Giant salamanders - May 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but we're going to talk about a RL animal altogether, since Marvel and co. are lying low for the rest of May. Therefore, where are we?

Let us talk about the cryptobranchid, or the giant, salamanders of Asia and North America, simply because they are in their own suborder. Pause

There are three suborders of the tailed amphibians, aka newts and salamanders, and the overwhelming majority of them belong to the Salamandroidea suborder; the only exceptions are the sirens of the south-east North America, (USA), and the aforementioned giant salamanders and their relatives, (more on them below).

The sirens’ differences from the rest of the salamanders are obvious: they are probably the most neotenic of all the tailed amphibians: not only they have external gills, but they also have only front legs – no hind ones. Pause.

Whereas in frogs and toads it is the hind legs that develop first, in newts and salamanders it is the front ones instead; plus, their tadpoles have external gills, while the frogs and toads acquire internal ones very quickly; the legless caecilians, the final group of the modern amphibians, also seem to have external gills, but they are much less known than the other two, so they will be mentioned only in passing – wait.

Getting back into the mists of time, the thing is that the modern amphibians only began to appear around the time of the K-T extinction 66 MYA; before then, especially during the Palaeozoic and the early Mesozoic, completely different groups of amphibians ruled. The thing is that while initially paleontologists went with a linear P.O.V. and proclaimed that amphibians evolved from the fish, and reptiles – from the amphibians, by now it is clear that these statements are much vaguer than scientists have initially imagined.

Yes, the initial land vertebrates have evolved from fish, (as there were not any other vertebrates), but these days scientists tend to classify those early semi-terrestrial semi-aquatic animals as ‘tetropods’ and prefer to differentiate them from the amphibians because of reasons. Ditto, right now the actual ancestors of the reptiles is unknown; the reptiles have appeared back in the Carboniferous, (as shown in ‘Walking with Monsters’, for example), though they were small at that time – about the size of the modern lizards on average, (but, again, they weren’t really related to the modern lizards and snakes at all); yet they were already differentiated from the amphibians. However…

However, for a while, in the late Paleozoic, there were the so-called reptilomorph amphibians – amphibians that had reptile-like traits in adults, but their young still had gills and lived in water… and why should not they? The amphibious way of life – when the young and the adults of the same species have different… everything and thus do not compete with each other – is clearly advantageous, as the amphibians’ evolutionary history, from the Devonian to Recent demonstrates; however…

However, somewhere along the line, things have diverged at least for some tailed amphibians, as they evolved neoteny, a condition where juvenile traits persist into sexual maturity. Actually, neoteny is present in several groups of animals, including insects, so let us for now focus on the tailed amphibians: for them, neoteny is when a species has both sexual maturity and external gills, (with the sirens going one-step further, as we already said). However, the giant salamanders are a different story.

Why? Because while they are mostly aquatic, (as the neotenic amphibians are), their adults lack external gills. Yes, their young hatch underwater, have external gills, eventually grow legs…but unlike the axolotl and the mudpuppies, their gills disappear with sexual maturity; instead, they grow skin folds and the like to extract oxygen from the water instead, which is a different story altogether – but what it is?

To recapitulate, metamorphosis came before neoteny – for a while, there was no obvious reason to evolve the latter, but when it did… either the giant salamanders were too late, apparently, as plenty of other salamander groups and subgroups had, and so the giant salamanders couldn’t ‘fit in’… other the giant salamanders were too early: they began to stick to a mostly fully aquatic lifecycle before the other salamanders evolved neoteny, and since there was no competition, they flat-out didn’t evolve it, as there was no need for it. What next?

While throughout Earth’s history there were plenty of giant salamander subgroups, right now, there are only three species around – one in North America, and the other two in Asia. The American hellbender is the smallest of the three – no bigger than 70 cm long, about the size of a small child at best… but the bigger species of North American mudpuppies don’t grow over 48-50 cm long, so, obviously there’s some other factor at work, since the Japanese giant salamander reaches 150 cm in length – the size of a small adult – and the Chinese species – reaches 180 cm, which is the size of an average adult instead. Pause.

Let us get into the ecology of the giant salamanders instead. While they might be vaguely associated with the crocodiles, they really are not. The crocodilians divide, among other ways, into two broad categories: narrow-snouted fish-eaters and broad-snouted ambush-hunters of land animals. By contrast, the giant salamanders live most of their life underwater, and they do not ambush land animals, yet their heads and snouts are shore and broad instead. Therefore, whom do they resemble instead?

Why, the catfish, and especially the wels catfish – one of the biggest freshwater catfish species of them all. Just as the giant salamanders, the wels catfish is active mainly at night; it hunts by swimming along the river bottom, sensing the prey with its whiskers and swallowing them whole. The giant salamanders’ don’t have such as advanced whiskers as the wels catfish does, but neither does the burbot, (another fish), and it does the same thing too, but being around 1 m 24 cm in length, (in the size range of the giant salamanders, cough), it just cannot compete with the wels catfish size-wise. Where are we?

Ah yes, entertaining my theory that the giant salamanders, (also known as the ‘primitive salamanders’ in some nomenclature, while the other, non-siren salamanders, are known as the ‘advanced salamanders’ instead), are the ecological analogues of the wels catfish instead. The hellbender lives in the Eastern United States, where there is not any natural analogue of the wels, and, again, it is the smallest living member of the cryptobranchids. The Japanese giant salamander lives alongside the Biwa catfish – a wels catfish variant… which is endemic to a single lake only, and the Amur catfish, which is around the size of a large burbot instead, so the Japanese giant salamander can handle it.

As for the Chinese salamander, this is where things get murky. These days, there are actually two species of this amphibian: the Chinese salamander proper, and the South China giant salamander; both species are critically endangered, (i.e., in a much worse state than their Japanese and U.S. cousins), and there may be more species of the giant salamander living there – they just have not been identified and confirmed by the scientists yet. Still, the Chinese giant salamander species’ complex is struggling – from habitat destruction, water pollution, harassment from humans, hybridization with the Japanese giant salamander…and maybe from the competition from the introduced wels catfish? Who knows!

One last thing. The kappa. In one of the RM episodes, our main man JW went to Japan to confront the Biwa catfish and the Japanese giant salamander, which he proclaimed to be the root behind the kappa legend. With all due respect, JW, but on this occasion you’re a flat-out wrong; the kappa was never depicted as even vaguely salamander-like, but as a turtle-like humanoid instead. Therefore, that is that.

For the moment, though, we are saying good-bye to the giant salamanders. See you all soon!

JWD trailer 2 - April 29

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk briefly about the latest JWD trailer: what about it?

So far, it is a gorgeous spectacle slash show, but there are always sticky moments, and I came across two of them at least.

Firstly, the pyroraptor. For me, this dinosaur remains ‘colored’ by its’ rendition on ‘Dinosaur Planet’ (2003-4); it was the main character in the miniseries’ European episode. In it, the miniseries’ scriptwriters used the pyroraptor as a vehicle to show the life on proto-Europe’s islands during the late Cretaceous, (80-70 MYA). The new, 2022’s version of pyroraptor is visibly influenced by the previous version, but its’ muzzle is more pointed than the 2003 version on one hand, and on the other – it can swim.

…Yes, the dinosaurs clearly could swim; Mr. Crichton had a T-Rex chase Dr. Grant and the children in his initial novel back in the 1990s; but this version of pyroraptor had DNA of diving birds inserted into it, because Dr. Wu – or his imitators – was, (or were), an artiste! The modern birds, (which are also dinosaurs, yes), have mastered the element of water, true, but the most aquatic of them are the penguins, on one hand, and the loons & the grebes on the other. (The auks and their kin are a close third). Therefore, what is the punchline?

That while the penguins cannot fly, but they can certainly walk on land, the loons and the grebes can fly, but they are nearly helpless & immobile on land. Since the pyroraptor does not appear to be able to fly, but it is certainly mobile on land, I am guessing that it is part penguin, (or maybe auk), instead of being part loon, (or grebe; not that the two bird groups are all that closely related to each other either). What else? (Aside from me waiting for those Carnotaurus/hummingbird hybrids)?

Ah, yes, the giganotosaurus. The trailer proclaims that the latter carnosaur was the biggest land carnivore ever. Sadly, in RL, this title belongs to the Spinosaurus…which was semi-aquatic, true, but still bigger than the T-Rex, and the carnosaurs had been – precisely of its’ semi-aquatic lifestyle, yeah. Therefore, JWD may be fudging the truth somewhat, implying that the Spinosaurus is semi-aquatic and as such – disqualified, but I remain sceptical all the same. These sort of proclamations are a slippery slope, and films like JWD should either embrace the science fully…or not at all.

That is it for now, though. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #109 - July 8

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I planned to finish talking about Dougal Dixon’s initial speculative zoology trilogy today, but given all the excitement that arose about the dilophosaurus, let us talk about this dinosaur instead.

Why is the dilophosaurus so famous? Because it appeared in the very first JP film, and by now ‘everybody knows’ that its’ depiction there was wrong. However, what ‘everyone’ seems to miss here is how the movie differed from the novel in this aspect, as well as the ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’ docu-film as well.

First, about Mr. Crichton’s ‘true’ dilophosaurus. In the JP novel, it was bigger and more formidable than its’ movie counterpart was, plus it was brighter – with a bright red crest and a spotted body, (reminiscent of the modern leopard, just as the ‘raptor’/velociraptor/Deinonychus was reminiscent of the modern tiger). Moreover, while it did take a backseat to the novel’s raptors and rexes, it was still a formidable dinosaur…while in the movies the dilophosaurus was more of a one-time wonder instead, an analogue of a random wandering monster in the various RPGs.

This brings us to ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’, a 2001 documentary movie, made by the Discovery channel, as a responsa to BBC’s ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ mini-series. Whether or not it was an appropriate and a proportionate response is another thing, but right now, we are talking about the dilophosaurus instead. There, it had appeared in the movie’s Early Jurassic segment, alongside Anchisaurus, a prosauropod dinosaur, and syntarsus, another theropod carnivore.

Let us elaborate. First, the segment itself was about the saurischian dinosaurs, the carnivorous theropods, and the herbivorous sauropodomorphs – prosauropods and sauropods. While a theropod and a sauropod are built very differently, a prosauropod and a theropod share enough common features to establish a common evolutionary relationship. That said, the evolutionary/taxonomic relationship between the prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs is not as straightforward as everyone assumed that it was in the late 20^th century/the early 2000s – i.e., the two groups were cousins, not an ancestor and a descendant, as it was once assumed.

…Getting back to the theropods, the dilophosaurus in that film was much larger and formidable than it was in the JP movie – it was bigger and stronger than the other theropods there, and it had powerful jaws, sharp claws, and strong forelimbs to bring down its prey – the prosauropod Anchisaurus, even though the latter tried to fight back. There was also some inter-species combat too, after that, and given the fact that that version of dilophosaurus had almost a dragon-, or a crocodile-like appearance, this brings us back to the Nat Geo article. To wit, it claims that everything that we knew about dilophosaurus is wrong. To that, I reply – no, we did not. We just ignored it, because we liked JP better than real life because reasons. In RL, the dilophosaurus was noticeably much more formidable than in the JP movie…and it probably was not venomous either, though the evolution of venom in vertebrate animals is a separate story entirely and we’ll leave it along for now – let’s just assume that dilophosaurus probably wasn’t venomous and leave it be.

…The point is that, again, yes, the JP movie did distort the real-life dilophosaurus into something else, something false, but at the same time, by 2001, plenty of people, (especially among the scientists) knew that, and in the U.S., they actually tried to fix the dilophosaurus’ image in the ‘WDRA’ film – which became forgotten quickly enough in the next 19-20 years. Ergo, it is ‘our’, i.e., the public’s, fault as well, that dilophosaurus’ image became so distorted in the last 19-20 years…

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

Quarantine entry #78 - May 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I mean, here you go, reading about how a lobster fisherman caught an albino lobster, one in a 100 million or something, and then you learn that a 10-ft. great white shark, (that’s 3 m long, longer than an average man is tall and much stronger, too), unintentionally killed a surfer. That is life, but it still sucks, even if it is not COVID-19 bad.

…And then you read how some pilot drew a fish – I mean, a fist - for George Floyd in the air over Nova Scotia, and this is when I knew that the American society is in trouble…and also nuts. Why? Because it is bored. Everyone in the West – but especially in the U.S. – was bored because of the lockdown, and when the George Floyd protests came along, they piled onto it with no intention of stopping it.

Oh, sure, people like the Donald try to stop it…which they do…in a manner that is certain to make everything worse and to ensure that the ‘U.S. civil unrest’ beats-out ‘Coronavirus-19’ for top spot on news sites, (such as the MSN, but still). The fact is that people are sick and tired of COVID-19 and will do anything to forget about it; but…

…But what people are not talking about is how the ‘civil unrest’ issue will exacerbate the COVID-19 issue. Forget ‘Barkskins’, forget ‘Gordon Ramsey Uncharted’, they are out in the real world, where blood is being spilled, and COVID-19 is beginning to become ignored, sickness or not. Pause.

Here is the thing. Canada itself is doing just that, demanding justice for its’ own deceased POC, deceased under suspicious circumstances, I point out, but somehow it falls far from the scope of the U.S. – and they still have not opened the borders.

That is to say, the U.S.-Canadian border is permeable, but because my family does not want to take risks – and they are not entirely wrong there by now – it might as well not be. Pause.

Here is another thing. I doubt that this border is going to be officially open anytime soon, as neither D.C. nor Ottawa want to force the issue, and actually, they probably do not want to open the border at all. The U.S. – because its’ people have been moving as in ‘immigrating’ to Canada since 2016, (and whose fault is that? Not the Canadians) – and Ottawa because right now the U.S. is a burning pile of tires that is full of crap that stinks. The Donald and Trudeau are two very different people that did not get along too often in the past, and now it shows.

…The people…under other circumstances, the people would, and could, tell Ottawa and D.C. something about that, and so they do…about people of color, and about defunding the police. The latter part is U.S.-only, somehow it didn’t get caught in Canada, (cough), and so I feel comfortable enough to say that whatever is going on in Canada is only an imitation of the ‘U.S. civil unrest’ and the ‘George Floyd fallout’, and it helps Trudeau and his peers to feel important, while keeping them out of the U.S. level of danger. Anything else?

Speaking of danger, the first episode of S2 of ‘Gordon Ramsay Uncharted’ has reminded me quite a lot of ‘River Monsters’, especially the African episodes, for the obvious reason – hippos. We have talked about them repeatedly on this blog, but they are amazing animals, especially the common hippo. The pygmy hippo is remarkable in its own right, but people do not encounter it in the wild as often as they do its’ larger cousin, with ‘encounter’ being the key word here. You see, unlike the wildlife in Asia or South America, the African animals are kind of used to people, they know that if they charge first and think about the fallout later, they can survive their human encounters, while humans don’t. Sadly, humans are even smarter and are even better at killing than the African mammals are, and the latter do include hippos; hippo attacks are one of the main causes of death in Africa, whereas shark attacks…

Whereas shark attacks in Africa are something else, and we have talked about the AFO episode ‘Hippo vs. bull shark’ in the past. The hippo won, but that is not very surprising; I have seen some live-action footage, (not CGI) of hippos encountering bull sharks, and the latter give hippos a wide berth. They may be as formidable as the great white sharks are, in proportion, but otherwise? Nile crocodiles feed on them, and hippos can handle Nile crocodiles, no problem! Kudos to GR for channelling his inner JW, I say!..

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

Quarantine entry #39 - April 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks and family is annoying, to put it lightly. In addition, there is more new info about our main man Spinosaurus – this dino really was the first truly aquatic dinosaur, (one that is known to human science, anyhow): not even a wading bird, more like a sail-backed crocodile instead.

Pause. Is there anything else than can be said about this prehistoric reptile? By now, Spinosaurus is about as popular as T-Rex is; the two reptiles are often compared and contrasted, and the JP3 film opened a can of worms, at least for a while, when Spinosaurus had killed T-Rex in a dino face-off. The JP fanbase has never been the same again, and the first JW film tried to address this issue – sort of – by having Rexy smash through a Spinosaurus skeleton and then the entire T-Rex vs. I-Rex vs. velociraptor pack fight, but that wasn’t the same, and not just because the I-Rex was a glorified carnosaur instead. (Think Carcharodontosaurus from ‘Planet Dinosaur’ as an example). Spinosaurus was a very different theropod dinosaur from Carcharodontosaurus and the other carnosaurs, that was quite obvious from the start, so it and the I-Rex do not have much in common either. What next?

The JP franchise has become more inconsistent with its’ reboot, and the second JW movie hadn’t had too much in common with the first; it was more of a reboot instead, so there’s that, and no Spinosaurus. It had a Spinosaurus cousin in one of the scenes, a Baryonyx or a Suchomimus, but it was a minor, episodic character, and so it did not play any important role at all, especially in the second half of the film, when the Indoraptor was introduced. I will say it again: the second JW movie was made out of scripts for two films – one about the end of the Dinosaur Island, (it culminated with the Brachiosaurus scene), and the second one about the Evil E’s dino mansion and the Indoraptor, which was too anthropomorphic for my tastes. Ah well, the third JW film is being delayed, as are the rest of the films, we will just have to wait and see what will come of it, so for now, I suppose, we need to return to the real life, and-?

And nothing. Apparently, Trudeau’s mother was hospitalized not because of COVID-19, but because of an apartment fire. That is fair, especially since comrade Kim’s medical troubles have started not because of COVID-19 either, so Ms. Trudeau Sr. may not be out of the woods yet. What next?

…I honestly wanted to talk about antelopes this time, but speaking of being out of the woods? It is very hard to talk about them – there are 91 species of mammals named ‘antelopes’, which live in Africa and Asia; if they live somewhere else, like the pronghorn in North America or the chamois in Europe, then they aren’t ‘true antelopes’ at all, but are their relatives. That said, all of the bovid ruminants that are not cattle, (like the yaks and the zebu that we have discussed earlier), or sheep and goats, (think mountain goats and bighorn sheep, for example), are antelopes instead.

The antelopes are a mixed bunch on their own. There are dwarf species, such as the royal antelope and the duikers. There are gazelles, such as the blackbuck and the springbok. (The impala belongs to its’ own genus and is somewhat unique, even by antelope standards). There are really big species, like the nyalas and the elands, which are animals that are big and strong enough to stand-up to the lion. There are the wildebeests, and the bontebooks, and the Asian species, such as the nilgai and the four-horned antelopes, and there are plenty of unique-looking species too, such as the gerenuk and the saiga. In short, the antelope animal group is varied and confusing, and not even the Wikipedia, who likes to poke around this sort of confusing info, wants to touch them – but then again, true nature is varied, confusing, and unpredictable: just look at how Spinosaurus has turned out to be, or at the coronavirus-19, as examples!

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

Quarantine entry #10 - March 31

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and sometimes it sucks because of something that you have done – everything was more or less fine before, and then you do something stupid, and clog one of the sinks in your home. Idiot. Yeah, talking about dinosaurs is just what you need – not. End irony. Today I got to revisit another miniseries, called ‘Beast Legends’. It consisted of one six-episode season and was never rebooted. Why?

Well, for one thing, it was supposed to be a reboot by itself – of MonsterQuest, another show that ended a long time ago. MonsterQuest itself raises mixed feelings in my chest – it was a show about all sorts of cryptids; an episode would begin with a CGI depiction of the cryptid in question – an alien, a giant shark, Chupacabra, and beyond – and then for the next hour or so a group of experts would go someplace where the cryptid in question was seen most recently, and do everything in their power as to not to find anything at all that would upend the status quo. They would not just laze around, but everything they did was so perfunctory and minimal that it became evident eventually that they were just killing time there and making it look convincing.

By contrast, ‘River Monsters’, which also got cancelled, never had JW go for the minimal – rather, JW did his best to be, well, JW, and to sell his show as best as he could – which was pretty damn good. Sadly, in the latter seasons, ‘River Monsters’ jumped a shark that had little in common with real-life fish…and so I lost interest in it, sadly… Where do ‘Beast Legends’ fit?

They never did. Rather, each episode was dedicated to recreating one or another mythical monster – whether a potential cryptid, like the kraken or the Vietnamese analogue of a Yeti, or a pure myth, such as the gryphon episode. Why? Because it was the most well delivered. However, the reason as to why it was the most well-delivered was because the biggest part of the BL’s budget went into it, leaving the last two episodes, dedicated to the Native American thunderbird and a dragon, (eh, maybe more about it later), with much less cash. I am not saying that BL blew its’ budget on the gryphon episode, (named the ‘Winged Lion’, if I remember correctly), leaving the last two episodes with much less cash. Budget issues are important issues in production of TV series and movies, and it may be why BL vanished after a single season slash six episodes. It just never had a defined audience, a defined niche for itself. The gryphon episode was quite fun to watch though. Anything else?

Sadly, not. Unlike the dragon, which remains a popular mainstay in fantasy, the gryphon…also does, but is more secondary and less popular than the dragon is by far. Pity, because it is an impressive-looking mythical monster. And yes, part of the reason as to why I have watched the gryphon episode of BL is because we’ve talked about the Protoceratops in the past, and its’ fossils may’ve been a partial inspiration behind the gryphon myth, so I thought that I should mention this dino, (a distant cousin of the more famous Triceratops, remember?).

Another bit of trivia is that the gryphon was a primarily Middle Eastern s (Asian) mythical monster (yes, the Ancient Greeks and Romans had adopted it, but only slight), unlike the dragon, which was found on all continents, except for maybe Australia and New Zealand, and even there are some dragon-like creatures to be found in their myths… Gryphon and its relative the hippogriff could never top that.

…Yes, both gryphons and hippogriffs were featured in the MLP: FIM cartoon, but if the gryphons were depicted quite canonically, then the hippogriffs were shown to be shapeshifters of sorts, shifting between a bird-horse and a fish-horse mode, with the latter being named the hippocampus instead. 

Yeah, someone in MLP: FIM had hit the obscure mythical monsters quite hard, which brings us back to the gryphons – kind of. In one of the episodes, the viewers saw some sort of a one-eyed monster harassing the gryphons – it was supposedly an Arimaspian. In real life, the Arimaspians were a race of one-eyed humanoids who constantly fought with the gryphons over gold, which the gryphons hoarded just as the dragons did. Fair enough, though I do not know as to why the Arimaspians were not classified as just variant Cyclopes, but the MLP: FIM’s Arimaspian had distinctly goat- or ram-like features, especially the horns. This, again, implies, that the final season’s Discord-as-Grogar story arc was the result of some sort of a reboot, just a behind the scenes one. Well, fair enough, this cartoon incarnation of MLP: FIM is over now, and we just got the last bits to pick over in the form of various comics and what not. Anything else?

Nothing, save that I just might be turning back to DW after all this Middle East discussion that we did in regards to the gryphon. (Yes, the name can be spelled in several ways in the English language and all are correct. Live with it). Consequently, this is it for now, see you all soon!

JW: motion comic part 4 - Dec 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. One’s family sucks even worse. When both of those factors combine, life becomes practically intolerable but what can you do? You take what you can, of course, and screw everything else. What is left after this approach, aside from reality, (such as it is)?

Well, there’s ‘Cats’, the 2019 edition, but we’ll talk about it later, maybe even in 2020, because so far this perfidy exists to ensure that life becomes even worse, if you spend roughly one and a half to two hours watching this… thing. Ergo, let us talk about the fourth part of the JW motion comic instead.

What can be said about it? Spoiler alert: judging by the ominous ‘the end’, white on black, at the final part of the motion comic, it is suggested that this is ‘it’ – an Allosaurus ate Rebecca Ryan. The end.

Pause. Here is the thing. This particular installment of the JW motion comic has made Rebecca Ryan be genuinely stupid – she wastes valuable time first trying to listen to her husband on the cellphone ignoring the obvious signs of danger – her frantic video crew, the park’s rangers, the helicopter circling overhead – and then, when idiot’s luck strikes and it’s her – well, the news’ – van that gets taken by the Allosaurus, and she gets to scamper to safety, she actually tries to get the still-active cell phone, (it gets stepped-on by the carnivore in the process), and so she catches Allosaurus’ attention. The end.

Another pause. Yes, this motion has promptly tied into the BBR short feature – remember it? The motion comic refers to it directly, featuring a surprisingly wooden re-enactment of the Allosaurus vs. Nasutoceratops battle, it doesn’t resemble how it went down in the BBR at all, but that’s not the point – the point that we’ve discussed the two dinosaurs featured in this short feature when we’ve discussed BBR itself, and you know what? Compared to Rebecca Ryan (and her skeleton crew), this nameless family proved to be pinnacles of common sense, competence, intelligence and teamwork! Really, the first three installments set the standard bar low – did part four need to get character assassination involved? Rebecca Ryan and co. barely had any character at all! Literally! Why did they have to add stupidity to her mix?..

…Wait, it ill behoves to speak poorly of the dead? Well, we haven’t seen Big Al eat Ms. Ryan yet – maybe she’ll have her great escape when the Nasutoceratops family makes its’ appearance. Otherwise, I am sorry, but this I am not very sympathetic for her plight. Anything else?

…Been reading Mercedes Lackey’s ‘Elemental Masters’ series lately. Cannot say that I am impressed by the latest version of it. To wit: the first seven books were written by one author, maybe even Ms. Lackey herself, but then they began to meander: first it were blatant imitations of the first seven books (book 8), then it was over to continental Europe (books 9-10), and now, the last four books are really the best reboot yet – ‘adventures of Sherlock Holmes and friends’, the magical edition, really. It is not as annoying as Ms. Patricia Briggs’ situation, for example, but bad enough. From truly exotic and intriguing novels, the ‘Elemental Masters’ have devolved into popcorn for brain – you read those novels once, and move on.

…Earlier in the ‘Elemental Masters’ series, there were even two anthologies – collections of stories written by other authors, set in this Mercedes Lackey’s universe – this particular universe was so good. Now it is not. Sad, but that is real life for you. It sucks… and that is before ‘Cats 2019’ got released today, (Dec 20, 2019). Between the bizarro take on the titular critters in question and the already problematic plot, (especially in regards to coherence), ‘Cats’ in particular isn’t a musical that takes well to the movie screen media, period. ‘Into the Woods’ was bad enough, but it had a plot that was both cohesive and coherent…more or less, but it was still hard to swallow on the Big Screen; even the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ does, and it’s the king of all musicals, (so far). And ‘Cats’ is a musical based on a poetry anthology of T.S. Elliot, a classic of English literature that these days is virtually unknown in the world outside of English language and literature academia, which is what the world deserves – there is a God. …Andrew Lloyd Weber and his team combined the anthology into a single musical – the anthology itself is just that, a collection of nonsensical poems about various cats in London-town, (that’s London, Great Britain, not London, Ontario, Canada), and the result is just that – ‘Cats’. A musical… or rather a series of musical numbers performed by actors, singers and dancers in cat costumes with some plot going-on. This… is not encouraging or easy to transfer to the movie screen, and, apparently, during the adaptation process, many things went wrong…to a point where a blueberry-blue Will Smith from ‘Aladdin 2019’ begins to look wholesome and realistic. Anything else?

No, not really, not right now – real life still sucks, though the ‘Cats-2019’ rant did make it better. Maybe more some other time, but for now? See you all soon instead!

JW: Motion comics part 3 - Dec 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so sometimes when you go online and find a really great story that helps you get through the day – then you are quite lucky. And sometimes you go online and see the next installment of JW’s online motion comic, and that is something else. So, let us talk about it.

…Well, first let us make a shout-out to Netflix’s upcoming ‘The Witcher’ series. It is shaping up to be the next GoT series and rightly so, because it’s author, Mr. Sapkowski, had written the original ‘Witcher’ as a series of books, not unlike Martin’s ASOIAF series, but with some differences: for one thing, the first book (or two) of ‘Witcher’ are more like series of stories and novellas rather than proper novels. For another – Sapkowski has actually finished his ‘Witcher’ series, while Martin’s ASOIAF, (which separate from HBO’s GoT, FYI), remain unfinished, for all sorts of reasons, but still unfinished.

…Will I be watching Netflix’s version of ‘Witcher’? Having actually read the original novels, I’ll probably pass – yes, the goal isn’t unlike that of Martin’s ASOIAF, or the ‘Jupiter Ascending’ film that’d come up to the movie screens few years before now, (i.e. before 2019) – it’s a space/fantasy opera, full of swords and sorceries and politics and plots. There are actual monsters – ghouls, vampires, sirens/mermaids, etc. There are dwarves and gnomes and elves. It is everything that a fantasy fan wants, but you can only read the entire series once before having enough – it will stoke the fires of your inner fan for months to come. That said, I want to point out that the word ‘Witcher’ is nonsense: Sapkowski’s own word for it is ‘wiedzsmin’ or something similar, (I don’t know the Polish language all that well), which roughly means ‘man-witch’ or ‘witch of a male gender’ in other languages, and in English language specifically, there are several words that also have similar meanings, words such as ‘sorcerer’ and ‘warlock’; J-Ro has actually used the latter in her ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’ story anthology, remember? …Probably not, since between ‘the Cursed Child’ and the current Newt Scamander series J-Ro has really muddled her own fandom, but it is there. Why did the English language adaptations of Sapkowski’s series had to create the word ‘Witcher’ and the good old ‘warlock’ could not serve is anyone’s guess. Human logic is one of those reasons as to why real life sucks.

And why does real life suck in this instance? For personal reasons – sometimes your life just changes for the worse and you cannot do anything about it, no matter how much you struggle to figure out a way out – but we digress. In other news, Weinstein – Harvey Weinstein – paid 25 million to get the charges dropped and be a free man – so much for #MeToo, put otherwise.

Listen. Back in 2016+, the whole damn process was supposedly precisely aimed at this sort of thing – for men in power not to be able to buy their way out of their crimes… but this is exactly what Weinstein seems to be achieving… so it all comes back to money. Not surprising – post Cold War, the U.S. philosophy was increasingly dominated by capitalism and it was all about the money, so now that the country is trying to distance itself from the all-mighty dollar – it does not work. It does not work for several reasons, including the one that is that from the 1990s onwards the U.S. increasingly tried to be a utopia and it failed for all sorts of other reasons, but regardless, money and the money cult do not make things any better either. ‘Frozen 2’ is a typical example of that… but we have talked about this movie already. Let us try to talk about the latest installment of JW’s motion comic, as we promised.

…Okay, here we got no money or philosophy, but a direct continuation of the first two parts; it even features Rebecca Ryan the news’ anchor and her nameless husband as well more new characters. Two of those characters are zoo workers – an Afro-American woman named Rachel, (yes, JW seems to have a problem with names that start with the letter R for some reason) and her Anglo-American co-worker, (of male gender), while the third is a journalist reporting to Rebecca, named Julie. Again, by utilizing the motion comic format, JW avoids from giving any characterization to any of its’ human characters at all, and as for the non-human characters…

…As for the non-human characters, this week’s motion comic featured that good old favorite, Rexy the T-Rex. Here, the motion comic picked up where the last JW film ended, (among other things): Rexy confronted Leo the lion at a zoo, and here we get to see what happened next. Nothing much, sadly: Rexy and Leo roared at each other some, and then human-piloted helicopters arrived and led Rexy off into some ravine. Kind of a letdown, especially since Leo was not backing down from a fight: the keepers may have been able to take wives and cubs to safety, but not him, as you can see in the motion comic. Maybe in the future installment he and Rexy will be able to have their final face-off? That would not be bad, especially since the actual franchise was never against blood and death, until now…

…Here I am talking about the pteranodon. The motion comic itself is confused as to how to call them: it calls them both ‘pteranodon’ (as a plural) and ‘pteranodons’ (ditto) within a couple of sentences, so let’s call them pterosaurs instead. In the motion comic, Rebecca wonders if they’re the same pterosaurs that were seen at lake Mead, and then one of them picks up some random guy off the street and drops him into a fountain, (so the shmuck probably survives this fall), and that’s problematic on so many levels.

Firstly, the lake. In the U.S., there is a lake Meade, which is located in Pennsylvania, and is not a lake, but an ‘unincorporated census-designated place’, whatever that means in normal English, and second, there is a Lake Mead, which is a lake, albeit an artificial one, which lies on the Colorado River. Which one was talked about in the motion comic is anyone’s guess.

Next, the pterosaurs themselves. The truth is that Crichton never wrote about pteranodons – his pterosaur species was the Cearodactylus, a flying reptile that looked more like the ornithocheirus from the 4^th episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (1999) – no horn on the head, and the jaws aren’t a toothless beak, but have teeth that function like a fish trap and a keel-like ridge as well. Why the franchise decided to replace them with the pteranodons onwards from ‘The Lost World’ film if not from the original JP one – is anyone’s guess, but by now the pteranodon are firmly a part of the JP franchise. Live with it.

…Living with the fact that the entire JP franchise, starting from the already mentioned ‘Lost World’ film depicted its pterosaurs bipedal like birds at least some of the time is harder. People know that on the ground pterosaurs moved on all fours like bats rather than just on their hind legs as birds do: just look at Hatzegopteryx in the final episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ (2011): the show showed scientific proof that on the ground those aerial monsters moved on all fours. So why are JP pterosaurs bipedal? Let us blame Dr. Wu, I guess.

Finally, the matter of size. Pteranodon was one of the bigger pterosaurs back in the 20^th century, (maybe even the biggest back then), but now Quatzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx shadow it: Pteranodon has only a 9-m wingspan; theirs was much bigger and they were even larger than the pteranodon was. So how did this flying reptile became so much larger than a human as shown in this motion comic, (not in any of the movies, mind)? Again, it is probably the fault of good doctor, so let us move on to the final part of this discussion:

I.e. on one hand, this motion comic is not so bad, the plot is fairly straightforward and the characters are consistent. On the other, the plot is also unsatisfying and tries to have it both ways: there are scary monsters, (I am sorry, but a T-Rex is certainly a monster, albeit a real life one), but also – that no one gets hurt.

Yes, this is the sort of ambiguity that has haunted the Western movies lately, ever since Rose Tico mentioned about defeating the First Order with love, not with violence. This is not how it works; this is not how it worked in the original trilogy, it was more of a ‘speak softly but stand-up for your principles’ instead, so Rosie, you got it all wrong. Still, the SW9 film is almost upon us, so it will be interesting to see as to how team Resistance co. defeats Palpatine and etc. Real life may suck, but often there are movies (and the like) to carry us through…

This is it for now, however – see you all soon.

JW: Motion comics part 2 - Dec 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The American government, true, seems to be putting their own spin on it with the impeachment that is authentically impotent; the best you can hope is that Pelosi never implemented it but for the plan that it will keep the Democratic party from turning upon each other and fracturing instead, but won’t know for quite a while yet. On with the show?

Rather, with the ‘motion comic’ – recently the JW franchise released the second installment of its’ motion comic. In it, we meet the rest of the journalist’s family – we are talking the same woman from part 1 – Rebecca Ryan – and learn that her husband, in particular, is working in the U.S. Wildlife department. What is so special about that? This is a good question, because as far as character development aspects of this motion comic go, they are weak. So far, this motion comic is an exposition dump, showing various interactions of humans with dinosaurs, sea reptiles and pterosaurs – nothing more. It is a variant on the closing scenes of both the second JW film and the BBR short feature – humans are interacting with the returned prehistoric beasts of the Mesozoic and so far, there is a national alert and what else have you. The mother of the family – Rebecca seems to be sceptical of this whole hysteria for some reason, but we never see it in this installment, because it focused on the still-nameless father of the family, and he encounters a couple of fighting dinosaurs on his own. (The rest of his family is elsewhere, on the route to school or wherever). I.e., it is less of an exposition dump and more of a shock-and-awe dump instead. Yay!

Ok, let us talk about dinosaurs. So far, from BBR onwards, humans are little more than cardboard features: the family in BBR did not even have names; as I said before, the cast certainly has names and you could see them in the credits, but the characters – nope. The first installment of the motion comic actually had named human characters – Rebecca Ryan, the journalist mother of the family – and Beau, the newspaperman from Hawaii – but here no go. That is somewhat weak and dehumanizing, so let us try to focus on dinosaurs instead. The news showed us a pteranodon harassing an airplane, (probably because it never seen one before back in Isla Nublar), a pack of compys’ running around someone’s backyard, and a pair of boy scouts encountering a stegosaurus. Again, we have seen variations of these encounters all over the franchise, so let us go for the main event: Mr. Ryan’s encounter with the battling dinos. There are two of them: a Triceratops and an Ankylosaurus, and-

And Ankylosaurus is depicted incorrectly. Sigh. Since there are no professional paleontologists in our audience, let us just go with the statement that there were two main groups of armored dinosaurs: the Jurassic stegosaurs and the Cretaceous ankylosaurs. Clear? If it is, let us move onto the team Cretaceous in particular. It was also divided into two main groups: one that had clubbed tails and one that does not.

Back in 1999, Impossible Pictures™ released the ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ mini-series. The final episode featured an Ankylosaurus – several of them. It had a tail club, and its’ scuted armor was relatively smooth, almost like that of an armadillo, for example. However, in the fourth episode of WWD, there was another dinosaur – Polacanthus – that was more closely related to Ankylosaurus than to Stegosaurus, but it had no tail club, and its body armor was much less smooth and spikier. It belonged to the nodosaur branch of the Cretaceous armored dinosaurs.

Yes, actually, the Polacanthus is a bad example of a nodosaur – the nodosaur branch of the Cretaceous armored dinosaurs were studied, and are known, much less than their ankylosaur cousins were, but basically? Ankylosaurs had tail clubs and small spikes on their body armor, if any. Nodosaurs had no tail clubs, but their body armor was much more formidable looking. The armored dinosaur that featured in JW’s second motion comic had both notable body spikes and a tail club, making it a chimera.

Pause. Yes, Dr. Wu admitted directly in the first JW film that none of their dinosaurs were authentic; they were homunculi, concocted in the labs by Dr. Wu and his fellows. That is fair, but it also rather undercuts JW’s intended messages – that life finds a way and that people now have to co-exist with the Mesozoic animals. They do not and it does not. Since all of the dinosaurs were initially created in labs, they could have been made incapable of surviving on their own in the wild – in fact, the first JP novel made them so, supposedly: they were incapable of manifesting Lysol and had to take it as a dietary supplement instead. The novel ended with Costa Rica possibly being invaded by a force of animals that needed supply of foods rich in Lysol – beans and chickens – but which were quite independent of surviving on their regardless. Of course, they were raptors too – but we digress. The point is that the rebooted JW franchise could’ve made its’ dinosaurs like this within its’ canon – artificial homunculi that gained independence of their own and which now run amok like a bunch of Frankenstein monsters… period. Instead, we still got a horde of artificial dinosaur-shaped homunculi running the world and no one is acknowledging it.

Is this distinction important? Yes, even though it really should not. The truth is, test-tube animals are still seen as inauthentic, especially within sci-fi genre, and are treated very differently from ‘authentic’ or ‘real life’ animals. TLK, for example, is not a sci-fi movie, even though it features talking animals, for example. The online game ‘Jurassic World Evolution’ actually features official hybrid dinosaurs, made by Dr. Wu, so artificial dinosaurs are JW canon even beyond the I-Rex and the Indoraptor, so why haven’t the American military and/or government try to use someone like Dr. Wu to create some sort of a virus that would target those ‘artificial’ dinosaurs, (all of them, really) and rid the world of them?

…Yes, this probably will not happen – wherever the JW-3 movie will take the narrative for the conclusion, this will not be this, most likely, and for good reasons: artificial viruses are bad. Natural viruses are not much better, but still. That said, given how stupid the American government (and its’ military) are running USA in real life, it would not be too surprising either if they were to make or to do something just as stupid in the upcoming JW-3 movie, (2021). As it is, we will just have to wait for both its’ release and the release of the next JW motion comic installments. Considering that right now we got human characters that are as developed as cardboard cut-outs and dinosaurs that are completely unrealistic, (come on, Ankylosaurus is not obscure, it is almost as well known as the Tricerotops and the T-Rex are), and are executing something that seems to be somewhat reminiscent of 'The Day that the Dinosaurs Died' documentary from the Discovery channel (2010), I'm not keeping my hopes are. ('The Day' has its own flaws, but we'll talk about it some other time).

This is it for now. See you all soon!

JW: Motion Comics part 1 - Nov 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. An extra notification: whatever you do, do not buy a reindeer donut, because it is a donut with eyes. It just is not right eating something, anything, that looks back at you while you eat it. It may not be animated, or sentient, or whatever, but it still got eyes and is looking at you while you eat it. Do not buy it and do not eat it – it is not worth looking at it looking back at you while you eat it. What is next?

The Jurassic World franchise released a new ‘masterpiece’ – a motion comic, a first part of a sequence, which deals with the mosasaur that was introduced back in the first JW movie. Ok, and?

Well, most important part that got overseen, most likely, is that this motion comic is ‘woke’ – its’ main character, the news TV host, is a part of an interracial family; essentially, it is a drawn animation version of the family that we’ve seen in the ‘Battle at Big Rock’ live short film – but because BBR and this mosasaur-featuring motion comics are about dinosaurs, so no one seems to be all that concerned about the human side of the pieces… So what?

Good question – for example, people on both sides claim that ‘wokeness’ is affecting mass media, especially cinema movies. Just look at latest failure of the CA-2019 reboot. It didn’t succeed, but not because of wokeness, and judging as to how quickly Ms. Elizabeth Banks stopped complaining about this, (for whatever reasons), she recognized, or was forced to recognize, this as well. What next?

The mosasaur? Yes, it’s the big one, and JW was working towards it since the closing scenes of JW: FK film; even the aforementioned BBR short feature had a shot of this sea reptile swallowing a great white shark not unlike how it swallow a sea lion, but-

On average, a modern great white shark is about 6 m long. This is a big fish, but even so, it does not really swallow its prey whole; it tears it into chunks with its’ cutting teeth and swallows those chunks. The mosasaur – well, all of the mosasaur family – belonged to the group of reptiles that includes modern snakes and lizards, the Squamata; the mosasaurs’ closest relatives were the shared ancestors of snakes and monitor lizards (think the Komodo dragon), and so the mosasaurs were aquatic relatives of both. (Both the modern marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands and the modern sea snakes of the tropical seas are not very close relatives of the extinct mosasaurs).

How big were the mosasaurs when compared to a 6-m-long great white shark? The North American Tylosaurus, the biggest of them all, could reach 12 m in length, twice as big as the modern fish in question. But! It was not a swallower like a modern crocodile, which prefer to swallow their fish prey whole. Instead, mosasaurs essentially had a second pair of jaws inside the first pair to better rip and tear their prey into pieces.

The JW mosasaur isn’t ‘real’ or even ‘realistic’ and might be more than 12 m long by now? It is not about size alone, in the first JW when we saw it for the first time feeding on a great white shark; it still tore it into a couple of pieces, before swallowing them. After it attacked and killed the I-Rex in the end of the first movie, the beginning of the second film showed the bones of the I-Rex just lying around in a jumbled mess. Size-related issues or not, the JW mosasaur is realistic, maybe not quite on the level of BBC’s ‘Sea monsters’ (2003) mini-trilogy, but still close enough. So where does it leave us?

It leaves us with a first part of a multiserial motion comic that shows, or will show, how the modern world will coexist with prehistoric animals. This is the movie that the JP/JW franchise wanted to make in place of what we now know as the JW: FK film and it will probably be done with a much more genuine, heartfelt effort than the JW: FK film, which is essentially two movies stitched into one. This isn’t a trait unique to JW: FK; the SW8 film had the same problem, fundamentally speaking, but in case of JW: FK, this was done because it became a filler between the first JW movie and the upcoming new JW franchise creations, such as BBR and this motion comic. Both are variations on the same theme – humans interacting with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, both even feature interracial families – how progressive! Moreover, the truth is, if a movie is good, then wokeness will not hurt it at all, just look at BBR, and the same goes for the other mass media mediums, such as this motion comic. Ergo, let us just enjoy it and see what the future brings us in this medium of mass media, because real life sucks, (see above).

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

The upcoming JW3 film - Sep 25

To continue talking about movies and their trailers, let us get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: real life sucks. More specifically, I do not like climate warning, but I have to admit that I like young Ms. Thunberg even less: her belligerent approach is the last thing the world needs, and her entourage is somewhat reminiscent of the Hitler youth from the 1920s and 30s, which is bad.

Pause. The year 2019 – since we are talking about movies and related memorabilia – saw the release of the movie ‘JoJo Rabbit’, where the titular character has an imaginary friend. The friend’s name is Adolf Hitler, and the movie is not a horror like the ‘It’ franchise is, but is supposedly more light-hearted.

I do not like censure and censorship, but I have to admit that I am on board with the RF government on this one: they refused to show this movie in their country. You just don’t mess with some things, and to someone like them, ‘JoJo Rabbit’ may seem like an early half-assed attempt to re-write history by pretending that Hitler (and his regime) was imaginary, and the WWII was all the Communists’ fault, and all the information to the contrary is fake news. It is paranoid, yes, but some things you just do not fiddle with, not unless you want to set-off a chain reaction.

…The Donald appears to have set-off a chain reaction again, seeing how he has twitted a Tweet or two regarding Ms. Thunberg; the tweet is supposed to be taking sarcastically and despairingly, but, sadly, there is no indication that he isn’t trying to be genuinely nice here. Of course, he may also be genuinely trying to get himself impeached, but this is not my point here; my point here is that Ms. Thunberg’s take on things sometimes isn’t too different from the Donald’s; Ms. Thunberg has Asperger’s, (or something similar); what about the Donald? Is he conventionally sane, even? Maybe the good politicians of Washington D.C. just should have him assessed, and-

-and what if he is mentally or psychologically deviant? Then what? Aside from the fact that part of the reason as to why hasn’t been impeached up to date because if he does, his role will be taken over by Mike Pence, who is feared and hated, (whereas the Donald himself is more like hated and reviled instead), then where does it leave the U.S.? With a president that really conventionally not sane? With a president who has been removed for precisely the same reason, yet who had been competent enough to get himself elected in the first place? Somewhere else? Hypothetical, let alone real-life, situations like this one can cause the West to re-evaluate its’ values, something that it really does not want – but we have digressed.

Let us talk about movies… apolitical movies. How about the third ‘Jurassic World’ film? It will feature not just the new-original cast, but also the original cast – Ian Malcolm, Dr. Alan Grant, and Dr. Ellie Sattler. Put otherwise, we can safely say that this reboot of the JP franchise ran out of steam and ideas. Both the ‘Fallen Kingdom’ film and the BBR short feature depicted humans living in a new ‘Jurassic World’, co-existing with dinosaurs and other formerly extinct Mesozoic monsters, now reborn thanks to Dr. Wu and his wizardry. That is a good enough concept, but somehow the first two ‘Jurassic World’ films did not really do it justice; the BBR short feature did a better job, but it really isn’t that much different from the ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ film with some elements of the ‘Jurassic Park: The Lost World’ movie thrown in. Yes, it has done its’ job in getting people excited once more about dinosaur movies… but only to a limited extent. The first two ‘Jurassic World’ movies just dropped the ball too much as far as most of the audience members believe, and it is unlikely that the third film will change this state of affairs. Anything else?

There is now a trailer for a film named ‘Primal’, that is supposed to come out later this year or sometime around that. It features a ship in a storm, where a dangerous convict has escaped and released the rest of the ship’s cargo, including a white jaguar. What is the punchline?

There are no white jaguars; there are white tigers and lions, (and boy, are they a real-life mess and a half), but not white jaguars or leopards. (There may be albino jaguars and leopards, but I have not heard of them either). The black or melanistic jaguars and leopards are called black panthers, a fact that became quite known since MCU’s ‘Black Panther’ film, but white jaguars and leopards just do not exist. Put otherwise, ‘Primal 2019’ is just as fantasy and unreal as ‘Frozen II’ will be, (or ‘Frozen I’, for that matter). Still, jaguars don’t appear in movies very often, (even as just monsters – judging by the trailer, the white jaguar could just as well been an Indoraptor from the JP franchise, both animals do about as much and are just as real), so hopefully I will be able to see ‘Primal 2019’ (or whatever), when it comes on screen…

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

Crawl - July 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. That said, this goes for everyone, and everyone is connected to everyone else in proportions, and thus, no matter how much my life is bad, the life of those people in the apartment building down the street that caught fire earlier today is probably worse than mine is, right now. Now onto the movies!

This time, since we are talking about life, its’ unpleasantness and disasters, let us talk about ‘Crawl’. It was released in theatres on July 12, 2019, and we have talked about it earlier, when the trailer had been released. It is possible that people forgot about both our discussion and the movie – unlike ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, for example, it never made much of an effort to catch the attention of potential viewers, who knows why…

As for the plot, it is a disaster movie: the main character goes home to check on her estranged father, and the two of them end up trapped in their house, as the hurricane brings the flood – and the flood brings at least two American alligators. And?

And this is it, actually – ‘Crawl’ is a horror movie, not that different from ‘The Shallows’, for example, and many other films, except that its’ monsters are American alligators, not sharks. Hence why it is worthwhile to be mentioned – you do not get too many movies that feature alligators (or crocodiles for that matter) these days.

As for the American alligator these days… First, we have discussed it not just as the monster of the ‘Crawl’ movie in question, but also as one of the contestants/combatants on AFO, remember? On that show, the American alligator fought the American black bear and lost. Why it lost specifically is a different question, but what interests us right now is that it was depicted very accurately, from a scientific point of view; before it faced-off with the black bear per se, the two animals were compared and contrasted to each other very succinctly, and we saw the differences between these two carnivores shown to us professionally. To be more precise, like its’ crocodile cousins, the American alligator (or the American caiman, in Spanish), is a crusher: unlike carnivorous mammals, (or sharks, actually), crocodiles, alligators and caimans slam their jaws shut on their victims, and then shake their heads or even go into death rolls to rip smaller chunks from their meals – if they can’t swallow their prey whole from the start, that is. Next?

Aside from AFO, the American alligator has also appeared on the ‘River Monsters’ TV series, on the episode 1x03, aka ‘Alligator Gar’. This episode, not surprisingly, was about the titular fish, but the American alligator appeared there too, as part of JW’s effort to clean-up the alligator gar’s reputation as a man-eater and a river monster. It worked, at least as far as JW and his show were concerned, but what is important to us is that the American alligator can, and does, (or did), attack people, contrary to its’ reputation as a meek and mild-mannered creature, as compared to its’ cousins, the Nile and the saltwater crocodiles. No argument here, the American alligator is smaller than those two, but it is still the biggest member of the alligator and caiman side of the crocodilian family and must be treated with respect. When compared to another one of its’ crocodile cousins – the so-called American crocodile, the American alligator is bulkier, more angular, less streamlined, with a proportionally shorter and broader muzzle. As such, scientists have determined that that means that the American alligator eats less fish and ambushes more animals from the shoreline than the American crocodile does. I.e. the stereotypical crocodile lies in wait in the water and waits for animals to come to the river to drink, after which it strikes. This happens in real life, but there are always other options – sometimes the Nile crocodile, (which is the stereotypical crocodile, FYI), hunts fish in the African rivers; other times it lunges at birds that are skimming the water surface instead; and so forth. However, its prey of choice are land animals that come to the water edge to drink and therefore the Nile crocodile has a large, broad, almost angular head that has plenty of anchoring space for muscles and has a very powerful bite. The skull of the American alligator is smaller, (because it is smaller than the Nile crocodile is, period), but it is built along the same lines, much more so than the American crocodile or the alligator gar skulls, so yes, the potential for the American alligator to be a man-eater is there.

…That said, ‘Crawl’ is still a fully fictional movie, as we’ve discussed it earlier: American alligators may be aquatic reptiles, but their eggs – unlike the eggs of frogs and newts – need to stay high and dry, and not be water-logged; this puts the reptiles at something of a disadvantage against fish and amphibians; if it hadn’t been for the smaller mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period, the world might’ve been a very different place from what we know it to be. (Or not, given that the Mesozoic, the Age of Reptiles, ended on a much bigger mass extinction event than the Triassic did). Where were we?

As a movie, ‘Crawl’ is a decent horror movie, and it is certainly worth going to it once – by itself, with your family/friends/significant other/etc. to enjoy it. Otherwise, you might as well watch ‘Stuber’, or re-watch ‘Spider-Man 2019’ movie instead, period. The conflict feels forced and contrived at times; the half-assed basement of the protagonists’ family home may be the least realistic element of the movie; and the character development is pointless and distractive, not unlike what we have seen in ‘The Shallows’, but this is neither there nor here. Go to the movies and enjoy it. Or not. It is your call.

This is it for now; see you all soon.

PS: And in conclusion, here is a couple of customized carnivorous plants from Pathfinder First Edition RPG, (just because). Enjoy!

ERUPHYTE ASSASSIN VINE CR 4

XP 800

N Large plant

Init +0; Senses blindsight 30 ft., low-light vision, thoughtsense 60 ft.; Perception +1

DEFENSE

AC 15, touch 9, flat-footed 15 (+6 natural, –1 size)

hp 30 (4d8+12)

Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

Immune electricity, plant traits; Resist cold 10 and fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 5 ft.

Melee slam +7 (1d8+7 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.

Special Attacks constrict (1d8+7), entangle, thoughtspear (2d8; Will DC 18 half).

STATISTICS

Str 20, Dex 10, Con 16, Int 6, Wis 13, Cha 9

Base Atk +3; CMB +9 (+13 grapple); CMD 19 (can't be tripped)

Feats –

Skills -

Language telepathy 60 ft.

SQ bardic knowledge (CL 2^nd), camouflage

ECOLOGY

Environment temperate forests

Organization solitary, pair, or patch (3–6)

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Camouflage (Ex): Since an assassin vine looks like a normal plant when at rest, a DC 20 Perception check is required to notice it before it attacks for the first time. Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (nature) can use either of those skills instead of Perception to notice the plant.

Entangle (Su): An assassin vine can, as a free action, cause plants within 30 feet of it to animate and grasp at foes. This ability is otherwise similar to entangle (CL 4th, DC 13). The save DC is Wisdom-based.

RAMPANT BASIDIROND CR 6

XP 1,600

N Medium plant

Init +1; Senses low-light vision, tremorsense; Perception +0

Aura growth

DEFENSE

AC 18, touch 11, flat-footed 17 (+1 Dex, +7 natural)

hp 80 (7d8+49)

Fort +8, Ref +3, Will +2

Immune cold, plant traits; regeneration 5 (negative energy)

Weaknesses cold lethargy, negative energy

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft.

Melee slam +10 (1d8+7 plus spores)

Special Attacks hallucination cloud, spores

STATISTICS

Str 20, Dex 13, Con 20, Int —, Wis 11, Cha 1

Base Atk +5; CMB +10; CMD 21 (25 vs. trip)

SQ verdant genesis

ECOLOGY

Environment any non-cold underground

Organization solitary, pair, or grove (3–8)

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Hallucination Cloud (Ex) As a standard action once per minute, a basidirond can release a cloud of invisible spores in a 20-foot radius. All creatures within the area must succeed on a DC 16 Fortitude save or be affected by powerful hallucinations as long as they remain in the cloud plus 1d4 rounds after leaving the area. A new save must be made each round a creature remains within the affected area. A hallucination cloud persists for 5 rounds before dispersing—a strong wind causes it to disperse immediately. The save DC is Constitution-based. To determine what hallucination is suffered each round, roll 1d6 and consult the following table.

d6 Hallucination

1 You're sinking in quicksand! Fall prone and spend 1 round flailing your arms and legs as if trying to swim.

2 Attacked by a swarm of spiders! Spend a full round action to attack the floor near you with your weapon.

3 An item you hold has turned into a viper! Drop it and flee from the item at top speed for 1 round.

4 You're suffocating! Stand in place, hold your breath, and clutch at your throat for 1 round.

5 You've shrunk to 1/10th your normal size! Take no actions for 1 round and monsters won't see you.

6 You're melting! Grasp hold of yourself in an attempt to hold yourself together, and take no actions for 1 round.

Spores (Ex) Any creature struck by a basidirond's slam attack is coated with spores. The creature struck must make a DC 16 Fortitude save or these spores take root in his flesh, and particularly in his lungs. The save DC is Constititon-based.Basidirond Spores: Disease—inhaled; save Fort DC 16; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d2 Con damage; cure 1 save.

Cold Lethargy (Ex) Although a basidirond is immune to cold damage, any cold effect it is exposed to slows it for 1d4 rounds. During this time, the basidirond cannot use its hallucination cloud or spores.

Any comments? Criticisms?

JW trailer 2 - Feb 5

The second JW trailer was aired. What did we learn?

That this is the official parting of the ways with the original novel duology. As one of the characters tells another one in the trailer, ‘the dinosaurs are old news’, they’re gone – and they most certainly are, as we get a proper glimpse of the Indoraptor this time.

It is decisively anthropomorphic, the proportions are all wrong. The I-Rex was a carnosaur, a RL dinosaur with some supernatural skills, cough, technically speaking. The Indoraptor is thoroughly anthropomorphised, on the other hand, a genuine D&D troll with some reptilian traits on top of everything and anything else.

Here is the thing. The dinosaurs of the JP franchise grew clearly more and more anthropomorphic since, well, the beginning. In the initial JP novel, the dinosaurs were animals, RL animals; science might have returned them back to life, but they were still animals. Crichton’s raptors were reminiscent of tigers, the dilophosaurs – of leopards, and so on. They were intelligent – but then again, RL modern animals are themselves can be quite intelligent, cognizant even – but they had no human DNA in them, period. Frog, (or some other amphibian) DNA – sure, but human? No.

Then came the JP3 film, and while in the first two JP movies the dinosaurs were animals, (though there were some dodgy moments with the tyrannosaurs), in JP3 anthropomorphic traits were appearing, especially in the raptors.

A brief aside about the raptors: part of the reason why they had such… incorrect PR in RL may be in part because of Crichton and his JP novels. You see, in those novels, he officially and publically conflated the generic term of ‘raptor’, (now known scientifically as dromeosaurid dinosaurs…which isn’t much of an improvement, because one of the ‘raptors’ is known specifically as ‘Dromeosaurus’…never mind), with specifically Velociraptor – only it wasn’t the dinosaur that we call the Velociraptor in these modern times, but its’ bigger cousin called Deinonychus. Deinonychus was just as big as the raptors in the first JP movie – at 4 m in length, it was the third-largest raptor in RL, with only the Utahraptor and the more recently discovered Dakotaraptor, being bigger – and it was the star of the JP movies, albeit under an incorrect name…though even in the late 1980s Deinonychus and Velociraptor were scientific synonyms…science can be confusing, in short.

Back to JP3. There, the raptors were decisively anthropomorphic, not only able to deduce that them pesky humans have stolen their precious eggs, but open to communication, literally. Dr. Grant directly communicated with the raptors in JP3, bargaining their safety in return for the return of the dinosaurs’ eggs. RL animals do not behave like that, (unlike fictional ones, as the ones described in medieval bestiaries, for example), but-

But already in the previous JW movie Dr. Wu, (who apparently didn’t die back in the first JP film – maybe S.H.I.E.L.D., or Hydra, or some other shadowy organization saved him back then), admitted/confessed/exposed to the viewers that these dinosaurs aren’t ‘real’, (i.e. realistic), they’re ‘hybrids’, (i.e. chimeras), fictional, artificial creatures.

An aside regarding the chimera. Initially, in ancient Greece and Rome, it was a mythical monster; it was part lion, part goat and part snake, and it breathed fire. It was dragon-like, but also composite, so not even the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves believed it to be real…

In later times, the chimera lost, in part, its’ specific features, and became a composite, generically vague-looking monster instead. Some of the gargoyles on various basilicas and cathedrals were probably considered to be chimeras instead in the older times – but in modern times, while the ‘classical chimera’ is once more a feature of the fantasy genre, in sci-fi the term ‘chimera’ is used to describe various hybrid creatures, whether composite animals, or human-animal hybrids, (and there were some in various sci-fi novels and TV shows over the last few decades). Thus, the ‘new’ dinosaurs of the JW films are not really dinosaurs at all, not even by Crichton’s standards – they are chimeras. The I-Rex supposedly had human DNA, and the Indoraptor certainly has it; even the vague shots of it in the new trailer show it, it even behaves like a human – a stalker, maniac, mad killer, but a human nonetheless. Thus, with the Indoraptor being probably the main villain of the new JW movie, it is safe to suppose that the next JW movie will only loosely be a dinosaur-associated movie, and more of a generic sci-fi one – but we’ll have to wait and see until its’ release properly for further assessment.

That’s it for today; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Best Laid Plans' - Jan 27

‘Best Laid Plans’… The latest AoS episode… Did it work?

Not really. The plans got derailed – of Mack and Yo-Yo, as well as of Kasius and Sinera, but-

But Sinera died. In a fight with Daisy, (though Deke helped – but more on Deke below). When compared to Kara’s death in S2, to Grant’s, the Malicks’, Hive’s deaths in S3, even AIDA in S4, you will realize that Sinera’s death was simply meaningless: she and Daisy were doing their best to kill each other, and Daisy accidentally won. That is it. No one will shed a tear for her, not even Kasius, who is apparently already busy on his next master plan, now that the xenomorphs (remember, in the previous episode?), and bombs have failed. Oh, and he has a seer as well!

…Let’s pause a bit. If Kasius has his own seer, and they’re real, and not a fraud as John Garrett had been back in S1, then Kasius should’ve known that Sinera is going to die out there, regardless of how formidable she is, and if he loved her, he would never let her go on her own. Evil does not mean incapable of loving – Grant and Kara, and Gideon Malick with his daughter showed that. (Sorry, but in canon S3 Grant did become a villain, alas, and he died as one – but he did bring Hive back to Earth at expense of his own life – not unlike a hero – and Hive did beat S.H.I.E.L.D. up better than Grant ever could. Talk about a pyrrhic victory!).

Back to Kasius, ahem. So he has a seer of his own, who may be a real deal. Given how AoS loves twists and turns, it just might be Virgil, who hadn’t died in the S5 premiere – remember him? This could be him coming back – or maybe it will be a cyborgnetic version of Lance Hunter; given how AoS loves its’ twists and turns, that is also possible.

Anything else? The sequel to ‘Deep Blue Sea’ is coming out this year. The original film was about a crazy doctor using mako sharks to develop a cure for cancer; it worked, but then sharks escaped during a storm and killed almost everyone, and getting killed themselves in the process. Basically, it was ‘Jaws’ meeting ‘Jurassic Park’ and producing a ‘Jurassic Shark’ kind of movie in the process. The most noteworthy part of DBS was that the movie used mako sharks rather than the more famous great whites, as the movie monsters. The sequel is using bull sharks instead – again, a less-known species than the great white…more or less. In ‘River Monsters’ series, (RM), the bull shark appeared fairly regularly, and while this species was smaller than the great white shark is, it was still a formidable species. Kudos to Darin Scott and co. for starring them in DBS2.

…Conversely, here is the thing. In the DBS2 trailer, the bull sharks were shown as pack hunters, a new and improved version of the old fish. That is not bad, but real life being what it is, there is already a carnivore who does it without any genetic editing – the killer whale. It is just as formidable a predator as any shark is, it has a more advanced brain than any shark does, and it is already a pack hunter, unlike most sharks…or, to be more precise, it is a better and more coordinated pack hunter than the sharks are…and it is much more adaptable than any shark species is, too. Why can’t it be a villain in a movie?

…Possibly because between the ‘Free Willy’ movie franchise and such films as ‘Blackfish’ that expose animal abuse of killer whales and similar species by humans, the killer whale or orca is just isn’t villain material; plus there are no confirmed attacks of humans by killer whales either, so there’s that.

…Back to AoS? Not much left to say. The previous episode was largely all about the back story, filling the gaps for the viewers. This episode was all about action and moving into position – both by the agents and by Kasius and his forces. The final confrontation is about to begin, and AoS needs it: its’ numbers are growing, but are still low. Good luck to them!

…That’s it for this time; see you all soon!

JW rumblings - Sep 17

And so, our ‘Giantslayer’ adventure path is slowly moving towards the final confrontation with the evil giant tyrant/final boss. That is good, and as a sign of my relief – fighting all of these evil giants took proportionally much more time than we expected when we began this entire slog – I feel like ranting about something, again. The issue is – what subject?

Well, there is always Marvel’s current ‘secret empire’ ‘adventure path’, which has ran its’ own length, and is now transforming into ‘Marvel Legacy’ or something like that. Basically, the evil Steve Rogers/Captain America/Hydra Supreme/etc. might’ve escaped, leaving the good Steve Rogers/Captain America/etc. pick up the pieces – or not, in which case, in either case, there are some poor SWAT-type folk who are about to get smashed by a Steve Rogers, which just isn’t fun.

In another plot line, Frank ‘Punisher’ Castle is being ‘groomed’ by Fury in taking down Hydra. This sounds very grand, but again, in another comic series, Punisher just got beat down by Diamondback, making MCU a true multiverse (in a manner of speaking), while in the long run, Hydra is just a too good & conventional plot villain to be completely exterminated, so I’m not being impressed by FC being an asshole to outright villains for a change, let us see what ‘Marvel Legacy’ story arc will deliver. Plus, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is dead now, apparently, and the Punisher is angsting because of that as well. Seriously, were these two ever a couple, (potentially or otherwise), or is a new thing?

Meanwhile, the preparations for the making (and subsequent release) of JW2 are proceeding. Am I excited about this? No. The original JP movie was good because it was based on the original novel, which was, yes, sci-fi, but with an emphasis on science and realism. Yes, there was suspension of disbelief, especially in the end, when the novel’s velociraptors organized themselves into a proper group and escaped/invaded to the mainland, (Costa Rica), where they vanished into the jungle. They were Lysol-dependant, (in the novel), so they learned to eat chicken (domestic fowl) and beans and similar food sources in the wild instead. What was that cartoon? The raptor was going to acquire a fake ID and live & work in NYC? Yeah, Crichton certainly set the stage for that!

But his movieverse heirs have certainly went beyond him. The first two JP movies were quite good, even if because they followed, (to various extents) the plot of the actual Crichton novels. JP3 film, however, was something else, including the entire T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus controversy. Seriously, it has been established/figured out/understood/etc. by now that both of these JP3 dinosaurs, especially Spinosaurus, are fictional, and are no more RL than MCU’s Iron Man and Captain America are. Does it really matter who would win? In RL, the two dinosaurs lived millions of years apart, on two different continents and never met each other during any point in their evolutionary histories. Talking as to which of the two would win and why, it is less of a ‘lion vs. tiger’ debate and more of a ‘Steve vs. Tony’ one.

Where were we? Well, on the topic of ‘Steve vs. Tony’, JP3’s Spinosaurus showed about as much realism as the crocodile from ‘Peter Pan’ did, (not counting OUAT, where his role was played by Mr. Gold, apparently), while the raptors of that movie did an admirable job of passing as the nastier versions of Neverland’s Lost Boys, so to speak – their intelligence in that movie certainly approached human levels, and when Dr. Grant communicated with them… no, just no. Forget realism. The dinosaurs of JP3 could as well be some aliens – original aliens – in a sci-fi movie and they would work just as well in that capacity…

In JW1, the intelligence of the dinosaurs was toned back down to realistic levels – only not. Enter the I-Rex, the hybrid that looks, and functions like a RL carnosaur for all practical purposes. Just think RL Giganotosaurus or Mapusaurus. Okay, and?

And the I-Rex was able to survive slash endure a direct hit from an Ankylosaurus’ tail. In RL, Ankylosaurus was one of the plant-eating dinosaurs that had evolved to survive and live alongside Tyrannosaurus, a carnivore that evolved one of the most powerful bites on the planet, specifically designed to smash through bone. In response, Ankylosaurus had evolved its’ infamous tail that was also designed to smash through bones, (especially if Ankylosaurus was in proper health). I don’t know what I-Rex was a hybrid of exactly, but just as with Rexy’s bite, there’s no way it could’ve endured Ankylosaurus’ tail strikes to its’ legs or the rest of the body, not unless it had the healing power of Wolverine (the MCU mutant, not the RL animal) as well. (In addition, the way it telepathically communicates and dominates all the other reptiles in the movie? Apparently, there is some Professor X in it as well).

Flash forward, and—

And we got Indoraptors, which is the same old I-Rex, just with different sizes, proportions, and velociraptor, rather than Tyrannosaurus, DNA. Odds are that we are going to see a new depiction of the JP3 super-intelligent raptors are quite high. And?

And where is the JP-franchise going with all of this, in the long run? Yes, the first novel & movie depicted them somewhat like sci-fi monsters, but dinosaurs do not really make good monsters, (especially for grown-ups) – they aren’t particularly monstrous or evil, certainly not kaiju/Godzilla/King Kong/Monarch universe evil. ‘The Land before Time’ franchise had a different take on them – there the dinosaurs were slightly anthropomorphic, and some were ‘good’, and some were ‘evil’, in the same manner that the ‘modern animals’ of Brian Jacques’ novels were – it’s all a fairy tale for children, but the JP-franchise isn’t going for that.

Where is it going? Possibly, to try to become a fully-fledged monster-verse, which is a bad idea, because dinosaurs aren’t really monsters, not even fictional, sci-fi ones. They are just too real and too abstract for us, (unlike giant monsters – the fictional Megalodon has only distant connections to the RL one), to be properly monstrous. Yes, Tyrannosaurus is bizarre – all head and no arms – but is it monstrous by being itself at the end of the day? No. It is scary because it would eat people if it existed in modern times, making it no different from a shark or a lion. Yes, ‘Jaws’ is a movie classic, but not just because it stars a man-eating shark, but some human star actors as well. The same goes for ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’, which is built on a similar premise, except that instead of a single Great White Shark there are two African lions. A good movie about some man-eating animal monsters can be honestly good…just not precisely, because it stars man-eating animal monsters – and the same goes for the dinosaurs.

And yes, we got the news that there’s going to be at least one other dino-hybrid – a stegoceratops, a Stegosaurus & Triceratops hybrid. I have no idea what was the logic behind this one. As BBC’s WWD mini-series (1999) have shown, the RL plant-eating dinosaurs, (i.e. Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Triceratops & Torosaurus, etc.), could be quite formidable themselves, without being augmented by human script writers…

Oh, and another thing. Yes, both Stegosaurus and Triceratops belonged to the bird-hipped branch of the dinosaur family, (let us leave the latest RL revision of the dinosaur family tree out of the equation this time), but they weren’t particularly close relatives; in RL modern terms the JW2 heroes could get confronted by a deer/antelope hybrid – it works the same way… Where is common sense?

In the bizarre appearance of the second hybrid.  Aye, RL herbivorous dinosaurs could be quite bizarre by themselves – just think Nothronychus and kin, the plant-eating cousins of raptors and tyrannosaurs – a typical theropod body, extra-long neck, extra-small head, (as in the sauropods), plus – extra powerful and clawed front legs…you couldn’t get more away from the traditional depiction of a theropod if you’d purposefully tried… but no, we get a bizarre-looking unrealistic hybrid, designed to shock and awe. Yay team (new) JP franchise.

And now, it is time to wind down the rambling. Basically, unbelievingly, but the first two JP movies were actually somewhat educational for purely fictional movies. (I am speaking very loosely here). They were also fairly realistic, (by sci-fi movie standards). Sadly, from JP3 onwards these qualities vanished, which is a pity, because they were what made JP-franchise’s movies’ unique. What will JW2 look like, I do not know yet. However, neither am I enthusiastic about it.

Well, this is it for this time. See you in the future!