Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about the new FH development instead.
Ok, no, first I need to address the issue of why I
am not talking about the current PJ Masks’ development. To this, I reply: real
life sucks already, so why should I talk more of the same? In greater detail,
listen: here, Disney Junior is trying to softly and slyly reboot the PJ
franchise, just as Disney/Marvel is rebooting AoS via the upcoming ‘Secret
Invasion’ series, and Disney itself is rebooting its’ animated movies as well –
just look at the TLM-2023 version and compare it with the original 1989 one.
However, in the case of PJ Masks, the soft reboot ran into a specific problem –
the lack of continuation. Seriously, look at the previous seasons, as I’ve
written before – there’s no consistent character development either among
heroes or villains; neither side seems to learn anything from their repeated clashes, or they do, but never utilize
it – and thus, all of them are caught in an endless loop of fights, night after
night. You could really write a dark story here, about several children who are
caught into some sort of a crazy Groundhog Day – pardon, night-like – scenario and
cannot escape it unless they do something drastic…
Ok, this will not happen because the titular
characters – the PJ Masks – have daytime/civilian identities and their nightly
emergencies have something to do with their daytime issues. That is fair, but
sadly, the series reboot seems to have gotten rid of this, now there is even
more nighttime action and even less daytime, making the cartoon series even less
realistic than it was before… Yes, I do understand that ‘PJ Masks’ was never
about realism, but still, this is depressing, so I’m ignoring the series for
the moment, and am not commenting on it either.
As for Ubisoft’s FH property… yes, they seem to be
going Mesoamerica now, and are introducing a new named character Vela the
conquistador. Yes, the conquistadors were the initial conquerors of Mesoamerica
for the Spanish empire. For me, though, they strike closer to home: one of
their most famous members, Hernan Cortez, appeared in the third and final
season of DW, where he faced-off against Ivan the Terrible.
I have written before that the match-up didn’t make
historical sense: like many eastern despots, Ivan IV the Terrible stayed safely
behind the front lines… of course, so did the king of Spain during Cortes’
times… so the point here is that in this episode, DW had a Russian/Eastern
villain defeated by a Western/European anti-hero! How novel… not. Still, DW is
done and gone now, and what is left is… FH, for as we talked before, the creative
team behind FH has plundered DW for ideas a lot, and the new conquistador
character is yet the latest example – with one difference.
For the melee weapons, Hernan Cortes used a halberd,
(which became a trademark weapon of one of the original team knight characters –
the Lawbringer), as well as the ‘espada rapera’ – the Spanish rapier. However,
since FH’s new character is based on their previous Warmonger character, their
weapon is the Warmonger’s old weapon – the flamberge sword. Essentially, this
is a rapier/sword combo, with a wavy, stylized blade, a la a tongue of flame.
Put otherwise, the FH team also seems to be running dry, Mesoamerican styles or
not.
…So, what we got here is the ‘PJ Masks’ show, which
has transformed from a relatively decent pre-teen superhero fable show into its’
flawed imitation, where style is more important than substance, and conversely,
we got the latest FH update, which has delivered – so far, but still – another update,
also on style, nothing more. That is flat-out depressing. Have I mentioned that
real life sucks? It does, and one can always count on oneself and one’s family to
make it worse.
For now though, this is it. See you all soon!
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