Dynasties - Dec 11

Obligatory disclaimer: sometimes life sucks, but right now? It is more tolerable. Let us move on?

‘The Gifted’ are on a hiatus until January 1, 2019. This is a doubtful move by the TV show in question; they tried this strategy back with their S1, and it wasn’t really successful, in regards to the numbers; right now, S2 is longer – 16 episodes vs. 13, but they already played about 55% of them, 9 out of 16, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how they will arrange the last 7. What is next?

DC’s ‘Elseworlds’ ‘Arrowverse’ special was aired this and last week, and it works. It introduced a new villain – the Monitor – and eventually Super-Girl, the Martian Manhunter, and the rest of their people will need to battle an evil Super-Man. Very exciting! However, there are plenty of people discussing this story arc, no doubt, so let us talk about something else.

…No, it is not the excitement of breeding the various breeds of goldfish, or domestic turkeys, or whatever. I am sure that it is very exciting from the inside, but again, not the topic I want to discuss now – rather, it is yet another TV show that went down lately: BBC’s ‘Dynasties’.

No, it is not a yet another GoT rip-off, well, not really. Rather, it was yet another David Attenborough’s special – a five-part series about various animals around the world.

Well, not really – the lion and the wild dog came from the African savanna, and the chimpanzee – the common chimpanzee, not the bonobo – is living right next door to them in the African jungle, so it’s not much of a stretch, (some chimpanzee populations actually venture into the savanna, but unlike the human ancestors they still give its’ predators – lions, wild dogs, leopards, hyenas, etc. – a wide berth. They have not mastered fire either, though they still have tools. Technically, that is not a big issue: humanity had mastered fire only at the Homo Erectus/Homo Ergaster level, so chimpanzees have some time yet… unless humanity drives them to extinction first.

Now, this brings us back to the ‘Dynasties’ proper – they, this TV series, was about conservation of wildlife, especially the last episode, about the Bengal tigers. …Yes, according to some data, there are only two species/subspecies of tigers – the island tiger, (the Sumatran tiger), and the mainland tiger, a single species/subspecies, from India to Siberia, but I am not so sure that that P.O.V. is correct; and I reckon that this last, tiger episode was the weakest among the entire series. That is not surprising, many of American, (Western, actually), books, TV series, etc., the conclusion is often the weakest chain in the link. However…

There are rumors that clouds are gathering over Sir David himself. If that is so, then it sucks, because Sir David had been one of the best people that had ever come from the British soil, and his TV series, specials, nature documentaries, etc., were some of the best that had ever come to TV and the Internet. However, it is always possible that times are moving on, and Sir David is being left behind. This sucks, a whole lot, but real life sucks as a rule. Period.

Back with the ‘Dynasties’ proper, one of the weaker aspects it was the composition. As it was said before, the lion and the wild dog are almost two sides of the same coin, the chimpanzee is their neighbour, (a stretch, but not so much), but then we have the tiger, and the penguin.

The emperor penguin is the odd beast out. It is an Antarctic fowl among tropical beasts, but hey – everyone loves penguins, and the ‘Dynasties’ TV crew did their best to sell those flightless birds – and they did. However, the tigers? They were the weakest, and the most intense. ‘Dynasties’ did their best at selling the tigers at their most vulnerable, that it worked…and it was too much. Somehow, if the penguin episode felt like the odd one out, then the tiger episode felt like the weakest. Sorry, but them’s the breaks.

…Yes, the public perception mattered – the tiger and the lion have two very different reputations in the eyes of the public, especially Western public. Why this is, so is a difficult question, so we will not talk about right now. Moreover, it is not the point – the point is that ‘Dynasties’ have fumbled the ball at their last tiger episode, and that’s that. The series is over, (there is no signs of a sequel), so we have to live with that, and we can. Whether Sir David, (who may have his own real life problems), can, is another story.

Speaking of the other stories, there is the remark of ‘The Lion King’ looming in the future. Influenced by the remake of the ‘Jungle Book’, TLK is coming on strong, but-

But while TJB was written by Rudyard Kipling, who didn’t care for political correctness (especially by the contemporary standards) and who tried to include some real life wildlife facts in his books, (initially, TJB was a duology), TLK was, or is, ‘Hamlet’.

No, seriously, by now it is openly admitted that TLK was a remake of ‘Hamlet’, which was never big on real life wildlife, but on many other things. If you google it, you can find plenty of essays and discussions on it, in particular whether ‘Hamlet’ was a Catholic or a Protestant play, in regards to the ghost, because Catholic and Protestant branches of Christianity have two different opinions of ghosts in relation to, well, Christianity and the Bible, and that is important, because it leads to the question as to whether or not the Ghost was a genuine ghost, or an evil spirit who sold Hamlet a load of baloney, and that leads to the question as to whether or not Hamlet was honestly righting a wrong, or just killing many people for the sake of revenge. The truth being is that regardless of the veracity of the Ghost’s info, Hamlet overreached himself; if he had killed Claudius in private, while the other man was praying (and failing) in private, then the play would’ve taken a very different turn; instead, in reality, we had Hamlet killed Claudius as he wanted to – in front of many people, with a large proportion of them also dying. Hamlet did not care about Denmark or its’ people – he just wanted revenge for his father, which, for him, was the righting of the wrong. Bully for him, really.

TLK, on the other hand, tried to be more derived, and as a result on one hand, it isn’t realistic from wildlife’s point of view – since the 1990s, plenty of wildlife scientists pointed out that real life lions and hyenas don’t behave as they do in the initial TLK movie, and on the other? There is at least one theory that equates Zazu with Polonius, the crooked counsellor from ‘Hamlet’, suggesting that he had been conspiring with Scar to get rid of Mufasa and Simba from the start. It is an interesting theory, especially since the original Polonius is not so straightforward a character himself, so it will be interesting to see as to how Disney’s remake of the TLK will come out.

Finally, in summer 2019 the second ‘Godzilla’ movie is coming out. Here, he is facing off with King Ghidorah, and as someone said, ‘what is a king against a god’? King Ghidorah is taller than Godzilla is in this incarnation, but a good amount of his size are his wings, and tails, and necks with heads – he’s tall, not big, so Godzilla has a good chance in a straightforward face-off that we were shown in this trailer.

In other news, in one of the original ‘Godzilla’ movies, the titular character teams up with Rodan and Mothra to defeat King Ghidorah, and this trailer shows precisely those other two kaiju – or titans, in this particular incarnation. Maybe they will work together in the summer 2019 movie too, we will have to see. Of course, the big question is where’s King Kong in all of this, for so far, we have seen no sign of him, but again, we will may learn more about all of this in the future.

Well, this is it for now – see you all in the future!