C&D cancelled - Oct 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. This week – on Monday – us Canadians put its’ own spin on this thesis, by creating a minority government. It became obvious almost immediately, that Singh, and Scheer, and Trudeau, do not get along and probably will not, and so it is anyone’s guess where this arrangement, the minority government, will get. Probably nowhere fast, that is where.

…Ivan Andreevich Krylov, the man who had adapted the fables of Aesop and Lafontaine for the Russians during their imperial period, had one among their number titled ‘The Swan, the Pike, and the Crayfish’, in which the titular characters were hired to deliver a some sort of a load, (it is never defined just what it is), somewhere. The load is not heavy, but the swan went for the sky, the crayfish began to move backwards, (in Russia, it is a common folk myth that the crayfish walk only backwards, because reasons), and the pike went into the water. Whose fault it was, the fable rhetorically proclaimed, is not for us to judge, but the load never went anywhere. The Russians consider this fable to be one of Krylov’s best ever. For Canadians, the Trudeau Swan, the Singh Crayfish and the Scheer Pike can be much harder to endure, especially since they are not the only characters on Canada’s political Olympus, and our country’s political landscape has acquired other features by now. In Western Canada – there is a lot of resentment brewing towards Trudeau and his government because of oil, and ecology, and native rights, and what else have you. Miss Greta Thunberg left her mark there too, but now her ‘phenomenon’ is dying down: if Al Gore, in the years past, as America’s VP, could change the tide, then neither can Ms. Thunberg, no matter how much she was tried to be puffed up in the past weeks and months.

…And in the East we got the good old Quebecois separatism, which, apparently, also gotten re-started these days. Fun! I remember that, however, vaguely, back in the 90s, when my family just came to Canada, it was all the talk, especially among the Anglo-Canadians, but nothing came out of it back then; what will come out of it now is for anyone to guess.

But enough of the depressing reality, let us talk about… television. Pause. No, let us not talk about the new ‘Watchmen’ TV series, which is already a shit-storm of alt-left, alt-right, fanboys, SJWs, and what else have you, and so far the series have only aired its’ very first episode. What will happen as more of its’ episodes is aired? More hubbub and controversy, and that is all that I care about. Why? Because I do not like ‘Watchmen’, I did not like the original comic series, I was not a fan of the film, and I am staying away from the TV series too. I had had this sort of bad excitement back with the SW7 & 8 films, and do not need its’ TV analogue too.

This brings us to Marvel, and – more bad news: C&D are cancelled. Why? Good question, and so far this is no concrete answer. The easy way would be to blame the latest Marvel shake-up, as Kevin Feigle begins to manage the Marvel TV, as well as the Marvel movies. But the more subtle signs that something wasn’t right there could be seen in S2, which was more jumbled and less tight than S1 had been, it felt almost like two seasons smashed together, just like how the ‘Fallen Kingdom’ movie felt like two movies smashed together, and SW8 – as a film that had fragments and elements of another film, especially in the end. Just like AC of MCU, or ‘Swamp Thing’ of DCEU, C&D may be just another TV series that got canned…just because. Maybe the numbers weren’t high enough… since the end of S1, as the S2/the series proper ended on Ty & Dy leaving New Orleans for pastures new. There are rumors of them appearing on ‘Runaways’ S3, but now it’s anyone’s guess if this’ll come to pass.

…Yes, in the comics C&D did come to NYC, but MCU is different from Marvel comics, and Ty & Dy’s departure from New Orleans felt like an end of something – in this case, it was of the C&D show proper. Ouch.

…Speaking of comics? The 2017 ‘Runaways’ comic reboot has amounted already to 24+ issues, while C&D – to 50% of that number, at best. Clearly, something was going on with C&D in the entire Marvel multiverse, not just to MCU, and now it has manifested itself: C&D is cancelled for good for now. That is real life for you. It sucks.

…You can argue that not all of real life is bad: the NatGeo site nowadays permits about 4 or 5 free articles a month, (the benefactors), plus there are some YouTube videos from that franchise that are appearing on YouTube on a more regular basis than once every week or so, (the generosity), so really, turn that smile upside down! Or not, because in Canada the political landscape has become an unpredictable and volatile cul-de-sac, (by Canadian standards, but still), and elsewhere it is worse. In the U.S., we got the brouhaha with the impeachment, now it seems to be going forwards, but it will make much fewer people happy than initially; and across the pond we got the Brexit, which is still going forwards…somehow, and increasingly more and more people are getting fed-up with it, especially in Great Britain proper. In under a week now there will be a lot of people unhappy with Boris Johnson and the rest of his crew, one way or another. Of course, the latter will have their own axes to grind and to bear once everything explodes, and that will just make everything worse, again, but hey! That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at C&D – it did not suck, so it got cancelled, and we just have to grin and bear it. End of the story.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

AoS; S7 spoilers - August 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now, let us get back to AoS. Yes, they are on their finishing line, 2020 is supposedly the last season for them ever, though it should be acknowledged that it is possible that the SM fallout will affect them too, somehow, and they will get a reboot, or a reset or something – but that is not very likely. For the moment, Disney+ and co. are coming forth, and with them come the new TV series, including the Falcon-Bucky bromance, and the Wanda-Vison romance, and a Moon Knight new TV series, and several other, and SW series, (like ‘the Mandalorian’) and what else have you – put this way, even AoS finds itself to be unnecessary, and as for C&D & ‘Runaways’, it’s open end for them too – no one expected for ‘The Gifted’ to be cancelled with a with a whimper for example, did you?.. Of course not, but the truth is that AoS for a long time had been MCU’s main toehold in the TV world once AC got cancelled…and it is just as unlikely that it will return to the big screen, seeing how Captain Roger’s A: E finale had him back with Peggy, abruptly changing the entire minor plotline(s) that had been leading up until the CA: CW film in the MCU. It is not AoS alone that can experience reboots and resets, but in the case of Steve and Peggy it is a relatively minor one…but it cancels out the now-terminated AC the TV series for good, no matter how fun it was. In it, Peggy was moving on from Rogers, and in ‘Endgame’ Rogers moved right back in. For a while, he had a semi-relationship with Sharon Carter, but now she is gone for good, without a trace. Ouch again, unless there was never a Sharon Carter, but yet another one of Fury’s Skrull allies, which raises a completely different line of thought…where were we?

Ah yes, the promo for AoS final season. The bulk of it is taken by the Chromicoms, as they arrive in 1931 NYC, kill two corrupt cops and steal the face of a third one, literally, with a machine of some sort, in a manner that would make Cthulhu be impressed. Not too much, but still impressed. However, this was not what had caught my attention, but one of the lesser shots – in it, Daisy holds a bullet or a similarly shaped and sized object that had a glowing green Hydra logo on it. Oh, bother.

In the second half of S3 S.H.I.E.L.D. and general Talbot supposedly had killed Hydra for good…only for it to start to return in the last third of S4. Then, it was a Framework version of Hydra, supposedly not real, (the character of AIDA took on many roles in S4), but still Hydra. In CA: CW, Zemo tells a man he’s torturing/interrogating, that Hydra is done, gone, in the trash bin of history…and in AoS S5 Hydra promptly returns, this time as an ally of the Kree. S.H.I.E.L.D. defeats them both – again – and this time Hydra is supposedly gone for good, there were no indications of the evil organization in AoS S6, as far as I can remember, so let’s give AoS its’ due – but now, in the upcoming 2020 final season, it might be back. Why?

…Because AoS seems to be recycling its’ old ideas over and over, usually in new ways, but they do not always work well, as I have written repeatedly, discussing AoS in its earlier seasons and episodes. How AoS will handle Hydra’s return (to MCU proper?) this time I do not know, and I am unsure that it will be good, face-stealing aliens or not. Ah well, considering that Disney/Marvel and Sony are at loggerheads in real life, and suddenly MCU’s superiority is no longer assured, it might not matter for much longer – let’s first wait and see as to what happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper by 2020 first and then try to make educated guesses.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

'Dark Phoenix', C&D, and etc - June 6

…Let us not talk about the ‘Dark Phoenix’ movie for now. The original ‘X-Men: Last Stand’ film was decent enough, but plenty of people have hated it all the same. There is no reason as to why ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ should be any different, but I here want to talk about something else – namely, C&D. Just as the actors from AoS had appeared at the premiere of CM the movie, so has Emma Lahana, from C&D, appeared at the premiere of ‘Dark Phoenix’; and-?

Firstly, it makes the contrast between ‘Dark Phoenix’ and CM look even more in CM’s favor. Ms. Lahana gushed enthusiastically about ‘being a part of the Marvel family’, or ‘the MCU family’, or whatever, but keep in mind that Ms. Lahana is a very talented actress, as she has shown in C&D S2: although they looked, well, identical, both Brigid and Mayhem have come across as two very different people – without the use of CGI, or any special effects, or whatever. Just different clothing…and a lot of acting skill. Ergo, how could you tell that Ms. Lahana wasn’t acting here, acting all happy and etc. about ‘being a part of the Marvel family’? When you got talent, you got talent, and when it is a great acting talent, then you are a great actor, well – actress, but in real life trusting you can be kind of tricky, I reckon.

That said, Ms. Lahana was apparently the only ‘outsider’, MCU or otherwise, who had appeared at the ‘Dark Phoenix’ premiere – and CM has Simmons (Mack) and NCB (Yo-Yo), Ward (Deke) and Wen (Melinda). That is 4 people from AoS as opposed to C&D’s only one, though that’s a great one, no doubt about it. However, many people are already pointing out that the ‘Dark Phoenix’ clearly had some issues regarding MCU on one hand, and that it had to reshoot its’ second half to make itself different from CM, which brings us back to MCU. Whatever is going, or was going, or will be going behind the scenes between Disney and FOX merger, it clearly was not as clear-cut as Disney, FOX, and mass media, want you to believe, but that is real life for you.

On the other hand, there is Netflix. No, not because the second season of C&D made a direct reference to Luke Cage the Marvel character – it was in the penultimate episode of S2 or the one before that – it lasted for about a minute and was kind of blurry; blink and you miss it – but rather about the upcoming final season of JJ that is coming to Netflix, as a part of an original series. In this season, the titular heroine is coming against a man named Gregory Salinger. In the comics, he’s a Deadpool-related villain, (yes, that Deadpool), but clearly in MCU, which is an entirely different Marvel ‘Earth’, he’s going to be a completely different character from what he is in the comics – and Disney cannot really do anything about it or the entire JJ S3. Go Netflix, stick it to the man!

…As for the ‘Dark Phoenix’ movie in general? We will talk about that at another time, preferably after it becomes available to a wider slice of populace than just the movie critics. Until then – see you soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Code Yellow' - May 31

…Obligatory disclaimer: real life is weird sometimes – in Mother Russia, the ministry of labor has rearranged the holidays, to shorten the New Year celebratory period but to ensure that the amount of holiday days in the Russian year remains the same. Hashtag what gives, and this brings us to AoS’ episode ‘Code Yellow’.

In this episode, we re-meet Deke, who seems to have started his own Fortnite 500 Company or whatever, centered on a VR game that is named ‘the Framework’, and whose existence – Hell, the entire existence of the Deke Shaw plot line in ‘Code Yellow’ – was almost to mock AoS’ S4 and S5, as Deke kind-of recreates some of the elements of those seasons for personal glory.

Here is the fact: in this episode, we learn that Deke Shaw is greedy, self-centered, and shallow. He is also loyal, competent (at least to a certain degree), and smart. He is brave too, especially when it comes to other people, so he’s a mixed bag, and ‘Code Yellow’ really takes what we’ve learned about him back in S5, (especially in the first half), and does its’ best to run with it and to develop Deke further. Sadly, it does this with a typical American humor, so the result is bizarre and absurd and funny mostly to Americans, and the viewers in the other countries just roll their eyes and go along with it.

On the other side, we get to see Yo-Yo and Dr. Benson deal…with an alien space bat of a parasite who infested agent Keller and then killed him. Yeah, AoS keeps on killing its characters off; Yo-Yo appears to be devastated, (fair enough, she and Keller were just beginning to have something between them), but the problem is that in the script she and Dr. Benson have kind of…dithered most of their time while Keller’s immune system was trying to fight-off the alien infestation and he was still alive; the actors’ acting here is simply unconvincing, period. What next?

Sarge and Isis have captured May, but lost the other two members of their team, while Keller is dead, his body converted to some sort of crystals, (like the ones that we have seen in AoS S6 promo) and Yo-Yo is devastated…but the bad acting has ruined that tearjerker of a moment. C&D may be cancelled now that their S2 is over, just as ‘the Gifted’ had been back in April, but…

But the truth is that with the ‘Dark Phoenix’ moving airing in June 2019, this incarnation of the X-Men universe is most likely coming to an end, which means that the entire franchise is likely to be re-shuffled, and now that Disney/Marvel have taken over the X-Men franchise from Fox™, that is even more likely; plus ‘Legion’ is also ending, (after three seasons total), so there’s that. Was ‘the Gifted’ S2 rushed? No, though it did have its’ problems, as we’ve discussed it back in winter 2019, but that is done and gone; ‘the Gifted’ didn’t deliver high enough numbers and so it was given the ax. C&D’s S2 numbers were not that great either, so there is that. In addition, the potential suspicion that their time together is ending might have given C&D’s cast and crew motivation to rush through things and even cut their screen time and plot development because hey, they no longer care about it so much. Just look at GoT S8 and see how well that approach has turned out for them.

…Could Got S8 deliver the same plot developments that we have seen by now and satisfy a greater amount of fans/viewers than it did in real life at the same time. By now, the talk of the petition to reshoot the S8 has died, as it was going to, obviously, (petitions don’t amount to anything, they’re as effective as scaring a hedgehog with your bare naked ass is, and ditto for sanctions – just look at what Russia is doing in Eastern Europe regardless of them), but the bitter aftertaste remains and it just might sour the next generation of viewers from watching the GoT sequel. Ah well, as the ancient Russian epic poem, ‘The Tale of Prince Igor’s army’ says, ‘No matter how badass are you, you may even be able to fly as a bird does, you still will not escape God’s judgement’. Incidentally, this echoes the biblical statement of Ecclesiastes, that ‘God’s mills mill slowly but exceedingly small’ and that everything turns to dust. Thus passes the fame of the world, and in time, GoT will be forgotten just as ‘the Gifted’ are, or ‘Time after Time’ and ‘Powerless’ have been. It will just take GoT a lot longer to reach obscurity; a lot longer. Back to AoS?

No, not really. ‘Code Yellow’ was focused entirely on the S.H.I.E.L.D. team back on Earth, as they are beginning to realize just what they are fighting against – only not. Not unlike at what the script writers tried to do in S2, especially in the first half, when Gonzales’ faction of S.H.I.E.L.D. had infiltrated Coulson’s, in AoS S6 we’re seeing two groups of ‘good guys’ coming to blows with one another because of misunderstandings, and because in case of people of Coulson/Sarge, they’re crazy and pointedly unlikable. Ah well, you can’t win them all, and for the next two weeks we’re going to be AoS free, for better or worse.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

CD, 'Level Up' - May 30

And so, the 2^nd season of C&D has reached conclusion, and what can be said about it?

Well, no, first the obligatory disclaimer: real life…sucks. Sometimes. Other times it is bearable, or outright weird, seeing how a pair of raccoon dogs are currently running around the U.K. countryside. Despite their name, they are actually a part of the dog family than the raccoon one, but otherwise? They are not very closely related to any wild dog at all, and they look quite strange – a mix of raccoon and fox features. No matter how hard TV shows try, they just cannot quite beat real life for weirdness.

C&D, meanwhile, did its’ best to wrap up its second season on a high note; the episode’s very name is ‘Level Up’; and yet…

And yet it is a mess. On one level, everything is straightforward: Ty and Dy go to fight Andre, who is now a god, while back in the mortal world Mayhem is helping Evita hold the fort. Simple, right?

The problems with this statement start with the question: Andre is the god of what? Is he even a god or a loa? Yes, he is the villain of the season, no doubt about it, but that said? He is less of a juggernaut as C&D the show tried to set him up, and more of a trickster, as he messes with the minds of Ty & Dy and the rest of his flock as he attempts to stave off his migraines and co. and- what? He has shed the mortal coil and is now a supernatural entity, what is his endgame now? Honestly, it does not fully fit.

No, let us try again. Andre was dying because of his migraines. (Did he have cancer or some similar sickness?) Roxxon gave him powers, inadvertently. Those powers made Andre a psychic vampire, an abuser, a pimp, and also a trickster. (He was a kickass musician before everything else, note). Fine. However, the catch was that his psychic vampirism allowed him to stave off his death only temporarily; the disease always returned. But then he died and became a god, so why all the kidnappings and psychic vampirisms? Did his ego need this still or what? Moreover, his M.O. – he is a trickster, something that made him somewhat morally ambiguous, something that C&D probably did not want for him, not in the end game.

Ambiguity moves us onto the other villains of the season – Connors and Lia. Fine, Connors’ is dead. The fact that he had tried to help Tyrone and his family and they killed him? Not so good, and the fact that Mayhem then hangs his corpse upon NOPD’s firing range is crude. Yes, Mayhem is crude, obtuse and chaotic; she’s random in her nature; she is randomness and chaos aka mayhem. Odds are, she is not even fully human anymore, (thanks to Roxxon, again). Again, this works, but…

It’s not even that hanging Connors corpse wasn’t really productive, it’s more like how did she know where to find it, how did she know that he was dead? Tyrone’s family aren’t in touch with her, she was more on Tandy’s side of the equation, and now Tandy is leaving New Orleans as the season ends, and now what?

Honestly, that is anyone’s guess. The numbers for C&D S2 were not very high, but the same could be said of S1. If AoS is keeping afloat because Disney/MCU supports it as some sort of a sponsor, then some people have used C&D – made by Freeform – as a message vessel outright: the episode finales constantly ended with breaking-the-fourth-wall messages about abductions, and suicides, and the like. It is a good idea, but since C&D is not the most popular Marvel show yet, maybe it was used prematurely. Maybe AoS (or ‘Runaways’) would be a better fit?

Back to Mayhem? As Brigid she was a human being with a wide range of emotions; as Mayhem, she just breaks things and destroys people; she was on the side of angels in S2, but she was almost more trouble than she was worse, as she’s kind of crazy, certainly amoral, almost invulnerable and super strong. She is the next member of the club initiated by Faith the Vampire Slayer from the original BtVS and Jessica Jones from the now finished Netflix series – but both of them became more rounded and likable people over the course of their series; they rediscovered their hearts, their consciences, and their stories, both past and present improved. Mayhem so far does not have that – her emotional pool has only rage in it and similar emotions; anything else is much reduced. One of Andre’s shadow minions (?) tried to mind-trick her by pretending to be her dead ex-boyfriend – she just blew him up with a grenade. Girl power and all, it is cool, just as Evita shooting the rest of Andre’s shadow minions in the back with some gun (Mayhem’s?), but it does make for a very poor script, with ‘poor’ meaning ‘rushed’. Evita and Tyrone broke up? That is sad, though regardless, I am rooting for Ty and Dy here, because they are the team. Whatever problems ‘Level Up’ had, Ty & Dy kicked ass; the way that they had switched their fears and almost made ‘Level Up’ a comic episode, it was great!

…And now Tandy is leaving town, but obviously, she is going to be back. C&D are a team and cannot really function apart from each other: this is how their corner of MCU works. Yes, C&D the show kept its main stars apart while having them slowly coming together at the same time, but sooner or later this will have to end, as otherwise, C&D will end up as AoS, where the FitzSimmons are constantly kept apart to a point where it’s almost a joke and the fans don’t care – they just put the FitzSimmons together, period; where Daisy (Chloe Bennett) seems to be a permanent bachelorette, (she and Deke could’ve made it work, actually); and as for Gregg (Coulson/Sarge) and Wen (Melinda)…some people are theorizing that their relationship ended both tragically and off-scene because AoS wasn’t comfortable with making an interracial ship. Maybe this is why Yo-Yo has broken-up with Mack and is trying to make a relationship with a new character named Keller – but we are digressing.

The point is that C&D S2 was good, but it was rushed through in places, especially at the end. Yes, the dynamic duo defeated Andre, but at the end Andre appeared to be almost a being of pity than of scorn (or anything else, really). Is he gone or is he coming back? Lia is alive and is doing time, (though how exactly anyone connected her to the missing girls’ case is another question? Tandy had Mayhem pull strings or what?), and that is good, but we have no indication that she’s going to clean up her act; as Grant Ward on AoS and Roman on ‘Blindspot’ showed, this sort of thing can go very bad very fast, so it would be good if Lia isn’t left twisting in the wind but is given therapy; maybe by father Delgado; and father Delgado…

Father Delgado had very little to do in the S2, and especially in the finale – yes, Adina had given him the documents that allowed Connors’ cohorts (including his relative the senator) to go into the slammer, but why him? (Also – Connors’ didn’t lie? In this case, Adina has some bad karma coming her way, I am afraid). He is just a priest; how could he have jump-started that entire legal process? Adina, at least, was some sort of a city politician, I think… What is next?

The next AoS episode – ‘Code Yellow’ – is coming up tomorrow, and then it is on hiatus until June 14. Never liked that approach, but then I was never a part of MCU. I will see you then, and as for C&D? Good luck to them. So far, there is no sound of a S3, and no teaser trailer unlike at the end of S1. This does not bode well, but we will have to wait.

Until then – and I will see you soon.

Aladdin 2019 - May 25

And now let us talk about that plucky lad, named Al. Did his real life movie work?

Yes, yes it did. Why so surprised? ‘B&B’ reboot worked, so did ‘Jungle Book’, and even ‘Dumbo’ – for some people at least. Unlike ‘Dumbo’ though, ‘Aladdin’ did not take any risks or liberties with the original material and is 90% a direct reboot of the original 1990s film. And?

And nothing. The original movie worked because it was good, and 2019’s reboot did its’ best to follow the established lines and it worked. It wasn’t exciting but it work, which is good enough for Disney, given how the other approach in regards to SW seemed to have backfired, so playing it safe and secure for Disney forwards ho!

…Yes, Disney (and Guy Ritchie here) tried to be woke and forward here too, what with Jasmine and Genie’s plotlines, but again, it works. When America does not try to shove political correctness down everyone’s throat extra hard, it works.

On the other side it did not work with Jafar – in the original movie Jafar was decisively darkly sadistic, (actually many of Disney’s 1990s animated movies these days look darker than their modern counterparts), but also humorous and well rounded as a character. His 2019 counterpart, on the other hand, feels like a typical evil stereotype, with a hint of Jafar’s song from the ‘Return of Jafar’ movie aka ‘Aladdin II’ that went straight to DVD (I think). In it, Jafar sings a song that is called ‘second rate’, and in 2019 film, he constantly feels second rate to no one in general and everyone in particular. Maybe the scriptwriters tried to give him a dash of LK Scar, who constantly felt as if he was in Mufasa’s shadow, but that did not work for Scar in LK, and it does not work for Jafar in 2019 version. When in 1990s he just wanted to take over the world with magic and sorcery, at least he was ambitious, and – impressive as a villain. Yay?

…Considering that in 2019 version he actually was unable to handle the Sultan, yeah, Jafar became rather deflated here, and correspondingly the titular hero did too. It is hard to be a good hero if you do not have a good villain against you, after all. What is next?

Will Smith did not suck, but why should he? His unnatural coloration as the Genie was not his doing; it was more of a technical mishap and that is quite different. Yes, the movie ‘After Earth’ wasn’t very good, and the Netflix film ‘Bright’ or ‘Light’ or something like that wasn’t an improvement either, but WS still got skills, and so he delivered them with panache.

Moreover, speaking of technical mishaps? Abu rather worked, though his capuchin monkey origins were still showing very clearly in the movie, but Iago? Rather than being a generic parrot as he had been in the animated features, he is a scarlet macaw. Pause. Like the other macaw parrot, the scarlet macaw lives in the wild only in the American tropics, and never in the Old World, i.e. Agrabah. Ergo, how exactly did Jafar acquire him? Yes, it is a magical place but still, if Jafar had power or connections powerful enough to export an all-American parrot for his own personal use, then he was not so bad off to begin with. Of course, it is never enough when you are greedy or evil or both or whatever, but regardless did he have to be so lackluster? And did Iago have to be a macaw?

As for the third animal sidekick of the movie, Rajah – yeah, he is a tiger. A CGI tiger, because real life tigers are worse thespians than macaw parrots are – and macaw parrots supposedly can bite through steel wires, let alone human fingers and ears: as a generic parrot Iago was really comic relief, (though yes, he was an oddly competent minion for Jafar too), but as a macaw he could be much more formidable than, well, Abu. That said, the scene when Abu and Aladdin have to deal with a giant-sized Iago? Pause. Where were we?

‘Aladdin 2019’ works. Of course, so does ‘Hellboy 2019’, in my opinion, but much more people disliked it…primarily because it was not Del Toro’s work and design. Del Toro’s duology works too, no doubt, but did we need to piss on ‘Hellboy 2019’ as well? Who knows…?

Anything else? Well, the remade ‘Aladdin’ was good and fun to watch, but ‘The Jungle Book’ was better, though again, this is personal preference. And one more thing, one that may come as a surprise – there is a Soviet version of ‘Aladdin’ as well.

No, seriously, during the Cold War period, USSR went and made their own take on ‘Aladdin’, and it was real life with actors – years if not decades before 2019, almost without CGI, (save for the Genie, duh). There were special effects, but they were done with ropes and things instead. On the NatGeo website, there is a short article about the original 1001 ‘Aladdin’ fairy tale, and it tells people how in the canon it took place in China rather than in the Middle East; and boy, would it be interesting to see a ‘race-bent’ version of ‘Aladdin’ instead of this one? That said, both the Disney versions and the Soviet film took place in Middle East rather than China, but otherwise, the Soviet version was closer to the original, and Aladdin wasn’t exactly a street urchin (or a street rat) but he still was fatherless, leaving with his mother – and then, one day, when the royal entourage was taking princess Boudur (the initial name of the Jasmine-like character) to take a bath in the public bathhouse, (something must’ve gone really wrong with the palace’s baths), she had a tantrum and demanded that someone looks at her face, (a big no-no in medieval Muslim world). That someone got to be Aladdin, he was to be decapitated because he’s a penniless no one and Boudur was the princess, but the Jafar-like sorcerer intervened because he needed Aladdin to go into the dark magical cave and give him the lamp.

NG is right here – there were at least two main villains in the original Aladdin fairy tale – a sorcerer who was not really interested in politics, he just wanted magic power for evil’s sake, and a vizier, who wanted the princess to marry his son so that he would become the next sultan and subsume the dynasty – kind of GoT thinking here – but Aladdin failed that plan with the genie’s magic: by then he outmaneuvered the sorcerer and kept the genie and his lamp for his own. That said, he was still nicer than in the original fairy tale and did eventually keep the genie from the sorcerer’s grasp by his wits and by befriending the genie and so on – but there weren’t really any animal sidekicks, unlike the Disney movies…though the evil wizard was chased out of town at the end of the film by a goat.

Yes, a goat, an ordinary goat, (who probably belonged to Aladdin and his mom or not, it does not matter), chased the sorcerer out of town. Jafar was a sadistic villain who deserved his gruesome defeat in both ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Return of Jafar’, but, on the other hand, if the first film had ended instead of him being powerless and chased out of Agrabah by some random goat…we would’ve had a very different ‘Aladdin 1992’ instead.

As for the Soviet movie, it was so popular in the U.S.S.R. that it even got adapted into a puppet theatre story with basically the same characters, though this time the main villain was the vizier, who wanted to marry princess himself, with the wizard being his flunky, (just think a human version of Iago pre-redemption), who tried to set him and Aladdin onto a collision course to become the winner by default…but got eaten by some random wild lion instead.

…Yeah, it is a good thing that Rajah did not get to be a liger, (a RL tiger-lion hybrid). Those unnatural hybrids are huge and impressive, but most animal protection groups hate them, and for a good reason, though yes, the question as to why Rajah got to be a tiger and not a lion in the original ‘Aladdin’ movie is anyone’s guess. In ‘Aladdin 2019’, it is more justified, but regardless…

…Back to the soviet ‘Aladdin’? (Or rather ‘Aladdin’s Magic Lamp’?) No, not really. Yes, it had a more GoT feel to it than the Disney versions, so let us have a shout-out to S.A. Chakraborty and her ‘Daevabad Trilogy’. Here, she has genies live in a world slash society not unlike that of Martin’s series, save that it is less tangled and convoluted and stretched-out but it still works. Essentially, if you like GoT and ASOIAF, give ‘The City of Brass’ and ‘The Kingdom of Copper’ (aka the published novels of the trilogy) a try – you may enjoy them too.

And secondly, the second shout-out goes to Tanya Huff and in particular her novel ‘The Fire’s Stone’, which is also a novel with strong Got elements, but also magic…and some atypical sexual situations; very mature, very progressive, and very Canadian. Take that, Americans! While you posture and preen about political correctness and whatnot, Canadians go forth and do it! Up yours!

Chakraborty’s novels, though, have something similar too – one of the main themes in this literary world is the half-human half-genie race…yeah, not unlike ‘Aladdin 2019’ there is human-genie interaction of the sexual kind, but in a much more serious manner. What is next?

Nothing. C&D S2 is coming to its’ finale and AoS will finally have Deke Shaw return in the next week’s episode. Sigh. In the first half of AoS S5 he was quite competent and someone to reckon with, though already AoS had problems in figuring out as to how to handle him on a regular basis – so naturally they brought him to the past in S5 second half though he wasn’t really required anymore – and the issue of how to make him fit into the AoS was made worse. Sometimes they honestly tried into making him into a love interest for Skye/Daisy/Quake, other times they flat-out did not, but all the same, he was becoming a part of the team – and then AoS S6 began. Given what as to what we have learned about his background story and in-world skill set, you would think that he would be right there with Jemma (his maternal grandma) and Daisy (his love interest) along the others in space, helping them get ‘grandpa Leo’ back but we so far we saw neither hide nor hair of him until now, and our first glimpses of him in S6 make him look completely ridiculous. Sure, there probably will be some sort of a cock-and-bull justification regarding this turn of event, but here Marvel shot itself in the foot when it showed that CM red carpet interview with him and Wen, when he honestly admitted that he and Iain (Fitz) hated each other. Just how bad their relationship became that MCU and co. had to reboot his entire story line after making him a regular character too? Guess we will have to wait and see as to what will happen next week.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Planet Kitson' - May 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Which is why this week’s AoS episode, ‘Planet Kitson’, tried to do something about it.

More precisely, ‘Planet Kitson’ was largely a comic episode, where almost every scene was done in a humorous manner one way or another. Very clever, and for those people who like American humor – namely the majority of Americans and maybe just as many Canadians too – very funny. For the humorless minority this was more of a filler episode where Elisabeth and Chloe (namely Daisy and Jemma) got to act drunk slash wasted, and Ian and Joel Stoffer (Fitz and Enoch) also showed to be a very good comedic team. Put it thusly, why did they need to bring Jeff Ward’s character into the second half of AoS S5 and beyond? It’s anyone’s guess, and it is little messes like this one that keep AoS from being truly great, but-

But the fact of the matter is that ‘Planet Kitson’ does not have much in plot advancement, save that some Boba-Fett-like character kidnapped Fitz at the end of the episode and prevented it from being this a happy ending. By now even fans of Fitz and Simmons are tired of their beloved characters being constantly apart save for brief periods of togetherness – it’s time for them to get it going on, especially since they will have at least one child, a daughter, the mother of Deke Shaw, so maybe this forced separation is enough? We will have to wait and see, again.

On the more immediate level – since otherwise this would be a blog entry that is too short even by my standards – we can also pay attention to C&D; in the previous C&D entry we talked about AoS, so let’s do an about-face and acknowledge that the good father Delgado isn’t doing so hot in the MCU: his role is constantly downplayed and minimized. A very possible reason as to why Adina Johnson – Ty’s mother – is acting OOC by S1 standards is that she’s doing someone else’s lines – either Mayhem’s or Delgado’s. In the first half of S2, we had some sparkage between those two, but since then Delgado’s character was increasingly pushed to the sidelines, while Mayhem had issues of her own, both within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and without. Yet again C&D handled whatever real life issues it had behind the scenes better than AoS does, so again, it is coming ahead. AC, cancelled or not, is and was still the best MCU show so far; ‘Runaways’ are very different, the Netflix were a mixed bag, and as for the ‘Gifted’ and ‘Legion’, they actually aren’t a part of MCU, but have their own universes.

…Marvel (& Disney) have merged with Fox, so now mutants may be a part of MCU – we will have to wait until the end of June for the ‘Dark Phoenix’ X-men movie to see what is going on there, but for now there don’t appear to be any mutants in AoS, (or C&D, and ‘Runaways’ are something else entirely). Anything else?

Firstly, the scriptwriters for GoT appear to have read the source material – Martin’s ASOIAF novels and reached the readily available conclusion that Westeros should throw out the entire hereditary autocratic monarchy out of the window and try something new. Sadly, since HBO is American, it ended with Westeros being a proto-democracy – supposedly. In reality, immigrants from Great Britain, Europe’s first, and best, constitutional monarchy, heavily influenced the U.S. democracy – and unlike it, Westeros got zilch in this department, so many critics of the GoT finale expect that it will collapse and things will fall apart into several kingdoms slash countries.

Again, it is a tendency that was implied even in the original novels and related materials: only the Iron Throne and whoever-was-sitting-on-it, write-in the name of the king/queen of the month kept the seven kingdoms together; the memory of the Targaryen glory days helped to make the Iron Throne desirable, and now that it is all gone and done and the North is independent, say hello to separatism, civil strife and further warfare. Pause. Yes, ethnic Westerosi probably call it the daily routine, but those of us who live in the real world find this turn of events rather sad instead.

A special mention goes to the separate North of GoT. In ASOIAF series, the North and South had a strong Scotland and England feel, with Dorne having a special mention as quasi-Wales, something that carried to the first five or six seasons of GoT so with North seceding from the Union…I mean Westeros, um. The Scots in real life are upset with the whole Brexit situation and while they are not fully interested in seceding from the U.K. in favor of the EU, that possibility is on the table too. Apparently, HBO is trying to make a comment about real life politics literally, and are also being all-American in regards to a largely European issue. Um. Can’t we try this again?

Mr. Martin seems to have made his peace with GoT and HBO, and besides, GoT is over; there are spinoffs in the work already, but the main, basic plotline, one that depended the most on ASOIAF, is done and finished, so that’s that.

MLP, as we’ve mentioned, is in its’ final season as well, and like GoT, it is beginning to play loosey-goosey with the script; the season’s premiere – Mane 6 vs. Sombra – had the cheesiest, the over-the-top, the blatant dialogue, not to mention that it completely disregarded the MLP comics, Hasbro’s own – so it seems as if Hasbro had settled its’ own affairs by now too. MLP is coming to the end, and though Grogar’s little cabal is coming together, they are still evil and thus will turn on Grogar, (made obvious by ‘Frenemies’ finale) and on each other, unless Grogar does so first, giving them (and the script) an opportunity to join the Mane 6 and allies and begin redeeming themselves for real now. Or not, and they go back to Tartarus, or get exiled from Equestria for real or whatever. You cannot really force redemption; both AoS and ‘Blindspot’ showed that, though only ‘Blindspot’ – intentionally. Anything else?

Well, there’s ‘Aladdin 2019’, and surprisingly, it is not a failure, so yay! However, that is also a topic for another time, and as such, we will talk about it at another date.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

CD, 'Blue Note' - May 23

Real life sucks. Thus speak the political specialists as they discuss the current election in India. And then there is C&D, whose last scene in this week’s episode, ‘Blue Note’, talk about suicide in real life. Since S2 began, C&D episodes often finish with an appeal to their real life audiences with some real life message, something that AoS, as an example, never did.

Why AoS? Not because of S6, which has begun to run earlier this month, but because of S2. Yes, it is about Kara and Bobbi and Grant and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D – and how C&D responds to it. ‘Blue Note’ is inspired by AoS’ ‘villain flashbacks’: from S1 onwards, AoS tried to show backstory of various villains, one per season. S1 – Grant and Garrett, S2 – Melinda May…something that demonstrated loud and clear that AoS was having major restructures behind the scenes, something that continues even to this day – you noticed how Yo-Yo is no longer with Mack, but with a new agent, Keller? Odds are, this was supposed to be Deke and Daisy, but instead we got no Deke, (Jeff Ward). It is as if he got cut out of the show so far. Ouch! And after all the trouble they went to keep him on the show in S5! Seriously, just let him remain in the future, that is the end, but no. They brought him back to the past, actually did a decent job of integrating him into S.H.I.E.L.D., and now there is neither hide nor hair of him. Ouch!

And on the other hand, there is C&D, who actually keep a tightly knit cast where everyone often goes somewhere and know what they are doing. Sadly, Connors’ plot line is kind of veering around – even if Adina, (Ty’s mother), did kill him, this still is not fully convincing…but we are digressing. The point of tonight’s speech is this: Mayhem points out that people (characters) like Lia, Andre, Connors, are victims but also villains and should be treated accordingly. This is a direct indirect reference to Kara, Ward, maybe even Werner and Ruby from AoS who had no redemption, no nothing. (Framework Ward was no more Ward than Hive had been). To this Tandy replies with hope and mercy, compassion, and so Lia is brought to a hospital instead, where Lia had worked before she met Andre and was mentally enslaved by him. Mercy won, at least for now, and yes, Lia just might die in C&D S2 finale, but this was still better than how AoS has treated Kara in S2, period.

As for Andre himself…yes, he is a genuine villain, even though he is sympathetic on occasion, though he is an atypical one – he succeeds through music. He is a psychic vampire, a pimp, and a very bad person altogether, but you have to admit – he has style, imagination and thinks outside the box. Mayor Willikins from BtVS gives him two thumbs up! (If he still has thumbs, that is). Ty & Dy fail to stop him; Andre has ascended, and became a god slash loa of some sort. Let see them stop him now!

…Yes, they are going to, because otherwise, C&D are done, and that is not going to happen, so go our dynamic duo! In addition, apparently Lia is inspired (let us call it that) by a canon C&D comic villain, some sort of a demoness that tried to manipulate Tandy (the comic version) without much success. That I do not see – it is more likely that C&D is trying to act cute, in the manner of AoS, AC, even the now-cancelled Netflix shows (aside from others), C&D is trying to remake original Marvel characters with mixed success: Andre and Lia are well-rounded characters – but original characters, there’s nothing decisively demonic about them, especially in a literal sense: MCU/Freeform should have just kept them OCs and be done – they would remain as good. However, apparently, this is not how it is done in MCU – and now we got some useless trivia/Easter eggs about Lia – and plenty of very important backstory in this week’s ep. Will it prove to be important in the season’s finale? Namely, will Ty & Dy be able to defeat Andre with Lia’s help in the loa world? We will just have to wait and see.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Window of Opportunity' - May 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and then there is Ali Smith. Her novel ‘Autumn’ was kind of pessimistic but still well-written and normal; ‘Winter’ was more, um, derived, (and no, this isn’t a compliment), and her latest novel, ‘Spring’ feels like a flow of consciousness, reminiscent of James Joyce at his most…semiotic. It is anyone’s opinion if this approach works; personally, it feels more like a breakdown of the author (Ali Smith) as a person due to personal issues with it reflecting in her works, not unlike as to what is going on with J.-Ro, whose professional life post the HP books isn’t going so smoothly either.

On the other hand, there is also ‘Dynasties’, both the book and a TV series. It works in both incarnations in an intriguing and thought-provoking manner. There are flaws – we have discussed ‘Dynasties’ last year – but it still works, regardless of the flaws. Go team Attenborough and co.! Raise the natural awareness! Fight the good fight! Yeah! …Real life sucks, but not always, and now let us try to talk about AoS S6.

The adventures of the titular AoS characters continue to delight; this week’s episode – ‘Window of Opportunity’ – stared the new, (and further?), adventures of Fitz and Enoch. Enoch was the non-human alien, whom is not quite android and not quite alive…interesting. The point being, however, is that the team FE killed off ‘the Controller’, who was really a minor villain and a jerk, and are off to the planet of Kitson for further adventures, with team Jemma being close behind them. The odds of them constantly missing each other until the S6 end are astronomical, AoS almost constantly kept the FitzSimmons apart ever since the second half of S1, so they probably are not going to change this dynamic in S6. Anything else is up in the air, free for grabs.

Trivia time: not only this week’s episode took place on a backdrop of a planet that looks suspiciously like real-life planet of Jupiter, but also AoS had no idea as to what to do with languages: the Controller spoke perfect English, while at least some of his crew – the engineers – talked some sort of an authentic alien language, cough. Seriously, who do the script writers think they are? Tolkien? Then let us have Fitz drop into, or onto, Middle-Earth and help Aragorn, Gandalf, and the hobbits fight Sauron and his orc hordes, shall we? The S6 of AoS – the space part of it – has some clear and obvious influences of SW, so why not LotR as well?

…Yeah, that annoying copyright issue and everything, but regardless, an AoS/LotR crossover could be cool. Does anyone want to write it? Really, I will read it and all! Back to trivia?

…Baron Samedi’s wife in real-life voodoo mythology is called Mama Brigid. Cough, but doesn’t our detective O’Reilly have something atypical in her ancestry? Just asking… oh wait, we are discussing AoS now.

Coulson/Sarge and his people continue to be a motley crew of chaotic, unpredictable, and possibly amoral antiheroes…but there does not appear to be an outright evil vibe coming from them. Maybe there is more to them than just destroyers of worlds, as they appear to be set-up in the eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D., (Mack’s version). Moreover, the scriptwriters did their best to make Yo-Yo be, well, important in this episode, NCB got to show-off her character’s new prosthetic arms, (from the second half of S5, when Ruby Hale had cut them off with her chakram – hello Xena, agent Heartly and Lucy Lawless) and ran around a bank. Yay Yo-Yo! …Of course, the fates of Bobbi and Lance come to mind: they were made regular characters on AoS in the first half of S3, and in the second half, they got dropped completely, and now their actors are done with MCU, at least for now. (Cough, the Orville, cough). Yo-Yo and her actress have lasted proportionally much longer than they have, but still…

Speaking of new agents? The one shot by Sarge last week was an agent Fox. (Really?) And now we got agent Keller and it does not look as if he is going away in a hurry, so apparently this side of the AoS script equation got a lot of its own drama now too. Yay! Not, but AoS is doing its best to be exciting – Melinda’s fight with Sarge’s crew was certainly interesting and well-choreographed – so let’s throw them a bone and worry about anything else later.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

CD, 'Two Player' - May 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. GoT seems to give it a run for its money, though, but first – C&D.

The excitement in the lives of our plucky and intrepid characters, C&D, Ty & Dy, you name them, you know them, keeps on coming. This time, they got to play in the land of the dead to rescue Tyrone from, well, dying. Yay!

…Of course the depiction of Baron Samedi was decidedly campy and possibly not very respectful towards the loa version of Hades, (just look at Riordan’s Jason Grace series to connect the dots), but then again, C&D treat the other depicted loa of the series – Papa Legba – in a very bizarre way, so there’s that.

It would be nice to move onto the living now, but firstly, we must mention Edita’s aunt Voodoo, who is officially dead, and her niece will now be the next voodooist of New Orleans…at least until the end of S2, after which it’s anyone’s guess how the cast will change. In particular, Tyrone’s family, including his mother, Adina, have changed some, Adina in particular has acquired some vigilante traits of her own, less suitable to the S1 version of her than to Mayhem.

Mayhem and detective Brigid have made their peace at last, and they are back in one body, and Mayhem is the dominant personality, for now. Honestly, we can safely say that while the cast of C&D is tight, their script is not, not so much, and while the main cast of C&D is small, the scriptwriters did not always figure out how to balance them out, as they did in AC, in the not-so-distant past. Father Delgado seems to be back, but right now, he seems to be more of a sounding board for Adina and the show never really figured out how to utilize Mayhem & detective Brigid to their full potential, (though their actress was still quite awesome, no argument here). Instead they got a storyline that meandered all over the place and will probably come to a head in the next week’s episode, when Mayhem and Tandy will face-off over ‘a girl’, most like Andre’s ‘girl Friday’, whom he had used up and discarded. Apparently, she is still alive, and can be rescued, physically, if not anyhow else.

Yes, Lia is both a victim and a villain, not unlike the canon take on Kara Palamas/agent 33 in AoS S2, but she’s treated much better here as a character, with much more respect and professionalism by C&D’s cast, which makes C&D a better show than AoS, who treats its’ characters like crap – and that brings us to GoT.

GoT S8 sucks. AoS has its own flaws, it certainly lags behind C&D, ‘Blindspot’, AC and others, but never there had been a fan petition to remake a season. In case of GoT S8 there is. Will it amount to nothing? Naturally, most petitions just vanish into oblivion, though sometimes there is some recognition of it, especially online, but that is it. There’d been a petition or something, (on top of anything and everything else) to cancel Brexit in the UK before it even got started, but the U.K. government went onwards with it anyhow, and now they’re in a worse mess than Westeros is – and I doubt that GoT S8 will have a remake.

Why? Because it is the series finale, no muss, no fuss, no S9. People are largely done with it, with ‘people’ meaning cast and crew: it is over; it’s not going any further. People have invested in it, and now they are done with it, and are moving on. To SW, if rumors are of any indication; apparently, SW has changed its’ approach again, and will release a plethora of new movies in the recent future. Will it bite them in the ass? Probably yeah, but they will act all stupid and say ‘What is that? Why? We were so sure!’ the end. Moreover, GoT is at its’ end too, and suddenly the fans’ opinions, ratings, numbers, etc. do not matter so much anymore.

Of course, it is not as straightforward as it may sound; the premiere episode of AoS S6 was summed up with a number 2.31 – the same number that came with the AoS 5x07 episode ‘Together or Not At All’. This is low number, but AoS is gamely plowing on ahead regardless. Good luck to them, and we will see them tomorrow, this Friday, hopefully.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Missing Pieces' - May 11

AoS S6 is here. And?

Firstly, the obligatory disclaimer: real life can be trying, but that is real life for you. How does AoS stack up to it?

The season’s premiere, ‘Missing Pieces’, is about Coulson and Fitz, since both died at S5 finale. Now, though, Team Jemma (her, Daisy, Davis and Piper) are travelling through space, kicking alien butts and taking their numbers while looking for Fitz – and there is a giant-ass space ship chasing them instead. However, never let it be said that Simmons is not an opportunist – she used the ship’s latest attack to take her team into a new territory, to continue to look for Fitz, though the rest of her team are unhappy with her, and there is going to be drama.

Simmons’ issues with Fitz aside - by now everyone knows that the FitzSimmons make their own drama, and this season AoS just might’ve jumped the shark with them, pity – what is worth noting is that Piper and Davis have become proper supporting characters: here’s to them lasting at least to mid-season, and not just because otherwise the FitzSimmons and Daisy will have to make a lot of uncomfortable explanations to Davis’ family at least, you know? Secondly, Daisy is having her own issues – she is channeling either Ward or Morse, and it does not do her character any favors. And finally – Deke is pointedly not with them; as Marvel Entertainment accidentally showed on YouTube, Jeff Ward (Deke) and Iain (Fitz) do not get along, so they clearly had to do something about it, while keeping Jeff on the show. Why is another question; they did a half-arsed job of trying to make chemistry between him and Chloe’s Quake in the second half of S5, but apparently it didn’t stick, so no Deke in space. Pity, because he and Elizabeth Henstridge (Jemma) actually had a good thing going-on in the second half of S5…

Back within MCU, Fitz is shown at the episode’s end, being dominated, somehow, by someone (or something) called the Controller. In Marvel, it is a man named Basil Sandhurst, who is…an Iron Man villain, actually, but in MCU, Stark is dead – for now, at least – so it is an open question if this is going to be a real-life version of the man, somehow. The point is that Fitz is having his own problems – again…so, it is nothing new. The more interesting question is – where is Enoch? He was not bad back in S5, did liven up AoS somewhat, and it would be exciting to see more Chronicoms in the future AoS episodes too. The fact that Fitz is in trouble, is mentally dominated, does things that are probably morally ambiguous at best, and needs Simmons and the team to help him is nothing new – remember the S4 Framework mini-arc, anyone?

This brings us to the other half of the season’s premiere – Mack’s version of S.H.I.E.L.D. on one hand, and the appearance of ‘Sarge’, (Coulson’s look-alike) on the other. There are several characters called ‘Sarge’ already in Marvel; the main ones are Nick Fury Jr. (and now that would be an interested character to introduce to MCU proper), and a mutant for a secondary universe (earth 2099 A.D.) now more usually called Travesty.

…Yes, in S5 already AoS took its’ characters to the future, and yes, there are gifted individuals of some sort, working for Gregg’s Sarge character, so it’s always possible that S.H.I.E.L.D. will be dealing with time travellers from a new future – the old one got derailed when S.H.I.E.L.D. blew up the alien space shift and defeated Talbot/Graviton in final S5 episodes, remember? The time loop is broken, the future is free from grabs – and MCU has introduced, sort of, the concept of a multiverse in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ movie, and it might be developing this concept further in the upcoming ‘Spiderman’ movie, just look it up at the IGN YouTube channel. IGN is not perfect, but it does deliver. What is next?

The main twist here is that as contrasted by a deliberately misleading clip released earlier, this version of Coulson/Not-Coulson is no friend of S.H.I.E.L.D. at all; the man he took down was a new S.H.I.E.L.D. agent instead, but on the other hand, despite their rugged appearances and crazy behaviours, he and his people aren’t trying to intentionally & deliberately hurt people, so maybe they’re not actually evil? In this case, Mack and co. will need to invent a new strategy beyond throwing armed forces and armored vehicles at them, while dealing with new drama: Mack and Yo-Yo have broken up, and now Yo-Yo is beginning to flirt with a new character named Keller, while Mack is with May…yes, because Coulson is dead now, (so far, Sarge is being set up as someone who’s not S.H.I.E.L.D.), and because AoS had thrown them together on occasion, especially in S4. What will come out of that, aside from the generic answer – more drama – is currently unknown.

…Also, speaking of drama, Mack and May managed to persuade an old friend of Dr. Garner to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. while the FitzSimmons are in space. Since Dr. Garner was revealed to be Lash, a killer InHuman, (who got redeemed, supposedly, by rescuing Daisy from Hive and dying in the process), it’s possibly safe to take the newcomer’s moral alignment with a grain of salt; after Radcliffe and the Darkhold disaster it is better to be safe than sorry, right?

Anything else? Gabriel Luna will return to his role as the Ghost Rider…this time, on his own show. Since it will be on Freeform, his show might have more in common with C&D that AoS, so (tentatively) welcome back, Mr. Luna, to MCU! Hopefully, you will have better luck here than Blood and Palicki did – by now, they are firmly in the past/recurring character sector of AoS, alongside Dalton and Campbell; ah well, ce la vie.

As for ‘Missing Pieces’ as a whole, it did a good job by bringing out the best aspects of AoS – special effects, a decent plot, great acting and decent dialogue. Now all they have to do is to keep it up and to win back their strayed fans. Between ‘the Gifted’, ‘the Runaways’, C&D, and ‘Legion’, (though it is supposed to have its final season this year, hah), it will be a tough job, even with Netflix’s series gone, and the Ghost Rider show still being in production…

This is it for now; see you all soon!

CD, 'Vikingtown Sound' - May 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometimes, it is bearable, but that is being deliberately optimistic. Now onto C&D?

Last night’s episode, ‘Vikingtown Sound’, continued to develop C&D’s S2 plot further. Ty & Dy are the couple, and while on their own they are rather dysfunctional, together they are unstoppable. Well, maybe not, since VS finale showed Ty’s powers fritzing out and him collapsing, so now it is up to Dy to be the rescuer instead. Detective Brigid is coming along for the ride, but she has her own complication – Mayhem.

…The good news here is that Mayhem is trying to be a hero here, and she is sort of succeeding. Whereas Andre is apparently shaping up to be MCU’s version of the demon D’Spayre, (Despair, got, it, cough? Marvel puns are usually quite awful), Mayhem is genuinely trying to stop him, and she’s succeeding, but the fact is that she’s, well, mayhem; she may not be specifically good or evil, but she is chaotic and uncontrollable, and odds are, her help comes with its’ own price, unless she’ll be able to master it and make peace with her other half – Brigid.

And then there was aunt Voodoo. Was, because Andre killed her at the end of VS. That said, before the audience was shown that Voodoo was aware of Mayhem’s interference in Andre’s plot, was maybe in contact with her, and was trying to help her – maybe? Certainly, Voodoo did not seem to be perturbed when Andre killed her with his music, the end.

Andre himself… On one hand, his evil plan is being, well, a pimp. He is running a brothel of mentally broken down girls, and Lia is his madam, essentially. Not the greatest villainous plot in history, but given the fact that so far C&D are your friendly neighbourhood heroes, this sort of evil is just what they can handle; ‘handle’ being the loose term, since so far Andre is holding their own against them, by trying to keep them apart and disharmonious. Ty & Dy, however, are getting onto him, thanks to Mayhem, and maybe aunt Voodoo…which brings us to the other side.

The voodoo. VM talks about loa, and Andre, in particular, learned about Damballah. In real life, Damballah (or just Damballa) is a serpent spirit and ‘The Grand Master’, the primordial creator of life. He is so far out of Andre’s reach, that Andre should wish to be the man in the moon instead, it would be more realistic and more up to his calibre. That said, aunt Voodoo did tell him, that he himself was becoming a loa, (a spirit/god), (but she refused to help him, and so he killed her), and on the other hand? The promo for the next week shows Ty & Dy interacting with a baron Samedi-typed character.

First things first. In the world of Robert Howard and his followers, (the world of Conan and Red Sonja), Damballa is a serpent-god of evil, he usually takes second hand to Set, who is based upon real-life ancient Egyptian demon-god Apop, Apep, or Apophis, the monstrous serpent who would eat the sun, but the Egyptians’ sun god Ra was ‘the world’s buffest grandpa’, to quote Rick Riordan, and is able to beat-off Apop nightly. The end, and if you want to know more about Apop, you should real ‘The Kane Chronicles’ trilogy of Riordan’s – it might not be as good as his PJ series, but still a fun read. The point is that in fiction serpent gods have a bad rep, (and are often conflated – never mind that there was nothing serpentine about Set in real life; it’s hard to tell just what kind of animal Set is depicted as – dog, jackal, hyena and donkey were all suggested as likely candidates, but never a snake), and then we got baron Samedi.

If in real life Damballa is the primordial creator (and is sometimes syncretized with Christ, though he has both a wife and a mistress), then Samedi is the loa of death and the dead, a grim reaper who is dressed to the nines rather than just a robed skeleton with a scythe. (He has a wife too, but it is unlikely that we will see her in C&D). Put otherwise, Ty & Dy are going to the land of the dead, and it will be a team effort to leave it – but returning from the dead to the living is always a team effort.

This brings us to AoS, and not just because on one hand this show has encounters with the land of the dead itself, and because it is returning to TV tonight, (May 10, 2019). AoS is mentioned here because Andre is a more down-to-earth version of Dr. Whitehall, (Whitehall hadn’t been a pimp, but he was trying to use the Obelisk to become a god of some sort), Lia is a better version of agent 33, (‘better’ as in ‘better depicted’) – aka a villain that is so pitiful that she’s almost sympathetic, almost, and Connors is also a ‘better depicted’ of Ward going on a redemption path. Mind you, ‘Blindspot’ in S2 did a better version of a Ward-like villain going onto a redemption path, (sort of), but we are talking about C&D here and now. Essentially, in the second plot line of VM, Connors and Ty’s mother have a showdown of some sort, have their epiphanies, and – their breakthroughs. Will they emerge as better people from this? What will happen next? Hopefully, we will able to learn next week.

This is it for now, however. See you all soon!

CD, 'B Sides' - May 2

Obligatory disclaimer: real life is not very good, to put it lightly. Now onto C&D.

In this week’s episode, ‘B Sides’, the script writers took ques from the C&D comic arc ‘Shades of Grey’, complete with a villain who enslaves others by getting into their minds and draining them of their energy, in a matter of speaking. Put otherwise, this is a variant vampire mixed with Killgrave from Netflix’s JJ, complete with a female minion (ala JJ), who has been completely brainwashed, in a matter not unlike how Kara/agent 33 was brainwashed on AoS S2.

…Yes, AoS S6 is returning to TV next Friday, (May 10, 2019), and from the current trailer, we can already see that Gregg’s new character is a villain of some sort, rather than a hero; or at least – an anti-hero. Gosh! How new and exciting! Not.

Since S1, AoS had had the following themes in its plot: doppelgangers with different alignments often played by the same actors. Dalton did it with Ward…period, and also with Hive in S3. (Hive was never Ward; Ward may not have had any powers ever in AoS TV canon, but he was the more dangerous villain out of the two by far; I am a fan of his, but how he destroyed Coulson’s morals at cost of his own life? Brutal. This is what Coulson got from messing with a suicidal man – but we have digressed). Wen did in S2 as Palamas, (primarily in the first half of the season), and then in S4 as the LMD version of herself. Actually, everyone in the ‘main cast’ of AoS S4 got replaced by LMDs at that time – and later on they got to play slightly different versions of themselves, (including Dalton as Ward, cough), so Gregg playing a different character that just happens to look like someone else, cough, from the past is nothing new.

…Furthermore, Gregg’s new character just happens to look exactly like the old main male lead who had conveniently died between S5 and S6, so there’s no conflict of interest, and no need to juggle two roles and being the showrunner for at least the S6 premiere episode either. Consequently, odds are he will not be killed-off in the first few episodes, because AoS needs Coulson.

Well no, not really, but the cast and crew of AoS clearly consider Gregg to be an integral part of the team or something, so he is going to stay at AoS for S6 at least. I may be wrong, but I am still making this bet. (There are noises that AoS is going to be cancelled in summer 2019, but considering that it just got revamped by being associated with the MCU’s CM movie, it is not very likely). Ergo, his new character will probably be redeemed or something along those lines, as the AoS S6 title promo implied. AoS already planned to do something like that in S2 with Ward, but then they threw a curveball…the end of that. Coulson/not Coulson will probably be luckier, cough, but where were we?

…Talking about movies, I suppose. A trailer for yet another film came out today – ‘Crawlers’. Basically, it is a monster movie about an Anglo-American heroine, her father and dog, getting stuck in a hurricane-driven flood with some monstrous alligators who eat people. Oh Hell.

Where to begin? First, there are supposedly three species of crocodilians living in the U.S.: the American Alligator, (2-5 m long), the American Crocodile (2-4 m long) and the Spectacled Caiman (1-2 m long). The latter is an introduced species, yet another exotic reptile that escaped into the wilds of Florida and the rest of the southeast USA. Of the three, the American Alligator is the most common, but also – is the most retiring and does not like to attack, kill and eat humans as a rule. The American Crocodile and the Spectacled Caiman are more aggressive, but they also have a smaller range than their Alligator relative does; plus I am honestly not sure that there are wild/feral Spectacled Caiman living on the USA territory – the sources are controversial and can go either direction. What is the point?

…My point that the alligators of ‘Crawlers’ are unrealistic, and given that we see the movie’s main character destroying their eggs, they are unreal. Unlike the eggs of fish and amphibians, the eggs of reptiles must be kept dry and out of water; the nest of crocodilians, (including the gharials, the most aquatic of them all) are always kept well away from the water, and the mother crocs and gators bring the young to the water via a journey, (short or otherwise), in their jaws – just look at a BBC or a NatGeo crocodile special, for example. If there was a flood in a crocodile or alligator nesting area, it would be a disaster, as their nests and eggs would be lost. (Yes, just as their bird/dinosaur cousins’ crocodilians make nests. They are different from bird nests, but still nests). Ergo, no gator (or croc, or caiman) nests in a hurricane/flood area – they do not really exist. ‘Crawlers’ reptile monsters’ offspring just wouldn’t be able to survive – baby crocodilians are really fragile and vulnerable, unlike their parents…

Back to C&D, since on one hand, they already have a doppelganger of their own – Mayhem, via detective O’Reily – and on the other, they are located in the southeastern USA, where alligators and etc. live, but not really. It is already clear that Dy is in trouble and Ty is going to save her, and she will save him, and together they will rock, as they rocked in the ‘Shades of Grey’ comic. Good luck to them!

…This is it for this time; see you next time!

C&D, 'Alignment Chart' - April 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. True, the young striped skunk that I came across earlier this week might disagree – when I found it, it was dead, and judging by the snarling expression on the corpse’s muzzle, it had not been a happy death either. Of course, while it probably came from natural causes, it possibly was not the obvious natural cause: while our park has coyotes and red foxes, as well as some semi-feral cats and dogs, none of them will willingly go for a skunk; only the great horned owl does, and I wouldn’t put anything against the northern goshawk either, but there was never any evidence of them living in our park; and the red-tailed and the sharp-shinned hawks that do live there aren’t interested in skunks, even young ones. I’m leaning towards the theory were the skunk youngster perished in one of the recent rainstorms – they can be very bad, and our park gets semi-flooded regularly, and skunks aren’t good swimmers… so there. There are plenty of big holes in this theory too, the main one being that I found the dead animal on the ‘high ground’, which does not get flooded, actually, but still. The skunk is dead, and I am not, not yet, so let us count our blessings and move on to C&D.

This week’s episode, ‘Alignment Chart’, brought…a real life message aimed against human trafficking, which is one of the main elements of C&D S2: Tandy has been taking them on with help of Tyrone and Mayhem, but this time she went alone, and got captured, after her new friend – Mikayla or someone like that – tazed her in the back. Ouch. MCU – and C&D is recognized as a part of it, unlike, say, ‘The Gifted’ - does love a good betrayal. Next week, it seems, Tandy will be for even tougher times, but Tyrone will help.

…Yes, this is the stable of C&D – Ty and Dy are inseparable, metaphorically speaking. On their own, individually, they are defeated easily enough, together – not so much. The Runaways managed it, sort of, in the comics, but these days both them and Ty & Dy are having their own reboots in the comics, going in two very different directions with two very different depictions. The Runaways – in the comics – are trying to get their old gang together, but keep ending up with a new one, featuring new people, such as the Doombot, (a robotic rogue version of Dr. Doom), while Ty and Dy have already gotten together and are established heroes, while the Runaways are move of Avenger-Ish these days.

Back to the TV version of C&D? Unlike ‘Runaways’, it takes less liberty with its’ script, regarding TV vs. comic-verse, but again, it is less exuberant than the ‘Runaways’ are. Not unlike AC in the past, C&D works with a small, tight cast with a small, tight budget, so – no showy special effects as they are in the ‘Runaways’, ‘the Gifted’, and especially AoS. Did people notice that there were no AoS representatives at the red carpet premiere of ‘Endgame’? They were at CM, but at ‘Endgame’? No. Guess now that they were brought back into the fold, (hopefully), they are not interesting anymore. Of course, I, for one, will try to watch them once they come back in May 2019, but real life being what it is, I make no guarantees.

Back in C&D, Brigid seemed to have gotten some of her mojo back, Tyrone hadn’t killed Connors, (who seems to be genuinely repenting for now), and C&D in general tries to compensate for the lack of showy special effects by having plenty of non-showy ones. Since its’ numbers in S2 remain low, it does not seem to be working. Of course, the fact that it is a YA adventure/drama may have something to do with that – not everyone likes MCU’s take on it, especially with AoS still running around and not down for the count. Pity, because C&D is enjoyable to watch, with just enough sci-fi/supernatural elements, (Ty seems to be using voodoo to find Connors’, for example), to make it different from most police/detective adventure/drama TV shows as well as the other MCU shows, including ‘Runaways’, so there!

…This is it, for now. See you all soon!

C&D, 'Rabbit Hole' - April 18

This week. Real life sucks. It sucks for many reasons, including, sometimes, your own stupidity and, maybe, arrogance. Sometimes you just fuck up your own life yourself, and if you are lucky? You are lucky and there is not fall-out to bury you, (which it could, otherwise). Needless to say, I hate my life, and I hate other people, and I also hate myself – and then, some day, (like today), you get to see some birds, a duck in a puddle that it just deep enough to drown a sparrow, (maybe), a couple of adventurous cottontail rabbits, an American toad, (that is what the species is called), and you realize that sometimes life isn’t so bad, and you aren’t desperate enough to do something truly desperate yet – so let’s move on to C&D.

In this week’s episode, ‘Rabbit Hole’, we…get a pun, sort of. On one hand, Ty leads his mother to one of his hideouts, aka a rabbit hole, (while spouting a bunch of New Orleans’ historical facts in the process), while Dy goes down a more metaphorical rabbit hole, (think ‘Alice in Wonderland’ the original novel), going after Mayhem – and Connors. The man is alive, rather insane, and Dy gets to save him from Mayhem, while experiencing flashbacks from her childhood, (and yes, she and Ty are just young adults, but still). Fun!

…On the other hand, Ty has to outrun police and gangsters, while taking care of his mother, so he is not bored either. The gun-wielding shmuck that we have seen in the last week’s promo? He is the most pitiful gangster that I have ever seen, and the least intimidating one. True, more kudos to C&D for depicting oodles of real-life stereotypes, (yes, that is an oxymoron, but still), but …

…The truth is, is that the actors are one of C&D’s strongest assets. So’s the plot, of course – so far C&D is unique and apart from AC, AoS, ‘Runaways’ and even the Netflix crowd, (which is gone, but still), but it’s the actors who carry it forth and make it convincing…with minimum special effects, as opposed to the later seasons of AoS, cough. The sad thing is, C&D’s numbers are low, and that is sad, because it is a great and enjoyable TV series, especially in the current season. Of course, so was AC, and it is cancelled, but still. C&D is still going forward, still enjoyable, and Ty & Dy, in particular, have a strong fan support, but…

…It is also true that it is still largely detached from the greater MCU, even moreso than ‘Runaways’ are, (in my opinion). AC was an extension of AoS and MCU, so fans trickled down to it, no problem. C&D does not have this advantage and has to make it on its’ own. Sadly, the greater fandom does not seem to be obliging – so far, they are more interested in GoT, and, well, MCU. Since the former is in its’ final season, (and it is living to its’ hype), and the latter has ‘Endgame’ the movie coming forth, this understandable; sad, but understandable. Anything else?

…Actually, no. C&D is a fun show to watch, but it is uninspiring, unlike, well, AoS, for example, or ‘Blindspot’, (especially the first seasons). This is its’ flaw, and it’s a big one, and C&D is unable to deal with it, at least not yet – but this is a topic for another discussion.

This is it for this time; see you all soon!

C&D, 'Shadow Selves ' - April 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now onto the main event.

We are back. We could not talk about the opening two episodes of C&D S2, so what about this one ‘Shadow Selves’? It is focused primarily on detective Mayhem or, more correctly, on her two halves – the detective and Mayhem. The former is a goody-two-shoes. The latter is a variant Jessica Jones, who herself is a variant Faith the Vampire Slayer from BtVS, as we have talked earlier. Together, the two make a very convincing Ying-Yang metaphor, which is, as people know, two halves of a whole, light and dark. Not surprisingly, C&D corner of MCU deals a lot with this imagery, (and keep in mind, that the halves have dots of contrasting color, to point out that even villains can be redeemed, and heroes – corrupted. Cough, AoS, cough). Also not surprisingly, many of C&D villains have something similar going on, especially with light and dark. We are talking, of course, about the ‘rebooted’ C&D comics. In ‘Shades of Grey’ story arc, Ty and Dy had to deal with their former friend, Grey, who became some sort of a variant vampire with vaguely Killgrave (from Netflix JJ) powers. In ‘Negative Exposure’, they had to deal with a much more better known and established villain – Mr. Negative, who had made a deal with some sort of a Lovecraftian Old One, and helped him to try destroying the world in exchange for Dy. To complicate things, Ty and Dy were on outs in both of those arcs, and got together only at the end of NE. Yay!

By contrast, in the TV series, Ty and Dy are not together yet, (though they already have amazing chemistry together). They have grown more powerful and skilled in mastering their powers, and they need them to manage Mayhem. They do not do a very good job, and ‘Shadow Selves’ introduces (sort of) a further complication – a sex-trafficking ring that C&D should handle, because they are something of New Orleans vigilantes. If they do not, Mayhem will, and Ty, at least, is not happy about her take on things. Yes, Ty and Dy are beginning to squabble, (sort of), but it is either them or having them make out like a pair of horny teens – and if they do that, a lot of fanfic authors will be out of jobs. Metaphorical jobs, but still.

Speaking of jobs, father Delgado was fired – he was shown fired in ‘Shadow Selves’ – and is now a street preacher. Again, he is shown being mostly behind the scenes, but he is playing an important role, as do Ty’s parents, as do his streetwise friends, cough – one of them is in the sex-trafficking ring, and it’s up to Ty, (maybe with Dy’s help), to save him. Maybe. If he wants to be saved, that is. Between his own evil self, Mayhem’s take on things, (her better half still needs to regrow her lost backbone, it seems), and everything else…yes, the survival of Ty’s friend is not very high.

In the background, we got the police investigation into Connor’s disappearance; in the foreground – Dy’s possible corruption by Mayhem and her attitude/take on things…mainly crime. Fun. C&D S2 is shaping to be very interested…and very different from the mainline MCU. There is no mention of the Avengers, or the dusting, for example. Ah well, as we’ve seen from C&D S1 finale, they’re there, maybe the snap has just missed them, or something. It is still going to be a very interesting S2. Hopefully, we will be around to see it too.

…This is it for now – see you all soon!

Shazam and Dora - March 24

…Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and some things appear to be unavoidable in their mass; all you can do is edit the details, so to speak and to soften the blow. The blow will still come, but at least you will have the knowledge that you did what you could, as much, you could, to avoid it; the failure is on you, but unless you want to break the laws of God and Man, you are stuck with what you have. Now where were we?

Ah yes, the new trailer for the new ‘Dora the Explorer’ movie. It works. It already promises to be quite delightful and guarantees the same atmosphere as the new ‘Shazam’ film, so let us talk about it too.

‘Shazam’ might be a part of DCEU, broadly speaking, but it is a very different movie from the previous films: it is a children’s movie. That is natural, since the titular character’s secret identity is that of a high school student, but that is only one element. The other is that like the previous ‘Aquaman’ film, ‘Shazam’ shows a clear departure from the initial DCEU films, directed by Zack Snyder, and has a much more joyous (and less solemnly Gothic) atmosphere in it. The fact that DCEU seems to be finally moving away from Marvel’s ‘Avengers’ formula also plays a role – it is about damn time that DCEU found its’ own voice and stood on its own two feet, so to speak. And ‘Dora’?

‘Dora’ is not a part of a DC or Marvel franchise; it is its’ own game/TV show/whatever, and is basically ‘Lara Croft’ for youngsters. So’s her movie version, which does feel inspired by the last ‘Tomb Raider’ films that feature a younger, scrawnier Lara with less curves than the early AJ versions have. (Jolie killed in those films, pity that lately age seems to have caught up with her at last). That said, there’s proportionally less violence in the ‘Dora’ movie trailer than there was in LC; in fact, the trailer already suggests that ‘Dora’ will be going over the top with gimmicks and physical gags – but there will be some genuine action and adventure as well. For an adult film this could be another Adam Sandler movie, but for children? Yes, it will certainly work, (though for their chaperones, slightly less physical gags might be better). What next?

Boots the CGI monkey rocks, (no real life monkey, New World or otherwise, has this shade of fur), and so do the human actors, it seems. Yes, SJW are going to have issues about the ‘racially diverse cast’, yes, it was probably done to appease the politically correct (or progressive) crowd, but so far, it seems to be paying off, so the critics should zip it, and wait for the movie to come out, (yes, the same goes for us), before complaining about the ‘racially diverse cast’, cough. In canon, Dora seems to be Latino-American anyhow, so here she seems to be cast true to her type. Yay? Yes, probably, but also because her actress can act. Anything else?

Well, the same could be said of Zachary Levi who plays the titular hero of ‘Shazam!’ I am not always enamoured, or trusting, of IGN reviews these days, (their review of ‘Captain Marvel’ had certainly been one big kiss-up), but here they are correct, when they point out that, for example, Dr. Sivana, (the movie’s villain), is a clear demonstration of how parents can shape their children, (biological or foster, it doesn’t matter so much), but it’s up to the child, (at least from a certain age), to make the actual choice and to decide just what kind of an adult are they going to be. Now, Marvel has tried to do something similar in its TV shows, but… AoS’ treatment of Grant Ward, (and also of Kara Palamas, though her case is different in this regard), was all over the place, satisfying no one. He never got to be a ‘true’ villain, (Hive was a different character completely), nor truly redeem himself, (the Framework Ward was also a separate entity, and how did Radcliffe include him into his SIMS, cough, or why?). Netflix’s JJ had Killgrave, who did a better job of the sympathetic villain role, but all of Netflix’s Marvel shows are cancelled now, so that point is double-moot, (because Killgrave himself is dead).

On DC’s side of equation, yes, ‘Arrow’ is cancelled, which is a pity, because it was good, but that is life. Sometimes even good things end, plus DC needs to get itself together as well – there are the movies, the remnants of ‘Arrow-verse’, the ‘Titans’ and so on. At least in Marvel everything is part of the same movieverse, as C&D’s S1 finale said so directly. Of course that was before ‘Iron Fist’ got cancelled, (it was the first to go, ouch), but again, that is life. Very often, it sucks, especially in reality – just look at New Zealand, for an example.

Well, this is it for now – see you all later!

Iron Fist S2 - Sep 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. My upcoming week promises to be rather bad, so I actually cannot wait for next week’s Monday, because it will give me a reprieve. Go me. My life sucks. I hate it.

…Of course, on the other hand, there is the first-rate tennis player SeWi, who has it worse. To recap, she lost her match against her fellow tennis player N. Osaka, and apparently turned upon the game’s umpire when things did not go her way – and lost her temper. As a result, she is now fined almost 20 grand, (as I have heard), the tennis officials are backing the umpire, (so she now might need to apologize – or not), and there already are some rather crude and unpleasant caricatures of her, too, damaging her reputation further. Yeah, and she cannot blame her bad decision of D.C. and the president Donald either. Poor her. Really.

Mind you, as much as I believe that SeWi is in the wrong here, it must be admitted that the caricatures, (there were at least two different ones), were completely unnecessary, and probably made the already bad business worse. SeWi and her people are probably doing their best at damage control, and the caricatures are making their job harder. One may hate SeWi, (though why? She is not a politician, at least), but still, to go at her deliberately is not a good thing. Hate leads to the dark side, the Jedi said, and they should know: the SW/Disney merger was apparently completely in the dark, it remained in the dark regarding the SW fanbase, and now the merger became successful at alienating that fanbase: some of its’ members honestly do hate it, and will probably abandon it, a new cartoon series or not.

This brings us to another merger – that of Netflix/Marvel. More precisely, ‘Iron Fist’ S2 was aired. How did it go?

It worked. The Netflix/Marvel combo took criticisms of ‘Iron Fist’ S1 and did their best to fix them. So far, it seems that their strategy is to take an ever-increasing amount of ‘Iron Fist’ comic elements and introduce them to ‘Iron Fist’ in particular (and maybe to ‘The Defenders’ in general). Yay?

Very much so. This is, after all, what all of the Marvel shows are about – to give their audiences the Marvel experience that the various comics (and novels) cannot. Otherwise, what is the point? There are plenty of non-Marvel TV shows, (some are not even in related to DC or other comic universes either), so to counter them a Marvel show, (TV, online, etc.,) has to use, well, Marvel elements. Moreover, it worked. Go them.

Anything else? Not really. ‘Iron Fist’ S2 shows that the Netflix/Marvel shows are diversifying and are going beyond the NYC city limits, at least partially. ‘Iron Fist’, the comic and the online series, for better or for worse, is caught between USA and Asia, and it needs to balance between these two landmasses to succeed.

…One may ask, if ‘Luke Cage’ is not similarly caught between USA and Africa. It is not – ‘Luke Cage’ is solidly Afro-American, with the emphasis on American, and while he – and Misty Knight, and a few others – can always come to Africa, especially to Wakanda, on request of their good friend king T’Challa aka the Black Panther, their homeland is still USA. (Seriously, this is what happened in one ‘Black Panther’ comic series: at one point in time a group of super-villains, including – a version of the Fenris twins, tried to take over Wakanda by fermenting internal political unrest, so the Black Panther realized: this is bigger than me and my family, and so he got his posse, which included Ororo/Storm, Misty Knight, and – Luke Cage, aside from other characters, and defeated the villains…eventually).

…Yes indeed ‘The Gifted’ S2 is returning to TV on Tuesday, September 25^th. I must admit - this is good news, and the current trailer is already exciting; the lines are drawn: the Mutant Underground vs. the Hellfire Club and Lorna is, potentially, the wild card. Magneto was never a member of the Hellfire Club, the Cuckoos have lied to get Lorna in, and if she ever finds out, the results will be explosive: Magneto was powerful, but never subtle, and Lorna seems to have inherited that. She will not be happy to have been lied to, that is for sure.

On the other hand, ‘The Gifted’ S2 trailers seem to imply that the Hellfire Club will undergo some sort of an W&H (from AtS) moment, which involves an internal coup. If done right, it will be a game changer, but to do that, ‘the old guard’ who will be killed off should be established first, otherwise the coup’s impact will be diminished.

…Yes, this all takes place in different Marvel universes: ‘The Gifted’ takes place in a separate universe – Earth-TRN674, while ‘Iron Fist’ – on Earth-199999. I have no life, (but this week, and especially the weekend still suck). Of course, it would make a cool crossover, but we will have to wait for someone to write it, so for now, we have to watch ‘Iron Fist’, and wait for ‘The Gifted’ S2, and also – for ‘Daredevil’ S3, which is also in the works. Unlike ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Daredevil’ so far takes places only in NYC, so for now, ‘The Defenders’ focus will be shifting back to NYC, leaving the rest of the world for the Avengers or whoever.

Yes, it does not appear that Thanos’ cosmic snap has affected the Netflix corner of MCU, (and as it was hinted at ‘C&D’ S1 finale, ‘Rands’ & ‘Starks’ share the universe – and Roxxon, and ‘C&D’ are also a part of that universe. However, some kinks are still needed to be worked out – so good luck with that.

This is it for now, see you all soon.