Movies - June 20

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Moreover, it is beginning to bleed into the media too.

Look at the movies, to be more precise. They are just going down. The Jurassic franchise? Surviving on games, which is separate, (in a manner of speaking, ok), from the films or the streaming series. The Planet of the Apes franchise? Also down to the ground. The upcoming Supergirl movie? It is the usual ‘cynical anti-hero find their wings and inner goodness to become the hero they were meant to be’. Given that ‘My Adventures with Superman’ cartoon has done this to Kara in S2 much more powerfully, there is no surprise that people are not too enthusiastic about the upcoming Supergirl movie. Not that DC had many options left – the CW Arrowverse Supergirl really rode the perky good-hearted superheroine aspect of this character to the hilt, making Supergirl look good too, so now the DC movies are trying to do something else with the character.

The Flashpoint Paradox live-action movie had a dark-haired Supergirl instead of Superman, which was not a bad idea, overall, but someone in the creative team behind the DC live-action movies decided that that idea was contaminated by Ezra Miller’s toxicity, so back to the blonde hair it is. Now Supergirl curses, swears, drinks, and the like, but never fear! Once push comes to shove, Supergirl will do what is right. …Whether the audience will appreciate it is another question. Next?

Well, this brings us to my main point of my rant: ‘Steps’. Pause. Here I mean not the stairs, (that is for Po Ping the Panda), but rather the upcoming Netflix movie. In this version of the Cinderella’s story, one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, (her name is Lilith), gets the fairy godmother’s wand, makes a hash of things, and has a tyrant named Priscilla take over the kingdom, so now she and Cinderella have to team-up to save it all. Pause.

Does this sound familiar? It kind of does. No, not the Lilith bit – thanks to the team Vivziepop the name of Adam’s first wife (in some religious traditions) is well known now. I am talking about the movie’s plot – it is heavily influenced by Disney’s movie ‘Cinderella 3: the Twist in Time’. There, Cinderella’s stepfamily stole fairy godmother’s wand and almost took over the kingdom, but never fear – one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, (Anastasia), reconsidered and helped Cinderella save the day. The delivery of ‘Cinderella 3’ and ‘Steps’ is different, but the latter was clearly influenced by the former. That said, while Disney’s movies often have plot twists, the plot of ‘Steps’ does not – not apparently. Rather, from the little we have, we will have Lilith help Cinderella defeat Priscilla and become a better person. The plot of ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ did this sort of thing already. Still better than Disney. Pause.

Let me try again. Where is Disney in all of this? Making ‘The Stepsisters’, something new and edgy about Cinderella’s stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella. It is supposed to be done a la ‘Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers’ reboot too. That particular reboot with Disney’s attempt to do something a la ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ film. The original movie itself… is based on a book that has little to do with the film, and has its own fans and audience, not much more. The ‘Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers’ film – ditto; it made money, so Disney is keeping the crew busy with ‘The Stepsisters’ while it decides what to do next, and it can take a while.

Listen. Disney loves to make money. It hates losing money, and being involved in controversies and the like – even more. It wants to appeal to the sexual minorities, which is does by featuring them in various MCU properties, done in such a manner that they can be ‘cut out’ of the main MCU narrative and the latter doesn’t suffer; sexual minorities are the outlier, and the main heterosexual narrative is the main narrative.

Is Disney’s own universe, sometimes that cannot be done, as it was with ‘Raya and the last dragon’: there the same-sex relationship was plain to see. Therefore, Disney just ended that universe, the movie is a one-time, and it will remain a one-time, though Raya herself will appear in various other properties as a Disney princess. No girlfriend or anyone, though.

Conversely, there is the ‘Frozen’ franchise. The first film was quite traditional by Disney princess standards, with Hans being a traditional villain, albeit one with an open ending – he did not die, for one thing. However, ‘Frozen 2’ completely discard that story, having Elsa and her family go north, where they met Honeymaren Elsa’s not-girlfriend – right now Elsa is officially single, and as some person told us, she’ll remain single until she decides how she swings. I.e., Disney realized that they hit on something good with a blue-eyed blonde queen/princess/whoever and they do not want to ruin it by controversy. So they did not, Elsa remained conveniently single in ‘Frozen 2’, and now that the third and fourth movies of the ‘Frozen’ franchise are coming in the next few years, we will get to see what Disney does to poor Elsa next. Anything else?

Eh, ‘Cinderella 3’ made a bit of a mess itself, as it cancelled out the events in ‘Cinderella 2’. Maybe ‘The Stepsisters’ will fix it, or they may not. Netflix’s ‘Steps’ might be a fun fresh (relatively) take on the ‘Cinderella’ story, or it might just be an insipid and pointless generic piece of junk about a redemption of not quite a villain. We will just have to wait and see. Real life sucks, remember?

This is it for now. See you all soon!