Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes, it is
somewhat tolerable, and other times it is downright weird. Now, let us talk now
about ‘Captain Marvel’. The movie. Is it controversial?
No. The ‘issues’ have risen because people may have
conflated, deliberately or not, Brie Larson and her personal beliefs, the
movie, and its’ titular character. Ms. Larson is entitled to her own opinions,
but then, she should also remember that not everyone will agree with them, and
some people may even do something about them. Of course, those people then
should expect their own backlash…and so on. It is a vicious cycle, really.
However, the movie itself? It is a straightforward origin
story, not that different from… ‘Venom’ back in 2018. That movie was good, but
also divisive, seeing how some people loved it, and some people hated it, and
no one could agree on it, but most people enjoyed it, period. ‘Captain Marvel’
is no different, so as long as people remember that Ms. Larson is not her
character – any of them in any movies – there should not be any problem. Unless
you just straightforward dislike the movie, but that is just a matter of a
personal opinion, so it is the turn of Disney/MCU to just buck up, grin and
bear it. Instead, there was a crazy-ass story regarding ‘Captain Marvel’, its’
initial reviews, and ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ the site that didn’t do the latest
Marvel movie any favors. It takes two sides to tango, and while Disney would
love to blame all of the blame on Internet trolls, it does not work like that.
At least they are not blaming the Russian Federation for ‘Captain Marvel’
problems.
No, seriously, look at Canada. For a while now, PM Trudeau’s
cabinet is embroiled in the SNC-Lavallin scandal, and it is quite intense,
quite serious, and no one is joking about it. Proportionally, it is just as bad
as any of the messes that the U.S. president has done. The difference? No one
is blaming any foreign powers for it, and instead are doing their best to
resolve it ‘within the house’; whether or not they’re successful is another
thing, but even so, Canada as a whole, remains a more cohesive and politically
healthy country than the U.S. Undoubtedly, RF is guilty of many things, but the
problem is that the U.S. just blames for anything and everything, for what they
did and didn’t do, and that just muddies the picture – unnecessarily – and so,
instead of getting anything done, the American people are revving for an
All-American fight in 2020 already.
No, seriously, on the Internet, there are people that are
planning to vote for Trump no matter what, and there are people who plan to
vote against Trump no matter who, and many other people besides those two
groups. Internet is awesome, if it was not around, I would not have an online
blog, now would I, but it is also ambiguous, and it divides people as well as
unites. Even in the last years of Obama’s presidency, the American people were
preparing to fight each other, then they fought each other, in the first year
of Trump’s presidency they continued to fight, and now they are almost back to
it, as the first four years of Trump’s presidency are winding down.
Will Trump go for the full eight? It is very likely. The
Republicans do not intend to rock the boat at such a sensitive point in time; they
want ‘their man’ to remain in charge for another 4 years, and them to remain on
top in D.C. Moreover, the Democrats do not appear to have a problem with it
either, since by now, no strong single leader of their party had emerged, and they
are just as messed-up as they were before. In addition, since the 1990s the
U.S. seemed to have formed some sort of an unspoken agreement that each 8 years
the Republicans and the Democrats switch their presidents, and everyone else
can go hang. What will happen in the U.S. in 2020 is anyone’s guess right now.
Real life sucks, I will say it again.
Back to ‘Captain Marvel’? The reason as to why I’m writing
about it, is because its’ connection to AoS and S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, and to
a lesser extent – Phil Coulson, played important roles in this movie and
brought us to the beginnings of S.H.I.E.L.D.; AC talked about its initial
incarnation as SSR (Strategic Scientific Research or something similar)
instead. Between this renewal of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the MCU movies and the changes
in the format (sort of) of AoS itself, odds are that S6 will see the show
rebooted. Will it work? Since ‘Arrow’ got cancelled, (sob), it just might.
Alternatively,
it might backfire instead: Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube channel uploaded, among
other things, a brief interview with Ming-Na Wen (aka May) and Jeff Ward (aka
Deke), who, among other things, confessed to really not get along with Iain.
The latter plays Fitz, aka Deke’s grandpa-to-be, as well as one of the main
characters, (Deke just appeared in AoS S5, so Fitz got seniority easily), and
so this got to sting, especially since Jeff the Deke said this on the red carpet
for CM. Few people really know as to what is going on behind the scenes in AoS,
but you got to admit – none of the actors from ‘the Gifted’ or C&D, for
example, ever said anything like this, so the upcoming (summer 2019) S6 of AoS
will be interesting…
Anything else? Well, speaking of YouTube, the National
Geographic Wild channel released some sort of a ‘Wolves 101’ video, where it
claims that there are two species of wolves in the world. One of them is the
grey wolf, which is correct – it is the wolfiest wolf that has ever wolfed,
aside from the now-extinct dire wolf, (on Earth – on Westeros it is another
story).
However, the other wolf, according to NGU? It is the
so-called Ethiopian wolf, and here we have a problem. The genus Canis has
several members. There is the domestic dog, the grey wolf, the coyote, and
coyote’s Old World counterparts, the jackals. There are three or four different
species of them, and the Ethiopian species is one of them. It lives a life…similar
to a coyote’s or the common jackal of Africa and Asia – it lives solitary or in
pairs, in a family group at most, and hunts small animals – in the East African
mountains, it’s various rodents – the Ethiopian jackal doesn’t go after bigger
animals like the local mountain sheep or the geladas, the mountain-dwelling
cousins of the baboons, who have formidable fangs of their own, but who feed
primarily on the local grasses instead. No, the other true wolf of our times is
the so-called red wolf from the American south; it is somewhat bigger than a
coyote is, (though it should be noted that the Canadian coyotes are slightly
bigger than the U.S. ones, really), but smaller than the grey wolf is, it doesn’t
live outside of the North American continent, and it is more reddish in color
than an average grey wolf is, (whose coat can vary from almost pure white to
almost pure black and anything in-between). The red wolf’s lifestyle is not
much different from a coyote’s, either.
To somewhat complicate the picture there is another species
of ‘red wolf’ or ‘red dog’, one that is now known moreso as the dhole. It is
also a wild dog, but it belongs to a much more ancient lineage than that of
wolves, jackals and coyotes, and it does not have any close modern relatives
either. It lives only in Asia and is not really domesticated. It is quite rare
too, in modern times too. Now what?
Well, NGU got its’ wolves mixed-up, (it never mentioned the
American red wolf at all in its’ video), ‘Captain Marvel’ is a good enough
movie to enjoy (or not, depending on whether or not you like this sort of
movie), and real life still is much more messed up than any movie is.
This is it for now; see you all soon.
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