Runaways: Kingdom - Dec 14

The adventures of Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ continue. We learn more of Wilders’ past, (before Alex was born, presumably), and we see the ramifications this has had on the present. Alex, in particular, met Darius and his posse and saw how the ‘other half’ lives – it is certain that there was some socio-racial commentary in it as well. …Yes, ‘Runaways’ are trying to be modern and edgy and introduce viable social (and etc.) commentary of the day, which is fine, and it also doesn’t ruin the plot of the series.

…The children have come together as a team, however problematically, and they were able to rescue Alex from Darius. Spoiler alert though – Alex might still be evil as he was in the comics, but the viewers will have to see the future episodes to learn whether this is real or not.

…The show introduced Jonah, who might be Karoline’s true father – or her mother has slept with two men, which isn’t a ‘nice’ thing, even in modern times, so hopefully ‘Runaways’ will keep sexual deviations here to a minimum. Jonah himself might be the counterpart to the giant aliens from the comic series, (the Gibborim), and if not, he is still a stereotypical white man villain – ‘Runaways’ isn’t against using racial stereotypes either, it seems.

Of course, Old Lace was there too, however briefly, and it certainly counteracted whatever flaws ‘Kingdom’ might have had as a TV episode. By fictional dinosaur standards, Old Lace is just as realistic as anything that we have seen in the ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ for example. The Baryonyx was just disappointing, as dino-fans admit unanimously; the Carnotaurus was taken straight out of Disney’s ‘Dinosaur’, (a fictional movie with talking dinosaurs who have to find the promised land to escape extinction – the ‘Land Before Time’ franchise should’ve sued), and then there was some pale theropod dinosaur, which might’ve been a Metriocanthosaurus, or an Allosaurus, or even an Indoraptor, which still hasn’t made a proper appearance.

…Again, this can be considered a reference to the initial ‘Jurassic Park’ novel by Michael Crichton. Yes, it is still fiction, but Crichton went the rhetorical extra mile to flesh it all out in RL facts; he even named Rexy, well, Rexy…who wasn’t helpful at all in the novel, but behaved rather as the JP3 Spinosaurus did, and was the second worst dinosaur in the entire park. (The raptors were the first, dilophosaurs and compys tied for the third) – but the novel itself was very different from the movie, as it is known by now. Also, the point is that the franchise continues to plunder the novels, (especially the first one), even now, years after it got published – so from this sort of a viewpoint, Old Lace, and the rest of TV-/Web-series ‘Runaways’ franchise are actually very good. They are both original and fairly true to the canon comic plot line, (though the family life of Karoline and her family? Yeesh!)

Anything else? Chase and Victor’s plotline has revealed that Victor has cancer and he has an impromptu time machine that works as often as it does not. Also, last week, on ‘Fifteen’, we learned that so far the titular ‘Runaways’ are not so much the heroic half dozen of children, but the victims of their parents’, (and Jonah’s?) plot – ‘project Runaways’: sacrificed children/young adults/teenagers that will never be missed. Again, some RL social commentary here, but it still works…

…And this is it for the moment; see you next time! 

Runaways: Fifteen - Dec 7

The fourth episode of Marvel’s ‘Runaways’, ‘Fifteen’, got aired, and what of it?

One of the more important notes was that Old Lace got his proper revealing: the bioengineered dinosaur certainly got character, and-

And here is where the rant about ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ dinosaurs has inserted itself. Let us be fair: both ‘Fallen Kingdom’ and ‘Runaways’ are equal, when it comes to paleontology, neither the movie franchise nor the TV series/comics are concerned with science or education; they just want to entertain, and here the ‘Runaways’ of TV/Hulu have done a very important turn of the plot: they are introducing new, original content into the old, initial plot, as depicted in the comics. They are creating something new that wasn’t there before, just as the JP3 movie did with the initial franchise – as it was written in the past, back then the JP franchise broke the formula that got established by then by introducing Spinosaurus as a newer, bigger, better monster than a T-Rex, and by giving the pterosaurs – Pteranodons – a moment to shine. ‘Fallen Kingdom’ did not introduce anything new, it just recycled the JP3 elements – both the pterosaurs, which now are playing a more active role in the franchise and Spinosaurus’ replacement – that is either Baryonyx or Suchomimus.

The latter is a relative of Baryonyx; even though it lived during the early Cretaceous in Africa, just as Spinosaurus did, right now – 2017 – scientists have established that the two dinosaurs in question, Baryonyx & Suchomimus were more closely related to each other, than to Spinosaurus. That said, Suchomimus was physically very similar to Spinosaurus, only smaller – about 11 m in length on average – and without the trademark sail on its back. Thus, if Rexy were to fight it, this would be the T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus fight from JP3, recycled, revisited, and reset – and that is not good. Lack of original content can be very problematic, for both movies and TV series – just look at AoS: the 5^th season’s premiere has started with some very low numbers, the lowest of any of season premieres ever; as a movie, ‘Fallen Kingdom’ is a very different beast from AoS, but if it continues to recycle old ideas instead of generating new ones, then it will also develop problems, (given the appearance of their Baryonyx, already available to the public, maybe those problems have already begun).

Back to ‘Runaways’? There isn't really anything to criticize - they are actually doing better than ‘Fallen Kingdom’, they have no problems with the original content (and featherless dinosaurs), and they are going strong, (good for them!). Hopefully too, they will continue in this vein and continue to satisfy their viewers…

See you later! 

Baryonyx vs. Tyrannosaurus

Now, it became known last week that the next JW movie is going to have a Baryonyx in it, and naturally, there are already discussions about it, is it going to fight the T-Rex, (Rexy) or what. There are also suggestions that it is something of a remastered rematch of a T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus fight back from the JP3 movie. Does this have any connotations?

Firstly, what is a Baryonyx, (or was). For a while, the popular opinion was that it is a cousin of Spinosaurus, and while that is true, the modern (2017) scientific P.O.V. states that Baryonyx was only a distant relative of Spinosaurus, not a close one, so its’ popular depiction – a smaller version of the Spinosaurus without the sail, but with extra-large claws on its’ ‘thumbs’, something similar to what the raptors had, but on its front legs, rather than the hind ones. It was also quite a bit smaller than the Spinosaurus was, (or the T-Rex) – whereas T-Rex was about 12 m long, and Spinosaurus – approximately 17, Baryonyx was about 7.5-10 m in length, and while people admit that it probably did get bigger than that, it wasn’t that much bigger, making it still smaller than the T-Rex was.

Okay, that is for measurements, how about the X-Factor? (Or whatever it was called on DW). Size issues aside, T-Rex was the better fighter than Spinosaurus was, when it came to intra-species fighting, and if we substitute Baryonyx for Spinosaurus, it is the same thing, except that Baryonyx was smaller and weaker than either T-Rex or Spinosaurus were, and would be overwhelmed by T-Rex and its’ bone-crushing bite all the quicker.

That is not to say that Baryonyx could not win. It could. While Tyrannosaurus’ jaws and teeth were designed to crush and tear, Baryonyx’s were designed to latch on and not let go, just as Spinosaurus’ teeth and jaws were. (Cousins!) Thus, if Baryonyx was able to grab and bite Tyrannosaurus, then regardless of how robust and strong the latter was, it would not be able to escape Baryonyx’s jaws without losing its pound of flesh – and meanwhile, Baryonyx would continue to hit its’ opponent with its’ powerful front legs that had those trademark claws – and if it scored a lucky critical hit on a Tyrannosaurus’ eye or a blood vein, then the ‘tyrant lizard king’ would be in serious trouble.

All that, but keep in mind that Baryonyx did not have Spinosaurus’ superior physical strength and bulk; with just one lucky bite Tyrannosaurus could break Baryonyx’s spine or even tear the smaller carnivore in two, even if Baryonyx would hurt it in the fight, however badly. It would be a clear winner, even if it probably would not want to tackle another Baryonyx anytime soon.

And here the reality raises itself once again. Baryonyx and Tyrannosaurus have never met: Tyrannosaurus lived at the very end of the ‘Age of Reptiles’, the Mesozoic, in the late Cretaceous, while Baryonyx live during the late Jurassic, much earlier than Tyrannosaurus did. In real life, the two reptiles never met – and this brings us to the upcoming ‘Fallen Kingdom’ movie. Technically.

Again, nothing in the JP-franchise was ever educational, even as timorous as it was in AFO or DW, (for example). It was pure fiction, even if the original Michael Crichton novel was actually based on scientific facts, (of its time). Ergo, it must be treated as such, and where does it leave us?

With the realization that until ‘Fallen Kingdom’ comes out anyhow, JP3 was more progressive – as far as fictional movies about dinosaurs go – than the initial JW movie. It introduced a brand new dinosaur ‘villain’ – Spinosaurus – and gave the pterosaurs (Pteranodons) the recognition denied to them in the first two movies. (In the original novel Dr. Grant and the children encountered the ‘dactyls’ – Cearodactyls – big, fish-eating pterosaurs, but let us talk about them another time). The first JW movie also features pterosaurs, Pteranodons and their smaller distant cousins as ‘hazards’ of some sort, while the main monster role passed from Spinosaurus to the imaginary I-Rex, but it came later than the JP3 movie did, meaning that the JP3 movie is the more progressive than the JW one, relatively speaking.

Now we come to the issue – is Baryonyx a substitute Spinosaurus? Odds are very good that it will be, yes. Somehow, the fight between T-Rex and Spinosaurus in JP3 became quite popular, and turned into ‘two dinosaurs fighting each other’ cliché. Movie dinosaurs, movie fictional dinosaurs are kaiju, basically, and the JP3’s Spinosaurus was a textbook example of it; ditto for the JW’s I-Rex. In ‘Fallen Kingdom’, either Baryonyx or the Indoraptors will take that role, but we will talk about the Indoraptors at another time – the point is that ‘Fallen Kingdom’ is a fictional movie with nary much logic, (especially by RL’s standards) and should be treated accordingly.

That is that for this time; see you all soon!