Hyenas (and Zombies) - Sep 08

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, therefore I was going to talk about the upcoming Marvel™ Zombies special, but then Textbooks Travels YouTube channel presented a video about five hyena species, including the one new species, and I had to watch – hyenas are some of my favorite animals, you know?

Anyhow, after going through about 30 minutes of video footage of the various hyena, team TT finally reached the supposed new species in question – and it is the aardwolf. Pause.

Here is the thing. There are four modern species of hyena, and they are all specialists in their unique ways, all are different from each other in various different ways. In case of the aardwolf, it is the smallest and the weakest hyena species, one that is specialized in feeding on ants and termites, it is an unassuming and nocturnal animal, most people in Africa (especially the not-tourists) are ignoring or just unaware of it, and for the rest of the world, the situation is not much better. That is one.

Two is that there are two aardwolf subspecies. Pause.

Let us backtrack a bit. Out of the four modern hyena species, the spotted and the brown hyenas are monotypic; there is just one species of each without any greater genetic variation. With the striped hyena and the aardwolf, the situation is different. The striped hyena has up to five subspecies, but they all differ from each other mostly by where they live – from northern Africa (the Sahara desert) to Middle East, to Central Asia, to India, (mostly the north-east – like its’ sister species the brown hyena, the striped hyena is primarily a desert dweller/specialist). The aardwolf is less extreme, but it too has two subspecies – one in east Africa and the second in the south Africa – that have some minor physical differences, and thus they are two separate subspecies – but they differ from each other primarily by where they live. Team TT took this concept and proclaimed that no, the two populations are two different species of the aardwolf (aka two different hyena species), but so far there’s no consensus on that, so I’m going to call out them (him) and say that their proclamation about there being five hyena species in the modern world is wrong. Anything else?

…The aardwolf really got the short end of the stick in the TT hyena video – it had the least amount of footage & screen time, it had to share with the bat-eared fox. The two are not related at all, the hyenas are part of the cat half of the mammal carnivore family tree, and the wild dogs are the more ancient clan out of the two. That is part of the reason as to why wild dogs are found all over the world these days, (excluding Antarctica), while the hyenas are not. Just like some of their cat cousins, they tried to imitate the dogs, to try to beat them at their own game – and outside of Africa, they failed. The spotted hyena is as a formidable a pack hunter as any dog, but it is savannah animal, unlike the brown and striped hyenas (or the big cats such as the lion and the leopard); it does not do well in the desert, it cannot cross the Sahara into Eurasia. The brow hyena, of course, is hemmed in by the two oceans on one hand, and it does not enter the savannah, because there it would be outcompeted by the local predators/scavengers before it reached the African east (where Africa is connected to Eurasia). The striped hyena is already there, of course, but it is half the size and muscle of the spotted hyena and just like the brown hyena, it is a desert specialist and does not enter more fertile areas, (such as the Southeast Asian jungles, for example). In addition, the aardwolf is an insectivore, it feeds on insects and as long as they are plentiful, (and they are), it is happy. So is the bat-eared fox, of course, but we are talking hyenas here, not foxes and other wild dogs.

…The point here is that without humans being in the picture, the hyenas are doing just fine, even though about 87.5% of their global population is in Africa. By living there, they avoid competing for food resources with the wild dogs, and thus both them and the wild canines are satisfied.

In addition, where does it leave the Marvel™ zombies? In their own part of MCU multiverse, of course – they were introduced In Marvel’s™ now finished ‘What if?’ animated series, and it will be somewhat interesting to see as to how Earth-89521 will deal with the undead threat. The hyenas, in fact, should be of little help there – the aardwolf is an insectivore and does not eat carrion to begin with, the spotted hyena prefers to hunt live prey, and the brown and the striped hyenas, while scavengers, are nowhere as formidable as it is. Therefore, the humans of that dimension will have to defeat the zombies one way or another, mostly by themselves – and we will have to wait until September 24, 2025 to see how it plays out…

Well, this is it for now, see you all soon.

Eyes of Wakanda - Aug 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’… Pause.

Well, first let me admit that, apparently, I got it wrong – the video of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee painting plastic pigeon figurines wasn’t the Kickstarter, more like a special feature to motivate the financing of the Kickstarter, or whatever… Fair enough, but listen: LN openly admits that her YouTube channel is a business venture, she is in for money – and she shares money with her underlings and coworkers. Have to respect her for her openness and honesty, if nothing else, (and there is much more).

BB, on the other hand… are largely similar, but are not as successful as LN is. In part, this is because they’re a part of PBS, and PBS overall is suffering due to the Donald’s meddling in the American world, (real life sucks, remember?), but still, the sight of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee just painting tiny pigeons while muttering some facts about the pigeons from the Internet… just no…

In addition, speaking of facts, what about the ‘Eyes’? Yes, they are a work of fiction, but in the episode 1x02, they went after the ‘Iliad’, and…

Yes, true, there was a Troy in RL, and there possibly was a Trojan War in RL too, but so far, we have no idea what actually went down, so we have to accept Homer’s version as canon, which makes ‘Iliad’ & ‘Odyssey’ about as real as MCU. Moreover, Achilles, Odysseus, and co. are a part of Marvel comics – and been so for a while, nothing new here, but, again, what is with the disrespect? The second episode of ‘Eyes’ plays fast and loose with the ‘Iliad’, so it will ruffle some feathers – it ruffled mine, which is why I am writing about the ‘Eyes’ more than 2 weeks after it had aired. Pause.

Taking a breath and starting anew. In many ways, the ‘Eyes’ are clichéd and banal. In the first episode, Noni is the maverick who makes the right in choice in saving Wakanda from… what? Exposure? The Lion did not care about it, he wanted to rule outside of it, but because Wakanda had a PR problem even in the 1260 BC or so, the Dora Milaje sent Noni to bring the Lion to heel – she caused him to die instead, but, hey, she recovered the artefacts, so yay! She becomes a War Dog instead.

That is one of Wakanda’s flaws – it is isolationist, it wants to stay largely isolated, it comes down hard on those, who disagree with it, yet when those dissidents leave and start their own thing, the Wakandan government (well, the royal family) short-circuits and does its’ best to bring those dissidents to heel or just kill them. MCU and co. deal with this problem by making such renegades evil, but still, it is not one of Wakanda’s best aspects.

Back to the ‘Eyes’… sigh. The Lion was a variant Killmonger from the first Black Panther film, and the final episode actually sets up the first Black Panther film, to a certain extent. The Lion wasn’t a bad character, but as a villain? He fell flat.

In addition, in the second, ‘Iliad’ episode, we have B’Kai, who joined the Greek army to retrieve a Wakandan amulet, and he does. He also lets Helen run away with Paris-

Helen never escaped with Paris; Paris died awhile before Odysseus came up with the Trojan Horse, and Helen would eventually return home with her legal husband, Menelaus. Helen of Troy, in fact, is partially a romantic heroine from the knightly stories of later days, and partially – a modern femme fatale, but we digress.

I don’t want to discuss all the ways how much did the ‘Eyes’ mess with the ‘Iliad’, I’ll just point out that Memnon/B’Kai isn’t from Homer – he is from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’; he was an Egyptian, or an Ethiopian, general, sent to help the Trojans. He was also the son of Eos, or Aurora, the goddess of Dawn. He went against Achilles, died, and his entourage became birds. Sigh. If the bigwigs in MCU wanted to, they could have made quite a story about the Wakandan meddling the Trojan War and remained much more true to the original classical sources as well.

As for the last two episode of the ‘Eyes’… Pause. The first two episodes were connected to each other via the character of Noni and the plot continuity; the last two episodes were much more detached from each other and the first two. Were there supposed to be more episodes of ‘Eyes’ than just four? Did some rushed editing had to take place? Disney/MCU are not telling…

Anyhow, the third episode feels like a filler – the south meets the east, that sort of thing, Wakanda meets the K’un Lun, eh? It does not amount to anything… and the final episode mostly just sets-up the first Black Panther movie. Fun!

Only not, as B’Kai, for example, reminded me of Grant Ward, who betrayed his new friends for duty. Only because B’Kai’s duty was to Wakanda, not to Hydra, he is a protagonist, rather than an antagonist instead. MCU really does its’ best to recycle the old ideas in new ways, but maybe it should just go with outright new ideas instead? It worked for the new F4 film…

There is one more aspect to the ‘Eyes’, however – the African/Afro-American one. As the ‘Black Panther’ films showed, they are MCU’s Afro-Futurism reps, and for Disney/MCU, political correctness in regards to the Africans/Afro-Americans is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, before the ‘Eyes’, MCU’s latest depiction of Afro-Americans came from ‘Ironheart’ – I’m talking about Riri here. In the BP2 film, she was… average. In ‘Ironheart’, MCU did not know what to do with her, and it showed – she made Sony’s Kraven look good. Also – competent and coherent, (the movie, not the main character). Something had to be done, so MCU quickly made, or remade, the ‘Eyes’, and used them to cover up ‘Ironheart’ as the latest MCU bit that features people of color. The ‘Eyes’ do a better job of it than ‘Ironheart’ did, but then again, almost anything would – ‘Ironheart’ set the bar this low, and the ‘Eyes’ still feel like a rushed job that MCU doesn’t really needs, you know? Ah well, Disney/MCU have a better idea of what MCU/its’ audience needs than MCU’s actual viewers do no doubt… That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at the Donald, Putin, and the Alaska story – but we will discuss that another time…

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

 

Bizarre Beasts: Pasenger Pigeon - August 09

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I spent an hour of my life listening to Ms. Sarah Suta and friend discuss – among other things, but primarily that – the life and the extinction of the passenger pigeon. (It happened in 1914 – spoiler alert!) Therefore, let us talk about this bird.

The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, evolved about 5.33 MYA – that is a couple of million years before the appearance of the Australopithecus primates in Africa, and unlike them, the pigeon lived only in North America. Despite being, well, a pigeon, it did not look much like the feral pigeon/rock dove that is found in the cities worldwide – rather it looked more like a mourning dove, for example: it was relatively slick, streamlined, and with a long tail. A body shape adapted for long distance travel, put otherwise.

Off topic: the doves and pigeons are more varied than people realize it, but they can be sorted into two baseline groups: slender and bulky. The dodo was an extreme case, but the other members of its’ ‘tribe’, the Raphini, are also big and bulky, as far as flying birds go; on the other hand, the passenger pigeon was a member of the Columbini tribe, and just its’ relatives, it flew just fine; in fact…

…In fact, the life and the ecology of the passenger pigeon was defined by flight: it was a migratory bird, travelling the North American continent to avoid winter and to find food. Like the other pigeons and doves, this bird was primarily herbivorous, and ate fruits and berries, as well as grains, cereals, and seeds: food that is easily digestible and found mostly on the trees. That is important, again, because unlike the homebody dodos, the passenger pigeons were migrants. What next?

The passenger pigeon’s migratory lifestyle was its’ defining feature: for centuries, the native North Americans had the humongous flocks of those birds as a part of life. Did they eat the pigeon? Yes, obviously, but their hunting weapons were… simple enough for the natives to be incapable to dent the great flocks, plus the passenger pigeons were rather adapted to co-existing with the non-too-friendly native North American humans, so they were able to handle it. Then the European settlers arrived. Everything changed.

Native North Americans lived in a homeostasis with nature, they conceived themselves to be a part of it, and adjusted their attitudes, and lifestyles, accordingly. The Europeans never had this idea, and adjusted the natural world to suit their needs. In case of the passenger pigeon, it meant that the European settlers began to kill and eat them in bulk; in a matter of decades, (say, from 1850s to 1900s), the great flocks of the passenger pigeons were gone.

Could the settlers and their American descendants have co-existed with the passenger pigeons? Not how, say, Colossal Biosciences would deliver this idea: the great flocks of those migratory birds did decimate the crops of fruits, and grain fields, and the like, and they would return time and again, making farming, such as it was, hardly possible. Instead, the passenger pigeons would have to be managed, (think modern forestry), maybe domesticated, maybe not. People have domesticated pigeons, obviously¸ but they were the ‘Old World pigeons’ that belonged to an entirely different genus from the passenger pigeon, (it had no immediate relatives, BTW), plus those pigeons were domesticated to be served as messengers and mail carriers – at first; the elaborate domestic breeds that don’t look like pigeons and certainly don’t appear to be able to function in the wild came later, when the need in carrier pigeons began to decrease. (However, some still exist even today). Whether the passenger pigeon could have been domesticated and managed as the modern ‘domestic’ pigeon was, is unknown.

The modern ‘domestic’ pigeon has a stable feral population, but unlike the extinct passenger pigeon, it has a broader diet and much smaller flocks, and it has larger egg clutches and/or reproductive rates: the passenger pigeon’s population was so huge and so stable, at first, that the passenger pigeons managed their population growth slowly: they could afford to take ‘hits’ that would hurt the populations of their less numerous cousins. The passenger pigeons were even able to survive the depredations of the colonists and their descendants – at first, and then they did not.

The Americans did try to preserve and/or to manage the last passenger pigeon populations in the U.S., for various reasons – but they failed. In the 1890s-1900s the concept of nature conservation was too new to be successful, plus the perpetually migrating, (ok, almost perpetually migrating, but still), were not the easiest birds to manage. Now, in the modern times, the situation is different, (technically speaking), but the idea of bringing back the passenger pigeon is not being discussed, at least not in public.

Why? Aside from the practical point of view – the passenger pigeon was perfectly edible to humans – the birds were more colorful, beautiful, and natural than the modern RL feral pigeon/rock dove is. They can fit into the modern world more easily than the dire wolf and the moa birds. They are also easier to manage than the dire wolf and the moa birds, and – easier to create, perhaps? Colossal Biosciences are ‘recreating’ the moa by modifying the tinamou with emu genes, or vice versa. Whatever hybrid will emerge, if it is viable and non-sterile, it still will not be a moa.

…Of course, with a ‘recreated’ passenger pigeon it will be the same situation: it will not be the original passenger pigeon species that died out by WWI; it will be something entirely new. However, it will be easier to pass the bird as the ‘recreated passenger pigeon’ and it will be easier to manage. However, no – CB has focused itself on the moa and the dire wolf (and whatever else it is doing behind the scenes). Sad, really.

…But not as sad as me watching a pair of young women painting miniature plastic figurines of apparent passenger pigeons for an hour, (that’s how long they painted, not how long I watched), while quietly discussing the abovementioned info about the bird. They have read the Wikipedia article about it and that is it. They had a private conversation about it, painted some plastic, and put it into the livestream. Oh, and there was a Kickstarter involved that had people send Sarah, Aimee, and friends money for Sarah and Aimee to do the above. Suddenly, Lindsey Nikole does not seem to be so mercenary anymore, and the CB – not such frauds.

That, however, is a story for another time. See you all soon!

 

F4, 'Ironheart' +etc. - July 27

Disclaimer: real life sucks. First OO is gone, and then HH, so now king Hades has to call queen Persephone to help him deal with the double emergency. Now onto the F4-2025 movie?

Hard to say. RL was not idle recently and CB unleashed the host species of their upcoming to be resurrected giant moa species – the greater tinamou and the emu. Why? Because among the ratites, the tinamous are the closest relatives to the extinct moa, whereas the emu…

CB also proclaims that the emu is a close relative to the moa birds. It is not – the two ratite lineages were quite distant from each other. However, it is the biggest modern ratite (and modern bird overall) after the African ostriches, so it is reasonable to theorize that CB is going to ‘augment’ the emu DNA with that of the tinamous and see what happens. In case of the wolves, this strategy worked… supposedly. Lately the trio of Romus, Remulus and Khaleesi vanished from MM, you know? The point, however, is that for most people grey and dire wolves are just… wolves, they expect them to be externally similar to each other, so when they see… well, wolf puppies, they don’t really care just what kind of wolf puppies they are – if CB says that they’re dire wolf puppies, they’ll believe CB, period.

With the birds, it is more complex, especially with such a unique species as the South Island Giant Moa: physically, it is quite different from both the emu and the tinamous. Whether CB will augment an emu with tinamou genes, or vice versa, the result will not be a moa, even if CB will successful. What will It be, (and that is a big if), is another question…

In addition, yes, again, the emu is not the best candidate for a resurrected moa – the moa preferred to live in forests, and the emu lives on open plains instead. Even behaviourally, the potential new hybrid will not be like the original species. The cassowaries, who are the emu’s closest relatives, do live in the forests, but they are smaller than the emu, and much more aggressive. Naturally, CB will not have anything to do with them. What else?

Well, the F4 film. To me, it feels like a successful reworking of the 2000s F4 films, which worked. This puts ‘First Steps’ miles above the ‘Ironheart’ mini-series, which is forgotten already.

Why?

Because ‘First Steps’ is a soft reboot of sorts: it takes place in a completely different universe from ‘the sacred timeline’ with completely new characters – and it is a success. Now Disney/MCU can make more Marvel adventures in this universe with an occasional something or other taking place in the original MCU timeline as well.

‘Ironheart’, on the other hand, takes place in the MCU, just as Disney/MCU lose interest in it. ‘Ironheart’ is better than SW-2025, (but that is a low bar), but worse than 2024 ‘Kraven’. It is not a mash of two different movies, more like a failed case of having its’ cake and eating it too. ‘Ironheart’ fluctuates from being depended on Tony Stark and his legacy in the MCU world, to being completely detached from it. The cast, the crew, everyone else did not really know what they were doing, and they did not care about it either. The result? ‘Ironheart’ is almost forgotten by now, as is MCU itself by now – somewhat, but that is another story.

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

CB and the giant moa birds - July 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I was about to talk about ‘Ironheart’, perhaps, or the JWR movie, when Colossal Biosciences (CB) came back out of nowhere, and proclaimed that they are bringing back the giant moa birds. Pause.

Let us roll back to the dire wolf adventure – re-creating those mammals is already hard because they belong to a different genus, one that is separate from all of the genera of the modern canines, none of them, from the grey wolf to the grey fox of the Americas are close relatives of the dire wolf. Giving ‘primitive’ traits and characteristics to the modern grey wolf puppies does not make them dire wolves. Pause.

With the moa birds, the situation is different from the wolves’. See, the moa birds are part of the ratites, or Paleognath birds, a separate infraclass from the rest of the birds for they do not have the keel bone anymore… only not. One lineage does.

The tinamous of South America are enigmatic and little studied birds; they behave largely like the gamebirds of the rest of the world, (aside from Australia), and they can fly, however poorly. Yet, they are also ratite/Paleognath birds, and they are the closest modern relatives of the extinct moa birds. Silence.

Let us expand. All of the Paleognath birds are related to each other, but there are nuances. The African ostriches (two species) are a sister group to everyone else. Next are the America rheas (also two species), followed by the tinamous and the moa birds, and finally we have the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and their closest living relatives – New Zealand kiwi birds on one hand, and the Australian emus and cassowaries on the other. Take a breath.

Now, with dire wolves, CB were able to swing it using the parallel evolutionary similarities between them and the modern grey wolves, and even that didn’t really float. With the giant moa birds, what candidates will CB use to ‘recreate’ them? Genetically their closest living relatives are the tinamous, but they do not behave or look anything like the giant moa birds did, so giving them the anatomical characteristics of the moa birds won’t work – the resulting mutations won’t be viable or beneficial most likely. Meanwhile, behaviorally, among the ratites, it is the cassowaries of Australia who are most like the giant moa birds are, but…

…But however the moa birds did behave, and we will never know because they became extinct because of the Maori before the Europeans could study them, the cassowaries are solitary birds with aggressive tempers who are not afraid of humans very much and who are known to attack them. Out of the two groups, the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries… ok, the biggest two species of the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries are, and so, if CB and co. will try to make bigger and more massive modern cassowaries, they just might end with an ecological disaster, and they don’t want that, hopefully.

On the other hand, Peter Jackson, the maker of the LotR and the ‘Hobbit’ movies seems to have invested into CB’s recreation of the giant moa birds, so now, CB does have to deliver something, at least on the level with the genetically modified dire/grey wolf puppies, or else there might be a lawsuit and some sort of a PR disaster for the company. Pause.

Do I care about CB? Not particularly. The wolf story was not a bad one; they could have just stuck with mammals and went along. Now they are off into the deep end, and with at least one celebrity along for the ride, they are likely to have a PR explosion in their faces – but they asked for it. Still, it will be interesting to see as to what will develop out of this statement of theirs – but it probably will not be a giant moa bird. (We do not really have any DNA of theirs, incidentally).

End

Thunderbolts - May 3

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In part, it might be my doing – but I never denied it – so now let us talk about the new ‘Thunderbolts’ film instead.

First, it works. It works, because it mostly keeps away from politics, whether RL or MCU, and talks about the titular characters dealing, and defeating, their inner darkness, while managing the conflict with Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, or – ‘Don’t call me Val!’ Pause.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, who are a bit of Marvel’s Suicide Squad, (run by DC instead). Moreover, the DCEU itself is being remade right now, so let us not talk about it, and get back to MCU and the ‘Thunderbolts’.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, but now, in the post-SW MCU, there is no mention of the Skrulls, the She-Hulk, or the Marvels; MCU is pretending that all of the above haven’t existed, and the CA: BNA movie, the D: BA TV series, and now – the ‘Thunderbolts’ film confirm it; there’s a distinct feeling of ‘in with the new’ with all of them. Even the titular team is named not after the general ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, aka the Red Hulk, but after some obscure piece of MCU in-verse trivia instead. Fun!

MCU’s Taskmaster/Taskmistress is dead – a pity – and there is no mention of Kate, even though she and Yelena had plenty of chemistry in ‘Hawkeye’. However, the market (and the political climate) directs, and with 4 years of a Republican president in charge of the U.S., Disney and its’ branches, including MCU, are changing. We have discussed it, when we talked about AAA, so let us not repeat ourselves. Anything else?

The special effects were impressive, another one of MCU characters that vanished was Rick Jones or whoever, who helped Natasha in her ‘Black Widow’ film; ah well. ScarJo is going to appear in the next JP reboot now, and it makes the ‘Black Widow’ film appear like a classical masterpiece. What else?

…Everett Ross, who appeared in both ‘Black Panther’ films, was also killed off in the SW; since he was ‘Don’t call me Val!’ ex-husband, this is somewhat important. Only not, since Val is flirting (sort of) with the Red Guardian (Alexei) already. Well, since the Thunderbolts (the characters) are forming some sort of a crazy family, (minus the dead Antonia), this is to be expected. Whether or not this will amount to anything is another story; for all we know, in the next film there will be no mention of the Thunderbolts’ team… just as there was no mention of Sam in the ‘Thunderbolts’ movie, not really, making Bucky’s appearance in CA: BNW kind of strange and unbalanced…

So, in conclusion: the ‘Thunderbolts’ work. They work as a movie, and in particular – as a standalone movie. However, Disney/MCU is a live action Marvel Comics Universe, which means that it all will be interconnected – in theory. In practice, as depicted by the now forgotten AoS, this might not be so. In AoS, the first 3 seasons were sufficiently tied, with ties to the greater MCU. From S4 onwards, however, this was not the case at all, and after the final, 6^th, or 7^th, season, no one is remembering AoS anymore; they didn’t even appear on the ‘What If?’ series, (aside from Coulson, who doesn’t quite count there). Put otherwise, quite regularly, MCU discards characters, plot lines, and more – there is no guarantee that the ‘Thunderbolts’ will be different.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Death of a unicorn - April 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Death of a Unicorn’ film.

Or not, as despite its’ title, the film is rather lackluster and banal. Pause.

Well, there is nothing to pause. A father-daughter duo bring down (accidentally) a unicorn foal and bring it to the father’s boss and his family, (idle rich, whereas the father and daughter are more of working-class people), who promptly abuse and experiment on it… wait. This makes ‘DOAU’ sound actually exciting, while in reality, it feels more like the second Jurassic World film, just with unicorns, rather than dinosaurs; it is a straightforward D&D RPG film, just set in a modern setting, with scientists rather than sorcerers or wizards. In addition, hey, some of the secondary characters are people of color, so there’s that box ticked off!.. Second pause.

Third try. ‘DOAU’ has a lazy script, and while the cast do their best to liven it, the script still fails. Yes, now, the unicorns are more than just horned horses, but so what? Until the 19^th century, perhaps, when the unicorn had a lot of cultural meaning, when the dominant view was that of the Western society, that it is a gentle, pious beast, then ‘DOAU’ could, and would, have been shocking and edgy, but not anymore. Now, the unicorns include the Far East’s qirin and kilin, (remember the last Grindelwald film? Those Far Eastern creatures had a relatively important role in it), animals that blur the lines between the dragon and the unicorn, though they are fully benign. In the RF, there is the Indrik-beast, a mighty monster that is reminiscent of the Near East’s karkadann, (more of a rhino than a horned horse). The Near East also had the al-miraj, a carnivorous rabbit with a single horn, as well as the shadhavar, a unicorn with a hollow horn – when the wind blew, it made a lovely sound with the horn; other creatures, including humans, would approach the shadhavar and be devoured. Finally, in the sea, there was the campuchurch, a marine unicorn with flippers rather than hooves. I.e., real life folklore had plenty of ‘monstrous unicorn’ ideas, but the A24 Company opted to go with a classic, with a twist on it that is just insipid.

The virtuous maiden… she’s played by Jenna Ortega; between “Wednesday” and the “Beetlejuice 2” film, she’s typecast; in this role, yes, she swears and has a nasal ring to make her more modern, but it doesn’t appeal to anyone, as neither the modern audiences nor the fans of the classical ‘the maiden and the unicorn’ approach will care for the ‘DOAU’ film. I did not care much for the ‘DOAU’ film and I have watched it. It ranks right there in the bottom with the ‘Dr. Odyssey’ franchise – but that is another story.

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