Jurassic World Rebirth - Feb 5

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Therefore, I looked at the upcoming JWR movie trailer, (due to come in summer 2025 for now), and it was something else.

What is it, then? A recycled chimera, pun intended. …Well, a recycled and a rebooted chimera, to be fair. In the 2022 film, ‘Dominion’, there were non-avian dinosaurs, (as well as other prehistoric reptiles) all over the Earth once more, and as the mini-movie ‘Battle of the Big Rock’ showed, the JP/W franchise was going with this setting once more.

Time passed, not so much within that universe, as within our real world, and in the ‘Rebirth’ film the non-avian dinosaurs have largely disappeared from our planet again, with just a few select populations within the tropical (and the subtropical?) belt. Put otherwise, this is the situation with had in the second and third Jurassic Park films, where non-avian dinosaurs lived only a couple of ex-lab sites’ islands and nowhere else. The franchise tried re-running itself in a new direction with the second and especially the third Jurassic World film and now that that trilogy is done, they are returning to the original setting – modern world, restrained dinosaurs. Pause.

In the trailer, both the mosasaur and the pterosaurs, (reminiscent of the RL Tapejara or some similar species), are hanging around the island site as well. Why? While the dinosaurs- while the non-avian dinosaurs are restrained by air and sea, the mosasaur can swim all over the globe, while the pterosaurs are fliers. Period. They can go anywhere they want, but they are here, because the movie’s plot is vintage RPG: go there, I know not where, bring back what, I know not. In this case, it is the DNA of the three biggest dinosaur species on the site so that a miracle cure can be made. Didn’t we see something similar in the ‘Dominion’ movie with Maisie and co.? We did, but in ‘Rebirth’ trailer, there are no mention of Owen, Claire, Maisie, Blue, or Beta, so odds are that they will not be mentioned in the actual movie either. Continuity? What continuity?

The new characters are your run-of-the-mill modern stereotypes: a warrior woman, an intelligent and sensitive scholar man, and another man, who is the modern P.O.C. sidekick; (the other two are WASPs, or can pass for them). Together, the three of them must compete the quest, or… they will die, and their superiors will send a new team, most likely. Somehow, ‘Rebirth’ makes ‘Naruto’ (anime and manga) look like a masterpiece, in the terms of the plot…

Anything else? Ah, yes, the actual chimera (chimeras) of the movie – the hybrid/mutant dinosaurs. Somehow, ever since the first JW film, the JP franchise was fiddling with hybrid/mutant dinosaurs in its’ games and like, and now, after a pause in the third JW film, (no mutant/hybrid reptiles there), we’re back with them. The regular theropod dinosaurs (aka most of the dinosaur carnivores) are no longer enough…

Therefore, to recap, we got a JP/W movie that has a recycled plot (from several previous films, but still), clichéd/stereotypical characters, and completely unrealistic monsters. By contrast, the original MC novels that started it all were at least trying to be informational, (if not educational), and entertaining. How it all has ended! As a direct opposite of what it once has been, that is how…

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

JWD - June 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the JWD film instead.

Without getting too deep into spoilers, it works. The movie works. It entertains its’ viewers well enough, and the movie critics hate it. Why?

Because there is no deeper meaning in it, not really, no bigger picture, especially by MCU’s standards. JWD sought to be the endgame for the latest JP/JW incarnation, to show the viewers a world where humans and non-avian dinosaurs coexist, and I would say that it had succeeded at doing so, too. The problem, of course, is so what?

No, let me reiterate the above statement: by 2022, the viewers have become quite sated on dinosaur-related films and such; the recently released ‘Prehistoric Planet’ may’ve stabbed JWD in the back by setting the bar much higher than JWD aspired to – it seems to be an entertaining movie rather than anything else… and it is a self-contained universe as well.

These days, the multiverse seems to be the key to success, as Ms. Yeoh’s ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ movie shows loud and clear, and JWD does not deliver on that level – in JWD, the story is wrapped, there’s no mid-credits or post-credits scene, no anything else. Fair enough, and the rest of the movie is not too evolved either.

Instead, JWD seems to try to milk the nostalgia for the old JP series and with some success at least; whereas J-Ro’s Newt Scamander films tried to add some new material – at least - into the Wizarding ‘Verse… with mixed success, but still it tried. JWD did not try at all; instead, it just went by the numbers and did what it did before with its’ movies, starting with JP3 – and can you blame them? Their source material is two sci-fi novels, written by the late Mr. Crichton, and nothing more; the fact that the franchise managed to make 6 movies rather than just one or two is remarkable enough!.. Anything else?

…JWD aside, people have already talked to me about me glossing over the Damage Control people in the ‘Ms. Marvel’ series premiere. Fair enough, but again, let us turn back to AoS. I know, I know, but for me, AoS did introduce Damage Control into MCU – literally: Damage Control first appeared in the AoS’ S3 episode, when Daisy teamed-up with Mack to save the latter’s brother Reuben, who fell-in with the Watchdogs, (MCU’s take on the KKK, aiming towards the InHumans rather than POCs), and Mack and Daisy had to rescue him – and Damage Control had to clean up the mess at the end of the episode. AoS being what it is, neither Reuben Mackenzie nor Damage Control re-appeared ever again in the series, (though Reuben’s role was taken over by MCU’s Flint – maybe), and Damage Control has surfaced-up here, in ‘Ms. Marvel’ – and so far it appears to be S.H.I.E.L.D. at its’ worst.

Listen again, AoS is the one MCU property that got out of hand and/or out of control, and no one was sad to see it go, not even the cast; there’s no indication that MCU will be rebooting S.H.I.E.L.D. any time soon; unfortunately, AoS is very popular with its’ fans, and since it has ran for 6 slash 7 seasons in a row, it has become quite well-known and well-established as well. So what?

Therefore, for a while now MCU is in a quandary – they had intended to use S.H.I.E.L.D., but because of real-life issues, they are unable to. Consequently, they tried to use something else – S.W.O.R.D. in WV, but WV has had its’ own problems, most notable – the imbalance between Wanda and Vision: WV was supposed to be a TV series about both of them, but instead it turned out to be mainly about Wanda instead, who would go on to become the antagonist in the second ‘Dr. Strange’ film – and that particular movie had no sign of S.W.O.R.D., of the new Vision, or of captain Photon, even though they played important roles in WV. Still, since the upcoming 2023 ‘The Marvels’ film is supposed to feature all of them – Kamala, Carol and Ms. Rambeau – the odds of the Damage Control introducing/re-introducing S.W.O.R.D. into MCU are very good. We will just have to wait and see as to what happens next.

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

Spider-Man, 'No Way Home' - Dec 17

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the latest Spider-Man movie instead.

…I mean, sure, it isn’t as straightforward, for example, the discovery of a brand new millipede specie in RL is really exciting, while the new JWD posters are something else: on the first, we have Claire stuck in a swamp, driven there by a therezinosaurus; again, I’ve no idea what a therezinosaurus would do in a swamp, plus the entire poster is too reminiscent of the ones done for the first film in the Jumanji reboot; and now we have the second poster, where Owen has lassoed a Parasaurolophus instead. A Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaur (duck-billed) dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous around the inland sea of the prehistoric North America, in a time, and a place, that was pretty much opposite to the boreal forest in which Chris had lassoed it on the poster, so clearly, the world of the JWD movie has a lot of issues to work out – by people, by dinosaurs, by both, and by anyone else. And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie?

…And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie is something else. When we talked about the ‘Ronin’ episode of ‘Hawkeye’, I said that ‘Hawkeye’ has becoming nothing more than by the numbers Marvel TV series, whereas ‘No Way Home’ has become a by the numbers… Sony Spider-Man movie.

No, seriously, the advantage of MCU over its’ competitors was that it had a greater picture, so to speak: every film was a step on the path to… the ‘Endgame’. No, seriously the ‘Endgame’ film was the endgame to the first three phases of MCU; just consider them the bigger and more derived cousins to the three seasons of a typical Disney property, and you’ll be set. Now, however, MCU is moving – has moved – onto Phase 4, and out of Disney’s comfort zone, so no wonder that it is meandering all over the place – and then it came back to Sony. Their previous collaboration with each other – the ‘Far From Home’ film – resulted in Sony and Disney/MCU fighting, and the latter was forced to retreat, and now…

…And now, we got another Sony & Disney/MCU collaboration on Spider-Man, and it is something else from what I have predicted. I predicted that it is going to launch the concept of the multiverse in the Disney/MCU universe for real, now that the previous Disney+ Marvel TV series have teased it – ‘Loki’ began to explore it – and so it had. By the final scene, where we see Dr. Strange encounter Wanda Maximoff after the events of WV, dismiss the events in Westview easily enough, and talk to her about exploring the multiverse for real: ‘No Way Home’ was a glorified pre-run instead.

It was also a reboot of the Sony Spider-Man universe, as we got to see Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin stab ‘his’ Spider-Man rather than be impaled by his glider before everyone was able to go home; Electro from the ‘second’ Spider-Man universe also got redesigned; and so on. Given that Sony is continuing its’ own Spider-Verse, (the upcoming Morbius film, etc.) this does bring possibilities – but not to MCU. Instead, in case of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, he lost everyone and almost everything, and is clear to start from a clean slate. MCU is done with the Web-Head, so the odds of him having to deal with threats from only ‘his’ universe are fairly good.

In addition, there are signs that MCU has moved onto from Spider-Man: I am talking about ‘Hawkeye’, who has no mention of Wall-Crawler at all: seriously, you have adventures in a Marvel-verse NYC and no mention of the Spider-Man? That is just wrong. But that is also real life business politics: Sony, (including Spider-Man), and Disney/MCU are done with each on this level, and so Spider-Man got send out of MCU with a big fanfare, Sony got to demonstrate its’ past and present Spider-Man properties in a more tasteful way of HBO’s ‘Space Jam 2’ film, which has little in common with the original movie, and is worse than the original ‘Space Jam’ had been, which is just sad. Where were we?

Oh yeah, with the realization that ‘No Way Home’ was just a side-quest, an ejection from the otherwise slim and streamlined MCU phase 4, (no sarcasm intended). ‘What if?’ might be ‘What if?’, but it is apocrypha for a reason; there we saw situations that could have happened in MCU, but did not… just because. And even so, the end result of ‘What if?’ S1 was a variant of ‘Endgame’, a mix of the first and the last ‘Avengers’ films – nothing more. Disney/MCU always returns to its’ comfort zone… Pause.

Ah yes, the Daredevil (Charlie Cox) cameo. Now that the agreement between Disney/MCU & Netflix has ended, MCU is cautiously (re)-introducing the ‘Defenders’ characters, starting with the Kingpin and his archenemy Daredevil…apparently. What will come out of that we will have to see…

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

Hawkeye, 'Partners' - Dec 8

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I was able to squeeze out some time to write down this, so let us go straight into escapism.

First – ‘Hawkeye’ episode 1x04, ‘Partners’. So far, there is no sign of the Kingpin, though since Charlie Cox’s Daredevil is returning to MCU, hope is kindling. Whether or not this reboot will be connected to ‘Hawkeye’ is another story.

Let me elaborate. MCU tries to be a complex, combined universe; it is trying to gain an advantage over team DC, when the latter had created its own world out of ‘Arrow’, ‘Flash’, ‘LoT’ and ‘Supergirl’. However, whereas DC tried to restrict itself to just those four TV series, (‘Black Lightning’, ‘Batwoman’, and so on were more distant), MCU is trying to make a much more tangled web, given how all of those Marvel TV shows are coming to Disney+ in the future.

…However, as Netflix’s take on the ‘Defenders’ franchise showed, to make a shared universe is harder than how it looks; the TV shows that made this franchise up were quite different from each other, and not necessarily in the good way, so there’s no sign that Disney/MCU will have it better: so far, the various Marvel TV shows were treated separately from each other – but yes, Yelena Belova, I’m looking at you.

Yes, Natasha Romanoff’s baby sister has appeared in ‘Hawkeye’ at last, as she took the titular character – I mean, Barton – on for size, but Barton was able to stand his ground and even send her packing, but given that she’s Natasha’s replacement, (even before ScarJo had her feud with Disney/MCU, cough), this certainly isn’t the last time that we’ve seen her. What next?

Well, the other Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, was also able to stand up to Maya Lopez/Echo and even get the best of her. Given that in ‘Echoes’ Barton was unable to defeat Maya, this is certainly important. But-?

But here is the thing. The action aspect of ‘Hawkeye’ is great and so far, it is the motor of the series; whenever there is a lull in the action, the show has problems: the discussion that the titular characters had with Ms. Bishop and William was painful to watch, for example. It did serve a purpose, as Ms. Bishop then made some sort of a mysterious phone call… and what do we know about her, and her deceased first husband, anyhow? Nothing in MCU, but in the comics Kate’s mother did work with that version of Madame Masque; MCU had its’ Madame Masque in the character of Agnes Cully, but that was in the past, a different villain can assume that name easily. (Not to mention that Agent Carter and her cohorts defeated Agnes). Where were we?

Ah yes, the mysterious phone call. So far, the fans have enjoyed wondering just how Kingpin was going to fit – to re-fit, pardon me – into MCU. Much was talked about how Echo was his stepdaughter in the comics, and in MCU, she had a mysterious, unseen, ‘Uncle’. Sadly, it is never confirmed that that man was Fisk, not to mention that ‘Hawkeye’ already had an uncle – William’s uncle Armand, who died off camera in unknown circumstances, while William himself owns a company that launders money from the Tracksuit Mafia, which is led by Maya and Kazi. Oh dear, I fear that we are going to have another red herring on our hands…unless Ms. Bishop is calling Fisk for real. Now what?

Well, aside from the fact that Clint Barton tried to dissolve his relationship with Kate Bishop – ha-ha, he thinks that it is up to him – we got a new look at a new dinosaur from the upcoming JWD movie, and it is the therezinosaurus. In RL, it was the biggest of plant-eating theropods, (i.e. the dinosaurs that were usually carnivores instead), and it looked…well, people know how it looked/looks – just look in the deviant-art website, for example; it looked either like a cross between a giant ground sloth and a goose, or like a prosauropod dinosaur instead.

Here is the thing: as far as the dinosaurs go, there is the ornithischians, the bird-hipped dinosaurs, such as the Stegosaurus and the Triceratops, and the saurischians, or the lizard-hipped dinosaurs. The dinosaur carnivores – Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Archaeopteryx and so on – belonged to that group, but so did such herbivores as the Apatosaurus: the sauropods, and their prosauropod cousins.

 For a good long while scientists assumed that the sauropods such as the Apatosaurus have evolved from the prosauropods, but now the two dino types are considered to be sister groups instead. What does that entail for paleontology I do not know, but what I do know that some of the prosauropods moved on two legs rather than four, and their forelimbs had rather impressive claws – such as the Plateosaurus, one of the last, and the biggest, of prosauropods. It was still an herbivore, just as the other prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs were, but so was Therezinosaurus and its’ relatives, which physically were similar to Plateosaurus and the like. I.e., yes, Therezinosaurus and co. were the dinosaur analogues of the giant panda, carnivores, which switched to a purely plant-eating way of life, but the thing is that the lizard-hipped dinosaurs have evolved something similar way back in the Triassic, (Therezinosaurus and the rest lived during the late Cretaceous instead), so it isn’t too unexpected, actually. Nature tends to recycle its’ ideas, and while Therezinosaurus was unusual, there was precedent for this type of dinosaur and dinosaur body plan as well.

As for the Therezinosaurus’ role in the upcoming JWD movie… I really cannot tell. So far, we only know that it might have chased Claire into a swamp… or it may be just a promo poster instead. It is hard to tell, and since this is a cloned Therezinosaurus, and not a member of the prologue, it may not really matter.

…Yes, this may be crude, but at the end of the day? The prologue of JWD was yet another attempt at authenticity in fiction, just as the fact that the actress who plays Maya Lopez in ‘Hawkeye’ is disabled in RL. No offence, but RL and silver screen are not directly connected, and though I have enjoyed Maya’s interactions, cough, with the titular characters, that is because her actress is naturally talented, not because of disabilities, RL or otherwise. The silver screen and RL are not equal to each other, and neither are they in direct symbiosis to each other, as the elections of 2016 showed everybody. Not that the elections-2020 were much better, but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See all of you – eventually!

Hawkeye, 'Echoes' - Dec 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so after this week’s, my blog entries will be more irregular than before, so you’ve been warned, and apologized for, in advance. Now onto the episode 1x03 of ‘Hawkeye’?

…Well, there isn’t much to go on about here and now; this week’s episode main entry was Echo slash Maya Lopez; in the Marvel comics, she was the adopted daughter of Wilson Fisk slash Kingpin, but since the latter’s defeat in Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’ series, the man was a no show in MCU, so here she was given a different backstory instead, one that is Wilson Fisk free. Pity, since Kingpin’s reappearance in MCU would have been interesting, but not really surprising, as MCU really prefers things neat and avoids anything uncomfortable, especially in RL.

For example, take a look at the AoS: in the initial seasons, especially the second and the third, the titular characters had to battle two threats – Hydra, and later on the InHumans and their ‘pureblood’ alien superiors. Initially, the show dealt with them ‘separately’ – one mini-story arc would deal with Hydra, the next with the InHumans, and so on. Eventually, of course, the two plotlines blurred into one – and this is what is happening on ‘Hawkeye’: we got two plotlines blurring into one: Maya Lopez and her Tracksuit Mafia, and William the Swordsman, or whatever his moniker is.

Pause. While we’re on the subject of Marvel, I have to admit that I disagree with the decision to combine the ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ and ‘Hit-Monkey’ cartoon series into one universe – aka Earth-1226; as I said before, the two shows are different enough for this decision to be wrong, and moreover, what do they have in common aside from the basic and the obvious? That Hulu made both of them? Then should not Hulu’s ‘Runaways’ series be added as well? I daresay that these three Marvel shows are different enough to be similar, so there is that-

Sorry. We were talking about ‘Hawkeye’ instead. Sadly, aside from Maya/Echo’s official entry into MCU, (she’s getting her own TV series… for the moment), there’s nothing new to talk about – this episode was action-packed, otherwise: Kate and Clint escaped from Maya-Echo and her tracksuit bros…they ran into William the Swordsman, who’s about to fight with Hawkeye…the end. Where were we?

Ah yes, the issue of MCU’s comfort. AoS has been swept under the rug because it has evolved slash devolved into an unwieldy monstrosity that did not fit into MCU at all in the end, while ‘Daredevil’ and co. fared the same fate because Marvel was ‘sharing’ them with Netflix, and Disney/Marvel/MCU does not like to share. Yes, Phase 4 is introducing the multiverse, more or less, but it certainly took its’ time, and its’ heaviest hitter – the upcoming Spider-Man movie, ‘No Way Home’ – is being made because the Spider-Man franchise is passing from Disney/Marvel/MCU onto Sony, and this way some sort of a compromise was made, in a form of a grand movie: this way, Disney/Marvel/MCU, gets (still gets) a piece of Spidey, and so does Sony and its’ Sony Universe of Marvel Characters, (plus a nice send-of gift in regards to its’ Spidey franchise). ‘Hawkeye’ doesn’t get that; in fact, we have Clint and Kate running around NYC and no sign of Marvel’s Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, even though he is THE hero when it comes Marvel’s NYC, you know? Disney/MCU hates lawsuits; it hates losing money, (it loves to make money), but it hates lawsuits even more, and so it would rather share than sue… usually, but regularly. So what?

So now we got a ‘standard’, ‘paint-by-numbers’, ‘Hawkeye’ mini-series, since by now the rumors are that it’ll end after 6 episodes are swirling. Well, fair enough. Clint Barton/Hawkeye was the most underwhelming of all the Avengers; the most underappreciated, but also the most underwhelming, and rightly so. This episode reminded why that is so; there is style and flash, but little substance, and this combo carries only so far. So, onto the JW: D prologue?

Eh, by now the internet has recognized and admitted that not only a T-Rex vs. Giganotosaurus face-off in RL would’ve been impossible, but the entire dino mockumentary portion of the prologue was a pastiche: we got Cretaceous ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, we got Jurassic brachiosaurs, we got an Oviraptor-type dinosaur that is stealing eggs – an incorrect and outdated stereotype – and both Jurassic & Cretaceous pterosaurs to list only the obvious. The JP/JW franchise may be more realistic in its’ depictions of dinosaurs, but little else.

Well, this is it for now. Everyone, enjoy your first day of the official winter in the Northern Hemisphere. I will see you all… eventually.

Hawkeye, series premiere - Nov 25

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Hawkeye’ instead.

…Ok, this is actually not such a good idea, since the show itself has quite some issues going on for itself, with most prominent being the supposedly clever double entendre, (or whatever it is called), as the show’s title is the legitimate moniker for both Clint and Kate, and now the duo have to cooperate with each other, (technically speaking), in order to- but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Let us begin again. The problem of ‘Hawkeye’ is that both Clint and Kate each have their own issues, and they do not like to share. Kate wants to find herself, and hates her up and coming stepfather; Clint wants to spend time with his family, but cannot – because of the tracksuit mafia. And-?

And it has been a running gag for a while now that Clint is the least of all the Avengers; the ‘Endgame’ film and the penultimate episode of the ‘What If?’ s1 tried to change this perception, but not enough, and right now, his opponents are a group of criminals, organized or not, completely mundane, not very competent, and not very intimidating – clearly members of the shallow end of the MCU pool. The fact that Clint has not whipped them yet is not a mark in his favor either.

On the other hand we got Kate, who wants to be like the Avengers – perhaps even an Avenger herself – and, possibly, to avenge her late true father, who died during the battle of NYC in 2012. Sadly, because she is a young and unexperienced vigilante, so far she is underperforming herself, and the fact that her nemesis – so far – is her stepfather is also underwhelming; good thing that Kate’s attitude, charm, and charisma compensate for that lack in spades.

…Of course, the same can be said of Barton, albeit to a lesser extent, but the fact is that by the TV series’ standards, ‘Hawkeye’ delivers a much more balanced and equal act than ‘WandaVision’ did. No offence to the team WV, but in that TV show, Wanda had the lion’s share of the plot development, while Vision developed an identity crisis instead, and by now, there’s no Wanda & Vision, since the show’s Vision was either a construct that Wanda made from her memories with magic… or a completely different synthezoid who has no relationship with Wanda whatsoever, and had actually almost killed her at one point… Where were we?

Right, the transitions. MCU’s Phase 4 is all about them; for example, in the already-mentioned ‘WandaVision’, the titular characters transitioned from a couple into complete strangers, starting their entire relationship – professional, familial, and otherwise – anew. In ‘Black Widow’, the titular title passed from Natasha to Yelena. And in ‘Hawkeye’, the plan is something similar – the titular title will pass from Clint to Kate, especially since the latter is willing and almost ready already. So, what else?

Aside from the issues of underwhelming and duality, (not quite necessary)… no, not quite. The issue of duality is quite necessary, it permeates the first two episodes of ‘Hawkeye’ at least: on one hand, we have Kate, her issues with her new stepfamily, and also the stepfamily’s own issues, (just who did kill Armand III?). On the other, we got the tracksuit mafia, who, clearly, are not a part of that process, but instead seem to be working for, or with, Maya Lopez instead.

The latter was only introduced in the episode’s 1x02 finale, but she’s an important character in the Marvel comics already, and since she wears the title of Ronin, (cough), in one of Marvel’s video games, the odds of her being a rival to Kate’s claim of being the next Hawkeye, are good enough.

Of course, though both ‘Hawkeye’ and ‘Ronin’ were Clint Barton’s alter-egos, they’re also quite different from each other, so maybe Maya and Kate will learn to get along – but for now Kate and Clint should survive the tracksuit mafia and etc. Given how Hawkeye was underplayed among the Avengers that is not very encouraging, actually. What else?

Well, there is also the ‘Encanto’ film that also came out this week. It is the latest Disney movie, and it is underwhelming; less ‘CATS-2019’ and more ‘Doolittle-2020’ done right. As it is the rule with the Disney animated films, there is no villain per se, (as there are in MCU or SW movies), rather the film’s main character (and her family, to a lesser extent), and so the result is… a musical. Yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, I am looking at you. ‘In the heights’, the movie version, was simply overwhelming, with such qualities as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ not applicable to it; that was an epic movie, and ‘Encanto’ attempts to do a liter version of it. The result are overwhelming musical numbers set in an underwhelming, by the numbers, Disney animated movie. With a lack of an antagonist, and with a less extended message than the one in ‘Frozen 2’, ‘Encanto’ leans into more flash than substance easily; it does have a message – about family and family values – but it tends to get buried under all the glitz and glammer of Disney’s animation instead. Anything else?

Yes, the first 5 and a half minutes of the ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ movie. Whereas Disney has apparently removed most of the concept of ‘conflict’ from its’ animated movies, this film has not, however this conflict is changed – rather than humans, (or other sentient beings), so far we got dinosaur vs. dinosaur, (though dinosaur vs. human conflict is close second). Indeed, given what we have seen in all of the previous films of the franchise, there will be some conflict between humans regardless, so it will be interesting to watch…but that is a story for another time.

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

Loki 'The Variant' - June 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the JP franchise seems to be doing its’ best to make it even moreso, if the rumors about the upcoming JW: Dominion movie are correct.

What are they about? In it, a T-Rex will be fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong, and on several levels too. Let us go there.

…However, you may ask, what about Loki? And – ‘Loki’? Sadly, nothing. This week’s episode, ‘The Variant’, was a fun watch, as we saw the titular Loki suffer by trying to adjust to being the straight guy of the show/in the TVA, and suffering from it…within his soul, while people all around him aren’t impressed.

To elaborate, Loki is a showman; for him, a large part of his trickery is in pretending to be someone that he isn’t; the problem here is that he may be too chaotic on one hand: he switches allegiances and disguises at a moment’s notice, always trying to come up one step ahead regardless of what he was trying to do in the past and whoever he tried to trick earlier. He is inconsistent, he is selfish, and he is petty.

Only he is not. In the very first ‘Thor’ movie, when Loki appeared in MCU for the first time, Loki had a clear goal: first, he was trying to prove to Odin and the rest of Asgard that he was better than Thor, and then, when he learned that he was actually a frost giant rather than an Asgardian himself, he… remained constant to that goal, his epiphany just took him in an unexpected direction – genocide, by using Bifrost; the first ‘Thor’ film was done on a cosmic scale with a cosmic scope, and Loki was a worthy villain of that movie. And now?

And now Loki is depicted as a failure as both a character and a villain. In part, this is justified – Loki’s act as a trickster wore thin by the time of ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie, as Hela, who is his female counterpart in the Marvel universe, took over from him there, and died in it, but since Loki died quickly soon afterwards, in the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ film, this does not really matter.

Or does it? This Loki variant in a blonde-haired woman, while the show’s main character is a dark-haired man, of course. Yes, he is gender-fluid, but since we are talking about Disney/MCU here, this may not amount to much, because Disney wants to make money, first and foremost. To do so, it’ll be ‘progressive’ to appeal to the native, U.S. audience, but it will also be ‘retrograde’ to the audiences overseas, including RF and China, so let’s leave Loki’s sexcapades to the fans, and going back to the canon…

Going back to the canon, we got nothing. Loki is reduced to being a glorified goofball, and then he meets the ‘variant Loki’, aka the series’ main villain, for now, and follows her to see how the other half lives and whether or not he can get his own mojo back. Spoiler alert: he cannot. Not until he commits to being either a hero or a villain completely, and that is not something that he is ready to do so; he is much happier being a selfish and self-serving asshole instead – such a fall for a once great villain. I hope that the show will stop assassinating his character soon enough and begin to rebuild it instead. Now onto the JW movie?

Of that, much less is known, but, again, we are talking about a T-Rex fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong.

First, because of realism: Tyrannosaurus Rex lived at the very end of the Mesozoic, precisely 66 MYA, in North America. Giganotosaurus lived almost 30 million before that, during the Mid-Cretaceous period, in South America. The lineages of the two dino species have never crossed paths.

Secondly – and yes, I understand that I sound completely prejudiced here, but I honestly cannot help it – but Tyrannosaurus Rex would have won. Out of the two dinosaurs, it was the more derived carnivore and the better fighter as well. Yes, like the rest of the Cretaceous carnosaurs, the Giganotosaurus was bigger than the T-Rex…but with a much weaker bite. Like its’ African cousin the Carcharodontosaurus, the Giganotosaurus aimed to rip and tear the flesh with its scissor-like jaws and thin, blade-like teeth, whereas the jaws and teeth of a Tyrannosaurus evolved to bite through flesh and bone, (not to mention armored skin of some of the herbivores that it lived next to). Ergo, as soon as it got a grip on Giganotosaurus, the latter was doomed, as the Rex would literally bite and rip it into pieces, rather than bite and claw with forelimbs in order for Rexy to bleed to death, as the Giganotosaurus would aim to do.

This brings us to Spinosaurus, which already had killed a T-Rex…back in the JPIII movie, which has aggravated many dino-fans since then. As Dr. Wu would point out in the first ‘Jurassic World’ film, their dinosaurs are not exactly real, but here we need to talk about repetition: the third JW film seems to be repeating the third JP film, and as we have talked about in our discussions regarding the now-finished AoS, this sort of recycling is just bad.

…So, to recap. The third JW movie is about to dismiss all sort of scientific integrity that the franchise tried to cloak itself in, in the initial films, it seems to be recycling plot ideas from those initial films, (which means that it is becoming bankrupt in its’ ideas, not unlike how AoS became in its’ own later seasons), and that means that the JW franchise really is heading towards its’ own ultimate conclusion, at least for the immediate future. Sad, but that is real life. It sucks, as I have always said in my obligatory disclaimer.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #68 - May 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. AoS is in its’ home stretch, and I cannot access it – there goes my (almost) perfect streak. Ah well, as we have said before, now AoS is apparently ripping of DC’s LoT series…, which were a rip-off of AoS to begin with.

The other main influence here is Marvel’s ‘Agent Carter’ (AC) series, which were very good themselves…but got cancelled after just two seasons, because the actress behind the titular character, Hayley Atwell, decided to go back to U.K. at that moment in time. I do not know if it was her best call or not, since she continued to be associated with agent Carter the Marvel character on and off since then, but it did throw a wobble into MCU – enter Peggy’s niece Sharon Carter. In ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and ‘Captain America: Civil War’, the ex-‘agent 13’ of S.H.I.E.L.D. was being set-up as Steve Rogers’ new love interest – and then that abruptly stopped, and Steve ended up back with Peggy thanks to the Infinity Stones and time travel. Fun! Anything else?

…Sharon Carter is, or was, going to be one of the main characters on ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ Disney+ show, as we have mentioned it several times in the past, but since we’ve mentioned it because it went down onto a producing hiatus first, it’s anyone’s guess as to how ‘F&WS’ will re-emerge after the COVID-19 lockdown and just who will be on it. From what we have seen of it pre-lockdown, the lines were – our titular heroes, (plus Sharon Carter?) vs. MCU’s version of Zemo, (first introduced in ‘Captain America: Civil War’, remember?) and MCU’s version of John Walker, U.S. Agent, who is something of an anti-Captain America, I suppose. ‘F&WS’ sounded like one of those ‘politically charged’ shows of America by Americans, and it was probably aimed at least some of its’ shots at the Donald’s regime of the U.S., but then real life happened, and ‘F&WS’ (and the rest of Disney+ shows… cough ‘The Mandalorian’ cough) are currently on some sort of an indefinite hiatus instead. Next?

…Since we cannot discuss AoS S7 because of real-life reasons – it sucks – I wanted to return to the yaks, which we have discussed in the not-so-distant past. But then real life happened, and past happened, and everyone is discussing the evidence that at least some of the Jurassic theropods, (aka the carnivorous dinosaurs) were cannibals. Pause.

My reaction to this: so what? The Cretaceous Majungasaurus, (featured on ‘Jurassic Fight Club’, “Dinosaur Revolution’ and ‘Planet Dinosaur’), was a cannibal. Modern dinosaur relatives, namely the crocodilians and the birds of prey, (not that the other avians are such nice guys themselves), are also cannibals. Ergo, people, and especially scientists, should have been aware (and accepting) of the possibility that at least some theropod dinosaurs, (aside from the Majungasaurus), were cannibalistic as well. What is with all the commotion? It about matches the one about Spinosaurus’ true tail!

…Yes, the news about Spinosaurus’ new tail were somewhat cool, but that is Spinosaurus for you – it rivals the T-Rex and the raptors for popularity, especially since the JP3 film. There is no indication that Spinosaurus will return for the third JW film, but who knows… Anything else?

No, not really. The Donald had had his actual birthday yesterday – whoopee. Given how much the U.S. society is getting divided over the lockdown decision as well as over that actual division, he really should be keeping a low profile instead. In the RF, president Putin is going to have an actual, real life parade on June 24 or so about – bully for him! He really should be more concerned about a revolution instead…

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

Quarantine entry #8 - March 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. To make matters worse – yes, I am whining here – I got nothing planned for my escapism today. So, let us talk about something different… how about Archaeopteryx?

Pause. What about the Archaeopteryx? It is a very peculiar creature, part bird, part non-avian dinosaur. It was the first feathered dinosaur that was discovered and an important part in building both the evolutionary theory in general and the dinosaurs to birds in particular. What next?

Archaeopteryx was not a direct ancestor of the modern birds, no more so than the Microraptor is. Indeed, the issue of theropod dinosaurs and feathers is an especially messy one, seeing how paleontologists swing from them being all featherless to being all feathered – and that’s without mentioning such franchises as the ‘Jurassic Park’ one, which tends to ignore this issue entirely.

Pause. ‘Jurassic Park III’ had partially feathered raptors, (unlike the first two movies). Pause. ‘Jurassic World’ went back to completely featherless raptors. Pause. So where is the Archaeopteryx? Nowhere, that is where.

Pause. Archaeopteryx always was a ghost presence in the various franchises of this sort; my most vivid memory of it is in the dino segment of Disney’s ‘Fantasia’, where it has a brief cameo – escaping a harassing Coelurus or some similar dinosaur. That is it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of scientific documentaries about this dinosaur, (Hell, birds are dinosaurs themselves, live with it). Maybe this is why many people in Hollywood and the like prefer to avoid Archaeopteryx – it is too well known, too established, too unique for them to mess with it, and so they avoid it. Various dino-based games do feature it, but again mostly on secondary roles – it is not that big and scary, it seems.

How big was it, (especially in real life)? About the size of a modern crow, I would say. I first met it – as a grown-up, not as a child with a coloring book – in Josef Benes’ work about the evolution of life on Earth; Archaeopteryx, of course, was discussed in the chapter concerning the evolution of birds, from a mythical ‘Proavis’ to Hesperornis, (and Ichthyornis), and beyond. So what?

Well, Zdenek Burian, a painter and a man who is respected even now for his artwork, illustrated Benes’ book. Moreover, his ‘Proavis’, (aka the theoretical proto-bird) was depicted a lot like the real-life Microraptor, albeit a more toned-down one, but! The real-life Microraptor was not a direct bird ancestor either!

Here is the crunch. There are two ways of moving through the air – actively flying and passively gliding. Insects aside, the only animals that fly by their own power, (and not via airplanes or helicopters, say), are birds, bats, and the extinct pterosaurs. While none of them are related to each other, and everyone’s wing evolved via its’ own design, they all have enough similar traits, including the wings itself and also the keel bones, (extensions of the breastbone/sternum) which are the bones to which the wing muscles’ attach. Because of this, birds, bats and pterosaurs were able to flap their wings actively and generate lift, among other things. Even the flightless penguins retained their keel bones – they do fly in a manner of speaking, underwater.

Archaeopteryx did not have a particularly well developed breastbone or keel bones, so it is unclear if it could fly actively, or just glide passively, if it lacked the anatomical apparatus of the modern birds. Of course, its’ wing muscles could’ve attached to some other bones – Archaeopteryx already had fused collarbones as the modern birds do – but this again makes Archaeopteryx a member of a different branch of the theropod/bird family tree. Where does it leave the ‘Proavis’, however?

So far, it is unknown. The birds’ evolution, especially during the Jurassic, still has more gaps than filler, so it is still hard to make any secure statements. Anatomically modern birds begin to appear at the end of the Cretaceous, but again, if it was not for the K/T extinction, it is anyone’s guess as to how they would have fit alongside the rest of the dinosaurs – theropods, sauropods, ornithischians – and the other reptiles. Given that alternate history is a sci-fi rather than a documentary genre, we will stop here.

Anything else? Sadly, no. Real life sucks, just look at the Archaeopteryx: it died out without leaving any descendants. It has sprouted many lively discussions, however, and the birds themselves are living alongside us to this day. Life goes on, but we may not always be a part of it.

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

The Harley Quinn Movie - Feb 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, pure and simple, and your family tends to make it worse – and it is also simple. So, let us talk about something more complex – the latest DC movie – instead.

Why it is a more complex subject? Because in reality, it is two movies stitched into one – first, we got ‘Birds of Prey’, (BOP), which deals with a group of anti-heroes, led by Harley Quinn, in a fight against a crime boss named ‘the Black Mask’, (DC’s answer to Marvel’s Red Skull, BTW), and the second is ‘the fantabulous emancipation’ of the same Harley Quinn as she gets over the Joker, (Jared Leto’s version). Pause.

Now, this is not the first case of two movies being stitched into one – I personally remember the ‘Lost World: Fallen Kingdom’ film, which was two films – the first being the team Owen/Claire (OC) teaming up with the minions of the Evil E to rescue several dinosaurs, (including Rexy and Blue), from the exploding island; and the second being team OC infiltrating/getting captured by the Evil E’s minions to get into the Lockwood mansion and stop the Indoraptor from…something – yes, it’s a killing machine, but nothing more; the movie heavily anthropomorphized it, but it still was nowhere as formidable as the I-Rex from the first ‘Lost World’ film was, and plenty of dinosaurs got out into the world… but we digress.

…And the second film was the SW8 movie, where everything from Rey and Ben’s final confrontation in the ex-Snoke’s throne room feels like a tag-on from an entirely different SW8 film – maybe it was borrowed from the original SW8 script? Or something? Hard to tell, and we have discussed the SW8 & 9 films before, so let us get back to the DCEU.

Did DC succeed with their latest film? As people have acknowledged, it’s no ‘Joker-2019’, and indeed, when the discussions about BOP-emancipation began, ‘Joker-2019’ was avoided. Not surprising, since on one hand, ‘Joker-2019’ is an outlier and not a part of the DCEU per se, and as such, it is a completely different film from the DCEU ones… and it had also won an Oscar. Not surprisingly, then, that team DC does not known as to what to do about ‘Joker-2019’ and tend to avoid it in their discussions, especially unofficial ones.

That said, ‘Joker-2019’ did try to discuss important social issues in real life…and the Harley Quinn double-whammy tried to be feminist! Feminist! Feminist! In addition, girl power! Rawr! …Did it succeed?

Leaving aside the impressive interweaving of the two films, BOP and ‘the fantabulous emancipation’, done in a way that would make Marvel’s Deadpool, (especially the MCU version), proud. That said, since people treat it as a single film instead, well… it is done by the book – women are good, men are bad, (or outright evil), and women are beating them down as soon as they are done being oppressed by them. Just look at Greta Thunberg, back in real life.

…What is this? Now that the initial shock value is gone, Greta seems to have met only a limited success – people are indulging her, going along and pretending that she matters. Since none of her efforts seem to have actually amount to anything beyond making this or that public statement and talking to this or that leader of some country or another… Greta is beginning to feel like a trained parrot that everyone loves but will forget as soon as the entire out of sight out of mind situation occurs – and this, atypically, brings us to Cassandra Cain.

Why? Here is the thing. Margot Robbie’s Harley is consistent with her depiction in 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’ film. Dinah and the Huntress look nothing like their counterparts in the DC ‘Arrow’ TV-verse (or the original BOP TV series), but DC is inconsistent like this, so that is acceptable. However, for both Renee and Cassandra, this is their official entrance into the live-action DC depiction, (especially for Cass), so what, and who, was thinking? They took ‘Orphan’, one of Batman’s most formidable lieutenants, and turned her into a plucky extra from ‘Ocean’s 8’!

…Actually, the entire movie has a strong feeling of ‘Ocean’s 8’, especially in regards to girl power – ‘Ocean’s 8’ was ‘Ocean’s 11’ albeit gender-flipped and more edgy. Alas, as the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot showed, gender flipping a movie plot is not always enough, (both it and ‘Ocean’s 8’ are largely forgotten by now), and as ‘Like a Boss’ proved, girl power on its own isn’t a miraculous money-maker either.

Does the Harley Quinn movie has anything else going for it? It is bright, it is loud, it verges on the absurd, and the good guys – that is, girls – win in the end. It is not trying to be intentionally deep if you move away from the titular heroine as she goes on a journey of self-discovery and the rest of team BOP is going for the ride as they need to work together to defeat the Black Mask and Zsasz. The latter are completely unsympathetic, (especially Zsasz), nonredeemable, and are killed at the end. 

Sigh. Even Marvel/MCU is moving past killing every villain in their movies – Loki is back and being redesigned, so’s MCU’s version of Zemo, (and maybe others?). Seeing how DCEU is trying to ape MCU still, maybe it is time for them to stop killing-off their villains… oh, right, Joker. Pause. Never mind. This version of the Black Mask was decisively influenced by the comics’ Joker, and it shows – the movie’s villains have actually more time on screen than its’ heroes – aside from Harley, and this brings us to Cass, but also – to the hyena.

Cass is simple – Harley decided to make her her protégé or something. Ask Harley. Maybe she knows. But the hyena is something else. True to the DC canon, it is a spotted hyena, which is the biggest modern hyena species, and the strongest. It can literally rip a person apart with its’ bone-crushing jaws, so seeing Harley interact with her new pet is something else. I really hope that she had picked-up her comic-book counterpart’s hyena managing skills, because otherwise, there will be trouble!

…As it is, there may be trouble already, as the movie shows no sign of a Poison Ivy. These days, in most incarnations, Ivy and Harley are a couple, a duo, a team – Ivy helps Harley the way that Joker did not, would not, or could not – take your pick. They are also a couple, the same way that Willow and Tara were on the BtVS TV series, for example, so her absence in the movie is glaring, and also telling.

In ‘Frozen 2’, there was Honeymaren, Elsa’s new potential love interest, and yet nothing came of it. Why?

Because Disney does not like to make statements that hurt it in the wallet; it does not like to be hurt in the wallet to begin with: their ‘damage control’ in the SW9 film is the latest evidence of that. Only, in SW9, this ‘damage control’ didn’t succeed, so for now no more SW movies, and especially trilogies; ‘The Mandalorian’ and the like will need to carry the SW-universe forwards for now.

For Disney, their ‘Princess’ series are even more important than SW is, so they have no intention of rocking the boat by getting either the same-sex issues or the sexuality issues involved. Yes, there is many fanworks that do just that, but they do not matter, especially not to Disney, whereas DC…

…Well, in DC, there is the current Harley Quinn cartoon series, which seems to be going precisely in that direction, by the means of an endgame. Yes, DC is not putting all of their eggs in one basket, and the HQ cartoon series is different, and much more balanced, than the HQ movie is, but the signs of this were there in the last trailer, so we were warned. Anything else?

No, not really. ‘The Fantabulous Emancipation’ gave a new dimension to the movie, which otherwise would have been just a more violent and psychedelically crazy ‘Ocean’s 8’. The gangster setting…well, ever since the Superman/Batman animated series of the 1990s, the gangster setting was the default for Gotham, which only served to make the Black Mask and Zsasz even more formidable. The fights themselves were nothing special, certainly not in 2020, and they were not any more feminist than the ‘Like a Boss’ movie was. So, yes, Harley Quinn saved the movie and the day, just not how she probably intended to… i.e., this her normal M.O., especially without Ivy around to ground her, cough. Hint-hint. Regardless, go Harley!

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

Cassowaries - Nov 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask the cassowaries, Austrian/Papua New Guinean relatives of the African ostrich. (For a while, the ostrich has also lived in Middle East, but it is practically extinct there now). According to the ‘Seven Worlds One Planet’ TV series, right now the cassowary is on the ropes because of the invasion of the feral hogs/wild boars into its’ jungle kingdom. And?

And here I just want to elaborate on the case of the cassowary, (cough. Sorry about the alliteration). Firstly, there are three species of cassowaries, not just one. However, only one species out of them – the southern cassowary – is found in Australia proper, and so it is the one known best, especially by the lay public. Ok.

Second, as far as ratites go, the cassowaries are atypical, for they live in jungles slash rainforests. The ostrich of the Old World, the rhea of South America, even the emu of Australia – they all live in open spaces, on open plains and among the scrubland. Not so the cassowaries, which are distinctly jungle birds. They are also some of the smaller modern ratites; only New Zealand’s kiwis are smaller than the cassowaries are.

However, the kiwis are a special case – they are survivors of an earlier age, when they lived in shadows of much bigger ratites – the moas and the giant moas, which were among the biggest birds of the Cenozoic, (known ironically as the Age of Mammals instead). Then the humans arrived, and hunted the bigger ratites (and many other species of New Zealand birds) to extinction. The plucky little kiwis survived. (The fact that humans themselves found the kiwis not to be tasty helped though). Where does it leave the cassowaries?

In the same place as the kiwis, ecologically speaking: both genera are shy, retiring birds, especially by ratite standards. (There is nothing shy or retiring about the African ostrich or the Australian emu, for example). However, while the kiwis are small, the cassowaries are not; the southern cassowary, in particular, is almost the size of a human and they have their attitudes, especially the sexually mature males. They also have really sharp, needle-like claw on their feet, with which they can wound and kill, even humans; certainly, it is always the right thing to do – to use some sort of a protective armor – when dealing with cassowaries in captivity or in stressful situations. As a result, the cassowaries are often called, or considered to be, the modern analog of the Mesozoic raptors. That is incorrect.

Before Michael Crichton utilized and popularized the word ‘raptor’ for certain carnivorous dinosaurs – i.e., deinonychus and co. – it was used to define modern birds of prey: eagles, hawks, falcons and owls, to name a few. Even in this capacity, the term was not very proper – all of those avians (avian dinosaurs?) are not very closely related to each other; already, in the 20^th century people realized that owls were a group onto themselves, separate from the rest of birds of prey, and by now – 2019 – people have reclassified the birds of prey into several separate families and genera, so by now the word ‘raptor’ is used primarily for carnivorous dinosaurs such as deinonychus, utahraptor, and dromaeosaurus, and not for any of modern birds. That said, while the term ‘raptor’ is no longer truly appropriate for any of the modern birds, the various birds of prey, (including the owls), have several shared characteristics, with the carnivorous way of life being the most obvious one. There are some exceptions, but ‘exceptions’ is the key word here – all birds of prey eat meat in one capacity or another, and as such they all have talons on their legs and hooked beaks. The cassowaries do not have that. Their ‘killer claw’ is actually a…specialized but primitive characteristic, as far as the ratites go.

Here is the thing. Ratites evolved as herbivorous animals… okay, birds. There were flightless carnivorous birds – the terror birds – but they were not related to the ratites; it is somewhat hard to establish just who their relatives are, but most scientists claim that it is the seriema, a family of South American birds; initially, they were considered to be relatives of cranes and the like, but now scientists believe that they connect the terror birds to such modern avians as the parrots, the falcons, and the passerines instead. (Yes, the falcons are not very closely related to other birds of prey such as the hawks and the eagles – live with it). The ratites have nothing to do with them; their closest flying relative is the tinamou – a different order of South American birds; they are this continent’s analog of the game birds of the rest of the world – but we digress.

The point is that the ratites evolved from an ancestor that resembled a tinamou closely and the various gamebirds superficially, and was never a pure carnivore at all. At best it was an omnivore, but aside from the kiwis, (which are very specialized birds, when you think about it), most ratites prefer to eat plant matter to animal. This includes the cassowaries, which eat primarily fallen fruits, (not unlike many other jungle bird species), not animal matter, as deinonychus and its’ relatives did – and on the other hand, they are smaller and weaker than the African ostrich is, (proportionally speaking), and also are less efficient runners than the ostrich. The African ostrich is the only modern bird, (I think) that has only two toes on each foot. This makes the African ostrich the bird version of the modern horse, donkey and zebra – an open-spaces running specialist, who had sacrificed manual dexterity for speed. Horses, donkeys and zebras are much less ecologically flexible than the antelopes are, for comparison, and the ratites are also less flexible than the flying birds are.

…However, ratites themselves are a varied bag, they consist of several families, and if the African ostrich is the most derived of them all, then the rest of them are less so. This includes the cassowaries, which are the biggest jungle-dwelling ratites (and probably the biggest jungle-dwelling birds, period). They may be big as some of the bigger mammals, (include modern humans and wild boar), and they can take care of themselves, (theoretically), but they are nowhere near as formidable as the ‘true’ raptors of the Mesozoic had been, and they probably do need human help and intervention, if they are to survive the 21^st century and beyond. Of course, there is also the matter of how to do it – begin to exterminate all of non-native Australian mammals? This was once tried with rabbits – not the most formidable members of that bunch. The result was an epic fail for humans, so obviously something different must be tried – but what? So far, there is no idea, but then again, if there were, then real life would not suck so badly, now would it?

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

Birds of Prey trailer I - Oct 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now onto TV land?

Ok, first I need to address some issues that arose from my previous posts. What are they, as follows?

First, someone has commented that the end of BBR, we see the door of another motorhome open to release its’ inhabitant, who will help the Motorhome family of No Name get through the destruction of their own motorhome. Yay! …It is also supposed to show that humans do not have any great advantage now that the dinosaurs and the other prehistoric reptiles are out and about. Fair enough.

Now, the entire premise of the original JP movie was all about ‘life will find a way’, which echoed, however distantly, the message of the original JP novel, as spoken by that version of Ian Malcolm. Yay, (the novel’s version of Ian Malcolm does little more but blather after its’ version of the initial T-Rex attack; it has its’ own share of flaws, but we are not talking about them here), so what does the franchise’s reboot do?

…Bring back not only Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, and Ian Malcolm for its’ final film, but also Hammond’s grandchildren, Tim and Lexy, (do not confuse her with Rexy – Lex/Lexy is a human young woman, while Rex/Rexy is an aged female Tyrannosaurus. They are different). The fans are quite happy with this fan service, but will it help the franchise? Considering that they already have the ‘new’ characters – Owen, Claire, Maisie, Franklin and Zara – this leaves them with a lot of characters to juggle around, and killing any of them will likely backfire by enraging the fans!..

On the contrary, and this brings me to my other critique, ‘Insatiable’ the Netflix series has gone the other way around – it seems to have largely removed the entire WG/WL issue from its content, (there’s a scene of Patty compulsively eating, but this it so far), rebooting itself as a standard black humor drama/comedy; the trailer for S2 is much better and far less messier than it was for S1. It still is not for everybody, but least it is not offensive. So kudos to ‘Insatiable’ here and now; sorry for bitching about you in my previous blog entry.

…And now that we have this out if the way, let us move onto the main event: the ‘Birds of Prey’ first main trailer. What can be said about it? The 2016 ‘Suicide Squad’ movie was a mess. It was not a bad film, but it had plenty of room to improve, and apparently, it is going through a reboot now. By contrast, the upcoming ‘Birds of Prey’ film will be focusing on Harley Quinn’s character, and her emancipation. This is not a problem; the problem is that it appears that they will be cramming several years of worth of her emancipation in the comics into a single film. Compounding this is the fact that the BP movie itself already feels chaotic, in a bad way: there are characters from all strata of DC comics – there’s HQ herself, there’s the Huntress, there’s officer Montoya, there’s the Black Mask, there’s Cassandra Cain, whose version in DCEU clearly has a long way to go before she reaches her kick-ass levels in DC comics, (where she is one of the Bat-family, BTW). The trailer itself gives surprisingly very little exposition for such an action-filled piece: I think that Harley and her posse will be saving Cassandra from the Black Mask and his people? Yeah, there are worse films in DCEU, including the ‘Suicide Squad 2016’ itself, let along the ‘Justice League’ film, but still. I am of the mixed feelings when it comes to BP.

A special shout-out should be done for the hyenas that we also see in this trailer. Obviously, just as in the TLK-reboot, they are CGI – they may not be as impressive and regal as the African lions are in real life, but their teeth and jaws can crack bone, so it is hardly unlikely that any movie will be featuring them as real life animals. They are supposedly not that easily trained either.

…There are rumors that the beast of Gevaudan, a much-discussed wolf-like cryptid of the pre-revolutionary France, had been either a spotted, or more realistically a striped, hyena, released into the French wilderness. How probable is that is debatable, but this is one of the more popular theories when dealing with this monster, and I felt that it should be mentioned, because Joker. He is not in the BP movie, it seems. Considering that we are talking about the Jared Leto version here, it isn’t too surprising; regardless of how you feel about the 2016 movie in general, its’ Joker had certainly sucked. Not surprising, then, that BP feel probably not feature him in person, but trying to cram several years’ worth of Harley’s character development in comics into a single film is not the best solution either. Ah well, we will just have to wait and see what will be revealed regarding the BP movie next.

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

Donald R. Prothero & JP franchise - Sep 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It sucks for various reasons, and when you try to escape it, say, by reading Donald R. Prothero’s collection of dinosaur-related essays, named THE STORY OF THE DINOSAURS IN 25 DISCOVERIES, it sucks even more. Why?

Well, to be different, let us look at the ‘final’, twenty-fifth, discovery – ‘Triceratops’. What is it composed of? The first section – a collection of anecdotes regarding Cope & Marsh and Triceratops’ misadventures with them: Cope called it Agathaumas and assumed that it was a hadrosaur; whereas Marsh at first assumed that it was a giant prehistoric bison at first, (even though bison horns and Triceratops horns are very different). Ha-Ha. How humorous. These days, Cope & Marsh seem to be hybrids of paleontology’s founding fathers and Lewis Carroll’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee from his ‘Alice’ duology. Everyone and their dog know something about Cope and Marsh, especially in their homeland of USA, mainly that they were the first paleontologists there ever, that they participated in ‘Bone Wars’ that were half-grand and half-ridiculous… and this is it. There is even a ‘Weird West’ novel where some Native American shamans begin to animate dinosaur bones slash bring dinosaurs back to life, because the dysfunctional duo and their entourage have intruded on a holy site of some sort or another, ho-ho. Groan. The problem is not about the respect/disrespect of those two deceased worthies, but about the fact that everyone in the US and their dog knows that much about them, and is not impressed about it.

…Except maybe for the current POTUS and the rest of the D.C. crowd. There is a political cartoon on the DA site that depicts the two parties as flies that crawl over a chop of meat that is the country of USA. Frankly, it speaks to me.

‘Triceratops’ the chapter’s opening salvo begins with reused and recycled material that is on par of AoS & MCU reusing and recycling Hydra no matter what. They seem to be replacing them with the Kree in Spider-Man II, but then real life happened, apparently, somebody got scared or something, and Hydra is coming back instead, just because. The Disney/Marvel juggernaut does not do explanations; it just does whatever it wants. This attitude has aggravated the SW fans, cough, and so now that faction of the juggernaut is trying to win them back by SW comics, that these days contain various mini-essays about this or that SW character. Sigh. In today’s Western society, what is sauce for the goose-comics may not be sauce for gander-movies; the SW comics themselves aren’t exactly selling like hot cakes; maybe the upcoming ‘Mandalorian’ series, set in the era of the rising First Order, may do a better job – we’ll have to wait and see.

After the Cope & Marsh anecdote of the chapter, Mr. Prothero went into the biography of another prominent paleontologist – Mr. Hatcher, John Bell. And immediately the Triceratops angle of the chapter began to suffer, as the deceased was not just about the old three-horned face, but went all over the place, including Patagonia, to dig for extinct mammal fossils there. Where is the Triceratops?

In the historical anecdotes and vignettes, of course! Marsh was trying to write a monography on Triceratops and died; Hatcher picked up the slack and also died; it was up to Mr. Swann Lull to finish it. How exciting! …If you did not know about any of this thing, of course, but… However, these days the Western society is becoming increasingly stratified, and in case of paleontology, you either have heard it all before and are not impressed because Mr. Prothero is recycling the same old chestnuts, or you have not heard this before because you do not care about this, and therefore are not impressed for that reason instead. You can hit an owl with a stump, you can hit a stump with an owl, the end result is all the same: the stump is unaffected, the owl definitely is. Mr. Prothero? Your actual readers are your owl. Your essay collections are the stump.

…From the biography of Hatcher, where the Triceratops came and went, we go onto the third part of the chapter, which describes the Triceratops in general, from a biological/paleontological P.O.V., and again, it is all generic, it is basically a lite paraphrase of Wikipedia info. When in the 1970s USSR Nikolai Plavilshchikov released his book ‘Homunculus’, which was a collection of biographies of various scientists from the 17^th century to pre-revolutionary (and WWI) Europe and Russia, it was basically the same thing. Just with the emphasis not on dinosaurs, but on life sciences and scientists, and it is a more coherent book because it doesn’t try to combine dinosaurs with life histories of people in a medium of vignettes and anecdotes released as essays – no, it’s just a collection of vignettes and anecdotes, released at a time when Wikipedia and the Internet didn’t exist, (especially in the USSR), and as such ‘Homunculus’ came across, at least initially, as more original, even though the lay-out was the same – minimum text with maximum illustrations. Just no Wikimedia commons unlike the ’25 Discoveries’… because they did not exist of course, but we are not talking about Plavilshchikov here, but about Mr. Prothero. Did he skim on the Wikipedia? Oh yes he did, with ‘skim’ being the key word: as he is talking about Triceratops on the recent media, he talks about such pieces as – Walking with Dinosaurs. The horned dinosaurs in WWD were actually Torosaurus. In ’25 Discoveries’ you get the feeling that Mr. Prothero adheres to the theory that states that Torosaurus and Triceratops are two different dinosaurs, so why the conflation and confusion regarding the horned dinosaurs in WWD? There’s even ‘The Complete Guide…’ made by Impossible Pictures, the same company that made WWD, that succinctly describes Torosaurus and shows several photo stills of this bull lizard.

…Oh wait, there was a single dead Triceratops in WWD, as opposed to all the live Torosaurus. Nice eyes, Legolas, great generalization! What is next?

Mentions of the Jurassic Park franchise in all of its’ incarnations. The problem is that in JP3 there were no horned dinosaurs, especially in main roles, and neither were they in the first JW movie. Why did Mr. Prothero include those two movies? Because he was just skimming through the Wiki looking for Triceratops info and got complacent? Because just as Marsh (in the ‘Triceratops’ chapter) was putting his name onto his assistants’ work, so does Prothero have the ghost writers do all the work for him, and one of them decided ‘to stick it to the man’? Because Mr. Prothero knows that in the modern Western, (especially American and Canadian) society books aren’t really bought and/or read anymore, and his publication of ’25 discoveries’ and other books is just to stoke his own ego and to demonstrate to his friends, enemies, rivals and so on that he can afford to do this on his salary of ‘a paleontology and geology researcher, teacher and author’? Who knows… Which is where ‘Jurassic World Evolution’ comes in. Several weeks ago, it released the Nasutoceratops species profile, and began to look around for information sources beyond the Wikipedia about this dinosaur, and ’25 discoveries’ supposedly had it.

Only they do not. The only mention of the dinosaur in question is the author’s photo of the ‘family tree of ceratopsians at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City’. I have no idea what Mr. Prothero, his publisher, and the rest of the team were sinking, but the photo isn’t just black-and-white, isn’t just ‘meh’ in quality, but also made at such an angle that it is even harder to see and distinguish all of the skulls in the photo, let alone see what number goes with what skull. Did Mr. Prothero even get permission to photograph this ‘family tree’ or did he just photoshoot it once on the sly and got the hell out of there?.. However, we digress. What was the point, again?

…That JW: BBR, at its’ 8 to 9 minutes in length is precisely the dinosaur movie we deserve. Let us break it into acts. Act I – we meet the Motorhouse family. The actors are credited post-movie, aye, but their roles have no names, they are functions rather than people, apparently. They are shown to be your typical American family, racially diverse and woke, and yes, it is a double-edged sword of itself: when the movie is good, such as ‘Spider-Man II’, being woke makes it better; when the movie is bad, as it was in ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’, then wokeness will only make it worse. In BBR, the plot is so brief – the feature film itself is under 10 minutes, remember? – that it doesn’t matter whether or not this family is nuclear, composite, are its’ members WASPs or POCs – all it matters is that they saw a struggle of dinosaurs, then a carnivorous dinosaur attacked them, and they survived. The end. BBR has all the main characters of a JP franchise movie: dinosaurs & humans, and all the main themes of a JP franchise movie: dinosaur attack, human survival of the dinosaur attack, and human family issues. The only theme missing is the human corporate greed, (but then again, the JP3 film lacked it too), and the entire human mad science creating dinosaurs. JP3 film did not have it either, so JW: BBR actually does not stand out there either. What was the main message of the JP novels, especially the initial one? Life finds a way. This is what the novel version of Ian Malcolm, especially in the first novel, was talking about, however long-windedly and roundaboutedly. Everything else was just dressing, and the BBR post-credits scenes show precisely that. …The final scenes of JW: FK do that too, so no ground-breaking new achieves here in BBR either. The JP franchise goes round and round in circles, as does MCU’s AoS, for comparison, only AoS was doing it for longer and more continuously, proportionally speaking, therefore it is more obvious.

…And then we come to the Nasutoceratops. Whereas ‘Big Al’ had been a fan favorite of the American public for a long time, for a while it was second only to the Tyrannosaurus Rex as the best and most known North American carnivorous dinosaur, Nasutoceratops has been introduced to the general populace by the paleontologists only in 2013. Right now, it’s fall 2019, so let assume that people have known about the Nasutoceratops under 7 years. That’s not that long, so the fact that this dinosaur received several minutes of pure film footage is remarkable; yes, it’s a feature film of JP franchise and the Nasutoceratops’ role could’ve been taken over by any of its’ featured cousins, such as the aforementioned Triceratops or Sinoceratops – but it didn’t. JW: BBR and the rest of the JP franchise actually did something new, whereas Mr. Prothero in his ’25 discoveries’ went with the tried, tested, and old – Triceratops and Protoceratops, for example. Yes, Protoceratops fossils were possibly one source of inspiration for the griffin myth, this was acknowledged at least from the 1990s, if not earlier – is Mr. Prothero putting a brand new image for that story? No, not really – the bigger half of the 24^th chapter is about the Protoceratops and its’ discovery, and the rest is about Psittacosaurus, both tried and true dinosaurs, well known to the public. Unlike the JP franchise, Mr. Prothero is not about to talk about the brand new, but about the really old and well known – and in the last part of the 25^th chapter, Einiosaurus supposedly had a thick bony boss instead of a horn, just as Pachyrhinosaurus did.

…Einiosaurus – and this was established for a while – had a nasal horn and it jutting upwards and forwards like a horizontal hook or a sickle, whereas most horned dinosaurs had a horn that jutted either straight upwards, as in case of Monoclonius and Styracosaurus, or at an angle, as in case of Triceratops and Torosaurus. It is Nasutoceratops that actually lacks a nasal horn, and it is an established fact by now, so either Mr. Prothero has confused it and Einiosaurus, or there is some other gaffe. Ouch.

Let me start to wind down my rant. In the introduction to his ’25 discoveries’, Mr. Prothero may wax poetic about us living in the dinosaur renaissance. He is echoing the language used in the intro to Planet Dinosaur mini-series, (aired in 2011), but that is not the point. The point is that he, and the rest of the official paleontological world, are going around in circles, not unlike the rest of the Western/American society, going for old reliable while presenting them as brand new with nary an effort – and what effort there is, echoes directly back to 1970s and 80s, when the ‘dinosaur renaissance’ truly began in the first main mass media – printed books. These days printed media is decreasing in popularity, but officially, it is still going strong, and Mr. Prothero, at least, is trying to get his piece of happiness by publishing all sort of essay collections – but this is not the point. The point is that the entertainment sector of the Western/American mass media is being the pioneer here, with the official science lagging behind. That is just a sad state of affairs, people!

…And this is it for now; see you all soon!

Battle of Big Rock - Sep 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, just ask the Saudis and the US allies, given how they have just lived through possibly one of the worst attacks on their oil fields…since WWII, maybe. So far, the suspect is supposedly Iran, which raises the question: are we at the start of WWIII? Just like the RF, Iran has had enough of the US hegemony, which grows steadily weaker ever since the US failure in Libya, (and now there are supposedly Russian mercenaries too – double ouch), while its’ European allies squabble with each other over the Brexit. Seriously, people, flip a coin – if it lands on one side, U.K. leaves, period, if it lands on the other – it stays, the end. Kind of like the end of the US/Israel hegemony in Middle East, apparently, as Iran isn’t backing down from a fight with the US and its’ allies anymore. When the G7 meeting took place earlier this year, everybody in the West (and their pro-West allies elsewhere) were extremely happy that Putin had not been there, but a certain high-ranking political representative of Iran was. Where are they now, those wise men and women of statecraft? Clearly, Tehran is just as hostile towards the West as Moscow is, if not more, so where does it leave the leaders of G7 and their allies?

…Yeah, with the Donald in the role of POTUS and a rising crescendo of political hysteria in general in the US, as the elections are coming closer, D.C. party lines are further apart than ever, and no idea of where to go next. If the Saudi Arabia falls before Iran, things will be very bad; the relationship between the two nations had been strained ever since the prophet Muhammed arose in the desert, united the formerly divided Arabian tribes and they conquered… yes, eventually, the Byzantine Christian empire, (what was left of it, eventually), despite the West’s interference, cough, but also the Persian empire of Zoroastrians, the nation that would in modern times become Iran. Now, it seems, the descendants of them Persians are about to unleash some karmic whoop-ass on the descendants of Muhammed’s devotees at last. Oh dear. Moreover, no one can blame it on Putin and the rest of RF either. Ouch.

…Well, this is depressing, so let us try to talk about something – JW ‘Battle of Big Rock’, perhaps? First, though, an honorary mention of AoS and MCU: they are bringing Hydra back officially. And to quote Ambroise Bierce, author and major in the US army (we are talking the American Civil War here of the 19^th century), ‘Why’? In the CA: CW movie Hydra was supposedly gone for good; yes, it came almost on every season of AoS, but AoS’ own relationship with MCU had plenty of problems; and moreover, the second Spider-Man movie seemed to be setting up the Kree as MCU’s next main villains, not Hydra, (which had been mostly human in the MCU so far).

If Hydra is coming back to MCU, this is going to be bad – the first time around it caused a rather nasty split between MCU’s fanbase – whether it was Nazi, or ‘only’ evil. Considering that this version of Hydra is a fictional organization, (rather than a mythical monster, for example), the argument was ridiculous, but there were many bad feelings generated by it until MCU ended Hydra in the CA: CW film. If it brings Hydra back in Phase 4, already burdened with the fallout from Spider-Man’s departure from MCU, as well as the acquiring of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, then MCU might develop new problems on top of the old ones and that is bad, again.

…There are at least two probable reasons regarding this development. The first is that MCU was going to use the Kree in place of Hydra during Phase 4, as set up by the final scenes of Spider-Man II, (remember?), when Spider-Man left, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four came in, and suddenly MCU got shook up by all the new changes, and people in charge decided to scrap the Kree, go back to the tested and true Hydra just because. Too many changes too soon and Disney/Marvel may not control them. As said above, Hydra was more controversial in MCU than it was assumed, so bringing it back in place of the Kree completely might make the MCU situation even worse, so let’s go for the better option: MCU is going to conflate Hydra with the Kree, and then replace Hydra by the Kree as the Phase 4 unfolds, so the AoS S7 will be the final nail in the Hydra coffin…at least in the mainline MCU. What Disney/Marvel will bring out in place of AoS, (probably the Falcon & Bucky show on Disney plus), and whether it will feature Hydra, is another story. What is next?

The ‘Battle at Big Rock’ JW short movie. About 8 to 9 minutes long, it featured a diverse American family in California as they go on a camping trip in some fictional American national park in California, and get involved with the imported wildlife, as an Allosaurus fights it out with a Nasutoceratops family and then turns upon them. Hit the stop button.

Where to begin? First, in that perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Nasutoceratops profile was released by the Jurassic World Evolution game several weeks before today; if any’s interested, a Nasutoceratops is a cousin of Triceratops, but without the nasal horn and with a notable different muzzle from its’ much more famous cousin. Allosaurus, on the other hand, is a well-established dinosaur among paleontologists, dinosaur fans, and ordinary people; for a while, it was second only to Tyrannosaurus in its’ popularity in the West, but now it has been pushed back in favor of its’ cousins, dinosaurs like Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus, but it is still prominent. In BBR, however, it was hopelessly outmatched; no offense to all of the Big Al fans out there, but unlike Tyrannosaurus, who had evolved precisely for this sort of thing – to bite through bone and crush the reinforced skulls and frills of horned dinosaurs, (among other things), Allosaurus’ teeth and jaws were designed for shearing flesh of giant sauropods – just look at ‘Ballad of Big Al’, for example of the “Walking with…” series. When facing a dinosaur like the Nasutoceratops, Big Al was out of his depths.

…Yes, the Nasutoceratops was most certainly not in any of the franchise’s movies so far; in the last JW movie it was the Sinoceratops instead, a different Triceratops cousin. It had no brow horns, but a prominent nasal horn instead – essentially, a reversal of the Nasutoceratops’ arrangement. In the last JW movie, it fought a Carnotaurus; why the people of the JP franchise decided to use an Allosaurus this time is anyone’s guess. Maybe they were trying to change the dressings on what was basically a rehash of the JW: FK Carnotaurus vs. Sinoceratops fight? It is still anyone’s guess…

As for the human element, here we come to the second JP movie, ‘The Lost World’. This is the film in the franchise that the BBR resembles the most. Primarily, its’ second act, when Big Al goes for the family in the trailer is reminiscent of the scene in ‘The Lost World’, where Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding are treating the juvenile Tyrannosaurus in their trailer, and its’ parents begin to object. As it happens in those movies, some of Malcolm and Harding’s entourage got eaten, but they and Malcolm’s daughter, who’s an Afro-American herself, just like the father and daughter in BBR – making, her, Malcolm and Sarah something of a mixed family themselves – survive.

Again, both Tyrannosaurus and Carnotaurus make much better dinosaurs for this sort of smash and grab attack – they both evolved for strength, in two different ways but along similar evolutionary lines, whereas Big Al was proportionally a more gracile hunter among the giant dinosaurs. (Plus, at 9 m in length on average, it was smaller than the Tyrannosaurus was, even if still bigger than the Carnotaurus). It really was not designed for this sort of punishment – being gored and tossed by the Nasutoceratops’ parents, and then being shocked, stabbed, shot and so on by the humans. No wonder that it had enough and just left in the end – and this brings us back to people: where did they go?

The obvious answer would be that they got eaten, but this is wrong: a solitary Allosaurus is precisely the wrong theropod dinosaur to eat several families of humans without making a noise. This dinosaur – and the rest of its’ carnosaur cousins – were pack hunters, working together to bring down giant sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Argentinosaurus, (to use the Impossible Pictures’ examples). When faced with several smaller prey items, an Allosaurus just did not have the mental hardware to deal with them – remember ‘The Ballad of Big Al’? The titular character’s downfall came when he tried to attack a herd of smaller, human-sized dinosaurs – Dryosaurs’ or Othnielias: Big Al chased them, they scattered, Big Al didn’t catch anyone, and actually broke one of his toes, and the fracture eventually got infested and he died. His relative in BBR did better – he didn’t die at the end of this short feature film, but he wasn’t doing very well either… but what about the humans? What happened to them, Greg and co.? The better option is that they got swallowed by a plot hole, but let us go with the other possibility: the Nasutoceratops family scared them away, and the main characters – actually, the only characters, you can say – just did not hear it due to their own noise. Ok, and this brings us to the ‘credit scenes’ and ‘The Lost World’.

Sure, one of the scenes featured a pterosaur eating a white dove released at a wedding and another one the Mosasaur eating a great white shark. Both of those animals escaped from the island and the Lockwood manor in the last movie, (though does it mean that the Mosasaur has reached South Africa or Australia by now, because that is where great white sharks and sea lions live these days; they also live in California, but the island was not off the American west coast, I think, so South Africa & Australia are more realistic here, ironically, but we digress). However, the other two short scenes featured, firstly, a girl chased and attacked by several compys. The same thing happened in the opening of ‘The Lost World’ film, which, in turn, were inspired by the opening scenes of the JP novel. (Read it). And secondly, we have a Stegosaurus attacking a car – again, we are talking ‘The Lost World’ here, where a different Stegosaurus attacked Sarah Harding. What does it all add up to, I have no idea, except that it is evidence that the franchise has lost steam: BBR is a rehash of ‘The Lost World’, the second JP movie, with some ‘Fallen Kingdom’ elements thrown into the mix. Put otherwise, and this is a rehash equal to some of the worst AoS/MCU rehashes, such as the return of Hydra, talked above. Where will this old rotten chestnut take MCU, (AoS is ending in 2020 for good now), is unknown, but proportionally, MCU is much more durable than the JP franchise; it is more likely to survive its’ bad decisions than the JP franchise – its’. Yes, the next JW movie is supposed to end this trilogy, but if it goes out with a whimper, it might be the end of the JP franchise for good, and I hope that that never happens…

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