Doolittle-2020 - Jan 23

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It sucks just because, and your family, as well as yourself, are a part of it. Yes, every new day is different, one way or another, but as a rule – real life sucks. You may want to discuss the long-tailed duck or something, but you cannot, simply because real life sucks, and your personal life sucks, and you suck. Plus – priorities. No matter how much you love nature, sometimes you just cannot master the enthusiasm to write about the ducks, (or the woodpeckers, hedgehogs, squirrels, etc.). So, let us talk about something else – the doctor. He, (i.e. Doolittle), is in the house!

…And apparently, he sucks almost as much as real life does, according to many reviews and critics. They are wrong. ‘Doolittle-2020’ is not bad. It is insipid.

Does anyone remember Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ that’d aired several years back? If not, it is not surprising – the show lasted for a single season, and it numbered only eight episodes. Yes, in the pre-Disney+ era Marvel TV shows didn’t last for more than two or three seasons, (AoS is the exception, period), but even so, ‘InHumans’ stood-out: they were that bad.

And yet… there did not appear to be something that was specifically damning that prevented them – in theory – from continuing from another season or two. (Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ ended after 3 seasons, for example). Instead, it was an entire assimilation of small flaws, including bad script and rushed acting that did Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ in. In different hands, under different management and circumstances, they could have been good, but because real life, they failed to launch instead. ‘Doolittle-2020’ is in the same boat, even though it is a single film and not a TV series instead.

On one hand, it had a lot going for it, actually, starting with the Iron Man being the titular character and a story plot that sounded good on paper. On the other, with such an illustrious name playing the main lead in a film that just couldn’t be anywhere near the level of the last two Avenger films, (let’s be honest – even in the best of circumstances ‘Doolittle-2020’ wouldn’t be anywhere near the level of ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’), enough people would feel gipped, as if this was a step down or something – and they were probably right.

 …And top of those failed expectations and the subconscious feeling of being cheated out of something that is Avenger-level film, the film itself is flawed, let’s be polite. The plot felt rather like Stark’s new Welsh accent – completely unnecessary and a straight-out failure. Queen Victoria is poisoned, so Stark – er, Doolittle – is off to bring back the miracle cure? What is this – the Avengers, Victorian era? Well, maybe – we did also get Sony’s current version of Spider-Man voicing a dog, so it could have been a start. Instead, we got a failure with a bunch of grown-up jokes in a decisively pro-child film, (children under the age of 10 will enjoy ‘Doolittle-2020’ moreso than their parents, yes), the titular character farted by a dragon, (what is this – mockery of GoT? If so, then ‘Doolittle-2020’ is excessively late for this party), and, oh yes, a gorilla fighting a tiger, (sort of) among other things.

Off topic, if a gorilla fought a tiger for real, who would win? In AFO, when a gorilla faced-off with a leopard, it actually won, but a tiger is much bigger and heavier than a leopard is and carries a much heavier punch than a leopard does. In a feline clash, tiger will triumph over a leopard, as ‘Jungle Book-2016’ showed openly and clearly – even though it is fiction, it actually did a good job of being realistic, at least to a point. But a gorilla is completely different beast than a leopard is. A tiger is a professional hunter and killer, but if it fails to get a drop on the modern world’s biggest and strongest primate, period, then it can go either way – and, of course, ‘Doolittle-2020’ went in a completely different direction to begin with. What next?

Well, for me, Chee-Chee the gorilla brought back memories of the Soviet adaptation of Doolittle, (where Chee-Chee was actually a capuchin monkey instead). To wit, this adaptation consisted of one large poem where the Soviet Doolittle went to Africa to cure all the cute animal babies there, because they all were sick; and of another large poem, where the good doctor comes to Africa to rescue a couple of human children from the Soviet analogue of Rassouli; and also a couple of novellas for children where the good doctor crosses swords with the pirate leader time and again, until he defeats the villain for good. Not such a small assimilation, especially by children’s standards, after all.

…And then the Soviet cinematography produced a cartoon series, and a couple of movies, all about the good doctor confronting the wicked pirate and his crew, and frankly, one of them, ‘Soviet Doolittle-66’ is just as crazy, but much more coherent and enjoyable than the U.S. 2020 version. Not unlike the gender-flipped ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, ‘Doolittle-2020’ is just bad as in uninspiring and insipid, which brings us back to Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ TV series – they had the same problem and collapsed, though compared to them, ‘Doolittle-2020’ is better, (and it is certainly better than ‘Cats-2019’, cough), simply because the younger children will enjoy it with all the poop and fart jokes as well as periodic clothing, and, hey, the Iron Man is riding an ostrich in this universe, while a giraffe is talking to him in voice of Selena Gomez. Fun! Anything else?

Well, the second ‘To all the boys…’ movie is coming out on Netflix on Feb 12, 2020. Why before 2020’s Valentine Day – who knows; who cares, too – while the first film had its’ flaws, clearly, the entire franchise has proven to be tough, enduring and popular enough to bring forth a second movie. (Jenny Han wrote a trilogy about LJ’s adventures, so there is at least one more movie in store for LJ and her love life). By comparison, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ franchise apparently hadn’t – so far there’s no news about a second movie in this franchise; maybe because it tried to be a pro-American propaganda piece among other things back when it aired and ‘Boys-1’ didn’t? Who knows, but ‘Boys-1’ was a very good romantic movie, surprisingly so, given all the flaws of both it and the original novel…but it was not insipid. It delivered. It gave enjoyment to the views. It made real life slightly more endurable than it is on its’ own. I am actually looking forwards to ‘Boys-2’ coming to Netflix next month. Yay.

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

Iron Fist & etc. - Aug 29

…Saw the latest trailer/clip from ‘Iron Fist’ – this one is focusing on the show’s second season’s fight scenes. Apparently, they are going to be quite different from what happened in S1. Well, cannot blame a show for trying to improve itself – whether it will succeed is another question. Given all the excitement that is coming down lately, it has to, because-

Because it already had flak before the series’ premiere that the titular character is not an Asian-American actor, but Ser Loras Tyrell, the Flower Knight, who decisively is not. An Asian-American anyone, that is. That said, it really wasn’t the problem for S1 ‘Iron Fist’ – other issues were, but the whitewashing of the titular character didn’t help either, so here we are, at a moment in time when the USA media is doing its’ best to cash in on the Asian-American factor of its’ international sector. There’s ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ – did wonderfully back home, less wonderfully abroad, but they still made money, as Huffington Post pointed out, (or a similar website did), so they are in the gravy, at least in the short term. In the end, it all comes down to the money, so the titular characters of the novel trilogy and movie, (and the movie is likely to have a sequel), are/were onto something, after all.

The same goes for the LJ Netflix movie – proportionally, it has as much restructuring as KK’s movie – i.e. ‘Asians’ – did. As it was said before, the titular heroine is not biracial as she was in the novels, (and let us be fair, this is a big deal), she is wholly Asian, her father is not her father, but is her stepfather, and etc. As far as novels-to-movies adaptations go, this is mild staff; when Rick Riordan’s novels began to be turned into movies they suffered a much worse treatment, to the point where the author himself publicly denounced them, apparently starting some sort of a chain reaction: to this day, only the first two novels of his, (and he had written over a dozen about Percy and Annabeth, the Kane twins, Magnus Chase and his friends and so on), became movies and no talk has been raised about any repeat experience. Some of the novels were adapted into comics, but so far only the Kane chronicles were adapted completely; clearly, Riordan’s works have a reputation of some sort by now, so there is that. What next?

FH and its’ new heroes, that is what. It was discussed earlier that it was somewhat weird that the new heroes of the game also came from the Far East/Orient, just as the Samurai did, making it something of a repetition, but it is still very – convenient for FH that their new heroes are Oriental, thus giving team Ubisoft an extra edge to cashing-in on their fans – and team Ubisoft is firing on all cylinders here. They are fixing the technical issues and they are improving their story-telling aspect too: now FH has an arcade mode, which is something of a Choose Your Own Adventure sort of thing, complete with varying quests and levels of difficulty, something new and exciting. Go them! They are playing their cards close now, their level of cooperation with such YouTube channels as GameSpot, IGN and AWE Me has vanished, but maybe this is justified: in the past such alliances didn’t give Ubisoft much of an advantage, so they went in a different direction, and it seems to be working better, so good luck to Ubisoft, one guesses.

And now we are back at ‘Iron Fist’, who, as a show with – at least partially – Asian-American cast should be in a right place for some extra PR and benefits, as Ubisoft’s FH game is. Only it has not aired yet, (and it already has a weird reputation), so its situation is more ambiguous. Bugger. Still, it could be worse; it could have been like the ‘Dragonballs: Evolution’ movie or the 2017’s Power Rangers’ movie reboot. Both failed so miserably, that they are largely gone by now, so there is that.

…Well, I guess this is it for now; see you all soon!

Pathfinder & real life - Aug 24

Real life sucks. In this particular instance, the suckage began when we were finally wrapping up our Pathfinder adventure path – the giants’ one – when one of our members proclaimed that Pathfinder the franchise was undergoing a reboot.

That is nothing new in the world of RPG; D&D, for example, has went through at least five reboots/editions, and does not appear to be stopping, not yet. For Pathfinder to go through a second, or a third, reboot is not unnatural or anything like that, it is only the question of whether we will continue to play it. We are going through the official playtest manuals/adventures/etc., and it does not feel as good as the previous edition, so maybe we will tone down our involvement with Pathfinder in the future.

…And don’t try to talk about loyalty; all too often, for various RPG franchises, loyalty is translated into sinking money into their property – whether it’s D&D, Pathfinder, SW, (yes, that one), or something much more obscure, such as ‘space 1889’ (or whatever it is called). As long as people are investing money, time and effort into an RPG, they are loyal to it, the end. When they stop, they are not loyal apparently anymore. Also the end and it is very hard to make a debate about an RPG, even if you do not have much of a life, (as I do).

Anything else? Apparently, there’s a petition going around about not making Zendaya the next ‘Little Mermaid’ in case Disney will a make a live adaptation of that animated classic too. Sigh.

Listen, when it comes to race in the movies, ‘nose goes’, as says Aru Shah. Everyone is singing accolades for the LJ Netflix movie, and no one cares that Lana Condor, who plays LJ, is Korean-American, whereas in the novels LJ was half-Korean half-American instead. Vietnam and Korea are as different as, say, U.S.A. and France are, yet no one is making a big stink about it in regards to the LJ film, while KMT, Rose Tico, another Vietnamese-American actress, was dragged through the mud… How is this for (in) consistency?

…Now while we are talking about Zendaya, let us talk about ‘Spider-Man’ and the rest of the MCU. It isn’t surprising that with Spidey away, Zendaya cannot play the role of Michelle Johnson in MCU, (and yes, Marvel has blinked there, it’s a different MJ, cough), so she is potentially free for other roles, even ones associated with Disney – and this brings us to the A:IW film.

Let us take a brief look at the roster of the dusted characters there. Bucky Barnes – a divisive, controversial character: some people love him, some hate him, and all are vocal. Wanda the Scarlet Witch – ditto. Black Panther… he was championed as some sort of an African champion and was this amazing movie milestone, until people began to proclaim him to be instead, an idealized Afro-American stereotype, an appeaser, and a conformist…basically, what Killmonger was accusing him of being. The hype died quickly after that. Ditto for ‘Asians’ – now they are proclaimed mainly as a movie success and nothing more, which is fairer for them, but still… And Spider-Man, who is already divisive – and not as a character. Rather, the rights to his franchise are owned, co-owned, by both Sony and Marvel, and even as the ‘Homecoming’ film was being made, people learned that Sony and Marvel do not get along all the time. Now, the ‘Venom’ film is coming in 2019, and even trailers it is said that the film is made in association with Marvel, not as a part of it. Odds are, before Spidey returns to the big screen, Sony and Marvel will need to work their issues first.

As for divisive, controversial characters… Disney/MCU is quietly getting rid of it all controversial elements, whether it is something more vague, like Hydra, or characters, such as Bucky and Wanda, or real life people, such as James Gunn. He was supposed to produce ‘GotG Vol 3’ movie, but then got fired because of ‘me too’ related reasons, and… the cast, (and maybe the crew) of GotG franchise rebelled, and it all…ended in nothing: James Gunn is still gone, (there were negotiations, but apparently they didn’t work), but the movie too is put on hold, and it is shaping to be a lengthy one: how it will affect the next ‘Avengers’ movie, (which also features the GotG), is anyone’s guess.

Now it is still a better approach than the opposite number that had been executed in the SW enterprise by the Disney/SW team – ignoring the criticisms, and calling the fan-critics retrogrades, obscurantists, idiots, trolls and the like. Only now the Disney/SW team discovered that these retrogrades, obscurantists, idiots, trolls and the like are also the SW fan base, and as it falls apart into pieces, there are fewer people who want to give their money for tickets for a SW movie. Disney hates losing money, so again, it is anyone’s guess as to what the SW9 movie will look like. KMT/Rose Tico is going to appear in it, but in what capacity and how exactly is another question.

Anything else? We are trying some of the Pathfinder playtest adventures and do not exactly love it; it feels rather like D&D 5 ed. adventures with a slightly different layout & format. We got into Pathfinder because we did not like D&D 5 ed. in the first place, and now that it is no longer the case, we might have to rethink it, our RPG strategy – but that is life for you.

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

KMT and co. - Aug 22

Sigh. Firstly, real life sucks, when you least expect it to do so… or when you see it coming, (sort of), but it is equally bad in both cases. And then the Americans have Hollywood.

Not so long ago, an IGN member made a brief speech on YouTube, which conflated ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, ‘To All The Boys that I Have Loved’, and – KMT, also known as Rose Tico on SW, the current trilogy. So what is the problem?

In fact, the IGN member has conflated – as the rest of U.S. may have done – a number of social groups. There are Asians who live in Asia, and whose relationship with Americans, as well as Asian-Americans is one thing. There are Asian immigrants to the U.S. as well as their direct descendants, the Asian-Americans: them and their social position in the greater American society is another thing. The third is the power struggle between the Asian-American actors (and that includes celebrities) in Hollywood and the rest of the American entertainment industry and the other power groups, including Anglo-Americans and Afro-Americans. It is very possible that there are other groups lumped with those three, but let us put them outside the brackets for the moment.

Now, KMT. The fact that she was driven from Twitter, (or Tumblr, or some other social media platform) by Internet trolls (or whoever) is abominable, no human deserves this, but-

But KMT is not just some average Asian-American citizen, (unlike the IGN member who spoke up in her defense on YouTube recently); she is a celebrity, actually. She is famous, she is talented, and she is certainly not an average person. As such, she is not just ‘a face in the crowd’ and should expect unusual treatment, both good and bad. This is the essence of free will: everyone judges everyone else freely and expresses this judgement freely. No one can be liked by everyone else, not even a deity: just read the New Testament as to what happened when the Savior played with the free will of people – it really went horribly wrong, or horribly right, but horrible either way. Judaism, and Islam, and in a different way – Buddhism – do not go this way: it is either God’s way or the highway, and you do not want to go there.

…Or maybe you do, for this is how free will works: once Moses got the Jews out of Egypt and they started their travels through the desert, the man had to have his Levites make several bloodbaths to ‘tame’ the newly liberated 12 tribes and to stop them from rebelling and returning the fleshpots of Egypt. Since the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is full of tales when the Israelis turned their back on God and went to worship other gods, idols, Moses was not really successful, though he tried hard and implemented truly draconian tactics – but we have digressed.

On a less epic note, what happened to KMT was wrong, but it was not unexpected, because a famous person always draws attention both good and bad. At that time, KMT got hit with more bad than good attention, apparently, but it had nothing to do with her race, but with the fact that Disney/SW merger went on in an unexpected direction and seems to have split its’ fan base, or at least – diminished it to a point where ‘Solo’ made only tens of millions of dollars, and not hundreds, as Disney expected it to. Now, it is not known where SW movies will go, in what direction: there is vague information about the SW9 movie, an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, but nothing concrete, no indication of how the audiences will react to the future SW movies. The merged Disney/SW team might have wanted something new, progressive and radical…well, so did the Netflix-allied folks behind ‘Insatiable’, (though again, Debbie Ryan doesn’t appear to be associating with Disney anymore), and we know how that went down instead.

To rephrase it. The IGN member, who is an Asian-American, somehow conflated KMT, who is a single person, a real life individual and so on, with ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, a good, solid, American romantic comedy that got hyped so much that it strove to achieve a status of international importance – and failed, and now all the hype is dying down quickly, leaving behind nothing more than a romantic comedy of a movie; and with ‘To All The Boys that I Have Loved’, which is also a romantic comedy movie, a young adult one, and one that is less hyped. It also is different from ‘Asians’; and in the original novels, the racial angle wasn’t too important; in the last novel, the father of the family married a Ms. Rothschild, who was certainly not Korean or even Asian.

Listen: even as this article was wrote, ‘Scientific American’ has released an article online about female climatologists being sexually harassed in a manner that looks similar to what KMT went through, a woman herself – but it isn’t about race. Not primarily. Such trolls are angry at what KMT and other progressive people are doing – and they are using free will to express their anger, whether it is wrong or right.

The catch of course, that this is to be expected; if KMT expected only accolades to have come her way post the SW8 movie…then it genuinely sucks to be her, and maybe she should star in something less controversial: a romantic comedy, maybe. (Note that for a variety of reasons she apparently was not considered to be a ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ material). She is going to replay Rose Tico in the upcoming SW9 movie, but again, until it is actually aired, this can go in any direction.

Seriously, look at ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’. There was supposed to be a scene that depicted Zia in coming out as a same-sex person, but it got cut and there is no indication that it will be revealed, or play a role in the next JW film. So where does it leave the actress and the JW franchise? The latter was trying to be progressive itself…until it did not. What will happen to SW now that ‘Solo’ has indicated that even a Disney/SW juggernaut can start feeling the hits if they accumulate. Will they pull a Riordan and leave all the progressive values behind to salvage the financial situation? And either way, where will it leave KMT and the other actors?

…And keep in mind, that none of the above matters either to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ or to the adventures of LJ and friends, regardless of whether they will have sequels or not. LJ and friends did not really try to be politically progressive, more like mundanely romantic, and neither did ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ within their movie-verse. Their real life cast and crew did, and now there’s some backlash as well, and with the Donald still at the helm this is something ‘Asians’ and the real life U.S. don’t need – but that is another story.

…Well, this is for now – see you all soon!

To All The Boys That I Have Loved - Aug 21

…And, since we have talked about Jenny Han and her LJ trilogy before, let us talk once more about the movie.

Why? Firstly, because of timing – it isn’t known if it was intentional or not, but it came out just as the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ did, and so it got to ride their wake, because the LJ movie is also a movie about the Asian-American people, who actually live in a mixed-culture family: their dad is Anglo-American, while their mom was from Korea, and now she’s dead. There is the spectre of Jane Austen hanging over the entire LJ trilogy, and it is likely to be intentional for whatever reasons the author has.

The movie has toned down that influence: the film’s LJ is much more spunky and athletic than the novels’ version is. Jenny Han did her best to show LJ as a young woman who is just coming into her womanhood throughout the trilogy…with some humor, but also some drama and tragedy. The movie has that too, but the humor is more boosted, just as it is in the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ film.

True, we did discuss it before: the LJ novels feel more like a ‘Maid in Manhattan’, not ‘Fools Rush In’ or ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (mostly, in the latter case). The author put the emphasis on romance, not on humor, while the movie feels more like a mixture of two. This makes it better than the ‘Insatiable’ series, as far as YA Netflix productions go, while ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ differ from it by trying to go international and beyond their rom-com parameters.

Listen: there are still plenty of accolades for ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ coming from…within the U.S. Abroad, even in Canada, there are more sceptics than in the U.S., and it is beginning to show. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is an American movie, or maybe even an Asian-American one, but it isn’t an Asian one, and if the American society doesn’t understand the differences, then it has problems. The American society, not the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ movie. The latter does its job – it entertains. So does the LJ film, as well as the original novels, (in both cases). It’s just that LJ is less ambitious in its message or scope than ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ are, which makes sense, because Netflix isn’t Disney, and it isn’t as formidable as the big league movie companies are, either.

(Apparently, Netflix did offer to make ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ a part of its’ menu, but the director decided to go for the big screens instead. Small world).

Finally, about ‘Reverie’. So far, it is still uncertain if it will be renewed for a second season or not. That is not surprising – it got potential, but little excitement, and on occasion, it was known to focus on Sarah Shahi, (who plays Mara) and her legs a little too much. It is not exactly a hot mess, nor is it insipid as Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ had been; it is just rather lackluster and sometimes – it felt hollow, unsupported, loose.

That and the fact that it ripped-off Marvel’s AoS’ framework plotline, of course. Cannot forget that either. Not surprising, then, that the face of ‘Reverie’ is still hanging in the balance. Good luck to it, though.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Crazy Rich Asians - Aug 19

…‘Crazy Rich Asians’ have aired this month at last. Already there are issues with them. How come?

Firstly, the plot. Despite the statement that the movie drew its’ material from the entire trilogy, it is still largely based on the first novel, the initial ‘Crazy Rich Asians’. Before anyone begins to argue, let us immediately agree that yes, the novel is about the nouveau-riche of Asia, the new aristocracy that is supplanting the old, European one, so calling the movie derived from the novel some sort of a breakthrough is a misdirection. …Or is it?

Before we discuss this matter further, let us look on the more technical aspects of the movie, how it is different from the novel. One notable difference is Astrid’s plot line – in the movie, it is downplayed; she and her husband break up and this is it. In the novels,…it lasts for the entire trilogy, and it is one of the least comic plotlines there, too. It is an inverted mirror to Rachel and her man, Astrid married outside of her class, a poorer man, and their marriage didn’t work, as he became a jerk and a stereotypical domineering husband, (in a bad, non-sexual way). Fortunately, her ex-boyfriend was there to save the day and help her and her son, so it all works out at the end of the trilogy. Yay! …But with fewer laughs than you might think.

…That is actually an interesting point. Not unlike the LG trilogy by Jenny Han, KK’s CRA trilogy is not exactly as comic as the movie may make you think; there are plenty of comic moments, but both trilogies have plenty of drama, too. This is reminiscent of yet another supposed rom-com movie, ‘Maid in Manhattan’, back in 2008. Remember? It has starred J-Lo and some other celebrities? It was a good movie, but it was not exactly a comedy, for a number of reasons.

One is that J-Lo is not really a comic actress; Salma Hayek, (re: ‘Fools Rush In’ from 1997), is, but J-Lo is not. Her current TV series, ‘Shades of Blue’, is a very good TV show, but it certainly is not a comedy either, and ditto for ‘Maid in Manhattan’ film. There were a number of comic/funny scenes in that movie, but as a rule, J-Lo was not in them. Funny just does not come naturally to her, and neither does romance, apparently: there was zero chemistry and Ralph Fiennes in all of the scenes that they were together, which was bad, because they were the lead characters in the movie.

Mind you, ‘Maid in Manhattan’ had plenty in common with the CRA film – both films talk about social inequality; both movies are set in big, famous cities, and etc. Both movies are also American, but mayhap we are getting distracted?

No, not really: another major difference between the CRA film and the novels is the downplay of the fact that Rachel’s biological father was an important member of China’s communist party – it is not featured as prominently in the movie as it is in the book.

…This was actually a point of realization for me, when I read the novel: it was set in Singapore (primarily), yet the characters came across mostly as Chinese, so I actually did some research about Singapore and China and learned, to my embarrassment, that Singapore wasn’t all that close to China, but actually quite far away, which brings us to the next point.

Firstly, the critics of the movie are not wrong: CRA is downplaying the multiethnicity of Singapore, focusing primarily on its’ elite, which is apparently mainly of Chinese origin, both in the movie and the novels. As such, it raises an issue: just how much of making the movie is an international win?

This brings us to Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’, (released in Feb 2018). It is a different movie from CRA, but it had been handled similarly – it was proclaimed to be an African movie, an Afrofuturistic movie, and etc. – and then people began to examine it more closely, look at the technical angles, and began to realize that it actually didn’t have too much to do with Africa, especially with real life Africa, such as it is: Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ featured an idealized American, or Afro-American, version of Africa, which is another matter altogether – and the same thing is going down with CRA. It has less to do with real life Asia and more with a stylized, fictional Asia of the novels’ author first and the movie’s actors, filming crew, scriptwriters, the director, etc. second. It is still a very impressive feat of cooperative achievement, very important for Asian-American actors in Hollywood, but just like ‘Black Panther’, CRA appears to be reaching out for being a movie of international importance – and this is where it falls flat, as Asians abroad, (especially those native to Singapore), have very different opinions of it than the people back in U.S. do, and it shows, as all the hype about CRA the movie is dying down already.

Does CRA matter? Yes, because right now U.S. is wrestling with the temptation of getting rid of its’ international utopia…for good. This is an ambiguous move, not because if the States do it, it is the end of the official-unofficial Pax Americana that has been going on since the end of the Cold War. Fewer people outside of U.S.A. want to get rid of it than the Americans pretend, but it is enough for the Americans to grow increasingly disillusioned with the utopia that they have been building since the 1970s, actually, and this is not good either. If U.S. stops even trying being an international arbiter, (as they have pretended to be in the post-Cold War years), this is it. The end of an international democracy and the end of a world that we have lived in for more than twenty years by now. What comes next will be different – just different, but we got sidetracked.

No, not really. CRA is a good movie adaptation of a novel, with plenty of technical differences from its book cousin. This is a regular occurrence for such films – the LG movie is different from the book as we have discussed earlier, and so’s ‘Freaky Friday’, or rather – its’ latest reboot, (that has also aired in August 2018). Somehow, people forgot that in the original novels… that is right, there were at least two novels – in the first, mom and her daughter switched places, in the second – a father and son, and they were all one family, a stereotypical nuclear family. In most of the adaptations, the family usually misses a father, and the son is much younger than his sister is. Somehow, there was never any stink raised over this odd development, so there is that. The latest FF movie version was wonderful all the same, too, but we are talking about CRA here.

…And it is the same thing. Whatever justified criticism CRA’s message might be bringing forth, the setting – the city of Singapore – well, does not. Everyone likes it, but many people loved ‘Black Panther’s’ Wakanda too, and let us be honest: while the setting can have some importance to the plot, (i.e., in ‘Main in Manhattan’, Manhattan and NYC did play an important role in having the plot go along), people usually stay to watch any movie for its’ actors – and this is what they’ve done for CRA: they watched it, and they judged it. As a movie, CRA is a success; as an attempt to affect real life politics, especially outside of the U.S., it is not so much, just as ‘Black Panther’ was not, (do people even talk officially about that film anymore?), so let us just accept it and move on.

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

S.H.I.E.L.D., S6 - July 30

Let us start… no, let us skip the obligatory disclaimer, and go to the more intense things. Or not, let us wait and see how it goes.

To begin – ‘Insatiable’ continues… either to have problems, or to generate problems for itself, via Netflix: by now, there are rumors of a ‘review embargo’; i.e. apparently, no critical reviews can be published until the film itself is released. Look: it may appear to be a sound strategy, but in reality, this shows that ‘Insatiable’ does have problems that are more serious than just a badly made trailer is. If the film was sound, then a little criticism wouldn’t hurt; there are plenty of movies that went on regardless of what the critics thought…including the TV ones, but ‘Insatiable’ is trying to do something different, apparently, so good luck to it – so far it just further amplifies the feeling that ‘Insatiable’ is a badly made movie, so it might end up going the new ‘Ghostbusters’ route, where the movie had a bad reputation and was just bad. In fact, having any reputation helped the new ‘Ghostbusters’ some, as it actually made people want to come and look at it, just to see how bad it really was. Not unlike the Marvel ‘InHumans’ TV series, it was just…insipid, and while Marvel ‘InHumans’ just got cancelled after their S1, the new ‘Ghostbusters’ movie franchise…has also ended; there are some new ‘Ghostbusters’ comics, but otherwise? That is it for now; just like ‘InHumans’, ‘Ghostbusters’ have failed.

Meanwhile… the shark week has ended, the global tiger day was yesterday, and there are new news about AoS. Firstly, Clark Gregg, (aka Phil Coulson) will be back…to direct the first episode of S6. There are no news of Wen, (May), so she probably will not be back in AoS in any capacity, period. There are some Coulson fans that will be excited by the news, no doubt, but for the rest of us? This will not be the same; as always, AoS wants to have it both ways and consequently, does not succeed in either – go them. Not.

EW has published a mini-interview with Gregg online and showed that yes; he is directing the upcoming 6x01 episode – ‘Missing Pieces’, (or something like that). Good for him, Gregg has directed the ‘Fun and Games’ episode of AoS already back in S5, (does anyone feels that this made ‘Fun and Games’ somehow different from the rest of AoS, eh?), so he has plenty of practice under his belt – and everyone is very excited, especially Chloe Bennett, (who plays Skye/Daisy/Quake). The more I see of her as a person, the less I like her, regardless of what I feel for her character on one hand, and how much I respect her acting skills on the other.

Speaking of Skye/Daisy/Quake? Jeff Ward is also staying on AoS, as Deke Shaw, the FitzSimmons’ grandson from the future, and probably Daisy’s love interest. Why?

Listen, AoS began as a show about three couples – the FitzSimmons, Skye & Grant, and Phil & Mel. The FitzSimmons are technically a couple still, even though the show constantly divides them in ever creative and new ways, to a point where it gotten ridiculous: the two of them still have to sire and give birth to Deke’s mom, for otherwise, Deke will just fade away and Daisy will be left single again.

No, seriously, what gives? Daisy’s/Chloe’s love interests come and go every season, again to the point of ridiculousness – Britt and Dalton, Mitchell and Luna, and anyone else who’s forgotten, they all came and went for various reasons – is working on AoS with Chloe so bad? Seriously, by now this sort of a relationship leapfrog game with Daisy is also ridiculous…and there are still some fans who are feeling let down by the fact that SkyeWard relationship did not happen.

Of course, there is now Deke. Deke and Daisy, there is the letter D alliteration, how clever. If the S5 had treated their relationship as a, well, fledgling relationship, things would have been better for them and for the viewers. Instead, Deke’s role on S5 was all over the place, and never concretely with Daisy, (or as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new rookie either, for that matter), so right now he has less of a presence than Kasius and Sinara do – that alien power couple have some fans, even though they are evil and are kind of dead. Ish. If Deke and Daisy will appear as a couple of whatever sorts on AoS’ S6, then there will be some backlash just because – and now it is unknown if AoS can take it. (Mind you, if after their sixth season they will decide just to call it quits…that might not be a problem – six seasons are a respectable run, after all, and the Marvel scene is changing too…)

Anything else? No, not really. There’s also the upcoming ‘To All the Boys that I have Loved’ movie, also on Netflix, and-

And it is shaping to be a very different piece than the original novel was. The original novel – the first in a trilogy, and perhaps – the strongest, is a love drama novel. Yes, there’s some humor – moreso in the other two novels than in this one – but mainly to undercut the drama of the plot and to ensure that the novels don’t get too high-handed, or high-strung, or whatever. The movie – even in its’ trailer – has a lot more humor in it, including physical humor, than the novel does.

Secondly, the attitude. The author – Jenny Han – has made her heroine, Lara Jean, (let us just call her LJ in the future) – old-fashioned to a point, where she is still a virgin. Gasp, and with most of her friends, (including her big sister), not being so to the point. Somehow or other, Jenny Han’s LJ novels are romantic, without any sex involved, especially not directly. And in the movie trailer? LJ’s dad hands her apparently a set of condoms, for fun.

Now, here’s the thing – it isn’t certain if LJ is her author’s mouthpiece in her trilogy, but she is a representative of a certain set of values; actually, Jenny Han isn’t subtle about showing her values at least in this trilogy; she is politically correct and progressive, (of course), as there are racial minorities in the novels, and at least one homosexual character; but-

But when it comes to characters in the LJ trilogy in general, Jenny Han seems to have issues with them as an author. There’re LJ and her family, (including Trina, her eventual stepmother), there’s Paul Kavinski, (LJ’s significant other), and his family…but they are already nowhere near as well fleshed-out as LJ and her family are, there’s Josh and John- wait.

Josh deserves a special mention because he was LJ’s first love…but he became the boyfriend of Margot, LJ’s sister, and then they broke-up, Josh and Margot, leaving Josh free, but LJ didn’t want to get with him, because of reasons. She hooked-up with Pete instead…and the rest of the trilogy, (two and a half books, basically), are all about LJ and Pete…being together. They are being shoehorned together, sure, but-

But the same goes for the rest of romance novels, period. Teen or adult, it doesn’t matter – when it comes to characters, it all goes down very simple: character A meets character B, they fall in love and spend the rest of the novel getting there, whether you’re talking about Jenny Han or Nora Roberts; the devil’s in details, true, but the basic framework? It is the same. For those who love romance, Jenny Han’s novels, (both LJ trilogy and the others), should work; for those who want something more substantial, they will not. At least the LJ novels are driven only by plot, and the characters – especially the non-main characters – are secondary at best, little more than placeholders at worst. Josh was a main character in the first novel, (and he is probably going to be so in the movie too), but in the rest of the trilogy? He is barely even mentioned. Yes, he got himself a new girlfriend who was not related to the Song-Covey family, but his abrupt dismissal from the LJ world still kind of stings. Kitty – the youngest SC girl – actually addresses a point that Josh is not around anymore, and it goes down…about as well as the Apu controversy in the Simpsons-verse – it does not. As soon as characters stop being important to the LJ in love with Pete plot, they practically vanish and become ghosts for all that it matters. Ah well, how does the saying go? Don’t like it, don’t read? Sounds about right – Jenny Han’s novels – or at least the LJ trilogy – is sitting out there on bookshelves, as people do not read it. Maybe they will after the movie airs, but considering that the movie is already revealing itself to be very different from the books, it is not certain that it will be a good idea. For example, LJ novels are not very approving of sex in general and of casual sex in particular – the trailer has Mr. Song-Covey hand the movie LJ a set of rubbers – yes, that sort of rubbers. Ouch! This is a direct opposite of the novels’ atmosphere, of LJ’s character and of her father’s – but the movie does not care. This just might be a new ‘GG’ reboot in the making, or even – the PJ movies, which were denounced by Riordan personally, and that was the end of them – but that is another story.

In other movie-related news, SW9 will feature Carrie Fisher, or rather – the footage of Carrie Fisher as princess Leia. Her real-life family are apparently very happy/proud/positive etc., which is good, because if they weren’t, then the Disney-Lucasfilm merger behind the SW movies would’ve had a bigger problem from what they already had – but it was discussed earlier. There is still going to be controversy, as there was when they had done something similar in the SW ‘Rogue 1’ film, so why not? The mess that Disney-Lucasfilm merger found themselves in these days was discussed earlier too…

So, this is it for now – see you all soon!