Loki, 'The Nexus Event' - June 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the NatGeo magazine – in their July 2021 article about the Kenyan fossils they talk about ‘elephant relatives called proboscideans’, and all that I can say is: oh, for fuck’s sake! ‘Proboscideans’ are a taxonomic term that acts as an ‘umbrella’ that contains both the modern elephants and their extinct cousins, (the mammoths, the mastodons, and beyond). To call proboscideans ‘elephant relatives’ is just wrong, as the modern elephants, (the Asian and two African species), themselves are proboscideans. NatGeo once used to be a standard for scientific prestige and accuracy, and now that is gone. ‘Elephant relatives called proboscideans’ indeed!

…On to the more pleasant topics? This week’s ‘Loki’ episode, ‘The Nexus Event’ is…officially mediocre, as the show’s crew, apparently, just could not figure out the pacing in the show’s first season.

Let us elaborate, (if that is possible). From the start, Disney/MCU tried to downplay ‘Loki’; possibly because the titular character (characters?) are bisexual, and Disney hates controversy these days, and not just because it costs them money, but because. They just hate it after the entire SW, and MCU, and other messes. What next?

Well, again, I want to blame the troubles of ‘Loki’ on Disney/MCU trying to not have their LGBTQ+ cake and eat it too, but the truth is that the LGBTQ+ elements are minor in ‘Loki’, and the show itself suffers… from clunky, awkward plot. Loki and Sylvie’s entire side trip to Lamentis proved to be a monumental red herring; perhaps the duo needed to really bond, and there are few better bonding events than an apocalypse, (cough Thanos cough), but somehow ‘Loki’ the TV series mishandles this, by making Lamentis look like an unnecessary side trip from the TVA.

The TVA itself… I am no Loki, (though the post-credits scene introduced several more to the show), but I began to suspect that something was wrong with the TVA from the start; it was just too grand to be true, and now that the space lizard-gods proved to be robots… people aren’t being too surprised. Moreover, judge RnR is based on a character who has been associated with Conq the Kangaroo… I mean, Kang the Conqueror, who is a known villain in the Marvel Comics, so this sudden turn of events is not too sudden either.

In addition, Loki’s death? Also more dramatic than surprising, not to mention that I, for one, am kind of inured to this shit after the AoS’ S5 finale: they tried to make Fitz’s and Coulson’s demise oh so dramatic… and then they turned around and practically resurrected Fitz in S6, and as for Coulson and his look-alikes in AoS’ S6 & S7… don’t start.

‘Loki’, conversely, went in the other direction – all of the Lokis introduced in this series, (including Sylvie), are different from each other…and it will be interesting to see as to how the titular Loki figures out as to how to handle them, and how to deal with them, and so on. Straightforward enough, only ‘Loki’ the TV series does not deal with straightforward. Pause.

In AoS, the plot lines overindulged in twists and turns, especially in the first seasons…but regardless of this overindulgence, the overall plot still marched forward, from point A to point B, to oversimplify the situation. In ‘Loki’, conversely, the plot doesn’t go anywhere, it just circles around a single point – the TVA – and all the twists and turns serve even less purpose than they did in AoS, as they don’t progress the overall plot at all, but only make it more muddled. Anything else?

Ah, yes, back to the characters’ deaths. AoS already made a mockery of this aspect of MCU at the S5 finale, but ‘Loki’ took it one step further: apparently, all of the characters that are ‘killed’, or ‘deleted’, by TVA, don’t really die, but rather end up in some sort of a limbo, which is rather reminiscent of an apocalyptic NYC, (cough, the first Avengers’ movie, cough). I.e. instead of dying, Loki has found even more allies for himself, and whatever he will do now, he will do it with style and with help… (In theory about the last part). Anything else?

Sadly, no. Real life still sucks – a condo has collapsed in Florida, a man was attacked by a great white shark off the coast of California, (I believe), and yesterday we had to live through the mother of all the thunderstorms while dealing with a fire alarm. Put otherwise, my good readers, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Loki 'Lamentis' - June 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Loki’ instead. In this week’s episode, ‘Lamentis’, the show changes completely – it is no longer just about TVA, (well, about TVA and its’ interaction with Loki); rather, it is about Loki and Sylvie, who, in MCU, seems to be a conflation of a female Loki and the Enchantress.

Now, about the Enchantress. Yes, in the Marvel Comics, Sylvie is one of the characters who has this title; but the main character who has been associated with this title is an Asgardian magician/witch known as Amora instead. She also has a younger sister whose name is Lorelei, who did appear in MCU – in AoS’ S1, and left such a poor memory in the show’s fan community, that she vanished after about one and a bit of an episode. It’s possible that this bad fallout had ricocheted over at Amora, or perhaps she just got a bad stroke of luck, given that the ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ film has largely rebooted the entire Asgardian plotline in MCU, if not outright ended it, (Thor himself teamed-up with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of the ‘Endgame’ film).  Either way, it looks as if the newcomer to MCU is named Sylvie, and she is a variant Loki instead. What next?

Hard to say. Unlike the adventures of WV and Sam and Bucky, ‘Loki’ seems to be downplayed – officially; the nearest analogue is the 4^th episode of CAAWS, which was downplayed, in the news, because no one wanted to associate it with Biden’s reign in the RL America, but unlike CAAWS, ‘Loki’ has no connotations with America, real or otherwise, so what gives? Hard to say; people say that it reminds them of the lack of shout-outs regarding AoS, which began to be remade from S1, and whose plot had plenty of flaws – and so, to avoid self-repetition, let me just tell you that ‘Loki’ doesn’t appear to be suffering from such flaws, but rather it is more reminiscent of the Agent Carter TV series at its’ best, including a tight cast. Where it differs from AC is in the fact that AC was focused around a single city – NYC in S1, LA in S2 – whereas ‘Loki’ is all about jumping the different times and places; here it is a planet called Lamentis, (cough, allegory, cough), which is an obscure planet at the very edge of the Kree space. …So far, ‘Loki’ had not shown at Kree, only a single Skrull, but that can always change, but that isn’t important; what matters to us is that this episode is all about Sylvie and Loki, as the two bond, show their similarities and differences, and for the moment, TVA isn’t all that important for either of them, but getting off the planet is, since – I assume – that at least Sylvie’s master plan isn’t about her dying on Lamentis alongside Loki. The other/titular Loki, i.e.

…Well, maybe it is, but in this case, ‘Loki’ the series is going to be one weird TV series from now on, and somehow I doubt that this is what its’ cast and crew intended it to be. Rather, it is all about…well, this titular character and how he fits-in into the MCU, now that it is transitioning from what it was at the end of Phase 3 into whatever else it will become. So far, we already had Wanda and Vision going their separate ways, (to put it lightly), we got to see Sam Wilson become the new Captain America, Sharon Carter – the new MCU villain, and baron Zemo – Marvel’s new Batman, (the previous one, in the Marvel Comics, was a character called Night Hawk, but clearly MCU aren’t bringing in the Squadron Supreme just yet – so what else is there?

Well, Loki, obviously – but so far, ‘Loki’ is taking time to bring its’ titular character to his final destination, one hopes. Again, it is always possible that in the show, Loki will die on Lamentis, now that the fallen space debris has destroyed their ride off it, but this does go against the show’s grain, from what it showed the audience so far. Yes, the final season of GoT did do just that, but GoT also suffered from it, and while GoT did this sort of thing only at the end of its’ long run, ‘Loki’ so far doesn’t appear to be a one-season show as WV was, so this turn of events is unlikely, but then again, ‘Loki’ appears to be a much more subdued show that either WV or CAAWS were, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen there next. For now, let us just accept the abrupt plot twist, from Loki’s stay and employment at the TVA to his road trip with Sylvie and go on.

…More precisely, I had watched ‘Luca’ this weekend, and what can I say? It was not as forgettable as ‘Over the Moon’ was, (remember that film? It had a girl and her stepbrother going to the moon to cheer up a despondent moon goddess – or something along those lines), but neither it is as good as people thought it would be. The relationship between Luca, Alberto and Giula, (and also Giulia’s father) is certainly good and realistic, but everything else is secondary; the movie’s main villain, a liter version of Gaston from B&B, is a jerk but little more, and the conflict itself is deflated rather quickly, making one wonder just what the stakes there were. The overall stakes were quite clear – the friendship between Luca and Alberto – but everything else was secondary; it was only the genuine feelings in the core of the film that saved it. That, and the definitive lack of songs as opposed to ‘Over the Moon’, where the abundance of music caused me – and probably not just me – to hit the fast forward button as often as possible, until the movie’s end credits were revealed. Bravo, the end, and ‘Luca’ wasn’t so bad even if it was more circus than bread, you know? But still, nowhere as good as people proclaimed it to be either – ah well, that is the way a cookie crumbles, sometimes.

For now, though, this is the end. See you all soon, instead!

Loki 'The Variant' - June 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the JP franchise seems to be doing its’ best to make it even moreso, if the rumors about the upcoming JW: Dominion movie are correct.

What are they about? In it, a T-Rex will be fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong, and on several levels too. Let us go there.

…However, you may ask, what about Loki? And – ‘Loki’? Sadly, nothing. This week’s episode, ‘The Variant’, was a fun watch, as we saw the titular Loki suffer by trying to adjust to being the straight guy of the show/in the TVA, and suffering from it…within his soul, while people all around him aren’t impressed.

To elaborate, Loki is a showman; for him, a large part of his trickery is in pretending to be someone that he isn’t; the problem here is that he may be too chaotic on one hand: he switches allegiances and disguises at a moment’s notice, always trying to come up one step ahead regardless of what he was trying to do in the past and whoever he tried to trick earlier. He is inconsistent, he is selfish, and he is petty.

Only he is not. In the very first ‘Thor’ movie, when Loki appeared in MCU for the first time, Loki had a clear goal: first, he was trying to prove to Odin and the rest of Asgard that he was better than Thor, and then, when he learned that he was actually a frost giant rather than an Asgardian himself, he… remained constant to that goal, his epiphany just took him in an unexpected direction – genocide, by using Bifrost; the first ‘Thor’ film was done on a cosmic scale with a cosmic scope, and Loki was a worthy villain of that movie. And now?

And now Loki is depicted as a failure as both a character and a villain. In part, this is justified – Loki’s act as a trickster wore thin by the time of ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie, as Hela, who is his female counterpart in the Marvel universe, took over from him there, and died in it, but since Loki died quickly soon afterwards, in the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ film, this does not really matter.

Or does it? This Loki variant in a blonde-haired woman, while the show’s main character is a dark-haired man, of course. Yes, he is gender-fluid, but since we are talking about Disney/MCU here, this may not amount to much, because Disney wants to make money, first and foremost. To do so, it’ll be ‘progressive’ to appeal to the native, U.S. audience, but it will also be ‘retrograde’ to the audiences overseas, including RF and China, so let’s leave Loki’s sexcapades to the fans, and going back to the canon…

Going back to the canon, we got nothing. Loki is reduced to being a glorified goofball, and then he meets the ‘variant Loki’, aka the series’ main villain, for now, and follows her to see how the other half lives and whether or not he can get his own mojo back. Spoiler alert: he cannot. Not until he commits to being either a hero or a villain completely, and that is not something that he is ready to do so; he is much happier being a selfish and self-serving asshole instead – such a fall for a once great villain. I hope that the show will stop assassinating his character soon enough and begin to rebuild it instead. Now onto the JW movie?

Of that, much less is known, but, again, we are talking about a T-Rex fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong.

First, because of realism: Tyrannosaurus Rex lived at the very end of the Mesozoic, precisely 66 MYA, in North America. Giganotosaurus lived almost 30 million before that, during the Mid-Cretaceous period, in South America. The lineages of the two dino species have never crossed paths.

Secondly – and yes, I understand that I sound completely prejudiced here, but I honestly cannot help it – but Tyrannosaurus Rex would have won. Out of the two dinosaurs, it was the more derived carnivore and the better fighter as well. Yes, like the rest of the Cretaceous carnosaurs, the Giganotosaurus was bigger than the T-Rex…but with a much weaker bite. Like its’ African cousin the Carcharodontosaurus, the Giganotosaurus aimed to rip and tear the flesh with its scissor-like jaws and thin, blade-like teeth, whereas the jaws and teeth of a Tyrannosaurus evolved to bite through flesh and bone, (not to mention armored skin of some of the herbivores that it lived next to). Ergo, as soon as it got a grip on Giganotosaurus, the latter was doomed, as the Rex would literally bite and rip it into pieces, rather than bite and claw with forelimbs in order for Rexy to bleed to death, as the Giganotosaurus would aim to do.

This brings us to Spinosaurus, which already had killed a T-Rex…back in the JPIII movie, which has aggravated many dino-fans since then. As Dr. Wu would point out in the first ‘Jurassic World’ film, their dinosaurs are not exactly real, but here we need to talk about repetition: the third JW film seems to be repeating the third JP film, and as we have talked about in our discussions regarding the now-finished AoS, this sort of recycling is just bad.

…So, to recap. The third JW movie is about to dismiss all sort of scientific integrity that the franchise tried to cloak itself in, in the initial films, it seems to be recycling plot ideas from those initial films, (which means that it is becoming bankrupt in its’ ideas, not unlike how AoS became in its’ own later seasons), and that means that the JW franchise really is heading towards its’ own ultimate conclusion, at least for the immediate future. Sad, but that is real life. It sucks, as I have always said in my obligatory disclaimer.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Loki, 'Glorious Purpose' - June 9

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the premiere of ‘Loki’ TV series instead.

The first episode, ‘Glorious Purpose’, is more of an introductory episode than of anything. It introduces Loki to the TVA, (especially agent Mobius and the hunter B-15), and it introduces the viewers to the TVA, to the greater multiverse, (even more so than the ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ series have done), and to Loki from the universe TRN732, rather than the mainline MCU, where he’d been killed by Thanos – not blipped, but killed literally, not unlike Vision.

In addition, not unlike ‘WandaVision’, and even more like ‘The Sam Wilson and Bucky show’, ‘Loki’…is building out the MCU, yes, by adding more layers to the previously streamlined Marvel Cinematic Universe – literally speaking, for the viewers get a literal depiction of the side-universes branching out from the central timeline – the ‘sacred timeline’ or whatever it is called; given how the live-action TVA is depicted as a rather secular place, the entire ‘sacred’ terminology doesn’t really appear to fit.

…And the same can be said about the titular glorious purpose. Getting back to the show’s titular character, the man’s- the god’s- the alien’s villainy stemmed from his selfishness, exacerbated by his arrogance and his identity crisis. In the original MCU timeline, Loki fancied himself the smartest there was, and then the events in the ‘sacred’ timeline unfolded and proved him wrong, and the original Loki learned compassion, understanding, self-sacrifice, so on - and then he died, killed by Thanos – but we repeat ourselves.

This brings us to the TRN732 Loki, who has found himself in the TVA, with his identity crisis made worse by the TVA, and who is getting to be angry with all of this. This Loki is still stuck in his selfish stage, and he is not pleased with the tough love treatment that his character is getting. Of course, there’s also the question as to why his character is getting this treatment, why not just put him back into his original timeline and move on? Yes, that would deride the show to begin with, but conversely, if ‘Loki’ will try to go deep, such questions will be raised.

…Yes, if we are to go back to the Meta, the TVA saved Loki in order for him to grow, (re-grow?) as a character, to confront his evil- well, eviller, counterpart and become an actual hero, or at least an anti-hero, rather than an outright villain. MCU tried to subvert this trope in AOS with Ward’s and Palamas’ story lines, and the result backfired in their face badly enough that they didn’t appear to have tried to do that anymore, and have outright replaced S.H.I.E.L.D. with S.W.O.R.D. in Phase 4, but now they’re tried to do exactly the ‘forced repentance’ plotline with (the rebooted) Loki, for better or worse – and for the glorious purpose, of course, whatever that even means anymore. TVA has clearly deflated Loki for the moment, but the alien is resilient and vengeful, if nothing else. ‘Loki’ the TV series should really introduce the carrot to counter the stick, or else its’ titular character might just figure out how to turn onto the TVA and really mess them up – don’t forget, this is the Loki that led the invasion of NYC to do Thanos’ bidding, and tried to destroy Jotunheim with Bifrost as well. I.e., Loki may act suave and sophisticated, but he goes for some wide scale destruction as well, if he can achieve it, especially quickly.

…Yes, this might be somehow played out in the entire ‘Loki vs. Loki’ conflict/plot line of the ‘Loki’ S1, but for the moment, we don’t know that, not really, and we can only guess. What we do know, though, is that the new MCU show – i.e. ‘Loki’ is good, but not great, and whether or not it will succeed or fail is too early to tell.

Cruella - June 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Cruella’ the movie instead.

What can be said about it? It’s long – at 2 h 14 min long, it could’ve been shorter. It is overindulgent, (not unlike the titular character), what with all the costumes, the music, and what else have you. Pause.

Let us try to talk about the message, and the plot line, instead, because complaining about technical issues does not really take us anywhere. The reviewers, the critics, etc. talked a lot about ‘I, Tanya’, and the other movies made by Mr. Gillespie, so let us talk about the actual influences here – Disney’s animated movies, such as the initial ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’, and so on.

Seriously, I am calling out people here – ‘Cruella’ is designed as a typical Disney princess story: the righteous heir…ok, heiress, who is cheated out of her fortune by the evil mother/stepmother, who begins to run the kingdom…ok, the barony, by herself and no one can help our protagonist until she takes matters into her own hands. Pause. Simba from the original ‘Lion King’ movie rolls his eyes and matters that Cruella makes him feel like a Pansy, since his uncle actually ran his kingdom into the ground, while the Baroness was a success. How is that for cross-pollination?

…As for the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ franchise – do not go there. Initially, some of the ‘101 Dalmatians’ franchise pieces inspired it, but otherwise? Cruella was not a fashionista or anything; she was just a crazy rich woman who wanted to kill puppies to make herself a fur coat.

…Dalmatians’ skins and furs are actually rubbish from the fur industry’s P.O.V., and I suspect that Ms. Dodie Smith, who actually invented Cruella, Pongo, Perdita, Roger, Anita, and who else have you in the initial 2 novels, intended it to be so – her Cruella is rude, crude, entitled, and little else. Oh, and crazy, but this aspect of Cruella is her most defining and enduring one, from Ms. Smith’s books to the 2021 movie.

Getting back to the film, ‘Cruella’ differentiates from a Disney princess movie by Cruella being not just morally ambiguous, but also crazy, as in mentally unstable, something that is signified by her white and black hair, of course. Whether it stands for her split personality or something else, I do not know, but the titular character had no issues in proclaiming herself being ‘just a little bit mad’ or something. This is fine, this is her superpower, just as Elsa from the ‘Frozen’ franchise has powers over water and ice, but it does ‘unmake’ Cruella in being the underdog here, really, and makes the conflict between her and the Baroness rather undercut.

…Yes, this is probably a conflict between generations as well, respectable vs. rebellious, or something along those lines, but the conflict is still undercut; the entire issue of ‘grey morality’ isn’t exactly something that is safe or easy to discuss, and has plenty of its’ own baggage, but in ‘Cruella’, the titular character’s bicolored hair undercuts this concept as well, kind of – hence the entire confusion over the movie’s message.

…Is there actually a message in the movie? It is hard to say. Mr. Gillespie tried to combine the trope of the Disney princess movie with the modern individualism and the result is something akin to the relationship between Cruella’s bi-colored hair to the modern grey morality – a semi-existent mess… that was mostly buried by the stunning visual and audial pageantry. Hooray! Anything else?

Not particularly, no. ‘Loki’ is coming next week, (June 9, 2021), and we will get to see the trials of the god of chaos, who has been identified by everyone as being an unpredictable wild card that can’t be trusted. Still better than whatever the ‘Eternals’ movie is promising us in the future. This is it for now. See you all soon!