TLM-2023 - May 26

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I would rather talk to you about tigers or some similar creatures, but let us talk about the TLM-2023 movie remake instead.

Basically, it works. It is not the best movie of 2023, but it works. It is not the most remarkable or the most memorable, but neither is it the most horrid film of 2023. Anything else?

Ok, there is the species-changing operation of Scuttle – the bird changed from a male seagull into a female northern gannet. It is the same principle as changing Eric into Ariel or vice versa – these are two different seabird species and they are not really related to each other at all – you could just as easily replace humans with dogs, horses, or elephant in TLM-2023 – the basic principle would be the same.

With geography, it is the same mess as it is with biology – initially, Disney’s TLM franchise was based on Andersen’s fairy tale, which was set in the North Sea – but now Disney is proclaiming that their original TLM movie was set in the Mediterranean instead, and the remake is set either there or in the Caribbean. Yay.

Again, this mess is completely unnecessary, as is changing a bird’s species – does it really matter if Eric and Ariel live in northern Europe, in southern, or across the world in Central America? They are imaginary characters, for crying aloud! …But since the same question could be asked about the film itself – did the TLM really needed to be remade? It had spawned one or two movie sequels, as well as a TV cartoon spinoff already – but that Disney franchise became completely upended as well.

Getting back to characters… Disney did not really deliver anything good with them either. So, Ursula really is Ariel’s aunt – so, how did she end up with tentacles? Is she a mutant, or has the High Evolutionary, (the MCU version), had a hand in her transformation? Ariel was the one to end her rather than Eric? Great, more gender misbalance in Hollywood – Barbie and Ken are going to go down great!..

No, seriously, have you seen the trailer for the Barbie movie? It is all about girl power, about the titular doll character going into ‘the real world’ (such as it is in the film) and learning… something or other. This is an old trope, one of the first characters to do this sort of thing had been Buddha, the deity behind Buddhism, but Barbie is no deity, and whatever she is going to teach her audience will not be any new modern Buddhism. Rather, the cast and crew behind it are going for a new Pinocchio film, the wooden boy replaced by a plastic girl… and her sidekick, Ken, who – in the trailer at least – seems to be about as helpful and coherent as Ariel’s animal sidekicks are, (and that leaving behind the chemistry either between Diggs and Awkwafina, or between their characters), and can you imagine a modern film, where a male character goes on a true character development, and a female character is a comic relief? Well, I cannot, but we digress.

No, not really – these days the TLM remake is all about Ariel going out and about, learning who she is and embracing herself… just Disney’s Pinocchio remake had been. Del Toro’s take on the wooden puppet is something else entirely, so let us leave it off to the side for now, and we are left with what?

..Aside from a lame-ass excuse that Awkwafina’s character changed species to become a diving bird so that she would take to Ariel and friends underwater – seriously, it is a world with mermaids and who knows what else, why a seagull cannot dive here? – there is the odd reluctant of featuring Ms. J. Alexander, who played Vanessa, Ursula’s alter-ego. For a while I thought that Ms. McCarthy would just play Vanessa herself – Eric was in love with her only through a spell to begin with, who cares if ‘Vanessa’ looked like Ms. McCarthy without CGI and make-up – but no. This might have been too risky; plus Ms. McCarthy, (Ursula), and Ms. Bailey (Ariel) are too different from each other as people, so, again, we get Ms. Alexander as Vanessa and no particular reason as to why she did not appear in the trailers. What is left?

Nothing of any significance. The queen – Eric’s mother – is the same actress who played the grown-up Hermione Granger-Weasley in the original HPCC theater production. That… might’ve been one of the reasons as to why HPCC didn’t succeed – Ms. Dumezweni and her male counterpart, who’d played the adult Ron Weasley didn’t look anything like Hermione and Ron; they just as easily could’ve been a pair of OCs who got caught in the latest Potter and friends’ madness – but that story is over. The story of TLM-2023 also probably is – while it was received better than HPCC was, it is not by much. People may be invested, and investing, into the TLM franchise, moreso than they had into the DnD film – and hah, was not that painful – but not by much. We will just have to wait and see as to what will come out of this in the future, immediate and otherwise, instead.

This is it for now. See you all soon.

GotG Vol 3 - May 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I apologize for my tardiness. Now let us talk about the GotG, Vol 3. What is it?

A really great film, to put it down concisely. Without getting into details too much, let us point out as to what is absent from GotG Vol 3 – multiverse and Kangs.

No, seriously, let us try again. Throughout the GotG series, aside from the Christmas special that titular characters went from challenge to challenge, growing and developing as a team/family from film to film, including the ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ movies – only not, as some of them were dusted by Thanos… and Gamora died in a non-reversible way – and got replaced by an earlier copy of herself, who acted quite differently from the previous incarnations. So what?

Therefore, compared to the previous Marvel film, ‘Quantumania’, GotG Vol 3 is more toned down out of the two, it is more restrained, and the stakes for the cast and crew – not the characters – are higher. Put otherwise, the former put a better performance than their counterparts in ‘Quantumania’ did. What next?

Next, the movie is more restrained, by Disney/MCU standards. ‘Quantumania’ is supposed to be a leap into the multiverse. Sadly, Disney/MCU hasn’t gotten the hang of the multiverse so far; the best take on it is ‘Loki’, and so far the info about its’ upcoming second season is kept close to the chest: apparently, Disney/MCU is aware that they haven’t figured out as to how to play the multiverse card correctly, and ‘Quantumania’ was supposed to be a test run. Like a test run into something new, it was not a smashing success, even if Elon Musk’s went worse, but that is real life for you – it sucks.

Back to Disney/MCU the fact that the titular characters disband at the end of the film, marking something of an end for the group. This is important, for everything has to end, for otherwise it risks overstaying its’ welcome. Now, this is something that has been harped about in regards to Disney/MCU for a while now, so some elaboration is in order. Let us begin.

Firstly, nothing is set in stone, and as long as MCU continues to make money for Disney, it will continue to run. However, the overall reputation of Disney/MCU will continue to suffer and what will come out of that is another question. Of course, this means that the voices of Disney/MCU’s critics will continue to sound, but by themselves, they are nowhere near enough to end the MCU, for they matter less than they like to. In the elections of 2016, the American mass media did its’ best to ensure that Hillary Clinton would win – and she did not. Since then, the American mass media wasn’t the same, and neither is the rest of the American society – but the Donald is still neither arrested nor affected overmuch; he may’ve lost the election-2020, but he’s still kicking, and the Democrats are trying to stop him from running for the election of 2024, and are mismanaging that strategy…badly, but that is another story.

Back to GotG Vol 3, they have actually ended and kudos to them for this. Disney tends to make its’ series a trilogy, and GotG confirms to this… unlike the Ant-Man franchise, whose third film, ‘Quantumania’, feels more like a beginning instead – but it also leaves the ant-family high and dry. That is a cheap shot, it is, and even Disney (and MCU) admit it… somewhat.

Ah yes, the villain issue of Disney/MCU. Until ‘Quantumania’, the villains of this franchise came and went in a range of a single film – normally. There were exceptions. Thanos was one, obviously. The characters in AoS were another, but AoS itself is buried deeper by Disney/MCU than Thanos is, but where it does leave Kang?

Pretty much in the same place as the rest of the villains, save that now there is a multiverse – as in a nearly limitless supply of Kangs. Now when one Kang dies, another can replace him with little effort, and that is it. It is the same old story, just cheapened even more, since death of any Kang will be almost meaningless on one hand, and on the other, the rest of the villains are now redundant as there’s probably always a Kang who can do their job just as well.

To expand – ‘Quantumania’ differs from Vol 3 is that it has a hero, who was left high and dry, as with ‘Quantumania’ over, there’s no indication as to where the Ant-Man and the rest of his family will go, (i.e. they are all left hanging), and on the other hand, it has a villain that had no meaning in the greater structure of Disney/MCU, no matter how much the latter tried to up-play the multiverse. Sad, but GotG Vol 3 did not have these issues, which is why people like it much better than they had ‘Quantumania’, and that is that.

This is also the end for now. See you all soon!