Black Widow trailer 1 - Dec 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So we look onto the TV and what do we see there? The ‘Vikings’ season premiere! And-?

And I was wrong – it will not be the Turco-Mongols that the titular characters will be fighting, but the Russians. Oh, for fuck’s sake!

Let me elaborate. These days, the Russia that the West knows is associated with Moscow, or as the Slavic people acknowledge it, (sometimes) – the Moscow Rus. Reasonable enough, right? The problem – the first one – that during the Viking era – the Rus that existed in the world was the so-called Kiev Rus, it existed primarily on the territory of modern Ukraine and the Balkans, Eastern Europe, really – and Moscow was only its’ north-east periphery at best.

…Real life carefully point-out to me that the Donald decided to replace the Democrats fictional Russian interference – the Russian threat to the U.S. regime is quite real, but meddle in the election-2016 it did not – but equally fictional Ukrainian one. Democrats firmly rejected it, Republicans are just as firmly pro-Donald, so now what?

Nobody knows. At least since the year 2016 the West figured out by now that using fictional Russian threats to distract from real-life problems – the Epstein fallout, for example, or the Brexit – just makes it works and have stopped using them. Substituting them with just as fictional Ukrainian threats is worse, since Ukraine is trying to be the part of the Western culture for real, for what reasons, is another thing, but for real. They do not deserve this sort of a backstab… but they are getting it anyways.

And now we return to the ‘Vikings’, where the Vikings will be fighting the Russo-Ukrainians, even though…

…Even though in reality they were the ones to establish the state slash kingdom of Rus – the Russians themselves accept it. The first Russian dynasty were the Ruriks, whose founder, Rurik, alongside with his brother, Sinehus and Truvore, was a Variag/Varangian – a Viking. The Russian name ‘Oleg’, and its’ female counterpart, ‘Olga’, are Russified versions of the Norse ‘Helgi’ (male) and ‘Helga’ (female). Far from fighting with the Rus, the real-life Vikings colonized and began to civilize them. …Yes, they were still Vikings. …Yes, in real life their version of colonizing meant that for about half a year they would plunder – but increasingly systematically – their Slavic subjects – and the rest of the year was spent by their journeys back and forth, as well as by other interactions, with the Byzantine Empire. These days, the geographic West took the place of the Byzantines, but otherwise? The ethnically Russian spiritual heirs of Russia, Ukraine and probably Belarus too follow the same model: they plunder, however systematically, their subjects and live-off on their spoils in the West, literally a distance away from their subjects – and the West largely has no problem with that. The 90s could have been a literal new leaf in the Russian history as the pro-Western faction of its’ society assumed that it would – instead this period became known as ‘The Big Grab’ and ‘The Cut-Throat Nineties’: neither name is particularly positive either in English or in Russian… where were we?

Ah yes, for a show that is a part of a History channel, the ‘Vikings’ are a great big pile of pseudo-history crap, as it was pointed out in the past seasons. They also discard a potentially very positive propaganda piece by having them arrive on the Rus territory and bringing to the latter the light of the true Western civilization – instead, we got some sort of a ‘cold war’ that we know that they are going to win; in reality, of course, the Kiev Rus actually became superior to the Viking Scandinavia by the XI century and it was only after the Scandinavian Vikings converted to Christianity and became a part of the European culture properly did they begin to catch up. But until the Kiev Rus succumbed to the Turco-Mongol yoke, it and Scandinavia were very close to each other – politically, socially, dynastically and so on. To see the ‘Vikings’ go the way it went is just sad. What next?

Next is the new ‘Black Widow’ trailer that came out recently, (Dec 3, 2019). Supposedly, it will take place in Budapest, Hungary, because in the very first ‘Avengers’ film, (the one where Loki’s loaned alien army invaded NYC, remember it?), Nat and Clint mentioned some sort of a Budapest incident in their past. Maybe we will see it; yes, Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye in MCU, has had his own #MeToo moment, but maybe we will still see him and Samuel Jackson’s Nick Fury star against ScarJo’s Black Widow in her 2020 film. What next?

I cannot shake the feeling that this movie include plenty of time jumps, simply because it will take place in the past, as in the ‘present’, aka the ‘Endgame’ film, the Black Widow is dead and probably won’t be coming back. Since even the trailer already introduces us to Yelena Belova, who is one of the ‘other’ Black Widows of Marvel comics, the odds of her becoming the next Black Widow of MCU is quite high.

Next, the trailer introduces us to the Red Guardian, in his Alexi Shostakov avatar, (because there was many Red Guardian characters in the Marvel comics). In the Marvel comics, Shostakov is Ronin these days, but in MCU, it was Renner’s Hawkeye who got to be Ronin, while a much older Shostakov version is the Red Guardian. ‘Much older’ because in the comics he is actually Natasha’s ex-husband; here, he seems to be more of a funny crazy old drunken uncle figure to Nat and the girls. ‘The girls’, because it brings us to the final new character introduced in this trailer – Melina Vostokoff. In the comics, she became the Iron Maiden… who is a Black Widow villain, not an Iron Man one, connotations be damned. In Marvel’s Mangaverse, (Earth-2301, I have no life, sue me), this is the superhero name of Tony Stark’s twin sister, but so far there is no evidence of such character in MCU, so let’s assume that the Iron Maiden will be the superhero or supervillain alias of Vostokoff…or she can become the new Task Master. In Marvel comics, the Task Master is an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Tony Masters – aka a man. This is also how the Task Master has appeared in Marvel cartoons, but as people pointed out, it is always possible that MCU will do a gender bender on this character instead. What next?

Well, let us give a shout-out to the new ‘James Bond’ movie trailer that came out today, (Dec 4, 2019), and move onto ‘Kings of Pain’. Why? Because the double-oh trailer reveals that the titular character of this film will just be running around, hitting and gunning down people, while saving either the world or his own skin in the process. Fun! – but nothing to discuss, however; even ‘Kings of Pain’ have more context, so let’s talk about them instead. Seriously, double-oh movies are pure suspense/action/adventure flicks with some romance and porn thrown in, so let’s give credit to ‘Kings’ – whatever they are, this isn’t them.

…No, actually, let us talk about the ‘Kings’ credit in this week’s episode – how does it fall?

In the neutral field, we got the velvet ant portion of the episode: this week, the not so dynamic duo went to Africa because of the Nile monitor. (Think a much smaller version of the better-known Komodo dragon). Why Nile monitor? Because ‘Brave Wilderness’ had a Nile monitor episode, as well as a velvet ant episode and a hippopotamus one.

…Getting back to the velvet ant, listen: there are 400 species of these insects living in the U.S., so there was no need for the ‘Kings’ cast and crew go to Africa to catch a couple of them. However, the velvet ants, (who really are wasps, whose females are wingless), probably live in Africa, so it evens out.

Next – the bad: the hippopotamus encounter. It was completely unconvincing: the duo’s boat was shaken around in the dark supposedly by a hippo…that is it. The camera stayed mostly on the show’s leads, we never got a glimpse of the hippo, and everyone made it to shore safely.

Listen: the hippopotamus is one of Africa’s Big Five, i.e. it is one of Africa’s biggest animals. It is also one of Africa’s most dangerous and ornery animals. Why? Because the first modern humans appeared in Africa, and they stayed in Africa, and the modern African animals evolved in co-existence with humans and human civilizations, and they know that humans aren’t their friends, but are dangerous, and tend to attack them – to attack us – with the slightest provocation because this knowledge is almost instinctual by now. The hippos’ twist – we are talking about the common hippopotamus here, not its’ pygmy sibling – is that it is an amphibious animal: like its’ cousins whales, dolphins and porpoises its’ skin does not endure well the sun, but unlike whales, dolphins and porpoises hippos can move on land just fine. Indeed, they do not really swim – more like walk along the bottoms of rivers and lakes, surfacing for air. Did not prevent them from colonizing Madagascar in the past, yes, (they are extinct there now, though)… where were we?

Ah, yes – hippos have explosive tempers and know how to use it. They are not as fast on land as rhinos and elephants are, but they still can run, and they can trample, and their jaws with tusk-like teeth are huge and strong enough to tear apart canoes and smaller rowboats, as well as lions and Nile crocodiles, so if the cast and crew of ‘Kings’ have encountered a genuinely upset hippo, odds would be that this ‘river horse’ would not only took bites out of some boats and what else have you, it could’ve also followed them to dry land, (actually, at night hippos prefer dry land to water – they forage there) and had a rematch. Nothing of this sort happened, so excuse me for being sceptical.

However, what has happened in real life was the Nile monitor biting the show’s main leads. That certainly was not fake, so kudos to them for this. While nowhere as large enough as the Komodo dragon, let alone the probably extinct Australian Megalania, the Nile monitor is still a very large lizard, with powerful jaws, claws and slapping tail; I don’t know if the duo’s interactions with the lizard took place in Africa or on a set, the monitor did bite them, and for the record? The teeth of the monitor lizards are serrated and sharp, they rip their prey, not crush it as the crocodiles do. Pieces of meat often get caught in their teeth, where they rot, giving the monitors – even the Komodo dragon – a very potent and atypical venom: Komodo dragons kill water buffalos with it, and let us be fair: a water buffalo’s immune system is much more robust than a human’s. True, a Nile monitor is also much smaller than a Komodo dragon is, but it still got powerful jaws and a toxic bite, and it showed. Coyote Petersen on ‘Brave Wilderness’ didn’t even try to have the Nile monitor bite him. So yes, here ‘Kings of Pain’ certainly broke the mould and showed that they are capable of something real and not staged. This certainly puts them ahead of the ‘Vikings’ and their messed-up world history.

…Yes, it’s kind of dramatic and strange that the official History channel in Canada airs mostly reality shows that don’t really have anything to do with History; the ‘Vikings’ are historical fiction, but at least they’re historical. That is real life for you, though. It sucks. I hope that when the ‘Black Widow’ movie comes out in May 2020 it will be good and a welcome distraction from real life instead.

This is it for now though – see you all soon!