Quarantine entry #44 - May 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. No, I am not talking about the COVID-19 for the moment, but rather about the Asian giant hornets, better known as the Japanese killer hornets. A couple of inches long at least, and armed with a stinger and venom glands to match, this insect is more hated for killing honeybee colonies, especially outside of its’ native range in Asia, where the local honeybee populations have been known to swarm scouting specimens of this species and literally cook them to death, using their special powers. Pause.

Now, so far, (May 4, 2020), the giant hornets were spotted in the West, in the Washington state (and maybe the province of British Columbia). There were about one or two specimens of this giant insect, but given everything – they may devastate honeybee colonies, but their venomous stingers can kill humans and other creatures as well – everyone is panicking already, especially since with the COVID-19 still on the loose, humanity’s control over nature is more tenuous than how it usually is. What next?

Back in the East, in Brampton, Ontario, an American beaver got confused for an American alligator, or something similar among those lines. Considering that recently, (about May 3, 2020, or so), a woman in the U.S. state of South Caroline did die from an alligator attack, there is some reasoning beneath all the hysteria – I hope. The American beaver is one of the bigger rodents in the world and it is certainly the biggest in North America, and people have certainly died from beaver attacks, as a matter of fact – but proportionally, there are fewer beaver attacks, successful and otherwise, than there are alligator attacks, (and the fact that there are more horror movies featuring American alligators than beavers has a reason, you know?).

Pause. I will not tell a lie – today, I planned revisit our old friends the elephants. Why? Why not? It’s May the 4^th, people are talking about SW related jokes all over the Internet, and I’m feeling despondent – yes, the 2^nd season of ‘The Mandalorian’ is coming to Netflix, or Disney Plus, or some other streaming service… and judging by the trailer, Marvel’s GotG and the last two ‘Avengers’ movies left a mark on the SW series – baby Yoda is more of a teen now, and he acts rather like how the teen Groot acted in the aforementioned Marvel films. And-?

And nothing. The last SW movie ended on a low note for all sorts of reasons, (though the Rey/Kylo Ren ship lives on), including the fact that it was a damage control attempt that failed. So far, ‘The Mandalorian’ is the SW franchise’s last and only attempt to fix itself, and if it tries to do so by ripping-off the Marvel franchise… not cool.

…Yes, the ‘Trolls 2’ movie has also ripped off the last two ‘Avengers’ films, but they tried to be subtle-ish about it, plus this film did end on a rather different movie than the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ film did, so it kind of blew over and vanished in the COVID-19-related smog of obscurity. The fact that it was aimed at a younger audience than the ‘Avengers’ films did probably did not hurt either. ‘The Mandalorian’ does not have that.

What does it have? Plenty of distance, (especially metaphorically speaking) from the SW Sequel Trilogy, which was not good. It was not bad, but it certainly was not good either. The 1^st season of ‘The Mandalorian’ established that it was not connected to the Sequel Trilogy… or at least it did not appear to when the 1^st season was aired. Now that the movies are over for the moment, and we don’t have much information about the 2^nd season so far, the situation can always change – and as we’ve talked about above, the 2^nd season of ‘The Mandalorian’ may fail due to its’ own flaws and not be related to the Sequel Trilogy at all…

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon! May the Fourth be with you indeed!