What If, 'T'Challa the Star-Lord' - Aug 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the U.S.’, (but also NATO’s), actions in the RL Afghanistan showed it to everyone, loud and clear, on August 16, 2021…onwards. I really want to talk about it, but, conversely, many other people have already talked, and are talking, and will be talking about this for a long time from now on, so let us talk about something else – the second episode of ‘What If?’

What happens here, of course, is that Disney/Marvel/MCU are trying to erase J. Gunn’s live-action GotG franchise and replace it with a better one, one that is animated. I am guessing that whatever beef they had with ScarJo in regards to the ‘Black Widow’ movie pales in face of their feud with J. Gunn! What next?

Well, the Western world will need to figure out what to do now that the Taliban, as well as their Pakistan backers and superiors have won a major score – oh, we are talking about ‘What If?’ No…well, yes, but here is where ‘The Suicide Squad’ deserves a special mention.

The new version of the 2016 film is a good movie although it has its flaws, just as the 2016 version had its’ virtues. For example, in 2016, Waller was assembling a team that was supposed to be custom-made, to be precisely tailored to deal with various threats…on behalf of the American government, (cough). Yes, it didn’t go smoothly, not quite to plan, but in the end? The titular characters actually delivered…pretty much as Waller and her cohorts had expected them to be, and maybe even surpassing the expectations, (not that there was too much height to clear). Here, in the 2021 version, the Wall not so much assembled as collected a literally motley crew of bits and pieces that don’t even fit together, and make MCU’s AoS crew seem cohesive – and has the gall to be surprised when the mission literally dissolves into shite.

…No, I am not talking about the massacre on the beach but about how the team Bloodsport did its’ job in the completely opposite direction from where the Wall…assumed that it would go, apparently? Seriously, she collected some of the worst people in the DC-verse and sent them off with minimal oversight – Colonel Rick Flagg and whatever means of keeping an eye on both teams, (drones? Satellite cameras?). The result was that Flagg died and the news about the American government’s involvement with Jotunheim and Starro leaked out all the same – something that Waller wanted to avoid. Peacekeeper was nullified, Blackguard died, and her FBI underlings turned on her, (guess they heard what she did to their predecessors in the first movie). I have no idea as to what agent Waller will do next, but that is not why the movie failed. Rather, it failed because the American audiences had their fill of movie theaters for the moment, plus all of the baggage that was carried over from the first Suicide Squad movie, one that HBO/WB/DC/whoever never managed to quite divorce from the new one…

Back to ‘What If?’ Yeah, sort of. In the first GotG film, we had a ragtag group of characters, literally, who went forth and saved the galaxy. In the second film, they progressed, becoming more competent and more comfortable together. Moreover, in the ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ movies, they did their best to stop Thanos, and stop him they did…with losses along the way, but that was unavoidable.

And now we got the second ‘What If?’ episode that has none of that, but instead we got T’Challa succeeding at practically everything that Peter Quill had struggled with. Maybe that is justifiable, but as we have seen in MCU, both in CA: CW and the first ‘Black Panther’ film, T’Challa has had his own problems so clearly, in his ‘What If?’ episode, (Earth-TRN877), this might be some very alternative T’Challa, (though he and Yondu both were fought to a standstill, cough, by this dimension’s Collector)… Anything else?

The tendency to play it safe as it was depicted in the series’ premiere is running here true too – all of the characters are familiar to us, its’ their roles that change. In the series’ premiere, this was downplayed, sort of, but now and here, in the episode 1x02, it is played-out to the max, in an almost vaudeville-like manner. So, what next?

Sadly, I have no idea, or at least – no concrete idea. I have some theories, but nothing that I want to air for the moment. Therefore, for now, this is it – see you all soon instead.

Doolittle-2020 & etc - Oct 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. You may try to alleviate some of this suckage by trying to do something new…but the U.S. government does something entirely different as judging by the Middle Eastern mess. It just is not good, and it makes the situation back in D.C. worse. Is the Donald getting impeached or not? For a while, there were even rumors of Mike Pence being the next Republican president, but this is it. Now there’s the Middle Eastern situation with the Kurds, there’s the story of a police officer shooting an Afro-American woman in her home in Texas, there are rumors of an Epstein-Trump connection, but nothing concrete about the impeachment.

The most likely possibility is that it had died down again. As the recent events showed, the Democrats are not that cohesive themselves as a political unit – the ‘old guard’ and AOC and her ‘new squad’ are not getting along, and there may be other factions inside that party as well. That said, none of them are all that enthused about Mike Pence’s presidency, so that might be an extra motivation for the Democrats to back down from the impeachment push and return to the previous plan: tone down the internal aggression to define and decide as to who’ll be the next presidential candidate for the next election. With the Democrats backing down, so will the Republicans – they don’t care much for the Donald either, but gives them the main advantage against the Democrats for the moment, and so they’re keeping him, if they can and if he continues to provide them the advantage. Otherwise, they will give him the boot themselves, the end. The only end that is left loose are the U.S.’ Mid-East politics, which are left in disarray while the big chiefs back in D.C. resolve conflicts of their own making and pat themselves on the back for doing this, but that is neither here nor there. What is next?

Let us talk about movies instead. ‘Gemini Man’ was expectedly bad unless you are a diehard Will Smith fan; the ‘Addams Family 2019’ was surprisingly good, though the live action ‘Addams Family’ 1991 movie is still the best, in my opinion. That said, the animated 2019 film has clearly been influenced by the live action movie series, (I think it was a trilogy), and did its’ best to capture the Addams family magics, (metaphorically speaking), and it succeeded so yay! Anything else?

There is going to be a ‘Spider-Man meets Venom’ movie after all, so far, there are no discussions of the ‘Addams Family 2019’ film online, (oddly enough), and then there is the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie trailer. In regards to the latter, what the Hell? It is a hot mess that is almost as bad as the trailer for S1 ‘Insatiable’ Netflix series had been; supposedly, the movie is about the titular character going on a journey to save queen Victoria, (yes, we’re talking about a character based directly on the real-life monarch here) from some mysterious illness after his wife died some time later. An assembly of sidekicks, both human and animal, are assisting him…but the trailer does a bad job of explaining this, all it is so far is a mess of movie action shots that just do not tell a coherent story, nor do they introduce any characters aside from the titular character who is played by Robert Downey Jr., also known as the Iron Stark – sorry, the Iron Man – who gets to ride a CGI ostrich in this movie instead. At least I hope that the ostrich is CGI, because while you can ride a real ostrich in modern times, you will probably be sued by ASPCA or some similar agency afterwards, and I doubt that Disney wants that.

…Disney doesn’t appear to be openly involved with the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie? Not surprising, because already the movie is off to a bad start, involving massive reshoots and changing dates to avoid conflict with the Disney/SW ‘SW9’ movie, which doesn’t promise anything positive for this particular film. Of course, keep in mind that I, for one, am more used to the Soviet adaptations of the original novel, which got to be very different from the original; in it, the titular character usually goes to Africa to treat some ill monkeys slash apes, encounters an atypical animal called Pushy-Pulley, and becomes an arch nemesis of a pirate leader… it really is a lot more child-friendly and less exciting than how it sounds, but the Soviet cinematography really loved it, and there were several versions of ‘Doolittle’ adaptations during the existence of USSR – cartoons, live-action movies, animated movies, etc. By contrast, in the West, (ok, the U.S.), ‘Doolittle’ adaptations are even more free-style than the Soviet ones were, often going completely off-script, but this is justifiable: in the original novel when the good doctor went down to Africa, for example, he encountered a kingdom of cannibalistic savages…which is really inappropriate for the twenty-first century for all sorts of reason, we all can agree. Even this misbegotten trailer for ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie seems to skip this plotline, though there was a shot of someone who might be this movie’s version of a pirate chief – and we see the Iron Doctor, sorry, the Doolittle Stark – facing-off with a man-eating tiger as well. If ‘Doolittle 2020’ will be able to keep itself together, it can be a really good movie, but otherwise? It risks becoming a mess on par with the ‘Insatiable’ S1, only worse so, since ‘Insatiable’ is a Netflix series, and in S2 it seems to have fixed itself and has become less controversial and edgy and more mainstream instead. ‘Doolittle 2020’ probably will not get the chance to do that via a sequel. Anything else?

The second ‘Frozen II’ movie trailer was mostly all about Olaf and didn’t give anything new regarding the plot of this film, and then there’s the trailer for the upcoming ‘Harley & Ivy’ cartoon series, starring Kaley Cuoco as the voice of Harley Quinn. It is not too coherent either, but it does not need to be – it depicts clearly enough that it will be about Harley breaking up with Joker and becoming her own woman, probably with a romantic plot line involving her and Ivy. The first attempt to team up those two had been back in the 90s, in an episode of Batman: the Animated Series’, where Harley had had enough of Mr. J for once, tried to strike out on her own and ended up teaming up with Ivy instead. The pair had had some fantabulous adventures of their own, though because it was the 90s, there was no Harley/Ivy romance…but from then on, the pair had increasingly more and more girl time together especially in the animated DC works. Ergo, this particular development in the DC cartoons is only natural and expected, but where does it leave the upcoming ‘BP 2020’ movie?

…Potentially high and dry and unrequested, because Harley will already have her fantabulous emancipation in the cartoon series, and the live-action movie will be the 2020’s analogue of the 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’, where several years of character development in the comics tried to be crammed into a single movie, so is it any surprise that the result was not so much good or bad, but mangled? If it does not work, the 2020 ‘Birds of Prey’ film will end up in the same way, and that would be sad, especially since Jared Leto is already upset that he and his version of Joker was apparently kicked out of DCEU for good. Ah well, maybe he will do a better Morbius in MCU instead.

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