‘Collision Course Part II’ is over. And?
First, the obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It can
suck for many reasons; one of them is that you may have a mindset just cannot
enjoy the present as it constantly remembers the future just lurking around the
metaphorical bend; your life, and your time, start in the future, become
present for a brief moment and then vanish in the distance of the past, of
what-have-been, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Well, nothing
that is not stupid or illegal, anyhow. Where were we?
Sarge’s plans have failed, his crew, except for Snowflake,
are dead, though given how AoS treats its’ guest stars, it’s only a matter of
time until she’s dead one way or another. Moreover, agent Davis seems to have
succumbed to something at the end of the episode, and since Izil doesn’t appear
to be dead, (Hell, spoiler alert – she’s coming to Earth proper in the next
week’s episode), odds are is that he had been infested by Izil’s alien space
bats back on the space ship. On one hand, it is sad, Davis has grown on the
audience, some, since his appearance in the S3 (or 4), but on the other…see
Snowflake above. Odds of him and Kim dying as AoS S6 is coming to yet another
climax are good, ‘good guys’ need to lose some people to make the show look
real, or whatever. What next?
Well, there had been ‘Stranger Things’ S3, which introduced
the Russian/Soviet threat into the mix, because of course it did. Modern
incarnation of Russia, the Russian Federation, is trouble whatever way you
look; the problem is that USA seems to be looking at it through some sort of a
history lens full of Cold War semi-nostalgia, and it’s a wrong approach on top
of everything else.
What is going on the RF? Putin worked in the KGB, in Eastern
Germany; his training was oriented more outwards than inwards, and it shows: he
works RF’s foreign policy very well, but what is going on in the country is
something else, and that something is bad. However! Since US is also treating
it as some sort of an inconvenience or a distraction, (not unlike how they are
currently using Epstein, the bastard), Putin can get away with anything – for a
while. Then, when his time is up, anything can happen; for example, ‘his people’
can rip him apart as they did with the Imposter in the 17th century
and scatter the pieces all over Moscow, as they did in the past. USA has its
flaws, but it is very much a more civilized country than RF is, so USA! USA!
…On the other hand, Georgia (we’re talking the Caucasian
country here, not the American state), has come out the loser here: it tried to
provoke RF into something stupid, and all it did was cause civil unrest within
itself, and sanctions from RF from without – and USA, alongside EU and the rest
of the ‘Western world’ promptly ignored it, though it did appear worried that
the civil unrest will cause their gay pride parade to be cancelled. RF’s
oppression of the minorities is bad; the way that USA aggrandizes them to be
used for profit (both private and governmental) is not better.
Back to ST S3? Not really. Aside from them Cold War feels,
all it really has is a plot line out of an RPG, and we’re talking Dungeons
& Dragons or its’ forgotten cousin, the d20 Modern, rather than
Pathfinder/Starfinder. God knows why, but there it is. People seem to love it,
but if so, more power to them; we played enough D&D 3.5 to have our fill of
mind flayers, and hydra variants, and Demogorgon and his thralls to last us
without going back to screens to watch ST instead of anything else…
This ‘anything else’ brings us to TLK 2019, and… it was
uninspiring. Both the remade B&B and ‘Aladdin’ brought something new to the
viewers; the remade ‘Dumbo’ might have even been too new judging the audiences’
reaction, but TLK 2019? Not new enough. It is the other way around, really.
The problem is that of all Disney movies it is the least
anthropomorphic; Disney’s original ‘Jungle Book’ movie had humans to diversity
the animal cast, while ‘Robin Hood’ was directly anthropomorphic; really, a
direct ancestor to ‘Zootopia’. (And ‘Sing’, I suppose). If Disney tried to
utilize the variant ‘Hamlet’ script it wouldn’t really be a problem, and not
just because ‘Hamlet’ was about as historically accurate as ‘Robin Hood’ is,
you know? However, TLK is about ordinary animals executing a human-level complexity
script, and that is already problematic, since ‘Hamlet’ does not really fit
African realities, (animal or otherwise), to begin with. When it comes to
Marvel, or SW, or even human-based movies, such as TLM, ‘the Princess and the
Frog’, and etc. that isn’t really a problem, because there’s only so much
realism can be instilled into a world where people turn into animated
candlesticks and clocks, beasts, and frogs, but TLK? It was also the most
realistic Disney movie to begin with, since – no magic. Oh, Rafiki is clearly a
shaman or a witch doctor of the world, but even in the original TLK, his magic
was kind of subdued and subtle, especially by children’s standards, (just look
at ST and what passes for magic there).
…And now remove the quirks of the old 90s animation, replace
everything with the 2019’s computer wizardry, and suddenly you get… real life
animals that talk in English (or whatever other language spoke in the countries
where TLK 2019 is running), and also acting with human motivations – and it does
not mesh. In Canada, the Mirvish theatre performs its’ version of TLK on a
regular basis – and we are talking human actors acting on stage in real life,
just dressed in various costumes. This works, because TLK characters are driven
by human motivations; they are humans in animal skins, and making those ‘skins’
look like their real life counterparts doesn’t help. TLK 2019 is not a flop,
but the 90s version was still the better one.
Back to AoS? Not really, it would be nice to think that
Sarge and Snow have some sort of an evil Ward and Kara dynamic, but odds are
that this was already done in S4 by LMD May and Coulson, so there is that. The
show still doesn’t know what to do about Daisy and Deke; it is trying to put
them together, but only half-heartedly; if Snowflake dies – when Snowflake dies
– it should push their relationship further together, but we have no idea just
how much do the actors want this to happen, and what is going on behind the
scenes? (Other than Jeff/Deke apparently hating Iain/Fitz). We will just have
to wait and see, I guess.
…This is it for now; see you all soon!
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