Iron Fist & etc. - Aug 29

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pathfinder & real life - Aug 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KMT and co. - Aug 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To All The Boys That I Have Loved - Aug 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Crazy Rich Asians - Aug 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iron Fist S2 - Aug 17

…Back to the topic of Marvel, the 2^nd season of ‘Iron Fist’ is appearing early in September 2018. Yay!

…The problem that ‘Iron Fist’ featured was that it was generic – it was about a single Caucasian male superhero. If he was, you know, Oriental, that would be okay, as ‘Luke Cage’ demonstrates: its’ titular character a single Afro-American male superhero, and that makes it different from ‘Daredevil’. ‘Iron Fist’ doesn’t have that, which gives it an extra need to differentiate it from the older, more established and successful, ‘Daredevil’.

Why is the titular character of ‘Iron Fist’ not Asian-American but instead is Westeros’ Flower Knight? There was never much of a satisfactory answer, but that is okay – there was never much of a pressure to change the actors either, so let us admit that the racial issue is there, but it is not as important as people like to pretend, and move on.

The actual problem that ‘Iron Fist’ may be facing is the lack of originality – according to the rumors, he is facing a bloke named ‘Steel Serpent’ in his second season. So far so good, but this Davos person appears to be mostly an ‘Iron Fist’/’Danny Rand’ turned evil – kind of how Jessica Jones’ mom in her S2 was just like the titular heroine herself – only evil. Come to think of it, weren’t the villains in ‘Luke Cage’ S2 also both sympathetic and evil? Yes, and there was something of a parallel ‘team-up’ – Luke and Misty on one hand, Mariah and Bushmaster on the other? Yes, and we’re probably reading in it too much, but if ‘The Defenders’ are trying to keep themselves original, (with ‘Daredevil’ aside, his situation is different), there’s nothing odd about it either.

As for ‘Daredevil’… look. Not only is his comic base much more solid than the rest of ‘the Defenders’, there were also a couple of ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Electra’ movies in not so recent past. They weren’t very good, especially the ‘Electra’ one, but they did occur, so the crew of ‘Daredevil’ does have more material on which to work with, and it is tested, so they some ideas at least as to where to go with it, and what to do, and what not to do, etc. Thus, they do have an advantage over the rest of the team Defenders, and it shows.

But again, this does not matter to ‘Iron Fist’, not entirely. The current trailer shows that Misty Knight from ‘Luke Cage’ will appear in the series, (just as Colleen and Rand themselves did in ‘Luke Cage’ S2), so the semi-crossovers and the improvement of ‘the Defenders’-verse is still strong, but it is not a wonder-cure either. ‘Iron Fist’ was probably the weakest of ‘the Defenders’ show and it has to work especially hard to catch up to them…and so far there’s no indication that it is doing so. “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce to the gander”… maybe, but with TV shows, and online shows, and so forth it may be different, but we will have to wait until September 2018 to see.

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

Insatiable III - Aug 15

These days, both ‘C&D’ and ‘Reverie’ are over. Boo, but at least we can always download ‘C&D’ from Freeform™ and co., so there is that. Moreover, ‘Runaways’ S2 is coming in December 2018, and ‘The Gifted’ S2 – in September 2018, (and DCEU’s ‘Titans’ are coming in autumn 2018 as well), so there is that. Anything else?

Firstly, apparently, the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ film was made based on all three novels of KK’s original trilogy, so it is different from the books. Yay? Probably, because the original novels didn’t go down so hot, at least not in Canada: they were being sold at a flat rate of $15 a book, and people weren’t buying them, regardless of all the excitement that Indigo and KK’s team tried to make of them. Right now, there’s a lot of talk as to how the movie will make or break the Asian-American flow in Hollywood…so, apparently, this puts the film on the level with the first transgender woman succeed in the U.S. politics at last…and this, technically, brings us back to ‘Insatiable’.

Why are we still kicking this dead horse? Probably because of Debbie Ryan, who seems to have become the latest young actress that is trying to survive in her post-Disney era. There’s Miley Cyrus, who burned her bridges with Disney so much, that no one remembers ‘Hannah Montana’ anymore; there’s Selena Gomez, for whom Disney took ‘The Wizards of Waverly Place’ and made it into her own show; and now there’s Debbie, who started her acting career in ‘The Suite Life on Deck’ portion of ‘The Suite Life’ series with the Sprouse twins, and where’s ‘The Suite Life’ now? Gone, just as ‘Hannah Montana’, ‘The Wizards’ and ‘Jessie’ are. ‘Jessie’ is the show that made Debbie into a lead actress, not one of several, as ‘The Suite Life on Deck’ did, BTW, but now it is also gone. Disney does have this trait – once a show is done, it is done, and everyone goes their separate ways. There was a crossover between ‘The Wizards’, ‘The Suite Life’ and ‘Hannah Montana’, and nothing came out of it. ‘Jessie’ got crossed with both ‘Good Luck Charlie’ and ‘Austin and Ally’ – ditto. Even before Disney teamed up with Marvel to manifest MCU, it tried to do something similar with its’ YA TV shows… but it didn’t quite work, most likely because Disney didn’t really want to commit entirely to it too.

…However, this was then. What now? Now Debbie, (known in this incarnation as Patty instead), is starring in ‘Insatiable’, a TV show that is supposed to be fat-positive, but comes across as fataphobic instead. Put more precisely, it sucks. On one hand, it deals with Debbie’s character in a not-very-funny way, the fat suit isn’t bad, but the jokes? They can be tone-deaf, and that is really ‘Insatiable’s’ true problem: it does not understand the material that it tries to address. It tries to be fat-positive, LGBTQ+ positive, and so on, but it comes across as phobic at worst and clichéd at best instead. There are all of the fat-related issues, and then there are the ‘me too’ issues: for a large part of the released episodes Patty is in not a relationship with an older man, who has been accused, (falsely or not is another issue), of molesting a teenage girl already, and the show makes it into a joke. Great. Lately there has been a report of Catholic priests also harassing teenagers across the U.S. and the pope has done nothing. Oh, how we are laughing!

That is probably the other reason as to why ‘Insatiable’ is failing, (it made 13% on Rotting Tomatoes site or some similar number) – it has bad timing; Netflix, or whoever it was behind the mental works of ‘Insatiable’ failed to realize the reality of the world where ‘Insatiable’ was going to be released into, and viewed.

No, seriously – for months now, the American in particular, and the Western in general, society was dealing with the ‘me too’ movement and what it means to both men and women, both personally and professionally. It is a thorny, complex, complicated issue, and the current political climate isn’t making it any better – and then along comes ‘Insatiable’ where Patty seems to be going into a very murky relationship with Bob, the pageant coach, while another student, Brick, is sleeping with an older woman. Just what the scriptwriters were thinking? That it will be funny? Why?

…Maybe at another time – yes, but here and now – no, just no, and this probably brings us back to the rebooted ‘Ghostbusters’, because they are in the same boat: an assumption was made that they will succeed, because the original movie was a success, and all that the new movie had to do was to gender flip its’ characters – and it didn’t work. The movie itself was a flop, and the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise itself experienced a backlash; the same thing happened with an equally unsuccessful reboot of the ‘Gilmore Girls’ franchise, to a point where it was abandoned, as are the ‘Ghostbusters’. SW, who is also experiencing franchise-related issues, are so far holding more strongly, there are rumors of an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie already. Considering that the Solo movie made only tens of millions of dollars, rather than the hundreds expected by Disney and co., I should not, and will not make any hopeful or positive predictions just yet.

Finally – speaking of rumors – there is one regarding a ‘Frozen 2’ movie. Well, no, it is not a rumor anymore, ‘Frozen 2’ is really in the works, and is scheduled to release in November 2019. Good for them, but because of its’ success, and the popularity of Elsa’s character, there might be some tough times ahead – too many people think that Elsa should be heterosexual, or homosexual, or asexual, and so, however Disney will depict her in ‘Frozen 2’, there will be upset people, and Disney hates upsetting people, because it means losing revenue – but that is all in the future.

And for now? This is all. See you all soon!