Obligatory disclaimer: real life continues to suck as more
and more people are getting sick each day. Seriously, this is getting truly
intolerable even by my standards, so this time, instead of watching JFC, I went
back to DW. For a change, I watched a modern face-off – the ‘IRA vs. Taliban’
episode, and-?
And ever since I have watched it for the first time, I am
being constantly struck by how openly prejudiced DW hosts had been on that
episode. More specifically, this episode matched the Taliban’s trophy AK-47 vs.
the IRA’s AR-15, and the show’s hosts twisted themselves into some amazing
knots to justify giving the edge to the IRA’s AR-15. Why? Because on the
earlier S1 episode, the Russian Spetsnaz actually took down USA’s Green Berets,
fair and square, and the show clearly hadn’t recovered from this – ever. True,
they tried to keep their future pro-American bias subtle in S2, but in S3? It
came to the fore, and as I have written a long time ago, (when the DW S3
episodes were aired in real life and we were discussing each one individually,
as each one was ‘piping hot’, pardon the clumsy pun), it was one of the reasons
as to why DW went down for good after the S3. USA isn’t RF, (and even so, the
Russians are becoming clearly against Vladimir Putin ruling them until 2036 unopposed,
good for them), and for them such blatant propaganda, pro-US or not, was too
much. …And yes, there were other reasons as to why DW was cancelled, but still…
…But why was I watching DW to begin with? Somehow, JFC
became even more intolerable than when I saw it last, and so instead of it, I
watched something else – DW ‘IRA vs. Taliban’ as I said earlier, as well as
Impossible Pictures’ ‘Chased by Dinosaurs: The Giant Claw’ episode, and – ‘Mulan-1998’.
What can I say? Ming-Na Wen was already awesome as a voice
actress, (and these days she is an actress-actress, staring as Melinda May in
AoS, though at the end of S6 finale she got temporarily killed-off or at least –
incapacitated). That said, the Shan-Yu and his horde were some of the least
impressive villains of animated Disney. Why? In the movie, none of the Shan-Yu’s
lieutenants really had names; yes, the various Wikis who specialise in this
sort of thing, have their names, but the movie never acknowledges this. Harsh!
Moreover, the Shan-Yu himself… It seems that he had invaded
China because he decided that the Great Wall of China is an insult to his
manhood or something. Seriously? What is this? A reality show, ancient Chinese
version? The Shan-Yu and his horde serve no other function than to be the
distraction; the real adversary, of course, were the gender roles and norms in
the society, and Fa Mulan proved that a woman could do a man’s job easily, etc.
etc. How very 20th century of her! (‘Mulan’ was released in 1998,
remember? Technically, it was the 20th century still, rather than
the 21st). It will be interesting to see how ‘Mulan-2020’ stacks up
against this film.
…Yes, it was evident – Hell, Disney outright told its’
viewers that this was going to be more along the lines of the new ‘Dumbo’ film
than TLK-2019 or the rebooted L&T. Fair enough, and hopefully the new
villain, Borikhan or whatever his name is, will have a better motivation than
his 1998’s counterpart did, but for now, it is too early to make premonitions –
or too late, but in any case, thanks to COVID-19, now isn’t the right time.
Moreover, what about ‘The Giant Claw’?
Not unlike JFC, this was a mix of education and
entertainment, but more honest – it involved Nigel Marvin travelling through
time – literally – to the Late Cretaceous Mongolia, 70 MYA, or so, in search of
the titular creature. Spoiler warning – it was Therezinosaurus, one of the
biggest purely herbivorous theropods, whose cousin the Nothronychus was
mentioned earlier, when we were discussing Tyrannosaurus Rex.
And where was this dinosaur in ‘The Giant Claw’? Why,
nowhere at all – it had not evolved in Late Cretaceous North America yet.
Instead, this 30 minute special featured its’ cousin, Tarbosaurus bataar.
…Ever since this dinosaur was discovered, there was plenty
of discussion, as to how it was related to Tyrannosaurus. These days the
scientific community believes that while the two species were cousins,
Tarbosaurus was more distantly related to Tyrannosaurus than some other North
American tyrannosaurid species, such as Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus and
Gorgosaurus; Tarbosaurus’ bones, especially in its’ skull, prove that. That is
fair, but ecologically wise, Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus played the same role
– that of an alpha predator; not even Velociraptors stood up to the
Tarbosaurus.
What about the Velociraptors? They were depicted in ‘The
Giant Claw’ as well, but they were much smaller and proportionally more
realistic than they are in the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise – turkey-sized
predators, rather like modern coyotes with an attitude. They were shown hunting
other smaller dinosaurs – the herbivorous Protoceratops, which about the size
of a modern sheep, but had attitude of their own, and a powerful beak to back
it up. (Something of the Protoceratops-Velociraptor interaction was shown in ‘The
Giant Claw’, FYI). Put otherwise, all of
the Impossible Pictures’ series did their best to educate, or at least to
inform, rather than to entertain – and did a much better job than the JFC did,
in my frank opinion.
By the way, JFC did not have Velociraptors to begin with –
instead, it had three of their cousins: the Deinonychus, the Utahraptor, and
the Dromaeosaurus. The first two were bigger than the Velociraptor was;
alongside the lesser-known Dakotaraptor, they were the biggest members in their
family, comparable in size to their fictional counterparts from the ‘Jurassic Park’
franchise. By contrast, the Dromaeosaurus was the Velociraptor’s counterpart in
the Late Cretaceous North America, but as I said earlier, it was not the
contemporary of the T-Rex, so here the JFC lied…but we talked about it last
time, so let us drop it.
Anything else? COVID-19 continues to march across the face
of the planet, more and more public figures are continuing to get ill, and I
have no idea as to when it all will end. The Donald is not entirely wrong when
he is focusing on the economical aspect of it all, but he is not truly right
either. Did I mention that the real life sucks? Because it does. Sad face
emoji.
…This is it for now; see you all soon.
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