Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, just ask the Saudis
and the US allies, given how they have just lived through possibly one of the
worst attacks on their oil fields…since WWII, maybe. So far, the suspect is
supposedly Iran, which raises the question: are we at the start of WWIII? Just
like the RF, Iran has had enough of the US hegemony, which grows steadily
weaker ever since the US failure in Libya, (and now there are supposedly
Russian mercenaries too – double ouch), while its’ European allies squabble
with each other over the Brexit. Seriously, people, flip a coin – if it lands
on one side, U.K. leaves, period, if it lands on the other – it stays, the end.
Kind of like the end of the US/Israel hegemony in Middle East, apparently, as
Iran isn’t backing down from a fight with the US and its’ allies anymore. When
the G7 meeting took place earlier this year, everybody in the West (and their
pro-West allies elsewhere) were extremely happy that Putin had not been there, but a certain high-ranking political
representative of Iran was. Where are they now, those wise men and women of
statecraft? Clearly, Tehran is just as hostile towards the West as Moscow is,
if not more, so where does it leave the leaders of G7 and their allies?
…Yeah, with the Donald in the role of POTUS and a rising
crescendo of political hysteria in general in the US, as the elections are
coming closer, D.C. party lines are further apart than ever, and no idea of
where to go next. If the Saudi Arabia falls before Iran, things will be very
bad; the relationship between the two nations had been strained ever since the
prophet Muhammed arose in the desert, united the formerly divided Arabian
tribes and they conquered… yes, eventually, the Byzantine Christian empire,
(what was left of it, eventually), despite the West’s interference, cough, but
also the Persian empire of Zoroastrians, the nation that would in modern times
become Iran. Now, it seems, the descendants of them Persians are about to
unleash some karmic whoop-ass on the descendants of Muhammed’s devotees at
last. Oh dear. Moreover, no one can blame it on Putin and the rest of RF
either. Ouch.
…Well, this is depressing, so let us try to talk about
something – JW ‘Battle of Big Rock’, perhaps? First, though, an honorary
mention of AoS and MCU: they are bringing Hydra back officially. And to quote
Ambroise Bierce, author and major in the US army (we are talking the American
Civil War here of the 19th century), ‘Why’? In the CA: CW movie
Hydra was supposedly gone for good; yes, it came almost on every season of AoS,
but AoS’ own relationship with MCU had plenty of problems; and moreover, the
second Spider-Man movie seemed to be setting up the Kree as MCU’s next main villains, not Hydra, (which had been mostly
human in the MCU so far).
If Hydra is coming back to MCU, this is going to be bad –
the first time around it caused a rather nasty split between MCU’s fanbase –
whether it was Nazi, or ‘only’ evil. Considering that this version of Hydra is
a fictional organization, (rather than a mythical monster, for example), the
argument was ridiculous, but there were many bad feelings generated by it until
MCU ended Hydra in the CA: CW film. If it brings Hydra back in Phase 4, already
burdened with the fallout from Spider-Man’s departure from MCU, as well as the
acquiring of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, then MCU might develop new
problems on top of the old ones and that is bad, again.
…There are at least two probable reasons regarding this
development. The first is that MCU was
going to use the Kree in place of Hydra during Phase 4, as set up by the final
scenes of Spider-Man II, (remember?), when Spider-Man left, the X-Men and the
Fantastic Four came in, and suddenly MCU got shook up by all the new changes,
and people in charge decided to scrap the Kree, go back to the tested and true
Hydra just because. Too many changes too soon and Disney/Marvel may not control
them. As said above, Hydra was more controversial in MCU than it was assumed,
so bringing it back in place of the Kree completely might make the MCU
situation even worse, so let’s go for the better option: MCU is going to
conflate Hydra with the Kree, and then replace Hydra by the Kree as the Phase 4
unfolds, so the AoS S7 will be the final nail in the Hydra coffin…at least in
the mainline MCU. What Disney/Marvel will bring out in place of AoS, (probably
the Falcon & Bucky show on Disney plus), and whether it will feature Hydra, is another story. What is next?
The ‘Battle at Big Rock’ JW short movie. About 8 to 9
minutes long, it featured a diverse American family in California as they go on
a camping trip in some fictional American national park in California, and get
involved with the imported wildlife, as an Allosaurus fights it out with a
Nasutoceratops family and then turns upon them. Hit the stop button.
Where to begin? First, in that perfect 20/20 hindsight, the
Nasutoceratops profile was released by the Jurassic World Evolution game
several weeks before today; if any’s interested, a Nasutoceratops is a cousin
of Triceratops, but without the nasal horn and with a notable different muzzle
from its’ much more famous cousin. Allosaurus, on the other hand, is a
well-established dinosaur among paleontologists, dinosaur fans, and ordinary
people; for a while, it was second only to Tyrannosaurus in its’ popularity in
the West, but now it has been pushed back in favor of its’ cousins, dinosaurs
like Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus, but it is still prominent. In BBR,
however, it was hopelessly outmatched; no offense to all of the Big Al fans out
there, but unlike Tyrannosaurus, who had evolved precisely for this sort of
thing – to bite through bone and crush the reinforced skulls and frills of
horned dinosaurs, (among other things), Allosaurus’ teeth and jaws were
designed for shearing flesh of giant sauropods – just look at ‘Ballad of Big
Al’, for example of the “Walking with…” series. When facing a dinosaur like the
Nasutoceratops, Big Al was out of his depths.
…Yes, the Nasutoceratops was most certainly not in any of the franchise’s movies so
far; in the last JW movie it was the Sinoceratops instead, a different
Triceratops cousin. It had no brow horns, but a prominent nasal horn instead – essentially, a reversal of the Nasutoceratops’
arrangement. In the last JW movie, it fought a Carnotaurus; why the people of
the JP franchise decided to use an Allosaurus this time is anyone’s guess.
Maybe they were trying to change the dressings on what was basically a rehash
of the JW: FK Carnotaurus vs. Sinoceratops fight? It is still anyone’s guess…
As for the human element, here we come to the second JP
movie, ‘The Lost World’. This is the film in the franchise that the BBR
resembles the most. Primarily, its’ second act, when Big Al goes for the family
in the trailer is reminiscent of the scene in ‘The Lost World’, where Ian
Malcolm and Sarah Harding are treating the juvenile Tyrannosaurus in their
trailer, and its’ parents begin to object. As it happens in those movies, some
of Malcolm and Harding’s entourage got eaten, but they and Malcolm’s daughter,
who’s an Afro-American herself, just like the father and daughter in BBR –
making, her, Malcolm and Sarah something of a mixed family themselves –
survive.
Again, both Tyrannosaurus and Carnotaurus make much better
dinosaurs for this sort of smash and grab attack – they both evolved for
strength, in two different ways but along similar evolutionary lines, whereas
Big Al was proportionally a more gracile hunter among the giant dinosaurs. (Plus,
at 9 m in length on average, it was smaller than the Tyrannosaurus was, even if
still bigger than the Carnotaurus). It really was not designed for this sort of
punishment – being gored and tossed by the Nasutoceratops’ parents, and then
being shocked, stabbed, shot and so on by the humans. No wonder that it had enough
and just left in the end – and this brings us back to people: where did they
go?
The obvious answer would be that they got eaten, but this is
wrong: a solitary Allosaurus is precisely the wrong theropod dinosaur to eat
several families of humans without making a noise. This dinosaur – and the rest
of its’ carnosaur cousins – were pack hunters, working together to bring down
giant sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Argentinosaurus, (to use the Impossible
Pictures’ examples). When faced with several smaller prey items, an Allosaurus
just did not have the mental hardware to deal with them – remember ‘The Ballad
of Big Al’? The titular character’s downfall came when he tried to attack a
herd of smaller, human-sized dinosaurs – Dryosaurs’ or Othnielias: Big Al
chased them, they scattered, Big Al didn’t catch anyone, and actually broke one
of his toes, and the fracture eventually got infested and he died. His relative
in BBR did better – he didn’t die at the end of this short feature film, but he
wasn’t doing very well either… but what about the humans? What happened to
them, Greg and co.? The better option is that they got swallowed by a plot
hole, but let us go with the other possibility: the Nasutoceratops family
scared them away, and the main characters – actually, the only characters, you
can say – just did not hear it due to their own noise. Ok, and this brings us
to the ‘credit scenes’ and ‘The Lost World’.
Sure, one of the scenes featured a pterosaur eating a white
dove released at a wedding and another one the Mosasaur eating a great white
shark. Both of those animals escaped from the island and the Lockwood manor in
the last movie, (though does it mean that the Mosasaur has reached South Africa
or Australia by now, because that is where great white sharks and sea lions live these days; they also
live in California, but the island was not
off the American west coast, I think, so South Africa & Australia are more
realistic here, ironically, but we digress). However, the other two short
scenes featured, firstly, a girl chased and attacked by several compys. The
same thing happened in the opening of ‘The Lost World’ film, which, in turn,
were inspired by the opening scenes of the JP novel. (Read it). And secondly,
we have a Stegosaurus attacking a car – again, we are talking ‘The Lost World’
here, where a different Stegosaurus attacked Sarah Harding. What does it all
add up to, I have no idea, except that it is evidence that the franchise has
lost steam: BBR is a rehash of ‘The Lost World’, the second JP movie, with some ‘Fallen Kingdom’
elements thrown into the mix. Put otherwise, and this is a rehash equal to some
of the worst AoS/MCU rehashes, such as the return of Hydra, talked above. Where
will this old rotten chestnut take MCU, (AoS is ending in 2020 for good now),
is unknown, but proportionally, MCU is much more durable than the JP franchise;
it is more likely to survive its’ bad decisions than the JP franchise – its’.
Yes, the next JW movie is supposed to end this trilogy, but if it goes out with
a whimper, it might be the end of the JP franchise for good, and I hope that
that never happens…
…Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!
