Cube Critics discuss ‘Echo’ and ‘Wild At Heart’

Cube Critics Jacob Aloi and Max Sparber discuss “Echo” and “Wild At Heart.” Plus a Cube Critics extra: An interview with the Chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Gary Batton.

The following is a transcription of the audio heard using the player above, lightly edited for clarity.

MPR News Arts Editor Max Sparber: Howdy Howdy.

MPR News Arts Reporter Jacob Aloi: I don’t know what we should do for our little — Oh! Oscars! We should talk about the Oscars. So you know, the Oscars nominations just came out.

Sparber: I do know that they came out.

Aloi: And we’re not going to talk about any of that.

Sparber: Nope.

Aloi: So Max Sparber. This week, I watched “Echo.” It is the new Marvel mini-series that’s on Disney Plus about Maya Lopez, who’s a Choctaw superhero. And she’s working to take down criminal kingpin Wilson Fisk while trying to repair some familial ties that have been fractured. And she’s also dealing with the echoes of her past her ancestors that are giving her her supernatural powers.

Sparber: Ah yes, “echo.”

Aloi: They echo, right? And this show is so fun.

“Echo” has finally beat Marvel’s greatest supervillain: pacing. This felt like it actually worked in the timeframe that it was given in the medium that it was delivered in. And there are so many little things that are just so integral to the story, that are so authentic.

So, sign language is a huge part of this. The main character, Maya Lopez, is deaf and played by a deaf actress — Alaqua Cox is the name of the actress. And you see sign language used throughout the entire show. And based on the different levels of how close of a family member she has — how close they’re related — is how much they know sign language. That was kind of a cool thing to watch.

And also, there’s a lot of authenticity paid to portraying the Choctaw culture. Disney actually partnered with the Choctaw Nation and brought on consultants before filming even began to make sure that everything was presented correctly.

And so, anyway, it’s all around great representation, a great show, check it out “Echo” on Disney Plus.

Sparber: So I am not going to recommend a new movie. I’m going to recommend a revival because this one is very hard to see nowadays and it’s not on streaming. It hasn’t been released as a DVD for years, perhaps a decade.

This is a film from 1990 by David Lynch called “Wild at Heart.” It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but that was controversial — it was actually booed when it won. Because it’s a weird and kind of edgy, strange, craggy, mean film, but I love it.

The story tells of Nicolas Cage. He plays a character named Sailor Ripley. He’s dressed in a snakeskin jacket and does an Elvis impersonation all the way through the movie, which Nicolas Cage was born to do.

His girlfriend is played by Laura Dern, one of Lynch’s greatest collaborators. She’s hilarious and she’s a delight. And Ripley breaks his parole goes on the road with her and so the whole film is just a bizarre American road trip.

Lynch is obsessed with “The Wizard of Oz.” And this is his most “Wizard of Oz” film, including Laura Dern’s own mother, Diane Ladd, who basically plays the Wicked Witch — she was nominated for an Oscar for the role.

And it has Willem Defoe, in the sleaziest role in film history, a character named Bobby Peru who ropes Cage into a crime scheme that goes disastrously wrong.

It’s hard to see legally, so go see it. It will be playing at the Parkway Theater next Tuesday.

Aloi: Hey, this is Jacob Aloi, I’m one of the Cube Critics. And because I watched “Echo” for this week of Cube Critics, I decided that I wanted to know a little bit more about the process that the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma went through when collaborating with Disney and Marvel to make the series. So I had the chance to sit down and interview the Chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Gary Batton.

Gary Batton: It was interesting. It started about a year ago, [“Echo” director] Sydney Freeland and some other people came down to our powwow, which happened — at that time it was in November.

And we started talking about just the history and how, you know, we wanted to see if we could come up with — I always felt like there’s a great story, whether it’s Choctaws or any Native Americans, how our Choctaw warrior, our resiliency, our strength and how we’ve come through and persevered and where we are today and how the tribes are doing so much better.

And so it led from that discussion to Sydney and them talking to us later on in regards to Marvel and Disney coming through. And what to do with this story of “Echo,” and the continuance of that story, I guess, if you will. And just turn it more into the Native American thing, which we were so excited to hear about. And so that’s how it began.

Aloi: Do you see this series with Marvel as a part of that effort, like you said, to be able to keep parts of these stories and these keep these important cultural things alive?

Batton: Yes. And that’s probably the reason why I embraced it so much, because you know, whether it’s “Dances with Wolves,” whether it’s “Echo,” you hate to say it, but the rest of the world, that’s their perception of us as Native Americans.

That’s with it being Marvel — Of course, it’s just me. I love Marvel and the series and so on. But I wish we could have told a little bit more realistic story. You know, I’m not thinking of a documentary.

And don’t get me wrong, do we all experience trials, tribulations, rough times, you know, not knowing where we come from. You know, me, because I think about the boarding schools, and I think about Maya having to leave her family to go up, and then the Kingpin — you know, are these good people? Are they bad people? We deal with those things, as Native Americans, all the time — do we trust them?

Trust is a big issue for us. So this is just one mechanism for highlighting and showing that. But, yeah, there’s numerous other ways that we need to be doing the preservation of our culture and history as well.

Aloi: You know, I think about shows like “Reservation Dogs,” “Rutherford Falls,” and now, of course, “Echo” joining that pantheon of this kind of renaissance of Native storytelling in the media right now.

And I’m curious, from your perspective, having done this collaboration with Disney, with Marvel, to develop “Echo,” and to have it now be out there in the world for people who don’t come from a Choctaw background or from a Native American background — to engage with the story? Is this kind of is this the kind of process you would hope that all the stories would go through?

Batton: Yes, very much so. I think it’s really just the story. The process was great, though. So to me if there was a more realistic story, or if there was another story of us coming across the Trail of Tears — but the process of engaging from our artisans to our cultural people to our original speakers to all of that. It’s the right process. It’s just a matter of which story going to tell through that process.