C&D cancelled - Oct 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. This week – on Monday – us Canadians put its’ own spin on this thesis, by creating a minority government. It became obvious almost immediately, that Singh, and Scheer, and Trudeau, do not get along and probably will not, and so it is anyone’s guess where this arrangement, the minority government, will get. Probably nowhere fast, that is where.

…Ivan Andreevich Krylov, the man who had adapted the fables of Aesop and Lafontaine for the Russians during their imperial period, had one among their number titled ‘The Swan, the Pike, and the Crayfish’, in which the titular characters were hired to deliver a some sort of a load, (it is never defined just what it is), somewhere. The load is not heavy, but the swan went for the sky, the crayfish began to move backwards, (in Russia, it is a common folk myth that the crayfish walk only backwards, because reasons), and the pike went into the water. Whose fault it was, the fable rhetorically proclaimed, is not for us to judge, but the load never went anywhere. The Russians consider this fable to be one of Krylov’s best ever. For Canadians, the Trudeau Swan, the Singh Crayfish and the Scheer Pike can be much harder to endure, especially since they are not the only characters on Canada’s political Olympus, and our country’s political landscape has acquired other features by now. In Western Canada – there is a lot of resentment brewing towards Trudeau and his government because of oil, and ecology, and native rights, and what else have you. Miss Greta Thunberg left her mark there too, but now her ‘phenomenon’ is dying down: if Al Gore, in the years past, as America’s VP, could change the tide, then neither can Ms. Thunberg, no matter how much she was tried to be puffed up in the past weeks and months.

…And in the East we got the good old Quebecois separatism, which, apparently, also gotten re-started these days. Fun! I remember that, however, vaguely, back in the 90s, when my family just came to Canada, it was all the talk, especially among the Anglo-Canadians, but nothing came out of it back then; what will come out of it now is for anyone to guess.

But enough of the depressing reality, let us talk about… television. Pause. No, let us not talk about the new ‘Watchmen’ TV series, which is already a shit-storm of alt-left, alt-right, fanboys, SJWs, and what else have you, and so far the series have only aired its’ very first episode. What will happen as more of its’ episodes is aired? More hubbub and controversy, and that is all that I care about. Why? Because I do not like ‘Watchmen’, I did not like the original comic series, I was not a fan of the film, and I am staying away from the TV series too. I had had this sort of bad excitement back with the SW7 & 8 films, and do not need its’ TV analogue too.

This brings us to Marvel, and – more bad news: C&D are cancelled. Why? Good question, and so far this is no concrete answer. The easy way would be to blame the latest Marvel shake-up, as Kevin Feigle begins to manage the Marvel TV, as well as the Marvel movies. But the more subtle signs that something wasn’t right there could be seen in S2, which was more jumbled and less tight than S1 had been, it felt almost like two seasons smashed together, just like how the ‘Fallen Kingdom’ movie felt like two movies smashed together, and SW8 – as a film that had fragments and elements of another film, especially in the end. Just like AC of MCU, or ‘Swamp Thing’ of DCEU, C&D may be just another TV series that got canned…just because. Maybe the numbers weren’t high enough… since the end of S1, as the S2/the series proper ended on Ty & Dy leaving New Orleans for pastures new. There are rumors of them appearing on ‘Runaways’ S3, but now it’s anyone’s guess if this’ll come to pass.

…Yes, in the comics C&D did come to NYC, but MCU is different from Marvel comics, and Ty & Dy’s departure from New Orleans felt like an end of something – in this case, it was of the C&D show proper. Ouch.

…Speaking of comics? The 2017 ‘Runaways’ comic reboot has amounted already to 24+ issues, while C&D – to 50% of that number, at best. Clearly, something was going on with C&D in the entire Marvel multiverse, not just to MCU, and now it has manifested itself: C&D is cancelled for good for now. That is real life for you. It sucks.

…You can argue that not all of real life is bad: the NatGeo site nowadays permits about 4 or 5 free articles a month, (the benefactors), plus there are some YouTube videos from that franchise that are appearing on YouTube on a more regular basis than once every week or so, (the generosity), so really, turn that smile upside down! Or not, because in Canada the political landscape has become an unpredictable and volatile cul-de-sac, (by Canadian standards, but still), and elsewhere it is worse. In the U.S., we got the brouhaha with the impeachment, now it seems to be going forwards, but it will make much fewer people happy than initially; and across the pond we got the Brexit, which is still going forwards…somehow, and increasingly more and more people are getting fed-up with it, especially in Great Britain proper. In under a week now there will be a lot of people unhappy with Boris Johnson and the rest of his crew, one way or another. Of course, the latter will have their own axes to grind and to bear once everything explodes, and that will just make everything worse, again, but hey! That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at C&D – it did not suck, so it got cancelled, and we just have to grin and bear it. End of the story.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

MLP: FIM over - Oct 20

…And so, MLP: FIM has ended this year, at this time – autumn 2019. Hurray, or boo, or whatever you want to call it, the end. This incarnation of MLP is done and gone for good, (‘Equestria Girls’ might be a different matter – if anyone cares). What is left?

Firstly, the obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Considering that next week is the election week in Canada, this suckage will take on a new, political dimension: while Canada isn’t U.S., it had its’ share of ‘FLAWS!’ and ‘EXCITEMENT!’ regarding the election month loud and clear, and right now all of the political experts aren’t sure as to what will have once the elections are over, what kind of government that Canada will have. It might still be a better, more decorous and professional than whatever is going on south of the border, but at 2019-2020 it is a low bar to clear, sorry. Back to MLP?

Meh, the MLP: FIM ended on a predictable note, except for one element, (pun intended), and no, it’s not the dastardly trio get petrified at the series’ end. By now, the MLP: FIM franchise has had plenty of redeemed villains, such as Flim & Flam, or the speciest councillor from the penultimate season, as examples. Yes, having a designated irredeemable villain can be bad for the show, if handled incorrectly, as MCU’s AoS has handled Ward, and to a different extent – Palamas/agent 33, but here MLP: FIM is less reminiscent of AoS, and more of the ‘Avatar’ cartoon series. At the end of A: TLA, there were two of such irredeemable villains in the show: Ozai and Azula. Ozai had lost his bending, Azula became insane, (and you do not usually get such a detailed depiction of progressive insanity in cartoons, you know, as A: TLA did with Azula), and the cartoon series ended. Then there was A: TLK, and between them, the ‘Avatar’ franchise is releasing a series of comics/comic books that depict what happened between the two shows, (as well as some post A: TLK events). In them, Ozai is shown to be still a very formidable villain, bending or no bending, while Azula actually escapes and goes on to become a force to be reckoned with, complete with a legacy, that would surface in a roundabout way in A: TLK… so who’s to say that CG, LT and QC won’t resurface in some new way in the next variation of the MLP saga, the way that Ozai and Azula have in the world of the ‘Avatar’?

…Personally, I was more impressed by the sign of the united ponies/griffons/yaks/changelings/dragons/etc. as they moved against the villains as a single front at the end – Union of Equestrian Socialist Republics here we come!

…Yes, this probably won’t happen…and not just because by now the U.S. is admitting, however reluctantly, that its’ dream of a ‘global village’ is currently at an end and even if the Donald doesn’t run for the president at 2020, (if he gets impeached, for example), it doesn’t mean that the Democrats will win this election, (so far it isn’t even fully clear as to who their candidate will be on that year – everyone is so busy with the impeachment), which means that whatever that had went down at the MLP: FIM’s series’ finale, is a pure utopia that isn’t truly realistic at all. This brings us to the actual point: the show’s conclusion: Twilight Sparkle has become a proper alicorn ala Celestia and Luna, (and Cadance too, I guess), while the rest of the Mane 6 have aged and by now are more to Mayor Mare’s age when the show has started.

…When TS became an alicorn in the past season finales, the show’s crew promised that she would not outlive her friends, but now that the show is over, the finale has come and gone, and everything is said and done…TS probably will. The show’s crew broke their promise, but because the show is over, its’ main villains – and the Storm King, does anyone remember him by now – are finished, and no one really cares about the canon anymore. True, if a show goes on long enough – the current incarnation of ‘Supergirl’, for example – no one cares about the canon anymore, unless it throws a real twist, as the second and last season of AC had, but still. It is a statement broken, a lie. Ouch! Remind me not to believe what the people in TV-land say anymore, would you?

Anything else? Real life sucks and family always makes it worse; a new kind of apple – a Cosmic Crisp – is hitting grocery stores in real life soon from this date, (October 2019) – and this is it, really. Real life sucks, sometimes hatred is the only thing that can carry you through and, oh yeah, today is the international sloth day! (The animal, not the deadly sin). Enjoy!

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

Tristan Strong - Oct 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and no matter how hard you try to fix it, it just doesn’t get any better, you don’t know what do, where to go, and how to change it. The anticipation is often the worst, the future poisons the present, you have no idea as to how to escape it, or rather – to prevent it, and you feel your hatred chewing you from the inside out.

…Or you can do what the Kurds in Syria did: once POTUS the Donald sold them to Erdogan’s Turkey, they quickly did damage control by re-allying themselves with the Assad regime, which is backed by Putin’s Russia. Therefore, now they have new allies that got their backs, (because the RF and Turkey have different ideas regarding Syria and the Assad regime), Putin’s critics had to zip it again about his external policies, Erdogan and his proxies have lost the advantage again, and U.S. has shit and cineole to show for all that.

Listen, this isn’t surprising – all too often, even during the Cold War period, the U.S. just tried to pick-up any loose ends, and when it came into proper opposition, as in Vietnam, let alone North Korea, it faltered. Still, it usually faltered militarily, rather than diplomatically, as it did now, and that makes it worse for the U.S. For the governments of the other countries, in either Middle East or elsewhere, it is business as usual, live with it.

Throughout my youth, in the 1990s and especially the early 2000s, the Western governments liked to talk about the concept of a ‘global village’ where people of every race (use whatever noun you want here) are equal. Aside from the fact that the communists’ concept of internationalism was basically the same thing just wrapped in a different package, the truth is that something like this was being worked out by people – primarily westerners – pre WWI…though largely at the expense of the rest of the world, at least in theory. Then the WWI happened and the world changed completely, in fact, it changed several times throughout the 20^th century, until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, when the USA won and the U.S.S.R. was no more. It was Pax Americana… and the U.S. blew it, but they also sold their concept of the ‘global village’ – see above. Only now that they are no longer in charge of the world officially – Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, and so on are showing to everyone that that is so – they no longer want a ‘global village’ and are trying to stop it. The result is pretty much the same as it was with the Kurds: the Yankees do a power play/temper tantrum and move out, expecting for everything to collapse and/or for everyone to come running back to them, begging the U.S. to come back. Once, this would have been the case. Now, there are other options on the table, and while they still may not be as attractive as the U.S., they are much more attainable and realistic, and once they’re realized, U.S. finds itself facing failure instead.

That said, there is an exception for every rule, and in this case, it might be the Brexit. Supposedly, on October 17, 2019, the U.K. and the EU made some sort of a preliminary arrangement… or at least a rough draft of one… yay? Not exactly, because not too long before that, Her Majesty the queen Elizabeth the II kind of tipped her hand by giving away that the royal family might be the main reason as to why the Brexit is happening in the first place, and not because of the public opinion or anything like this. So far it is being ignored and overlooked, Her Majesty made sure that the Royal Family stays well away from the Brexit mess per se…until her recent speech, when she gave away her pro-Brexit status clearly enough. Again, everyone is ignoring/overlooking it, but once the Brexit begins for real, it is anyone’s guess as to how the game will go. What next?

…Well, unlike Russians, who received shock treatments/therapy from their governments since the days before the yoke of the Golden Horde and got used to them and consider it a part of their daily lives, especially when it comes to politics, the Westerners have not. They do not like it, and because the U.K. in particular is a constitutional monarchy these days, it means that their kings, queens and dynasties can get executed and/or exiled, the divine right of kings be damned. Seriously, look at the English history, especially in the 17^th-18^th centuries… or, conversely, look at the biography of a man named Oliver Cromwell, the one and only Lord Protector of Britain, a symbol of a very particular time in that country’s history – the time when that land had no king…

The punchline is that Cromwell and his uncle, (or father, I do not remember), wanted to immigrate to the proto-U.S. at one point, but was unable to do so because of some royal law or another. Talk about karma! – but where does it leave us?

…With Mr. Kwame Mbalia’s novel, ‘Tristan Strong punches a hole in the sky’, published as part of Rick Riordan’s series of various authors who publish books set in the manner of RR’s novels… or at least they were supposed to. First, there was ‘Dragon Pearl’ written by Mr. Y.H. Lee, and now – the novel of Mr. Mbalia. The two novels do not have much in common with each other, but both break out of the mold set by RR. In his novels, the characters have to beat the clock, everything is structured around certain dates when various goals have to be reached, or else the characters’ world is doomed. Ms. Chokshi’s novels follow this structure, as do Ms. Cervantes’, and even Mr. Hernandez’ ‘Sal and Gabi’ do – sort of. However, Mr. Lee’s DP novel did not – it is fundamentally a Korean mythology meets Star Trek kind of a universe, when the titular character decided to clear-up her brother’s name, making her quest a much more personal issue than in case of the other novels, and also she is a kitsune, aka a completely non-human supernatural entity. In some cases, for example, in a Pathfinder™ RPG session, there’s no problem with a kitsune character, but apparently RR and his superiors at Disney™ thought differently regarding Mr. Lee’s DP novel, since he was the only author in those series who wasn’t making a sequel – until now. Mr. Mbalia’s novel ‘Tristan Strong’ is very different from DP, but again, it is not built as the RR novels are either.

RR novels are linear, with the characters running around in a metaphorical straight line, all but checking off various check boxes on their sheets: we have been there, there, and there, that, that, and that is done, only this, this, and this is left. DP also did something similar, but much more weakly, at a more leisurely pace. ‘Tristan Strong…’ doesn’t do that either, rather it’s more a dungeon crawl, as the titular hero and his team travel around Alke, an imaginary world, built around Afro-American and African mythologies, fighting, well, a semi-metaphorical depiction of slavery.

Now, let us be absolutely clear – of all the social inventions of humanity, slavery is one of the worst, period. Yet none of RR novels really deals with it, either. His novels depict a fairly glamorous and people-friendly version of the U.S., and neither do any novels of his current entourage. By dealing with such a real-life issue, Mr. Mbalia’s novel certainly has broken the series’ mold and changed something, but-

But here is when we return to the real world, again, and according to its’ data, Mr. Mbalia’s ‘Tristan Strong’, as well-written as it is, (and it really is, especially for a children’s/YA novel), should’ve come out next year, January 2020 or so, not now, October 2019, when a different novel from the series, one based on Navajo/Native American mythology, should’ve been released. Instead we go ‘Tristan Strong…’ and from what I’ve seen, his arrival to the book stores such as Chapters™ has been accompanied by far less fanfare than RR’s latest ‘Apollo’ novel (TTT), or Ms. Cervantes’ second novel, (‘Fire Keeper’) have. Why?

…Because there is something going on in the background of RR & Disney partnership. The first two novels of the ‘Apollo’ series were very progressive, especially in regards to LGBQ+ community, the third novel – ‘The Burning Maze’ – had none of those elements at all – and the latest work, ‘The Tyrant’s Tomb’, had a homosexual secondary character – Lavinia Asimov – whose homosexuality was mentioned but never seen, and often felt about as tacked-on as the secondary plotline in Ms. Cervantes’ first novel – ‘Storm Runner’ – did. And now we got Mr. Mbalia’ very impressive and well-written novel which is notably downplayed, and we get a break in the original progression of the novels, when each of them arrives on bookshelves. Again, there is probably a very reasonable and justified explanation for this change in strategy, but given that real life sucks, I would not bet on it. Ah well, best of luck to RR and his comrades in team Disney, they will probably need it. Anything else?

Well, the ‘Absolute Carnage’ mega-plot in Marvel’s comic books is ending, and it was much ado about nothing – not much is changing in the Marvel comics’ world, though I think that we are going to see Venom fighting a dark god named Knull at some future point, but that is neither here nor there.

Instead, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Doolittle-2020 & etc - Oct 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. You may try to alleviate some of this suckage by trying to do something new…but the U.S. government does something entirely different as judging by the Middle Eastern mess. It just is not good, and it makes the situation back in D.C. worse. Is the Donald getting impeached or not? For a while, there were even rumors of Mike Pence being the next Republican president, but this is it. Now there’s the Middle Eastern situation with the Kurds, there’s the story of a police officer shooting an Afro-American woman in her home in Texas, there are rumors of an Epstein-Trump connection, but nothing concrete about the impeachment.

The most likely possibility is that it had died down again. As the recent events showed, the Democrats are not that cohesive themselves as a political unit – the ‘old guard’ and AOC and her ‘new squad’ are not getting along, and there may be other factions inside that party as well. That said, none of them are all that enthused about Mike Pence’s presidency, so that might be an extra motivation for the Democrats to back down from the impeachment push and return to the previous plan: tone down the internal aggression to define and decide as to who’ll be the next presidential candidate for the next election. With the Democrats backing down, so will the Republicans – they don’t care much for the Donald either, but gives them the main advantage against the Democrats for the moment, and so they’re keeping him, if they can and if he continues to provide them the advantage. Otherwise, they will give him the boot themselves, the end. The only end that is left loose are the U.S.’ Mid-East politics, which are left in disarray while the big chiefs back in D.C. resolve conflicts of their own making and pat themselves on the back for doing this, but that is neither here nor there. What is next?

Let us talk about movies instead. ‘Gemini Man’ was expectedly bad unless you are a diehard Will Smith fan; the ‘Addams Family 2019’ was surprisingly good, though the live action ‘Addams Family’ 1991 movie is still the best, in my opinion. That said, the animated 2019 film has clearly been influenced by the live action movie series, (I think it was a trilogy), and did its’ best to capture the Addams family magics, (metaphorically speaking), and it succeeded so yay! Anything else?

There is going to be a ‘Spider-Man meets Venom’ movie after all, so far, there are no discussions of the ‘Addams Family 2019’ film online, (oddly enough), and then there is the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie trailer. In regards to the latter, what the Hell? It is a hot mess that is almost as bad as the trailer for S1 ‘Insatiable’ Netflix series had been; supposedly, the movie is about the titular character going on a journey to save queen Victoria, (yes, we’re talking about a character based directly on the real-life monarch here) from some mysterious illness after his wife died some time later. An assembly of sidekicks, both human and animal, are assisting him…but the trailer does a bad job of explaining this, all it is so far is a mess of movie action shots that just do not tell a coherent story, nor do they introduce any characters aside from the titular character who is played by Robert Downey Jr., also known as the Iron Stark – sorry, the Iron Man – who gets to ride a CGI ostrich in this movie instead. At least I hope that the ostrich is CGI, because while you can ride a real ostrich in modern times, you will probably be sued by ASPCA or some similar agency afterwards, and I doubt that Disney wants that.

…Disney doesn’t appear to be openly involved with the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie? Not surprising, because already the movie is off to a bad start, involving massive reshoots and changing dates to avoid conflict with the Disney/SW ‘SW9’ movie, which doesn’t promise anything positive for this particular film. Of course, keep in mind that I, for one, am more used to the Soviet adaptations of the original novel, which got to be very different from the original; in it, the titular character usually goes to Africa to treat some ill monkeys slash apes, encounters an atypical animal called Pushy-Pulley, and becomes an arch nemesis of a pirate leader… it really is a lot more child-friendly and less exciting than how it sounds, but the Soviet cinematography really loved it, and there were several versions of ‘Doolittle’ adaptations during the existence of USSR – cartoons, live-action movies, animated movies, etc. By contrast, in the West, (ok, the U.S.), ‘Doolittle’ adaptations are even more free-style than the Soviet ones were, often going completely off-script, but this is justifiable: in the original novel when the good doctor went down to Africa, for example, he encountered a kingdom of cannibalistic savages…which is really inappropriate for the twenty-first century for all sorts of reason, we all can agree. Even this misbegotten trailer for ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie seems to skip this plotline, though there was a shot of someone who might be this movie’s version of a pirate chief – and we see the Iron Doctor, sorry, the Doolittle Stark – facing-off with a man-eating tiger as well. If ‘Doolittle 2020’ will be able to keep itself together, it can be a really good movie, but otherwise? It risks becoming a mess on par with the ‘Insatiable’ S1, only worse so, since ‘Insatiable’ is a Netflix series, and in S2 it seems to have fixed itself and has become less controversial and edgy and more mainstream instead. ‘Doolittle 2020’ probably will not get the chance to do that via a sequel. Anything else?

The second ‘Frozen II’ movie trailer was mostly all about Olaf and didn’t give anything new regarding the plot of this film, and then there’s the trailer for the upcoming ‘Harley & Ivy’ cartoon series, starring Kaley Cuoco as the voice of Harley Quinn. It is not too coherent either, but it does not need to be – it depicts clearly enough that it will be about Harley breaking up with Joker and becoming her own woman, probably with a romantic plot line involving her and Ivy. The first attempt to team up those two had been back in the 90s, in an episode of Batman: the Animated Series’, where Harley had had enough of Mr. J for once, tried to strike out on her own and ended up teaming up with Ivy instead. The pair had had some fantabulous adventures of their own, though because it was the 90s, there was no Harley/Ivy romance…but from then on, the pair had increasingly more and more girl time together especially in the animated DC works. Ergo, this particular development in the DC cartoons is only natural and expected, but where does it leave the upcoming ‘BP 2020’ movie?

…Potentially high and dry and unrequested, because Harley will already have her fantabulous emancipation in the cartoon series, and the live-action movie will be the 2020’s analogue of the 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’, where several years of character development in the comics tried to be crammed into a single movie, so is it any surprise that the result was not so much good or bad, but mangled? If it does not work, the 2020 ‘Birds of Prey’ film will end up in the same way, and that would be sad, especially since Jared Leto is already upset that he and his version of Joker was apparently kicked out of DCEU for good. Ah well, maybe he will do a better Morbius in MCU instead.

…This is it for now – see you all soon.

Joker-2019 & etc - Oct 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It sucks on a personal level, and you cannot escape it; you turn on the news and you see that the U.S. has brought the suckage onto an international level just ask the Kurds. Maybe this was a clever maneuver by the Donald, to tie up Turkey and Iran in struggle over Syrian control while he deals with his own problems back home, but it still kind of petty and unpleasant, especially in the Middle East. There are even rumors of ISIS coming back. Sigh. It is precisely this sort of mainstream media propaganda that causes outliers to presume that ISIS had been a creation of the U.S. all along, just as the Taliban had been back in the Cold War. As we remember, the Taliban eventually bit the U.S. in the ass so badly, that it might not have fully recovered even by now, and as for ISIS, it is anyone’s guess. The Kurds are not impressed with the Donald or the rest of the land of bold and free, it would look like. What is next?

Well, I would like to escape into TV land, but everything out there is either a rerun of a now-ended show, a Halloween cooking special, or something new that is so forgettable… or is memorable, for entirely wrong reasons. There’s ‘Stumptown’, whose best trait is the main character, who is played by Cobie Smulders, aka Maria Hill from the MCU. Alternatively, maybe she is actually Soren, a Skrull – an alien from the MCU. Either way, back in MCU, CS is not the biggest fish, so maybe ‘Stumptown’ is an attempt to recast herself as someone new – a main character in a TV series… that is based on a comic book series. Here the biggest difference from MCU (or any of the DC TV shows) is that ‘Stumptown’ is not all that well known, so it is anyone’s guess if CS’s strategy will succeed or fail.

There’s ‘Almost Family’, made by Fox. It is a nice, family-friend TV show about an atypical TV family… that may glorify rape. The main characters are all doctors of a medical doctor who ran an artificial fertilization clinic and used his sperm in place of others’. Even to a non-American this sounds rather yucky, and the American society itself is having hysterics and in a bad way. I do not like SJWs, but I am not an American; the people behind ‘Almost Family’ are, and they should have expected at least some sort of an unpredictable reaction behind their unconventional TV series. Instead, they seem to be almost ignorant of what they have done. Ouch.

There is also ‘Primal’ by Mr. Gennady Tartakovsky, which is, so far, about friendship between a caveman and a T-Rex. It’s not a bad premise, but between the duo co-existing with woolly mammoths, for example, and one of the show’s villains, a chimeric dinosaur that shows traits of a T-Rex, a Giganotosaurus and a Ceratosaurus at the same time on the other, I think I’ll wait for the next ‘Jurassic World’ movie (or maybe the ‘Kong vs. Godzilla 2020’) instead for this sort of quasi-prehistoric chimeras… oh wait. The next ‘Jurassic World’ movie will have no chimeras’ a-la Indominus Rex and Indoraptor. Score one for team JW!

In the movies, meanwhile, we have ‘Joker-2019’. I admit – I am not going to talk about it, the feelings are too raw. Essentially, this version of the clown prince of crime is a stereotypical loser, who lives with his mother, and then one day he gets a gun, and suddenly his violent dreams get a very realistic outlet. Arthur Fleck is that pathetic and insignificant, but then he gets a loaded gun, and suddenly he is brave enough, (or at least hysterical enough) to kill. And no one can resist him, because no one expects him to have a gun – he is that pathetic. There is enough of breadcrumbs in ‘Joker 2019’ for GCPD to make a conclusion and arrest Arthur Fleck before things get too out of hand, but they never do, and instead it is the Waynes who are killed. Why? What is the phenomenon that led Arthur Fleck/Joker-2019 to the top of the social order in Gotham-2019?

There are two baseline suggestions. One is that Gotham’s poor, its’ proletariat, its’ plebeians, are sheep and less socially derived than their counterparts in Shakespeare’s play ‘Coriolanus’ that deals with the history of the Roman republic quite some time before the events in his ‘Julius Caesar’. True, Will Shakespeare was no more a professional historian than George Martin is, for comparison, but he truthfully transcribes and depicts the events described in his historical sources – they were not connected to the politics and power plays of his day and age, so he could risk it. And meanwhile, ‘Joker-2019’ tries to carefully depict the political realities on USA-2019 (albeit on a national level), and-

And you can really reach only a limited amount of conclusions. The first is already mentioned – that the downtrodden masses of Gotham-2019 are sheep who will follow anyone who has the loudest voice and the biggest, hardest shepherd’s staff with which to drive them into the kingdom of God, however they depict it. The communists in the first half of the twentieth century were especially like that, fully determined to drive humanity into some sort of a happiness utopia with a steel hand. These days they are largely vanished, with less than a dozen countries remaining true to this political doctrine – at least right now. Is Joker himself a communist? No. Well, maybe. A Bolshevik Joker decisively is not, but in the pre-revolutionary Russia there were other political leftist parties, such as the Anarchists-Maximalists, who, unlike their Bolshevik (and Menshevik, for that matter) counterparts didn’t care about government and politics at all; they just wanted to bring it all crashing down through sheer terror and overt assassinations, and then what will be, will be. The poor people of Gotham-2019 show something decidedly similar to such a political party – they just want to bring it all down, and then what will be, will be. The only question is – just who is in the driver’s seat.

This brings us to the next theory – that Joker is a cat’s paw, a stooge for someone else entirely. Think about it: Thomas Wayne is running for mayor. This version of Papa Wayne is extremely unlikable (and is somewhat reminiscent of the modern powerful men in light of ‘MeToo’ and similar movements), but he has a political program, a concrete and specific political program that he intends to implement when he is the mayor. However, guess what? Concrete and specific political programs tend to drive away people as well as attract them.

Thomas Wayne only told his true intention to the people of his class, to his immediate inner circle? And where do you think the true opposition to him began? Precisely, among the people of his class, of his values, who, however, have different ideas of how things are to be ran and resources to be shared and distributed than in Thomas Wayne’s vision.

Why didn’t they confronted him directly but rather did an entire song-and-dance with Arthur Fleck/Joker? Who knows. They might have misjudged the outrage and hatred of Gotham’s plebiscite, or they might have intentionally started it all so that the army might move in and pacify everyone in Gotham. They might be swept away with the old Gotham, or come on top of the new city. ‘Joker-2019’ is intended to be a one-time movie with no sequel, a latest depiction of Gotham City’s number one villain as well as a critique of the Western society in 2019. As a piece of fiction, it is very good. As something that tries to be more – not so much.

That is that for DC-world for the moment – ‘Joker-2019’ has its issues, but it is still a deeper movie than ‘Gemini Man’ is, one that is a self-love-fest for Will Smith. Kanye West is rightfully disliked for his narcissism and his support of the Donald; Will Smith seems to be staying out of political commentary for now, (not unlike Eddie Murphy), but ‘Gemini Man’? It is literally all about Smith, and the man just does not do good movies. There had been ‘After Earth’, that starred Smith and son, essentially, and it was just bad. ‘Bright’ the Netflix fantasy film had an interesting premise, but otherwise? Not that much better than ‘After Earth’. And ‘Gemini Man’? It follows the previous two. Unless you love Will Smith, ‘Gemini Man’ is not for you.

Finally, we come to the comics, because why not? Speaking of movies, you remember how ‘Spider-man’ franchise left the MCU, returned to Sony, but now is back in MCU on terms that favor Sony over Disney/Marvel? That’s Disney/Marvel life action universe, which is founded on movies, TV shows and streaming service shows & movies. What about the comics?

…In Marvel comics, fall 2019 is all about Carnage, one of the nastiest villains in ‘Spider-Man’ in particular and Marvel comics in general. Since the end of the summer 2019, Marvel comics went for the ‘Absolute Carnage’ story arc, which is essentially about Carnage and a lot of other symbionts taking over the Marvel universe, (well, trying to), with everyone else who had ever had contacts/encounters with a symbiont getting involved. It is a tangled mess, and then Spider-Man franchise was pulled out of MCU, and so the ‘Absolute Carnage’ plotline hit a hiccup, as several comic book plot lines appear to have been abandoned completely. Now that Spidey is back in in MCU, however tentatively, those plot lines might resume soon enough, but regardless, unless you are heavily investing, and closely following Marvel comics as such, it is not worth it.

Well, this is it for now, see you all soon!

Birds of Prey trailer I - Oct 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now onto TV land?

Ok, first I need to address some issues that arose from my previous posts. What are they, as follows?

First, someone has commented that the end of BBR, we see the door of another motorhome open to release its’ inhabitant, who will help the Motorhome family of No Name get through the destruction of their own motorhome. Yay! …It is also supposed to show that humans do not have any great advantage now that the dinosaurs and the other prehistoric reptiles are out and about. Fair enough.

Now, the entire premise of the original JP movie was all about ‘life will find a way’, which echoed, however distantly, the message of the original JP novel, as spoken by that version of Ian Malcolm. Yay, (the novel’s version of Ian Malcolm does little more but blather after its’ version of the initial T-Rex attack; it has its’ own share of flaws, but we are not talking about them here), so what does the franchise’s reboot do?

…Bring back not only Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, and Ian Malcolm for its’ final film, but also Hammond’s grandchildren, Tim and Lexy, (do not confuse her with Rexy – Lex/Lexy is a human young woman, while Rex/Rexy is an aged female Tyrannosaurus. They are different). The fans are quite happy with this fan service, but will it help the franchise? Considering that they already have the ‘new’ characters – Owen, Claire, Maisie, Franklin and Zara – this leaves them with a lot of characters to juggle around, and killing any of them will likely backfire by enraging the fans!..

On the contrary, and this brings me to my other critique, ‘Insatiable’ the Netflix series has gone the other way around – it seems to have largely removed the entire WG/WL issue from its content, (there’s a scene of Patty compulsively eating, but this it so far), rebooting itself as a standard black humor drama/comedy; the trailer for S2 is much better and far less messier than it was for S1. It still is not for everybody, but least it is not offensive. So kudos to ‘Insatiable’ here and now; sorry for bitching about you in my previous blog entry.

…And now that we have this out if the way, let us move onto the main event: the ‘Birds of Prey’ first main trailer. What can be said about it? The 2016 ‘Suicide Squad’ movie was a mess. It was not a bad film, but it had plenty of room to improve, and apparently, it is going through a reboot now. By contrast, the upcoming ‘Birds of Prey’ film will be focusing on Harley Quinn’s character, and her emancipation. This is not a problem; the problem is that it appears that they will be cramming several years of worth of her emancipation in the comics into a single film. Compounding this is the fact that the BP movie itself already feels chaotic, in a bad way: there are characters from all strata of DC comics – there’s HQ herself, there’s the Huntress, there’s officer Montoya, there’s the Black Mask, there’s Cassandra Cain, whose version in DCEU clearly has a long way to go before she reaches her kick-ass levels in DC comics, (where she is one of the Bat-family, BTW). The trailer itself gives surprisingly very little exposition for such an action-filled piece: I think that Harley and her posse will be saving Cassandra from the Black Mask and his people? Yeah, there are worse films in DCEU, including the ‘Suicide Squad 2016’ itself, let along the ‘Justice League’ film, but still. I am of the mixed feelings when it comes to BP.

A special shout-out should be done for the hyenas that we also see in this trailer. Obviously, just as in the TLK-reboot, they are CGI – they may not be as impressive and regal as the African lions are in real life, but their teeth and jaws can crack bone, so it is hardly unlikely that any movie will be featuring them as real life animals. They are supposedly not that easily trained either.

…There are rumors that the beast of Gevaudan, a much-discussed wolf-like cryptid of the pre-revolutionary France, had been either a spotted, or more realistically a striped, hyena, released into the French wilderness. How probable is that is debatable, but this is one of the more popular theories when dealing with this monster, and I felt that it should be mentioned, because Joker. He is not in the BP movie, it seems. Considering that we are talking about the Jared Leto version here, it isn’t too surprising; regardless of how you feel about the 2016 movie in general, its’ Joker had certainly sucked. Not surprising, then, that BP feel probably not feature him in person, but trying to cram several years’ worth of Harley’s character development in comics into a single film is not the best solution either. Ah well, we will just have to wait and see what will be revealed regarding the BP movie next.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!