If there was a single word or phrase to describe 2019, the final year of the 2010s, the culmination of all our hopes, dreams and fears borne into this world, a robust argument could be made that it would be “desperate nostalgia baiting.” Or “slimy corporate cowardice.” Or maybe “unmitigated capitalist greed.” No piece of media was more emblematic of this than Disney and Square-Enix’s putrescent action-RPG Kingdom Hearts III. In retrospect, maybe this game was trying to warn us.
Playing this game was an exercise in utter nihilism, a trip to Disneyland from the perspective of a tired parent shuttling their three very upset children around a sweltering, crowded, prohibitively expensive theme park whose only selling point was “DO YOU REMEMBER THIS MOVIE? HAVE YOU SEEN IT? IT IS VERY GOOD. YOU SHOULD BUY SOUVENIRS TO COMMEMORATE YOUR VISIT TO THIS MOVIE TIE-IN EXPERIENCE. THEY ARE ALL $200.” Maybe all of the Kingdom Hearts games have been like this, but memory (or maybe that pernicious nostalgia) tells a different story – one of a game series with a ridiculous premise that managed to just barely work because of almost-shonen anime levels of determined positivity and commitment to that premise. Imagine Gurren Lagann‘s ethos applied to a doofy Disney/Final Fantasy mash-up, and you have a reasonable picture of Kingdom Hearts and its immediate sequels, Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II.
Time’s inexorable march did the franchise and its creators no favors. Years of inconsequential and inscrutable later sequels, spin-offs and tie-ins turned the story into a mess of loose threads, dead ends and conflict. At some point, time travel and a concept similar to Horcruxes were introduced. As this stream of side games was released, we asymptotically approached Kingdom Hearts III. Over a decade, almost a decade and a half, of promised release dates, sneak peeks, trailer reveals, and snippets of gameplay footage. Every moment overanalyzed by fans looking for any indication as to what the new game will bring. Kingdom Hearts III was destined to explode with brave foolishness, or it would sputter out. It shot for the stars but couldn’t reach escape velocity and came slamming back down to earth.
Kingdom Hearts III was an incredibly cynical game, devoid of joy and a raison d’être. It was an attempt to cash in on nearly 15 years of nostalgia and speculation, trying to activate the 13-year-old soul of an audience who was in their mid-to-late 20s at this point. It was not the first time this year Disney would try to do this very thing, and Disney would not be alone in its efforts to make what was old new again – but safer, you know? Free from controversy. Activision made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare again, a game that somehow has no politics but wants to show you what war is “really” about. One of the best Switch games of the year, according to the people who played it, was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, a remake of a game from 1992. On the other hand, Wolfenstein: Youngbloods was not a particularly good game, much less a good Wolfenstein game. Pokemon: Sword andShield was… basically fine, if a beat-for-beat rehashing of every Pokemon game that came before it.
We’re all really fucking excited for Final Fantasy VII Remake I guess. And that new Half-Life game.
I’ve been struggling with my growing unease around all this nostalgia baiting. All of these franchises, all of these properties, from Star Wars to Stranger Things, shoving experiences in our faces going, “YOU LIKED THESE BEFORE LIKE IT AGAIN COME ON GOD DAMMIT”. This is what turning into a curmudgeon feels like. But some of that is justified.
Nostalgia baiting breeds traditionalism breeds the kind of reactionary politics we see all over the place today. You don’t just want the new live-action beat-for-beat retelling of The Lion King, you want to go back to when you were a small child seeing the animated Lion King for the first time. You yearn for a golden time, a simpler time, ignoring that at no time does this really exist. This kind of poisonous desire to go backwards exists in media, in politics, in life – it’s the lifeblood of the alt-right. The world has gotten too complex, too uncertain, and that can’t fucking happen to the totems of normalcy you hold onto. The desire to go back turns in on itself, becomes a recursive loop. You can’t let the past die. You certainly can’t kill it.
Nostalgia is, itself, a death cult. In your desire to go backward, people who rely on forward progress to live will be snuffed out. This isn’t just about video games anymore, or movies, or popular media in general. It’s not just about votes in an election. It’s about undocumented kids dying in concentration camps and trans women being murdered in cold blood. It’s about journalists being harassed, detained at border crossings and in airports, and killed at home and abroad. It’s about fascist militias taking up residence across the country and around the world, all in the name of going back. The world you want will be lifeless.
It would be easy to mistake this piece as a lamentation, as if the dead world that nostalgia promises is already here. But that’s not the case. 2020 has a chance, as do all new years, to be incredibly bright. We can win against the forces of stagnation, against the incessant demand to submit to nostalgia. Start small. Challenge yourself to try a new food you’ve never tried. Read a book by an author you haven’t heard of. Go see a movie that isn’t getting billions of dollars at the box office. Step out of your cultural comfort zone. And then work your way up. Challenge the casual everyday racism, or homophobia, or transphobia around you (and within you). Organize your workplace against unfair labor practices. Fight for justice in your city. And make your efforts inclusive of everyone – especially those who may not have the time, energy or literal ability to lead those efforts themselves.
Ultimately, the future is in our hands. We can’t go back, we can’t escape, so let’s embrace it, let’s move forward together, let’s fight together, let’s support each other and create a real world we want to live in.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. If you want to support No Escape with dollars I guess, check out our Patreon!