Eddington Explained | The SolidGoldMagikarp Of It All

Eddington has so much going on that it’s easy to feel lost. Thankfully, our First Rule of Film Analysis holds true: if you compare the beginning to the end, narrative and thematic intention becomes clear. 

Eddington Explained

SolidGoldMagikarp And The Homeless Man

What’s the first thing we see? A sign for the SolidGoldMagikarp facility on the outskirts of town and the homeless man wandering nearby. 

What’s the last thing we see? The newly constructed SolidGoldMagikarp facility on the hill outside of town, the town itself in the distance.

You may think that’s a little strange since so much of the movie had nothing to do with the facility. But this is how Aster signals to viewers that we need to reorient our perspective on the film. Instead of focusing on the characters, we should put more emphasis on the facility. 

What Is SolidGoldMagikarp? Why Does It Matter?

So let’s start with the name. SolidGoldMagikarp is a real thing. It has to do with large language models. Your ChatGPTs, your Claudes, your Geminis. They store information as tokens, then “analyze the semantic relationships between tokens, such as how commonly they’re used together or whether they’re used in similar contexts.” One model trained only on medical research may never associate the token for “teenage” with the token for “ninja”. But another model trained on pop culture would know there’s a relationship between “teenage” and “ninja” through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

SolidGoldMagikarp is what’s considered an anomalous token, or essentially a glitch in recall. One famous example was ChatGPT’s inability to tell you the number of “r”s in the word “strawberry”. It would count the first “r” as unique then blend the second and third into a single token. People who are really into LLMs hunt for these hallucinations or broken behaviors that occur due to errors in token interactions. 

That’s what SolidGoldMagikarp was.

The term “SolidGoldMagikarp” refers to an anomalous token identified in language models like GPT-2 and GPT-3, which, when encountered, leads to unexpected or erratic outputs. This phenomenon was first detailed in a LessWrong article by Jessica Rumbelow and Matthew Watkins, where they explored how certain tokens, including “SolidGoldMagikarp,” cause models to behave unpredictably.

Subsequent research delved deeper into this issue. In “SolidGoldMagikarp II: Technical Details and More Recent Findings,” the authors investigated the embedding spaces of GPT-2 and GPT-J models. They discovered that tokens like “SolidGoldMagikarp” are often located near the centroid of the token embedding space, which may contribute to their anomalous behavior. 

Further analysis revealed that these tokens are “unspeakable,” meaning the models struggle to generate them as outputs, even when prompted. This difficulty arises because such tokens are interior points in the token embedding cloud, making them less accessible during the generation process. 

The identification of tokens like “SolidGoldMagikarp” has significant implications for understanding and improving language models. It highlights the need for thorough examination of token embedding spaces and the importance of addressing vulnerabilities that could lead to unpredictable model behaviors.

The Breakdown Of Shared Reality

How does this relate to Eddington? I’ll tell you what my gut says. I believe Aster’s trying to capture how the COVID-19 pandemic introduced an anomaly into the system, and the result was (and is) a bunch of erratic output from people. And even though the pandemic is over, the anomaly remains part of society. That’s why the opening features both the facility and the homeless man, rambling incoherently, who becomes the embodiment of COVID in the community. 

Stepping back for a second, we can say, in a broader sense, that SolidGoldMagikarp represents a breakdown in communication. Think of each person as an LLM housing trillions of tokens that translate to everything they’ve learned and experienced in their lives. Give each of them the same input, and each produces a different output. Like, if you say a word and ask them to say the first thing that comes to mind.

• You say: Major
• A Sports Fan: Baseball
• A Veteran: Colonel
• A Musician: Minor
• A David Bowie Fan: Tom

Despite different inputs, there are some things everyone can agree on. 

• You ask: What color is the sky?
• Sports Fan: Blue
• Veteran: Blue
• Musician: Blue
• David Bowie Fan: Cerulean

Prior to COVID, the people of Eddington had somewhat stable lives (doesn’t mean they were happy with their lives, but things were at least stable). They could all agree that the sky was blue (to use a simple metaphor). But with the onset of the pandemic, everything shifted. And suddenly people could no longer agree on basic, fundamental things. To some, wearing a mask was a no-brainer—if it truly cut down on the spread, then why not wear it? To others, it was an attack on personal freedom. 

An Example Of How Aster Shows This Breakdown In Reality

Think about the scene when the homeless man, Lodge, tries to break into Ted’s bar. The superficial context is that Ted and Cross don’t like each other, so that’s why Cross initially doesn’t do anything about Lodge. But, really, the scene is a tool to show us two people who won’t agree on what’s happening.

• Cross: What’s the problem? He’s outside.
• Ted: I had to lock the door to keep him outside. It’s been a whole hour like this. 
• C: I can’t understand you [referring to Ted wearing a mask].
• T: Yes, you can. He’s disturbing the peace. Again. He’s blocking the entrance.
• C: Whose entrance? What are you even doing in there? It’s takeaway drinks only. 
• T: It’s town council members. That’s essential business. 
• C: Well, you can’t just call essential business whatever you want. 
• T: It’s a city council meeting wherever the city council congregates. It’s the mayor’s office if I’m inside.
• C: Good. Then you’re open. And you have a paying customer [referring to the Lodge].
• T: Customer?! He’s aggressive. He’s dangerous. He needs to be locked up.
• C: Where are we supposed to send him? He’s in your streets. 
• T: No, they’re yours, sheriff. They’re your streets to keep safe. And where is your mask? Where is your—[the Lodge  breaks through the door and into the bar]. 

I want you to pay attention to the flow of the conversation because this is a cool technique. Less-skilled writers will shove intangible, philosophical concepts into dialogue and hope people not only follow along but care about arguments. Skilled writers know that you have to ground those intangible ideas in tangible scenes and actions. So how’s that apply here?

The homeless man is tangible. The disagreement about what to do with him is immediate and not something people have to conceptualize. But then the conversation shifts to less obvious things. First, the concept of a council meeting being wherever the council congregates. Then we arrive at the most philosophical part of the dialogue: who is responsible for the streets. The idea barely gets time to breathe, or develop, or for audiences to engage with it, before Lodge bursts into the bar and the focus returns to immediate on-screen action.

The subtext to all of this is Cross disagrees with Ted about pandemic procedures. The mask mandate. The lockdown. Etc. The less-skilled writer would dive straight into the argument and exposition. Aster buries it, only letting the core of the conflict surface at the very end, then veers away before it can turn into a larger philosophical argument that would slow the pace of the story and lose audience interest. 

This is how “showing” vs “telling” actually works. Lodge  is a way to represent the divide over COVID. And you have the briefest bit of contextualizing dialogue that helps us understand the subtext. Rather than having mostly literal dialogue and little representation.

Technique Discussion: Slant Dialogue

Some of you may think I’m reaching here, but this is how layered, nuanced writing works. It’s not the kind of writing you’d find in a Jurassic World movie. It’s not even the kind of writing you’d find in a Nolan movie. But it’s what you expect from a film that’s truly literary. In novel-writing, this kind of escalating slant dialogue happens all the time. 

A good novelist doesn’t have a character march into the room and say, “You never do the dishes and it infuriates me! I want a divorce!” They have one character talk about taking a trip to Japan and they can’t really agree on where to go and then Character A goes to get a glass of water only to see the cupboard is empty and the dishwasher is full but not clean. Then they say, “Maybe we should take some time and decide what we really want.” Character B thinks it’s about Japan, but we know it’s actually about the relationship. And the disagreement about Japan embodies the difference in their overall perspectives on life. 

That example was all plot-based. A great novelist marries plot and theme. So Character A considering ending the marriage to Character B would represent some idea. Like in Past Lives, Celine Song grounds Nora’s identity crisis, between her Korean heritage and American life, in the form of Nora’s childhood sweetheart, Hae Sung, and her American husband, Arthur Zaturansky. Everything that happens externally becomes a metaphor for everything going on in Nora’s own head, heart, and soul. 

Technique Discussion: Microcosm Foreshadowing

Another technique worth mentioning. Many films have a scene at the beginning of the story that serves as a  simplified version of what comes later. Look at the opening of Jurassic Park. Park technicians attempt to transfer a velociraptor from a travel container to an enclosure. They have a process in place, but the raptor disrupts the process, causing a man to fall where the raptor can reach him. It snags him and kills him. That’s a microcosm of what happens at the park. They have a whole plan about how things will safely operate. Then something causes the plan to fail and the dinosaurs eat people. 

In Eddington, that initial argument about Lodge is a formula that repeats over and over again. Multiple characters experience X, but Character 1 believes Y, Character 2 believes, Z, and Character 3 believes ABC. Rewatch the movie with this in mind and you’ll see how often it crops up. Some examples: Louise’s father sexually assaulted her but the mom won’t believe it and blames Ted. Louise believes everything Vernon Park says, while Cross thinks Vernon’s full of shit. The cops have a different perception of the protests than the protestors. Brian passionately tells his parents about the problems created by whiteness, and instead of understanding where he’s coming from, his dad angrily replies, “What the fuck are you talking about? You’re white!” 

Grifters Win, The Honest Lose

What ultimately happens when these characters no longer agree on reality is frustration boils over into rage, into violence, into chaos. We see examples on this at various levels. 

• Individual: Brian has one identity crisis after another
• Family: Cross loses his wife, Louise loses her daughter
• Community: Eddington and Pueblo citizens die
• Government: Shadowy figures manage to install a vegetated Cross as a trophy mayor while they push through anything they want

Now extrapolate the events in Eddington to the rest of the country. Someone you know probably had an identity crisis and is a completely different person after the pandemic than they were before. Maybe they’re more radicalized politically, maybe they’re more spiritual, maybe they became Rogan-pilled, etc. You probably know a family that fell apart. Your community probably had some batshit thing happen that wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t so insane. And we all know how broken the United States government is at this point. The fact that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene holds office would send the founding fathers rolling in their graves. 

In the “one year later” epilogue, did you notice how all the grifters succeeded and all the honest people are  dead or down on their luck? Brian’s lied his way into conservative influencer fame. Dawn’s conspiracy ravings earned her a lucrative political career, the irony being she’s now helping the exact kind of shady shit she had been so paranoid about before. The governor’s guy opened SolidGoldMagikarp because he backed Cross and Dawn, an act that reveals that political ideology was less important than someone who would go along with business opportunities. And Vernon is on TV now, a sign that his popularity has grown (and probably his cult, as well). 

All of that is Aster capturing how in the aftermath of the pandemic, society is no longer grounded and far more frightening, where logic is gone and madness abounds. What place is there for people who aren’t extremists? Who are thoughtful, hard-working, etc? The Pueblo officer, Butterfly Jimenez, the one who had started to figure out Cross’s crime—he’s dead. Michael is scarred and probably haunted. All the potentially heroic figures lose prominence. That’s not poor writing by Aster. That’s intentional.

Technique Discussion: Thematic Concepts And Variable Swapping

Eddington reminds me of No Country For Old Men. The end of that film always puzzles people, but the point of the movie is right there in the title. The film starts with Tommy Lee Jones talking about his younger days as a sheriff. It ends with him retired, dreaming about death. For most of the middle portion, Jones’s character has nothing to do with the main action between Llewlyn and Anton. Jones’s character is always a step behind. The younger men, the more capable men, are always a step ahead. It’s one of my favorite examples of form and function. Jones’s inability to help Llewelyn, to stop Anton, to even capture Anton—all of that proves the title. Old men don’t really have a serious place in the events of the world. 

You could tell that story in any number of ways and the point is always the same. Jones could be a doctor and the whole movie could be him trying to perform a surgery using new equipment and he struggles and ultimately loses the patient. Then he retires. Or maybe he owns a successful small business but refuses to market on social media the way a new competitor does. The new competitor puts Jones out of business. 

Eddington is similar in that Aster could have taken any number of routes to capture the zeitgeist of the pandemic and the aftermath we’re still living in. He could have had 12 Angry Doctors in a room and they start off really civil but then become more and more unhinged as the weeks turn to months. Communication breaks down. One doctor is more like Ted and pro-vaccine. The other is more like Cross and anti-vax. Medical misinformation wins. Or maybe he focused on podcasters. And two people had a popular political show only for the hosts to take different sides. This version of Cross leaves the show and starts his own and the two battle it out over podcast releases and social media, until Cross SWATS Ted and Ted’s shot on stream. Cross ends up playing second-fiddle to his new co-host who is super extreme. And the show, full of misinformation, flies up the charts. 

Living In A SolidGoldMagikarp World

The point of all of that is to say by the end of Eddington something has tipped. Things aren’t how they were. Which is why I think Aster weirds us out with the final sleeping arrangements. We see Dawn and the nurse put Cross into bed. That makes sense. That’s normal. Except Dawn then gets into bed next to Cross. An in-law sleeping in the same bed as their kid-in-law is bizarre. Just seeing it made me uncomfortable. Then the male nurse gets into bed next to Dawn and they start making out!!! It’s so Beau is Afraid. Nightmarish. Vibe-ruining. Unsettling. Aster makes cinema that disturbs in subtle ways and this is one of his best efforts.

The shot of Cross in bed next to Dawn calls back to earlier shots of Cross in bed next to Louise. The latter is normal, familiar. The former isn’t. That’s the glitchy vibe I’m talking about. It’s like Aster’s trying to convey how weird everything is now, post-COVID. The order of things that we had known is done. And this new world is strange as hell. Logic, intelligence, common sense—these things don’t matter as much as they used to. The output no longer follows the input. That’s SolidGoldMagikarp. 

People With Power Take Advantage Of Those Who Trust Them

There’s a bit more, thematically. The whole push for the facility is from “the governor” and we can assume unnamed, unknown business interests. So while you have the very local stuff going on, there are these background machinations from influential people who want the SGM facility approved, built, and online. There’s no ideology there. When it made sense to back Ted, they backed Ted. When it made sense to back Cross, they backed Cross. It’s the same with Brian. When what he wanted aligned with the left, he went left. When it aligned with the right, he went right. 

The governor’s guy switching from Ted to Cross is a purposeful echo to Brian’s switch from left-wing pandering to right-wing pandering. It’s the same dynamic but on two very different scales. In both cases, people are so busy supporting their tribe and attacking the “other” that they never seem to realize how manipulated they are. 

So the final shot of the SolidGoldMagikarp facility on the hill overlooking the town embodies all of that. It’s the anomaly that’s now part of society, as well as representing the power brokers behind the scene who manipulate the larger population. Just think of the power dynamic between Vernon Peak and Louise. He’s started what’s essentially a cult that preys upon survivors of sexual assault and trafficking by fabricating, dramatizing, and performing. It’s the same power dynamic Cross has over his officers. Throughout Eddington, people in power take advantage of those who look up to them. 

Now that I mentioned it, people taking advantage is one of the biggest motifs in the film. Brian confides in Eric about Sarah, which gives Eric a bit of power of Brian. What’s Eric do? Make out with Sarah then send Brian a photo of it. Dawn’s sleeping with Cross’s nurse, even though she’s the employer. Cross abuses his position as Sheriff to boost his campaign. Ted plays nice but is working with that shady guy to sell out Eddington. Vernon steals Louise away under the guise of helping her. Don’t get me started on the Pueblo. What the United States did to Native Americans was and is horrendous. Their communities continue to face hardship to this very day due to policies both past and present.

Alright, Now Let Me Go Read What Aster Said

In an interview with MovieWeb, Aster said: I think social media is a tool and I think it’s been harnessed. And I think in a lot of ways we’ve been distracted by these ideological battles while big power operates above us and is changing us, changing the world.

That makes me think of the first poster for Eddington, the buffalo following each other off the edge of a cliff. But it also connects back to what I was saying in the previous section. So that’s good to hear. 

In an interview with Vulture: Here were all of these people who were unreachable to each other. They did not have a way of talking to each other, and that’s a catastrophe.

That’s another way to view the SolidGoldMagikarp reference. The token anomalies occur when the internal system doesn’t communicate properly, resulting in what amounts to a random or broken response. It makes sense given that LLMs have tens of thousands of tokens combining to form the information it returns. If Aster views the characters as having different worldviews, so different training, then they won’t draw from the same information pools when coming up with responses. Hm. 

Ignoring the specifics for a moment, the quote lets us know that communication is a major theme. 

Talking to Third Coast Review, Aster said, about the Native American cop: And the movie, in a very conscious way, keeps pushing him out, in the same way America does. 

In the same interview he included:  I think that’s the only way off of this path, to somehow re-engage with each other, and there’s a lot invested in keeping these divisions right where they are.

When he says “there’s a lot invested in keeping these divisions right where they are” that’s ominous and without context in the interview. But we know from the MovieWeb conversation that he views big power as fueling some of these divisions so they can push through things they want to push through that will benefit their bottom-line. His version of that in the film is the SolidGoldMagikarp facility. 

I guess that opens up the conversation around the “Antifa” attack. The fact they flew in on a private jet could mean they were sponsored. And probably not even Antifa but just hired guns posing as Antifa. Their real goal was to eliminate Cross so the governor could install someone who would go along with the facility. That’s the theory I’m putting out there. 

What About Social Media? Is Aster Criticizing That?

Social media is a form of communication. But, yes, Aster does point some fingers at the internet and social media, as both Dawn and Louise are radicalized through those means. And Brian gains his following through Instagram, initially, then, eventually other platforms. So Aster does touch on the role media plays in shattering our sense of shared reality. Like Cross and Louise. When they had a shared reality—Eddington—their relationship was probably relatively good. But once Louise went digital and could interact with people outside of Eddington, her relationship with Cross couldn’t survive. He only saw Eddington, while she wanted to focus on victims and healing and helping. That became her new reality. 

Aster said he spent a lot of time on Twitter prior to this movie and that informed a lot of the division in perspective people have. Spend any time on that godforsaken app (which I do every day) and you can see just how tribal and divisive that place is. Pretty much every topic or celebrity or thing has people who are passionately for something and others who are passionately against something. Pick a topic and the division is present: music, sports, politics, TV shows, movies, literature, pop culture, breaking news, etc. There’s always someone who is overly angry and always someone who is overly defensive. It’s all polemic, extreme. 

Seriously, I opened Twitter to find an example and one of the first posts I see is about famous streamer Pewdiepie. Quote, “Said one bad word 8 years ago and is still being dragged through the mud for it, people need to learn to let go.” The first response? “‘one bad word’ he is the sole reason India receives so much hate on the internet today. That’s why hes still deservedly criticized”

Another person said, “He said more than one bad word” and linked to a photo collage of Piewdiepie saying questionable things. OP’s response? “Half of these are literally jokes. They were not lying when they said ppl are getting too woke. Even at the same time this came out nobody had a issue with it”

It’s this, constantly. Attack, defend. Attack, defend. And that’s because of the lack of a shared reality and shared standards. For some people, saying something racist as a joke doesn’t count. For others, saying something racist is saying something racist. The stakes are low when it’s two people arguing about a streamer. The stakes increase mightily when it’s an entire country arguing about the President of the United States.

Cast

• Joe Cross – Joaquin Phoenix
• Louise Cross – Emma Stone
• Dawn – Deirdre O’Connell
• Ted Garcia – Pedro Pascal
• Vernon Jefferson Peak – Austin Butler
• Guy – Luke Grimes
• Michael – Michael Ward
• Sarah – Amélie Hoeferle
• Brian – Cameron Mann
• Erica Garcia – Matt Gomez Hidaka
• Lodge (the homeless man) – Clifton Collins Jr.
• Officer Butterfly Jimenez – William Belleau
• Written by – Ari Aster
• Directed by – Ari Aster