This week is proving to be much more exciting than the past
ones; a new ‘DM’ movie is coming to the cinema at last; this is primarily a
children’s franchise, so I cannot say that I am the biggest fan of these films.
Then there is the new TV promo for the new ‘Marvel’s
InHumans’ series. So far, the viewers are not being impressed, let alone
overwhelmed; many think that Lockjaw the dog is the best character of them all,
and he is CGI’ed. In addition, he is a dog, not a human, so does make him an
InDog instead? Never mind; my point is that I
am more excited about the upcoming ‘Jumanji’ movie, and I am not its’
biggest fan either. I remember the original film very enough, it was good, and
it was also less controversial than the upcoming rehash is, because it was more
child-friendly and less sexualized and edgy. (Does ‘Jumanji’ even need that?)
…As for the upcoming new movie of the ‘Jurassic
Park’/’Jurassic World’ franchise… so far we got some single shots and a poster
– not too much to go on. The original JW movie was not bad, just… somewhat
reminiscent of the SWII movie – not bad, but still nowhere as good as the
original SW trilogy was.
This probably brings up back to the TV land, as ‘Killjoys’
S3 is coming to TV tomorrow, (June 30, 2017), or so. ‘Killjoys’ are a very
enjoyable TV show, and I am honestly excited about seeing the S3 in the future,
(hopefully. Things will be chaotic at our house in the near future, so I do not
know how well I will be able to keep up with the series. In the meantime,
though, I have been re-watching AFO – the ‘Alligator vs. Black Bear’ episode,
so let us talk a bit about it instead.
Firstly, a dash of classification. The proper name of the
episode is the ‘American Alligator
vs. American Black Bear’, because
overseas, in Asia, lives a Chinese
Alligator, (possibly the closest relative to the American species), as well as
an Asiatic Black Bear, (whose
relationship with the American Black Bear is more vague).
The Chinese Alligator lives only in China, and may be
extinct in the wild. It looks like its American cousin, but it is smaller, and
has an armored belly, (and the American Alligator does not). The Asiatic Black
Bear looks basically just like any other bear, (including the Giant Panda), but
it is usually black, save for a large white patch on its’ chest, hence it is
also called a moon bear – as opposed
to the sun bear, which lives in
southeast Asia, (and the Asiatic Black Bear lives – these days – in Bangladesh,
China, and Russia, more to the north), is called a Malaysian bear for that
reason, and the patch on its’ chest is yellow instead. The American Black Bear
usually does not have a patch on its chest…but sometimes it does, and it is not
always black; sometimes it is brown or even creamy white. Isn’t taxonomy fun?
But the science of classifying animals (and plants) aside,
one of the reasons why the crew of AFO chose the American Alligator and Black
Bear for this episode is because it is far more likely to happen in the wild,
because the Chinese Alligator is virtually extinct in the wild on one hand, and
on the other it is far too timid to attack something as big and dangerous as a
bear. Come to think of it, so’s the American Alligator. So?
So we come to realism & suspension of disbelief, the
storytelling elements that help people believe a story, whether it is AFO, AoS,
or anything else. AoS, for example, seemed to have outlasted its’ welcome;
certainly the S4 finale was met with very low audience numbers – people just
weren’t excited about the titular characters winning against the last villains
of the season anymore. Not when there is an entire platter of DC shows to
choose from at the same time, for example.
But AoS is fiction, just as the aforementioned ‘Killjoys’,
or ‘Marvel’s InHumans’ are. AFO was based on facts, conversely, and… they had
their own pitfalls. They did their best to run the show only via facts and
data, but they had only a limited amount of it from the start. The format of
AFO was largely dependent on various big carnivorous animals – mammals,
reptiles and fish – and most of them are physically similar to each other. A
bear and a big cat are related to each other only distantly, but physically,
they are built similarly, their skeletons have more superficial similarities to
each other than the bones of a bear and a walrus do, even though the walrus is
closer related to the bear (and the wolf) than a big cat is.
With crocodiles and alligators, of course, the similarities
are more than just superficial – the two are twin twigs of the same branch of
the tree of life: not only they occupy the same econiche, they can coexist –
the Chinese Alligator lives on the same continent as do several species of
crocodiles, and South America is home not only to the various caimans,
(essentially the local versions of the alligators), but to several species of
‘true’ crocodiles as well. These reptiles can get along, and much better than
the big cats of Africa, Asia and the Americas do, in comparison, and – they all
have the same hunting & fighting technique, which was actually shown on AFO
as part of the episodes’ footage. There are
physical differences between crocodiles and alligators, but they are fairly
minor, and from a technical P.O.V. – bare bones and the metal replicas built
from these bones – they are non-existent.
With bears these similarities are not as extreme, but for
the sort of experiments that AFO did with its’ machines, this was enough. Even
in RL, all bears behave similarly, the only exceptions are the polar bear,
(which is completely carnivorous and lives part of its’ life in the water), and
the giant panda, (which is completely herbivorous instead). The brown bear has
its’ differences from the black and the moon bears, but AFO does not focus on
them, (and they are outside its’ data collecting criteria, anyhow).
This probably brings us to the actual face-off. In theory,
just as DW did, AFO used the data that the staff collected via the models to
determine the winner, but in reality, this was not so. In the ‘Jaguar vs. Anaconda’
episode, the jaguar lost. In RL, this would not be so; a jaguar has jaws
powerful enough to bite through skull bones of peccaries and caimans, so, once
it pinned down an anaconda and bit it, it would probably be able to rip the
snake in two, if it got especially lucky. And yet it lost on AFO. Why?
Well, why not? On DW, the staff actually showed the various
numbers of the various weapons, wins and x-factors; AFO did not even do that. DW
actually raised an issue – who was correct, who was more important, the data or
the experts/hosts; AFO did not have that. Moreover, while this ensured that
there was no controversy surrounding their decision…there still was, at least
in the ‘Lion vs. Tiger’ episode, (and so I probably will not be touching it at
all). Instead, the viewers got the option to take the AFO’s decisions regarding
the face-offs at a face value, (pardon the pun), and while some had accepted
it, the others had not – and so the show was not renewed for a second season
for this reason as well. AFO’s approach had its virtues, but it had its’ flaws
too; not even the season’s/series’ finale ‘Sperm Whale vs. Giant Squid’ could
save it…
Well, that is that for this entry; see you all soon!
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