King. The Justice League are in the movie, throwing a party in Superman's Fortress of Solitude (Batman's email invite must have gotten lost). Most fun of all are the scores of villains from outside the DC Comics Universe who The Joker recruits to help him destroy Gotham, including Lord Voldemort, Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, Daleks from Doctor Who, and Medusa and the Kraken from Clash of the Titans. (Incredibly, Ralph Fiennes provides the voice of Alfred, but he does not voice Voldemort. Eddie Izzard does the honors.) In the end, Batman becomes an even greater hero (not just because of his killer 9-pack abs) and learns that having the biggest Batcave is meaningless without people in his life to fill it with. Lobster Thermidor for everyone!

Screen Rant

I'm excited to announce that I've joined the talented folks at Screen Rant as a Feature Writer. From here on in, I'll be delivering at least 10 Feature articles for Screen Rant a month, ranging from movies, television, comic books, pop culture, whatever's happening.

It's only been a week, but I have a handful of Features already published that I'd love to have your cursor clicking on and your eyeballs peeping at. There's a lot more on the way, I can assure you.

Click on the photo above or the big ass Screen Rant banner at the top of the page to go to my Archive of Screen Rant Features. Please bookmark it so you don't miss a thing. 

Back of the Head isn't going away. I'll still be reviewing movies on here the way I always have, but Screen Rant will have wholly original content from me.

Thank you for checking out my work, and I hope you enjoy coming along on this new venture with me.

Jackie

JACKIE

** SPOILERS **

There is a famous photograph taken in the hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One. To the now-President Johnson's right is his wife Lady Bird, and to his left, shell-shocked, mouth agape, is the newly widowed former First Lady Jackie Kennedy. Director Pablo Larrain's dreamy, artful Jackie casts a sublime Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy. In one fatal afternoon in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the United States in a macro sense lost their President and the imagined dream-state of "Camelot" the Kennedys inhabited and cultivated. But for Jackie, what was lost was much more personal and harrowing: she lost her husband, their young children Caroline and John Jr. lost their father, and Jackie lost her home and sense of security, and indeed, for a time, her sense of self.

Given a chance to tell "her side of the story" to a reporter (Billy Crudup) days after the assassination, Jackie labors to come to terms with not just the events of that tragic day -- literally holding her dead husband's brain from falling out of his head as their limousine raced to a hospital -- but with preserving JFK's legacy against the machine of Washington inevitably marching forward. Larrain depicts Jackie's famous television special hosting a tour of the White House, giving us a glimpse of the nervous, hoping-to-please woman behind the cultured facade the First Lady presented to the nation.  The Jack Kennedy she spoke of is the one only she knew; she forgives his displeasure at her spending and especially his womanizing, focusing on what a doting father he was. Much of Jackie revolves around Mrs. Kennedy's planning of her husband's grand funeral, taking cues from the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. Jackie depicts how isolated Jackie Kennedy became; her closest advisor within the family was Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard), himself mourning his brother and how little their administration was able to accomplish compared to their big dreams. And yet, even in mourning, Jackie reveals Mrs. Kennedy as cunning and calculating to the reporter, seething and lashing out with "off the record" bombs of truth that she "never said."

Though she at times struggles with Jackie's famous accent, poise, and finishing school manners,  Portman persuasively inhabits the dresses, hats, and skin of Jackie Kennedy. The most heartbreaking moments of Jackie are when Jackie stumbles alone within the empty private residence of the White House she must soon vacate. It's moving when she confesses to her priest (John Hurt - in a V For Vendetta reunion where Evie is now looking for solace from Chancellor Sutler) that though she is still a relatively young woman, she fears no man will want a widowed ex-First Lady with two children who also buried two previous children. When her closest confidant Nancy (Greta Gerwig) tries to encourage her that her children are still so lucky to have her, Jackie replies in anguish "That isn't true at all!"; the film is knowingly aware of the further tragedy that would visit her family decades later. One wishes Jackie would take the advice she is given to escape Washington, D.C., "build a fortress in Boston and never look back." Jackie indulges the wistful memory of "Camelot," going so far as to lean a bit heavily on the audio of the musical Jack Kennedy loved as a boy, yet overall, Jackie is an wondrous tribute to the 20th century's most graceful and one of its most important First Ladies.

Passengers

PASSENGERS

** SPOILERS **

Passengers reassures all mankind that in the future, white privilege is alive and well in outer space. Aboard the corporate-owned starship Avalon, basically EPCOT Center if it was squeezed into a space ship, Chris Pratt awakens from his cryo-sleep 90 years ahead of schedule. The Avalon, transporting 5,000 souls to a new colony planet millions of lightyears from Earth, is an automated ghost ship with everyone else sound asleep. Except for little Roomba robots and an android bartender played by Michael Sheen, who is as if Dr. Ford from Westworld ran out of humanoid parts and just grafted a Segueway onto Sheen's torso and called it a day. Pratt is understandably distressed to be the only one awake onboard. With 90 more years of interstellar travel to go, and cryo-sleep being a one-way street, Pratt is doomed to spend the remainder of his life alone in a space mall. He handles it the way Will Forte does in Last Man on Earth. He spends a year getting all scraggly and slovenly and making a mess of the place. He is lonely and desperate for companionship, until one day, after contemplating suicide via airlock, he runs into the knocked out, cryo-sleeping form of knockout Jennifer Lawrence. 

Kif, Pratt has a conundrum: should he be a good, decent, moral person and accept his fate, or does he succumb to his asshole selfishness and wake Lawrence up (and lie to her about how she woke up), thereby dooming her chances at arriving on the new planet but strongly increasing his chances of getting laid? (There appears to be no porn on the Avalon, no sex-bots, no futuristic virtual reality spank machines. Thanks, Homestead Corporation!) Pratt succumbs to his assholishness, because he must. (Must he really? According to director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Jon Spaihts he does, instead pursuing all kinds of better, less scummy story options.) And for a while, Pratt's plan worked. Lawrence indeed becomes his sexy time girlfriend. Oh, what a love story in space this is. (Pratt does "feel bad" about the whole thing, the movie is at pains to keep reminding us with regular hang dog looks and puppy dog eyes from Pratt.) Unfortunately for Pratt, he confided everything to his robot bartender, who's also programmed to be a robot snitch. Sheen drops the bomb on Lawrence just when Pratt was about to pop the question. Lawrence justifiably goes nuclear and stops just short of Hunger Gaming Pratt.

What Pratt Did is nigh impossible for Passengers to walk back from, but boy, does the movie try. When crew member Laurence Fishburne suddenly awakens and discovers What Pratt Did, Lawrence announces that What Pratt Did to her can be considered "Murder!" Fishburne agrees with her, but then actually tries to justify What Pratt Did using the ol' "but a man has needs" argument. Bros before hos. Also, it's nice to see a non-white face after over an hour of Passengers, but don't get too used to him! Fishburne is dying, see - of over 200 medical ailments no less! He's like Mr. Burns in space; he has every disease! Fishburne's dying moments are a bizarre and unexpected cosplay of Forest Whitaker's cyborg in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. All he was missing were cyborg legs and an oxygen tank. Fishburne should have wheezed, "Save the Avalon! Save the Dream!" to Pratt and Lawrence before dropping dead. Speaking of Star Wars, there happens to be one other non-Caucasian character in Passengers, the Avalon's captain inexplicably played by Andy Garcia, who appears for a few seconds right before the end credits. Garcia has no dialogue so I guess he and Mark Hamill have the same agent. 

Passengers is as empty as the space ship it depicts. There's no deeper theme, no grander commentary on the human condition. It isn't about anything beyond What Pratt Did and whether he's an okay guy anyway. The mystery of what's wrong with the malfunctioning Avalon turns out to be a simple, head scratcher of a reveal: even though the ship is meteorite-proof, it got hit by a bunch of meteorites. Thus the ship's systems are all wonky and about to kill all 5,000 souls aboard -- unless Pratt and Lawrence can combine their action movie hero prowess to save the Avalon (and save the Dream)! Pratt goes all in with an attempt at a Noble Heroic Sacrifice as Passengers does everything under the sun to literally spacewalk back from What Pratt Did and make him redeemable. As she must adhere to the demands of the screenplay and director, Lawrence goes along with this, declaring her love for him after all, and saving Pratt's life from the cold, cruel void of death in outer space after he manages to save the Avalon and all aboard (dressed in an Iron Man-like space suit and hefting a Captain America-like shield, mind you. Marvel represent!). So one must swallow disappointment and accept that these two deserve each other. Pratt and Lawrence live out their life of white privilege together, presumably shuffling off this mortal coil before the ship arrives at her final destination. The 4,997 other people aboard the Avalon awake on schedule from their cryo-sleep, unaware of What Pratt Did during their slumber. Pratt, however, did grow an entire park, complete with grass and trees, inside the Avalon, thereby doing at least one thing that would make his old boss Leslie Knope proud.