With the new year comes Destiny 2's weekly reset, and while the game's holiday event, The Dawning, might have ended, there are still lots of ways to chase Powerful gear to get up to the new Power level cap of 650. Most notable is the rotating Ascendant Challenge, which takes you into the strange recesses of the Dreaming City. This is the end of the six-week cycle of challenges, and it's one of the most spookiest and most involved. Here's where to find the Taken portal and what to do once you're inside.
As always, the first step is to pick up the Ascendant Challenge from Petra--this is what nets you a piece of Powerful gear for completing it. Once that's done, make sure you have a Tincture of Queensfoil. With that in hand, you'll enter the Lost Sector in Rheasilvia, the Chamber of Starlight. You'll need to make your way through the entire thing, as the portal is located just behind the chest that unlocks after killing the boss. While optional, you might as well complete the Lost Sector to make things easier on yourself. With that out of the way, use the Tincture to gain the Ascendance buff, which allows you to see the Taken portal. The exact location can be seen in the video above and map below.
Jump through the portal to head to Cimmerian Garrison, located in the Ascendant Plane. Here, you'll be faced with what amounts to a gauntlet--you'll need to make your way through and kill an enemy at the end. Once you go inside, you'll be chased by three knights. As you progress, you'll have to deal with various enemies, including hobgoblins, shriekers, and thrall with yellow health bars. Take them out as you go, and you'll reach a point where you have to platform across some rocks (because it wouldn't be an Ascendant Challenge without some first-person platforming). Along the way, be mindful of the Taken corruption that will periodically explode with a blast of energy, which can send you falling you to your death if you aren't careful.
Once you're done platforming, you'll have to kill a knight to finish things out, but beware the shrieker that spawns nearby. With the knight dead, open the chest to complete the Ascendant Challenge. There may not be any special rewards inside there, but you'll get a piece of Powerful gear for turning in the associated bounty.
This week's reset marks the end of the Iron Banner as well as The Dawning, and you'll have to wait a bit if you're itching for something new to do. There's one last Forge activity to unlock in Destiny 2's latest expansion, The Black Armory, but it won't become available for to find and unlock until the weekly reset on January 8. In the meantime, though, there's the Izanami Forge, which is the toughest and most involved to unlock yet--check out our guide for help.
Back in 2016, when Scarlett Johansson was cast as the lead in the live-action Ghost in the Shell remake, critics balked, lamenting that such a prominent blockbuster role, which should have been performed by an Asian woman, was instead given to a white woman. It was part of a larger Hollywood trend, of Asian roles being performed by white leads, that began all the way back in the silent film era, when Mary Pickford performed as Cho-Cho-San in Madam Butterfly. Beyond that, the practice was common in theater as well.
Defenders and justifiers of this practice make their argument upon "pragmatic" concerns -- a rhetorical trick that dismisses the more complex, difficult-to-solve dynamics at play. For example: "Hollywood would create a film with Asian leads," they reasoned, "if those movies made money." "The films would not even be in production," they claimed, "unless a white lead actor signed on in the first place."
This argument, at its core, absolves the studios, the actors, and filmmakers of blame, and instead, places the onus upon the paying audience. But this is a self-defeating, self-serving proposition. The major Hollywood studios are at least complicit in this "whitewashing" effect; they determine what the public consumes, and they help to establish the norms. It's not worthwhile to play "chicken or the egg" over how things got this way; it is worthwhile to break a cycle that was created.
And 2018 will be remembered as the year that the lie--about minority leads and their lack of bankability--got exposed. The hit, minority-helmed films of 2018 were not "niche" interest, making a killing on the awards circuit but nowhere else; they were multi-million dollar blockbusters. Black Panther, released in February 2018, grossed over $1.3 billion at the global box office. It is the highest grossing solo superhero movie, to date, and it is only behind the Avengers films for superhero films overall. That's more than PR talking; that's money talking.
And in what has since become known as "Asian August," Asian-led films led the global box office in August 2018. Crazy Rich Asians, starring Constance Wu, raked in close to $240 million, while low budget indie film Searching, starring John Cho did close to $74 million against a $1 million budget. These actors are not A-List, instant-hit movie stars like Tom Cruise or George Clooney. But backed by a solid script and solid camera work, they shone on their own merits.
Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, and Searching were all written and directed by people of color; even writer/director Spike Lee, who is normally minimized as a niche filmmaker, had his biggest hit in 12 years with BlacKKKlansman. All of this raises another key point; it is not enough to cast minorities haphazardly, in a bid for token diversity and the appearance of progressivism. Minorities need to be in control of their own stories and narratives. And audiences need to demand it, rather than accept co-option as a necessary reality to doing business.
There is still work to be done. Minority filmmakers, writers, and actors are empowered and have their foot in the door, but that is all it is; it takes a sustained push over years, not a single month, to move the needle. And one day, these filmmakers should not bear the burden of being THE film that carries an entire group's hopes and expectations. Writer/director Jordan Peele had to clarify that his new horror/thriller film Us, (due out on March 15, 2019) does not make race its main issue. One looks forward to a time, hopefully sooner rather than later, that this is no longer a necessary point of clarification.
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