Thursday, 14 December 2017

Runaways: Kingdom - Dec 14

The adventures of Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ continue. We learn more of Wilders’ past, (before Alex was born, presumably), and we see the ramifications this has had on the present. Alex, in particular, met Darius and his posse and saw how the ‘other half’ lives – it is certain that there was some socio-racial commentary in it as well. …Yes, ‘Runaways’ are trying to be modern and edgy and introduce viable social (and etc.) commentary of the day, which is fine, and it also doesn’t ruin the plot of the series.

…The children have come together as a team, however problematically, and they were able to rescue Alex from Darius. Spoiler alert though – Alex might still be evil as he was in the comics, but the viewers will have to see the future episodes to learn whether this is real or not.

…The show introduced Jonah, who might be Karoline’s true father – or her mother has slept with two men, which isn’t a ‘nice’ thing, even in modern times, so hopefully ‘Runaways’ will keep sexual deviations here to a minimum. Jonah himself might be the counterpart to the giant aliens from the comic series, (the Gibborim), and if not, he is still a stereotypical white man villain – ‘Runaways’ isn’t against using racial stereotypes either, it seems.

Of course, Old Lace was there too, however briefly, and it certainly counteracted whatever flaws ‘Kingdom’ might have had as a TV episode. By fictional dinosaur standards, Old Lace is just as realistic as anything that we have seen in the ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ for example. The Baryonyx was just disappointing, as dino-fans admit unanimously; the Carnotaurus was taken straight out of Disney’s ‘Dinosaur’, (a fictional movie with talking dinosaurs who have to find the promised land to escape extinction – the ‘Land Before Time’ franchise should’ve sued), and then there was some pale theropod dinosaur, which might’ve been a Metriocanthosaurus, or an Allosaurus, or even an Indoraptor, which still hasn’t made a proper appearance.

…Again, this can be considered a reference to the initial ‘Jurassic Park’ novel by Michael Crichton. Yes, it is still fiction, but Crichton went the rhetorical extra mile to flesh it all out in RL facts; he even named Rexy, well, Rexy…who wasn’t helpful at all in the novel, but behaved rather as the JP3 Spinosaurus did, and was the second worst dinosaur in the entire park. (The raptors were the first, dilophosaurs and compys tied for the third) – but the novel itself was very different from the movie, as it is known by now. Also, the point is that the franchise continues to plunder the novels, (especially the first one), even now, years after it got published – so from this sort of a viewpoint, Old Lace, and the rest of TV-/Web-series ‘Runaways’ franchise are actually very good. They are both original and fairly true to the canon comic plot line, (though the family life of Karoline and her family? Yeesh!)

Anything else? Chase and Victor’s plotline has revealed that Victor has cancer and he has an impromptu time machine that works as often as it does not. Also, last week, on ‘Fifteen’, we learned that so far the titular ‘Runaways’ are not so much the heroic half dozen of children, but the victims of their parents’, (and Jonah’s?) plot – ‘project Runaways’: sacrificed children/young adults/teenagers that will never be missed. Again, some RL social commentary here, but it still works…


…And this is it for the moment; see you next time! 

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