WW1984 trailer 1 - Dec 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In addition, no, I am not talking about the Donald and his impeachment, which goes nowhere fast – Ms. Pelosi was able to use the hoopla surrounding it to prevent the Democratic party from breaking apart into several new parties, (all of which just as hostile to each other as they are towards the Republican party), so that’s it. She did the best of a bad job, but it was still bad. North Korea is still mocking USA, whereas Russia…

Well, the Russian bear had been insulted badly by WADA’s decision, and if it did want to abide by the Western rules, now would be the perfect time for it to start to come to its’ senses – but the problem that the RF’s president Putin doesn’t care about this at all – he just wants to bring the West down, and so he’ll continue to drive his country in this direction until he dies of his own causes, i.e. old age or he is offed. There had been variations of this chiaroscuro conclusion of the Russian rulers’ life, but not many and very rarely, so it is safe to say Putin will rule until he dies himself, or he is killed by someone else who’ll succeed after him… or not, because there’s always the Revolution. Contemporary Russian government is deathly afraid of the Revolution of 1905 and 1917, which is why they lost their shit over Ukraine when it experienced its’ own… hybrid of Revolution and Perestroika… but what does the West do?

Begin to dismantle NATO, that is what. Somehow, in all the excitement of the Russian bear getting punched in the face – hard, and the Donald being insulted by Korea’s great steersman of the state – comrade Kim – also hard, it was overseen as to what happened in Denmark. Something is rotten there, it looks like…but it is the U.S., again. An American critic of the Donald and his regime was supposed to participate in the NATO summit there, so the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark told him (it was a man), that no, you are no longer invited, period. Harsh! Moreover, the government of Denmark told Mr. Ambassador this, on top of ‘if this is how you’re behaving, then we’re done with NATO for now’ – and now there is not a peep about this piece of news on news’ channels and websites. What gives?

…EU has achieved the next stage of its’ being self-sufficient and independence from the U.S., that is what. NATO, just like UN, is still largely an American organization; EU is not. While WADA was punching the Russian bear in the muzzle, the leaders of France and Germany talked to Putin of RF and Zelensky of Ukraine with nary an interest in WADA. WADA is not impotent, but it is limited, it looks like. Now what?

Well, firstly, Putin fears EU the way that he does not the U.S. He has no interest in instigating WWIII – yet and so he is willing cooperate with EU at least to a point in a way that he is not willing to with the U.S. The problem that on the other side of the coin EU is not a big fan of the U.S. anymore – just read the news. While they have little to no in common with the regimes of North Korea or Iran, (China is different, let’s be fair here), again, they are also fed up with the way that the American government was doing things… since the infamous 9/11, while the U.S. sent its’ troops into Afghanistan and beyond. Surprisingly, cough, the only other major Western power that supported them properly was Great Britain. (Again, let us keep Israel out of the equation – but yes, it makes the situation more complex). These days, not surprisingly, Great Britain actually wants to leave the EU, (and remind me as to why did they want to do that in the first place, since obviously that isn’t Russia’s fault, even the Brits themselves admit it), and they got problems, again. I.e. Epstein was very much an American, not a Russian double agent or anything, and also? Prince Andrew of the U.K. was a good friend of his, apparently. The Royal family and co are denying everything, of course, but his highness was kicked out of the family regardless, his children – princess Beatrice and princess Eugenie – aren’t keeping the stiff proverbial upper lip either and the clouds are gathering over the fair isle of England and co. all the same. What is next?

As above as below, as in big things, so in the small – the actor who played the husband in the Peloton ad, (we have talked about it earlier this month) has received death threats, and his female counterpart, who played the wife, (aka Grace from Boston), did not fair too well either. The Hell? Yes, the ad was insensitive, stupid and vapid, but nothing more, and – death threats? People have time for this sort of thing. On with the show?

Yes, since the ad brings us back onto the other side of the silver screen, and to the upcoming ‘WW84’ movie trailer. What can be said about it?

It is funky, it is DC’s response to MCU’s ‘Captain Marvel’ film (set in the 1990s, remember?), and it got content. Most important, it got two new villains for WW to defeat – one is her archnemesis, Cheetah, aka Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva. The second is not as clear-cut: he’s Maxwell Lord, sort of a rip-off Lex Luthor in the original DC comics.

…Yes, there was a Maxwell Lord character in the first seasons of ‘Supergirl’, maybe there still is one, but by now it’s obvious that whereas Marvel is bringing all of its’ depictions to one source, DC doesn’t. There is a Maxwell Lord from ‘Supergirl’, there was a Maxwell Lord in the ‘Smallville’ TV series, there’s going to be a Maxwell Lord in DCEU, and so on… but he may not be the final big bad of the movie. Why?

Because this is how it went down in the first WW movie, where the final villain was Ares, the god of war, aka a male deity. Yeah, deities have a different relationship with gender than us mortals do, but in the first WW movie, Ares was very much male. And, since in this movie’s trailer we already see WW riding lightning, maybe we will get a visit from the old Zeus himself? First WW film – Dr. Poison, her German handler, Ares. Second film – Cheetah, Maxwell Lord, Zeus? And keep in mind, that as far as villains go, Maxwell Lord is usually a telepath/mental controller of some sort. Bring on Orwell’s 1984 dystopia!

No, seriously, one of George Orwell’s best novels is ‘1984’, and it was a Stalinist dystopia. These days’ people do not differentiate between communism, Stalinism, Trotskyism and socialism on top of it…plus they are beginning to thaw towards Russians again, so we probably will not get any Cold War vibes from the second WW movie. That said, we do see her destroy a camera as she is fighting, cough, a couple of robbers in a 1980s’ shopping mall, and later on she’s fighting more people in the White House, so – ‘big brother is watching you’, maybe? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark… and this brings us back to real life. It sucks, unless you are Bianca Andreescu, who had won another tennis trophy. You go, girl! Show the world what Canadians and Canada have!

…Apparently, it is just the right scenery for the upcoming ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ film, which was shot, in part, in southern Alberta. Already it is shaping up to be a different film from the previous ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, which it ignores, at least in this trailer. It will be interesting to see as to how this particular film will unveil itself… especially since Warner Brothers’ ‘Kong vs. Godzilla’ movie has hit yet another snafu – some photos were leaked, (mostly of Kong fighting Godzilla on a ship), so now team WB is doing its’ best to bring them all doing, citing copyright and what else have you. How great for them. Did I mention that real life sucks?

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

Mulan 2020 first trailer - July 7

Now you may ask – and what about the first trailer of the ‘Mulan’ 2020 remake? Since we have already mentioned the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ remake and ‘The Lion King’ remake is coming out later this month.

Firstly, the ‘Little Mermaid’ remake. There shouldn’t be a problem having an Afro-American actress being the titular character – as MCU’s ‘Spider-Man’ movies and Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ remake have shown, race is by no means a defining feature of a movie character, but! Then there was J-Ro’s ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, remember it? Both Hermione and Rose Weasley were played by Afro-American (Afro-British?) characters, and it didn’t work; J-Ro herself has abandoned that aspect of her HP-verse and is currently playing with Newt Scamander and co.; true, both movies had POC as actors, but if you compare it to, say, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, then you notice that J-Ro’s movies are notably underwhelming in that department. For its’ part – and that is just as important – Disney’s remakes are at their best, when they follow close the original animated movies, with just some differences, as ‘Aladdin 2019’ and the previously aired ‘Beauty and the Beast’ remake showed. When differences are much greater, as they were in the ‘Dumbo’ remake, then Disney begins to have problems. So far, TLK seems to be like the original movie; TLM, judging by the trailers and teasers that we have seen – not so much, (though they were sketchy, fair enough), so we will have to wait and see. This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, only not.

First, there is also the honorable mention of the Ghostbusters remake; no, Disney did not make it, but it was a remake, and it failed. It was really quite ironic – there were all those people arguing pro and contra, if the gender-flip of the original Ghostbusters film was worthwhile – and then the movie flopped on its’ own merit, and that’s the end of that aspect of the Ghostbusters franchise, as opposed to, say, the comic crossover between them and TMNT, when the Shredder had killed some rival crimelord, and the latter’s restless spirit returned as a ghost, and TMNT had to team with the Ghostbusters, because their skills aren’t really effective against a ghost… the Ghostbusters’ franchise is working out quite well, thank you very much, movie flop or no flop.

This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, to TLK 2019, to TLM, and the abovementioned point – racial issues do not matter, plot matters. ‘Mulan 2020’ is rumored to be very much reworked from the original 90s’ animated feature, meaning that it might have problems in 2020 when it comes to the big screen. Those problems probably will not be exclusive to racial matters or cultural appropriation, but Disney may pretend that they are, as they tried to do with their SW films, and that now will be a bad idea: Disney/SW merger may end at the end of the SW9 movie…or rather, the current incarnation of SW franchise will. The merger itself will go on for a while, as the numerous SW comics are indicating: the juggernaut is intently trying to change the public opinion regarding the rebooted SW before the SW9 film comes out…with mixed success. Of course, Disney princesses as a whole have their own comic series already, but that is different – SW, proportionally, is a much more popular and more bought franchise out of the two… but let us wait first until TLK comes out later this month (July 2019) before we make any assumptions…

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Insatiable III - Aug 15

These days, both ‘C&D’ and ‘Reverie’ are over. Boo, but at least we can always download ‘C&D’ from Freeform™ and co., so there is that. Moreover, ‘Runaways’ S2 is coming in December 2018, and ‘The Gifted’ S2 – in September 2018, (and DCEU’s ‘Titans’ are coming in autumn 2018 as well), so there is that. Anything else?

Firstly, apparently, the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ film was made based on all three novels of KK’s original trilogy, so it is different from the books. Yay? Probably, because the original novels didn’t go down so hot, at least not in Canada: they were being sold at a flat rate of $15 a book, and people weren’t buying them, regardless of all the excitement that Indigo and KK’s team tried to make of them. Right now, there’s a lot of talk as to how the movie will make or break the Asian-American flow in Hollywood…so, apparently, this puts the film on the level with the first transgender woman succeed in the U.S. politics at last…and this, technically, brings us back to ‘Insatiable’.

Why are we still kicking this dead horse? Probably because of Debbie Ryan, who seems to have become the latest young actress that is trying to survive in her post-Disney era. There’s Miley Cyrus, who burned her bridges with Disney so much, that no one remembers ‘Hannah Montana’ anymore; there’s Selena Gomez, for whom Disney took ‘The Wizards of Waverly Place’ and made it into her own show; and now there’s Debbie, who started her acting career in ‘The Suite Life on Deck’ portion of ‘The Suite Life’ series with the Sprouse twins, and where’s ‘The Suite Life’ now? Gone, just as ‘Hannah Montana’, ‘The Wizards’ and ‘Jessie’ are. ‘Jessie’ is the show that made Debbie into a lead actress, not one of several, as ‘The Suite Life on Deck’ did, BTW, but now it is also gone. Disney does have this trait – once a show is done, it is done, and everyone goes their separate ways. There was a crossover between ‘The Wizards’, ‘The Suite Life’ and ‘Hannah Montana’, and nothing came out of it. ‘Jessie’ got crossed with both ‘Good Luck Charlie’ and ‘Austin and Ally’ – ditto. Even before Disney teamed up with Marvel to manifest MCU, it tried to do something similar with its’ YA TV shows… but it didn’t quite work, most likely because Disney didn’t really want to commit entirely to it too.

…However, this was then. What now? Now Debbie, (known in this incarnation as Patty instead), is starring in ‘Insatiable’, a TV show that is supposed to be fat-positive, but comes across as fataphobic instead. Put more precisely, it sucks. On one hand, it deals with Debbie’s character in a not-very-funny way, the fat suit isn’t bad, but the jokes? They can be tone-deaf, and that is really ‘Insatiable’s’ true problem: it does not understand the material that it tries to address. It tries to be fat-positive, LGBTQ+ positive, and so on, but it comes across as phobic at worst and clichéd at best instead. There are all of the fat-related issues, and then there are the ‘me too’ issues: for a large part of the released episodes Patty is in not a relationship with an older man, who has been accused, (falsely or not is another issue), of molesting a teenage girl already, and the show makes it into a joke. Great. Lately there has been a report of Catholic priests also harassing teenagers across the U.S. and the pope has done nothing. Oh, how we are laughing!

That is probably the other reason as to why ‘Insatiable’ is failing, (it made 13% on Rotting Tomatoes site or some similar number) – it has bad timing; Netflix, or whoever it was behind the mental works of ‘Insatiable’ failed to realize the reality of the world where ‘Insatiable’ was going to be released into, and viewed.

No, seriously – for months now, the American in particular, and the Western in general, society was dealing with the ‘me too’ movement and what it means to both men and women, both personally and professionally. It is a thorny, complex, complicated issue, and the current political climate isn’t making it any better – and then along comes ‘Insatiable’ where Patty seems to be going into a very murky relationship with Bob, the pageant coach, while another student, Brick, is sleeping with an older woman. Just what the scriptwriters were thinking? That it will be funny? Why?

…Maybe at another time – yes, but here and now – no, just no, and this probably brings us back to the rebooted ‘Ghostbusters’, because they are in the same boat: an assumption was made that they will succeed, because the original movie was a success, and all that the new movie had to do was to gender flip its’ characters – and it didn’t work. The movie itself was a flop, and the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise itself experienced a backlash; the same thing happened with an equally unsuccessful reboot of the ‘Gilmore Girls’ franchise, to a point where it was abandoned, as are the ‘Ghostbusters’. SW, who is also experiencing franchise-related issues, are so far holding more strongly, there are rumors of an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie already. Considering that the Solo movie made only tens of millions of dollars, rather than the hundreds expected by Disney and co., I should not, and will not make any hopeful or positive predictions just yet.

Finally – speaking of rumors – there is one regarding a ‘Frozen 2’ movie. Well, no, it is not a rumor anymore, ‘Frozen 2’ is really in the works, and is scheduled to release in November 2019. Good for them, but because of its’ success, and the popularity of Elsa’s character, there might be some tough times ahead – too many people think that Elsa should be heterosexual, or homosexual, or asexual, and so, however Disney will depict her in ‘Frozen 2’, there will be upset people, and Disney hates upsetting people, because it means losing revenue – but that is all in the future.

And for now? This is all. See you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Good Samaritan - Nov 2

Now then. Since the 4^th season of AoS has begun, the already low-level audience decreased by somewhere between 25 and 30 (maybe even 35) percent. Why?

One of the issues is the ‘recycling’ – and I am not just talking about how this version of Robbie Reyes seems to becoming a redeemed/redeemable version of Grant Ward, with Gabe playing the role of Thomas… and where is Thomas Ward nowadays? He is gone, as yet another sign of disrespect of the cast towards the characters. You do not see anything like that on ‘Killjoys, or ‘Blindspot’, or any of ‘Arrowverse’s’ DC TV shows, even though they are all different in regards to their format.

This disrespect is another problem of AoS – not just of the cast towards its’ characters, but towards other shows – especially ‘Agent Carter’, (AC): the Ghost Rider plotline has been heavily borrowed from AC S2, down to Isodyne and Roxxon, and – zero matter, (or whatever it is called), which infests people and turns them either into ghosts (Dr. Wilkes on AC, Lucy Bower and her posse on AoS), or into something else (Madame Masque on AC, Ely Morrow on AoS).

 Of course, there is also the issue of the occult – so far, everything in AoS S4 can still be explained by science, unlike the upcoming ‘Dr. Strange’ movie, where the point is clearly that everything CANNOT be explained by science, so – no tie-in? AoS did it in S1, but not since then. Why? Who knows?

Well, a PARTIAL reason is that there is a lot of tension behind the scenes that we do not know off – Luke’s departure has been taken with clear ill grace, and as for Hayley Atwell, (she played agent Carter in question)? So far, she is happy to star on a mystery drama show that has nothing to do with Marvel, but as I had written in the past, AC was beginning to be just as good a show as AoS was, so losing it probably hit MCU hard, so – more hard feelings?.. At the very least, there is idea scavenging, (rather than recycling) between AoS and the now-defunct AC, which just is not professional, not really.

Add to that the recycled idea of redemption, (and why they couldn’t do it with Grant, anyways?) and…a possible conflict between Chloe Bennet (Skye/Daisy) and some of the writers? The point is that Chloe was very firm that there wasn’t going to be any romance between her character and Robbie the Ghost Rider, (Gabrielle Luna), yet it doesn’t stop the writers to have the two characters continuously interact in a ‘slow-burn’ way, (and Gabe, Robbie’s brother, is right there in the midst of it). I don’t know how AoS will resolve this without either making Chloe into a liar, (which is bad), or just have any relationship between Robbie and Daisy just fizzle out, and-

It is not as bad as making Chloe into a liar would be, but it is still bad. Once Ely is dealt with, why should Robbie then stick around? Yes, a romantic relationship with Daisy is not, or will not be, the ONLY reason for him to do that, but it would certainly make things simpler – for the show. Otherwise…Robbie and Gabe will stay for the rest of the season (another 16 episodes, maybe?), say, and then they are gone?

…Well, the Reyes' brothers are recurring characters, not part of the main cast. But again, in this case, what next? There are rumors of a separate Ghost Rider TV series in the future, but where does the Ghost Rider’s eventual departure leave AoS? In the previous seasons, S.H.I.E.L.D. could always count on Hydra, (and especially Grant), to move things along; now they cannot. They got the Watchdogs, but the Watchdogs themselves come along as half-fleshed – perfect cannon fodder, but nothing else. (Yet). Hellfire/J.T. James? Does anyone know where the actor who plays him, (Whitehead), stands with AoS? Moreover, he is yet another variation of an ‘irredeemable’ character, someone like Grant or Kara, so this probably does not sit well with some audience members – after his re-appearance in S4, the show’s ratings have continued to drop…

Where does this leave AoS? In a potential conflict between cast and writers, in a dead end that heavily requires the Ghost Rider to remain and join the main team to get out, with few original ideas left, (apparently), oh, and a gape-worthy reference to SW – either Coulson IS like Han Solo, or isn’t.

Considering that Han Solo DIED in SW7, how exactly does this statement/comparison made by Jeffrey Mace, (the new director), becomes a good idea? Yes, the second half of S3 was full of the ‘guessing game’ of who will die from Hive, just as Han had died from his son, but this is S4 now, so the guessing game is over? On the other hand, will Robbie die while killing his uncle Ely? Does anyone have an idea?

That said, in a certain way SW is appropriate in regards to the AoS – just like S4 of AoS, SW7 relied way too heavily on the past movies to make itself work – the new, upcoming films are supposedly going to be more original than SW7 was. As for SW7, this reliance on the past did not undo it, as it did to the new Ghostbusters (the 2016 film as opposed to the 1984 one), but it still damaged the film somewhat, just as the same reliance is damaging the AoS.

Therefore, this perhaps is the reason why AoS is failing – because its’ originality is transforming into something else – or perhaps it is just failing. The fact that now AoS is taking a hiatus until the end of November does not help either – it certainly did not help LG. Until it returns…it will be missed…by an increasingly decreasing audience