Insatiable S2 - Sep 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, we turn to TV land, and what do we see there?

These days – the autumn of 2019 – a lot of brand new, forgettable shows, such as ‘Bob hearts Abishola’, ‘Prodigal Son’, ‘Stumptown’ and so on. So, what does Netflix do instead? Does it jump on the wagon of newness? No, it is going to release the second season of ‘Insatiable’ instead. Why?

…Well, the obvious reason is that someone in the higher ranks of Netflix wasn’t getting enough head; they demanded it, and were told that in return ‘Insatiable’ was to get its’ second season. After doing some research and learning that the really good hos that gave the really good head were really expansive, whereas to shoot, produce and air the second season of ‘Insatiable’ would be the cheaper option out of the two, the high-level Netflix member went for the cheaper option – ‘Insatiable’ S2, and here we are: it is going to air on October 11, 2019, in less than two weeks from today, (aka September 30, 2019). The end.

…Sorry for being so crude, but as we have discussed before, ‘Insatiable’ isn’t any good, but is very cringeworthy; it has pissed enough people with the way it has handled WG and WL issues (including social acceptance of overweight people, among other things), so the best thing would’ve to let it go, no matter how good Debbie Ryan is as an actress. Instead, we got S2. Sigh. Maybe this time ‘Insatiable’ will leave the weight-related issues behind and be just a drama-comedy instead, teen-related or not, but I am not betting on this. Anything else?

…The other shows that have come out in autumn 2019 seem to be overwhelmingly bland and forgettable; for example, the aforementioned ‘Bob’ is a collection of bland, politically correct skits; the show was supposedly produced by the same people that gave us TBBT – this decade’s answer to ‘Friends’. It most certainly was – both shows started as part awkwardly adorable, part cringeworthily stereotypical, and over time evolved into oversized monsters that have overstayed their welcome. TBBT’s spirit already lives on in ‘Young Sheldon’, which feels less like a prequel and more like a spin-off of some sort sometimes. That said, so far ‘Bob’ has nothing in common with TBBT, so to connect the latter with the former is just pointless right now.

‘Stumptown’ is somewhat better, but so far it is putting most of its money on Cobie Smulders, better known as agent Maria Hill from MCU, (including AoS, but only very sporadically). Will she deliver? – again, we will just have to wait and see. (The rest of the new shows are not that different in a better way, alas).

…Yes, this is a sombre entry into the blog, but as I said above, real life sucks. Just ask the Canadian West, which got hit with a lot of snow yesterday/today. It is not pretty, and yet people there got to live with it – but that is life. You got to live with it, until you die – just like the skunk that I have come across on a street, since it was already dead when I discovered it. And we are talking about a striped skunk, whose skunk stench packs quite a punch. Of course, between us humans, you can try to do something else – but if this ‘something else’ turns out to be illegal, (and that is a highly likely scenario), then you got new problems on top of the old ones, and that just makes it all worse. Or better, if you are an optimist, unlike me, who is a pessimist instead. Still, since ‘Insatiable’ is coming back with an S2 on October 11, 2019, it is hard to be an optimist. Real life sucks, and MM (mass media) does everything to make it worth.

This is it for now, I guess. See you all soon!

The Tyrant's Tomb - Sep 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Yes, them Americans try to be in the vanguard of the rest of Earth’s society – but this is not about them. …Okay, it is about one of them – Rick Riordan, and his latest YA novel, ‘THE TYRANT’S TOMB’, and we will be talking about it now.

What can be said about it? Unlike Ms. Cervantes’ series, or Ms. Chokshi’s for that matter, Mr. Riordan’s TTA series have brought back an LGBT character – a minor character named Lavinia, who is a legionnaire at the New Rome, and who’s in love (or in lust, it’s kind of hard to tell) with a dryad named Poison Oak.

…In real life, this is a close relative of the better-known poison ivy; another plant named poison sumac completes the infamous trio. Yes, real life is not clear-cut as people would like it to be; in reality, this plant genus – Toxicodendron – contains much more species than just three or four, (because ‘poison oak’ is actually a name of two plants of the above genus – one grows in the American west, the second – in the American south-west. They are relatives, and isn’t life just full of fun facts to learn about? God, I hate my life sometimes), but the point is, is just like the better-known poison ivy plant, (not the Poison Ivy character), poison oak sounds more like a villain’s name than a love interest’s… right, my bad. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive in literature, and frankly, Lavinia’s love interest is not really a character in TTT at all – yes, she gets to be mentioned several times, but this is largely the extent of her presence in the novel. After the first two novels of the ‘Apollo’ series, (and also the first two novels of the ‘Magnus Chase’ trilogy), this feels like a step down – but keep in mind that the third novel of ‘Apollo’ series has no LGBT/LGBTQ+ elements at all, so this may be some sort of a compromise instead.

…A compromise with whom, you may ask? Most likely – the House of Mouse, who is conspiring with RR himself, as it had been mentioned several times in the past. Yes, Disney in itself cares only for money, but they are very good at making it, (the SW miscalculation aside), and apparently they think that the abrupt dismissal of sexual minorities in the ‘Apollo’ series is one of those miscalculations after all. Therefore, now they are back in the person of Lavinia, even though she remains largely a secondary, episodic character in TTT after all. Anything else?

TTT does not feel rushed, unlike the last novel of the ‘Magnus Chase’ trilogy or its’ immediate predecessor. Looks like that in this instance, RR was able to recover from whatever mishap had affected those past two books, or his current ghostwriter did. It is hard to tell with authors sometimes; Patricia Briggs of the ‘Mercy Thompson and co.’ fame seems to have gone through a couple at least; this is part of the reason I have dropped her for good. Sometimes authors, English-speaking, Russian-speaking, or of other languages, of fiction and of non-fiction, allow their writings to reflect slash reveal too much of their personality, and in case of Ms. Briggs, that is not something that I can enjoy. Some of her later books had been decent, but these days? Not so much. What next?

Spider-Man is coming back to MCU, of course. Disney/Marvel have invested too much into him just to let him go, and so a new deal with Sony was made. Yay for him! Back to Mr. Riordan?

What about him? Yes, his own novels have a sense of personality, an identity that Mr. Lee’s ‘Dragon Pearl’ has lacked, that ‘Sal and Gabi’ certainly have, as do Ms. Cervantes’ series and Ms. Chokshi’s. It’s up to you to enjoy them – or not, but regardless, it certainly feels that the time of RR is coming past, his latest work – TTT – has sold for a flat-out 20 dollars, much less than his earlier novels were sold for. Yes, time waits for no man – or woman, for that matter, just ask J-Ro, whose own HP novels are sitting there alongside RR’s, not being bought and sold either. How will GM handle it now that HBO is done with his novels (for now) will be interesting to see.

Back to TTT? This time the focus was not just on Frank and Hazel, but also on Reyna, so this is good. Her role seemed to have been lost/removed/rebooted in the shuffle-pack of RR’s-verse, so bully for her, I say! RR’s novels also had been re-released again, this time with brand-new covers, but that is not the most successful marketing strategy.

…The same goes, of course, in real life for Ms. Greta and her backers slash allies – their timing is bad. The US government is concerned completely with the upcoming election and also the impeachment that will obviously affect it, so Ms. Greta’s proclamation, no matter how passionate, will be passed-over. ‘Across the pond’ it is the same thing with the upcoming Brexit, so there is that. In Canada, the society, all of its’ social strata, from top to bottom and back, can afford to be more interested/involved/invested in her proclamation, and so they put on a show, but, sadly, Canada does not play the primary fiddle in the world at this time.

Anything else? Yes, in TTT the novel Lavinia is supposed to be homosexual, but we never see actually be so, unlike, for example, Alex from the ‘Magnus Chase’ side of RR’s verso, who is openly gender-fluid, (even if his portrait does not reveal him as such). This… is not too different from Zara from the JW Fallen Kingdom film, who is also supposed to be homosexual, yet is never depicted as such – yet she is clearly friends with Franklin instead. Yes, Franklin is not as manly as Owen is, but still – he is a man, so just like the JW franchise, RR and Disney have figured out a way to keep a toe in the sexual minorities’ community safely… and that is it. Compared to the first two novels of the ‘Apollo’ series, as well as the ‘Magnus Chase’ trilogy, (yes, even the last novel), this is mild, lukewarm stuff. Ah well, Disney does not want to support a failing (or a fading) horse too much, but neither does it want to abandon a project completely, not when there is money still to be made from it. Case in point – SW, though now that GL has ‘uttered his word of gold’, it’s anyone guess again as to how it all will turn out – but that is a story for another time...

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

Ghost Rider cancelled - Sep 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. With it out of the way, let’s go forth into the alternate universe of media, and-

Yeah, things are not much better there: Marvel’s ‘Ghost Rider’ TV series got cancelled. This is not too different from Marvel’s ‘Most Wanted’ TV series, which also got cancelled, and ditto for Marvel’s ‘InHumans’, (though the latter did get to feature a single 8-episode season), but still – it sucks. Gabriel Luna did a very good job as the Ghost Rider back in AoS, though yes, given that it was AoS, odds are that the Ghost Rider’s plot line got tangled, rebooted, restructured and so on several times before the character appeared on TV. It was not a bad plot line, Robbie and Daisy (Chloe Bennett, in case anyone has forgotten), had a moment together at the end of S4, and this was it. In the second half of AoS’ S5 the titular characters had to deal with a ‘fear dimension’ – Ghost Rider no show, we got Deathlok instead. (Just what kind of a contract Disney/MCU/AoS has had with its actor? Deathlok was very important in S1, but from S2 onwards he appeared more and more rarely on the show; he had not appeared in AoS’ S6 at all, and there is no indication that he will appear in S7). AoS’ S6 had some distinct references to Ghost Rider regarding the entire Izel storyline, but no Ghost Rider per se. True, I have not figured out the references back in S6, this one’s on me, but still – no ‘true’ Ghost Rider, and this brings us to the cancelled show.

Sadly, we do not know much about it; it was supposed to be a separate TV show from AoS, with Robbie (and his brother Gabe, maybe?) living their life alongside the U.S.-Mexican border, doing their thing, whatever it is, and – that’s it. That is all the information that has become known, really. It is not enough to make speculations about, but apparently it was enough for the show to break-up in the preliminary stage over creative differences, the end. Sad.

And on the other hand, this has made someone in the Marvel comics feel rather stupid, I reckon. Lately, the current ‘Avengers’ incarnation, it has become increasingly ‘all about Robbie’, as he gets to race the other main Ghost Rider of Marvel, Johnny Blaze, in Hell, (while the rest of the Avengers are dealing Frank Castle, the Cosmic Rider). The first 12 issues of ‘Avengers’ or so were mostly about the Avengers, with Robbie being the new kid on the block, (and being in early stages of a relationship with Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, yay). However, from the ‘vampire civil war’ arc this series became increasingly about Robbie, until we currently have him racing Johnny Blaze in Hell on one hand, and on the other, we got the beginnings of a ‘Strikeforce’ comic arc, which is centered around Blade instead. Not that I got anything against Blade – the man is going to return to the movie screens…but this is not fully the point.

What is the point? It unfolds as follows. To wit, Marvel Comics do not really know what to do with the Avengers as a cohesive unit of comic characters anymore. They were initially going for some sort of a Stone Age Avengers’ adventures, but that got replaced first by the Ghost Rider, as Robbie Reyes’ TV series were going to be his big moment in the spotlight, but now that that isn’t happening, the focus is shifting instead to Blade and the Hellstrom siblings, who are still on to being parts in the new MCU. More powers to them, I suppose, but still, poor Robbie. He is out of the AoS, (even though the upcoming S7 is the end for them as well, but still), and now he is not going to get his own TV show either. Ah well, I guess now that Lance Hunter and Bobbi Morse from Marvel’s ‘Most Wanted’ are going to get some company…

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

The upcoming JW3 film - Sep 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Frozen II trailer - Sep 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The Americans, however, tend to put their own spin on this fact. No, I’m not talking about the Donald – after all the months and years of his fellow American politicians blathering about the Russian interference in the last election, he openly half-offered half-tried to force the current Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son; given that the Ukrainian-Russian relations are still very bitter, (though there is something of a thaw between them now that Ukraine has a new president), this feels something like a joke that is done badly and gone badly. Does the Donald want to be impeached? In the years past, since he ascended to the White House, sometimes it did feel like this sometimes, but maybe it’s just the Donald being himself. We will just have to see if or how he gets out of this one. (In addition, the same goes for the Biden family, actually). No, rather, I am talking about George Lucas – the man of the week has opened his mouth and proclaimed that no, he did not like how ‘The Last Jedi’ the movie depicted his world.

Sigh. Lately it feels as if the Disney/SW juggernaut is doing its’ damnedest best to change the public’s opinion regarding it, (remember, ‘Solo’ the movie only brought in millions of dollars, not billions that the juggernaut is used to, these days), by flooding the comic scene with the SW comics that often have some, mmm, ‘insightful’ essays in the conclusion of each individual comic, and by bringing forth, (well, it’s about to bring forth), ‘the Mandalorian’ on Disney+, a show that is supposed to show how the First Order came to power – a Sequel Trilogy’s prequel, if you will. And then along comes Mr. Lucas and makes his statement, and the juggernaut is in hot water again. Maybe they really should quit while they are still ahead after the upcoming SW9 movie – nah. They will ride this franchise until it can run no more, and then they will boil it for glue and sell this glue, and patent this glue, and use this glue in their new money-making programs – ahem. The new trailer for the upcoming ‘Frozen II’ movie has come out. Let’s talk about some of its’ aspects.

In this adventure, Elsa and her team go into some enchanted forest, because some magical music/singing/humming is haunting Elsa and it makes her own innate frost magic go berserk. Ergo, Elsa and her team go into an enchanted forest, where she meets (or will meet) various new characters, some human, but others certainly not.

First, there are stone giants, bigger even than the ice monster that Elsa created in the first ‘Frozen’. Normally, I would say that those are trolls – in the post-antique Scandinavia, trolls were humanoid creatures of giant size that were made from stone or turned to stone in daylight, or both. However, in the world of ‘Frozen’ trolls are smaller than humans are, and are rather reminiscent of dwarves of the Norse myths instead.

In the pagan Norse myths dwarves themselves tended to turn to stone in sunlight, which was why they lived below ground, (duh); as Scandinavia turned from paganism to Christianity, (and that was a painful process in itself), the lines between dwarves and trolls blurred – but the height difference remained. Trolls were human-sized or larger, while dwarves were smaller. In-between the two was the huldra – a humanoid creature that looked like a human in the front, but had a hollow back as well as a fox’s or a cow’s tail. (There’s a possibility that huldra has reached the Russian lands and assimilated into Russian folklore as mavka – a variant rusalka that looks human in the front, has a hollow or a transparent back, and is an undead rather than a fey creature). The Scandinavians treated the huldras not unlike how the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh treated fairies and elves – they were not inherently evil, but much more powerful than ordinary humans are, with plenty of tricks up their sleeves and a short temper. Sometimes huldras married mortals and took them into their land beneath the hills. Other times they would go and live with their human husbands, (huldras usually are depicted as females), but usually those stories ended badly for both sides. Where were we?

Oh yes, the new ‘Frozen II’ trailer. It’s unknown if it is a huldra is doing the humming that gets beneath Elsa’s skin literally, (unlike the Greco-Roman sirens huldras usually didn’t lead men to their deaths by singing), but as we were talking about, Elsa and her friends are encountering stone giants of some sort, and since those cannot be trolls, (not ‘Frozen’s’ trolls anyhow), they might be stone giants slash Jotuns of the Norse myths. Unlike the trolls of the Christian Scandinavian period, the pagan Jotuns were not affected by the sun; in fact, at the time of Ragnarok, a couple of Jotuns in shape of giant wolves will swallow the sun and the moon instead! The trailer of ‘Frozen II’ too has those stone giants walking around in daylight and throwing rocks around and being completely unaffected by the sun.

And then we have Elsa going against the sea, (as she had done in the first trailer for ‘Frozen II’, remember?), and fighting-slash-taming what appeared to be a sea horse. This may be Disney’s idea of a kelpie, or it is an each-uisge, instead. Both of those creatures were water spirits or water demons, shapeshifters – sometimes that appeared to be human, and sometimes to be horses – and man-eaters, (and the each-uisge was even more vicious than the kelpie was). Either way, Elsa can be in for some interesting times, if she decides to keep her new ride, no matter how sweet it may be. (Water horses were supernaturally strong and fast, duh). So this leaves us where?

In a reboot from the first ‘Frozen’ movie, of course. In the first movie, (vaguely based on Andersen’s ‘Snow Queen’ fairy tale), the theme was about a human, who thought that she was a monster, (Elsa), vs. a monster who thought himself as a human, (Hans). (Ok, the last bit might have been rather strong, but the bloke deserved it). In the final scenes of the first movie, his highness appeared to be more sympathetic than when he was at his worst, but now there’s no sign of him, (and I don’t think that too many people miss him either), and instead we have Elsa and her people going Norse, (re the Jotuns and co.) with a completely different feel to the new movie already. Where this will lead to within the universe of Disney animated movies? We will just have to wait and see.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

Ad Astra - Sep 21

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about something different for a change – the 2019 movie ‘Ad Astra’. Warning, we are going to be talking about this movie at length, so today’s article will have plenty of spoilers! …Starring Brad Pitt and a fine-supporting cast, AA is… depressing as Hell, and makes some smart strategies by focusing on either close-up shots of the manly profile of Mr. Pitt, the amazing eyelashes of Ms. Negga, (which is one of the main reasons I went to watch AA, I admit), the hirsute face of Mr. Jones and son – or it making wide, far-sweeping, panoramic shots of space. Consequently, it manages to avoid the fact that its’ plot is rather sinewy and sickly, metaphorically speaking – and where to begin?

First, with the range of emotions – there really is not any. Mr. Pitt’s McBride-son, since he is the main character of AA – period, it is all about him and his father, (played by Mr. Tommy Lee Jones, again), everyone else are just passers-by in his life. No wonder that his wife, (played by Ms. Taylor),  has left him within the movie framework and is barely there from the script’s P.O.V. – she’s superfluous, you can replace her, say, by Ms. Negga’s character and the plot off AA will barely be affected. In an age of political correctness, this sort of male-centrism sounds kind of politically obtuse, but because it’s a space opera, no one seems to give a damn, plus September 2019 has given us ‘Hustlers’, so everyone might also be distracted by them too.

Back to emotions – there really are not any. None of the main characters display any. Between AoS and ‘Preacher’, as an example, we know that Ruth Negga can be very emotional, with a great range of facial features – but here we do not see any. To Tommy Lee Jones’ credit, he makes his McBride-father character sound like a major egotistical asshat without displaying any emotions: he may be completely deranged, in a captain-Ahab-like manner, but his face? About as emotionless as his son’s.

Moreover, this applies to the minor characters too. Finn’s Stroud, Ortiz’s Rivas and Hamilton’s Vogel appear only in one scene at the beginning, and this is it, yet they are have blank, featureless, emotionless faces that the rest of the cast also has. Mr. Donald Sutherland tries to make his character – Pruitt – to be more impressive, the heretic, but the good colonel is written out of the story by the end of the first third of the movie. That much for him.

…Actually, the good colonel’s character, (as in ‘movie character’ suffers another flaw): there is no back-story for him. When Mr. Sutherland first appears on screen, the audience may be distracted somewhat by his attempts to give colonel Pruitt some facial expressions, (and he succeeds, landing firmly in the ‘deranged owl’ territory of faces), but not enough not to miss that Pruitt and McBride-son have history together. Indeed, as the movie progresses, we learn that Pruitt and McBride-father have worked on the Lima project together, and there was a falling-out, and things ended badly between them. This is just a step in the process to make McBride-son realize that either something has went very badly and very wrong for his father, or his father isn’t the man that McBride-son always thought that he was – and that thought has driven McBride-son hard enough into making him into the man that he became by the beginning of the film.

However! None of the audience knows this, not immediately, and even after they do, all they see is a complete stranger, approaching Pitt’s McBride-son’s character and immediately hitting it off as the old friends that they supposedly are. In actuality, all that Sutherland’s Pruitt-character does is to give some cryptic info about McBride-father to McBride-son, as well as a memory stick with more cryptic info. And then he gets seriously shot and wounded by the space pirates on the Moon and was written out of the story.

Right. The space pirates. They were the random monster of the Moon arc. Because McBride-father had been a semi-deranged sociopath with a complete disregard for his fellow man, including his family and himself, but was presented to everyone as a dashing explorer and hero, things have to be very hush-hush for McBride-son to get to Neptune and retrieve him…only not. McBride-son had been lied to, and the military top brass decided that it was important for him not to know it, and that laid the seeds for the Martian portion of the movie, and its’ conflict.

Pause. On Mars, this is where the human b-story of the movie – McBride-son is going through the Solar System to discover the truth about his father, while various human factors try to help and hinder him – are the strongest. There, he gets some proof that his father is alive, but the military is cutting him out, because he has done his part and can be removed. Ruth Negga’s character – Helen Lantos – helps him get onto the rocket that goes after his father all the same… and it can be noted that while Helen Lantos is as bland and emotionless as McBride-son is, Ruth Negga is a good enough actress that you can almost see some of her Raina character fro, AoS shining through, as Lantos treats McBride-son not unlike how Raina treated Grant Ward at the final episodes of AoS S1 – but we’re not going there.

Instead, we are going off to Neptune. The remaining crew of that space ship, Cepheus, were actually government’s assassins, sent to off McBride-father, (and probably the son too), now that colonel Pruitt is out of commission and can no longer handle any McBrides. However, secondly, they are the most incompetent assassins, McBride-son is able to kill them despite his best intentions, which is sad, and firstly, there had been the Norwegian biostation in space. It sent out a mayday signal, and the then-captain of Cepheus decided to go there. There was a conflict with McBride-son, who wanted to get to Mars ASAP to continue to his quest for his father, but the then-captain of Cepheus channeled his inner child and told McBride-son very pointedly that this was his ship, so he’s the one who decides what their actions will be, so McBride can either tell them what’s the big rush to Mars is all about, or he can take over Cepheus and make all the choices himself. On one hand, this makes no sense – the crew of Cepheus were apparently in on the secret op – to find and destroy McBride-father, on the other, it is pointless: McBride was never the one to shirk responsibility, as the opening scenes of the movie showed: he put on a spacesuit and went forth to fix the robotic arm on the space station that he was upon, even though it wasn’t really his job, so the entire scene of getting McBride-son and the then-captain onto Cepheus is just painful.

But then they got onto the biostation and its’ monkeys. Monkeys come in all shapes, sizes and species, so some dumb-ass decided to use some of Earth’s biggest monkeys in an enclosed environment – drills. At 70 cm long, and weighing-in at about 50 kg, drills and their closest relatives the mandrills, are some of the largest primates there is, second only to the great apes in stature, but unlike them, and like their more distant baboon relatives, these monkeys are armed with powerful jaws and long sharp teeth – and have tempers to match.

…No, drills and mandrills are not baboons, though they are usually confused with them, ever since TLK-94, where Rafiki – a mandrill – not only had a baboon-like tail, but also ID’s himself as a baboon, (seriously, look it up on that video. It is right when he meets the grown-up Simba for the first time). AA’s drills also have them, as do the mandrills featured in the second Jumanji movie reboot. In real life, they only have short tails, not really noticeable in all that fur.

Back to AA and its’ space opera. As it was said already, some idiot decided to manage some of Earth’s biggest and strongest monkeys in an enclosed space, even though monkeys are very good at escaping their enclosures…which is why in real life, baboons, drills & mandrills aren’t really used in labs; instead, it is their macaque cousins, (such as the rhesus macaque), that are used there. Those primates aren’t as big and strong as the baboons, drills & mandrills are, and their teeth aren’t as big and sharp, but they can have ugly tempers, especially the sexual mature males – but where’s the blood? Aside from some scratches on the walls, (and monkeys don’t have claws, unlike big cats or bears, someone has really dropped the ball on their zoology there), there’s no blood or corpses, except for the first captain of Cepheus, who ran into the escaped monkeys on the space biostation and got his face ripped off for his trouble, because, yes, drills and mandrills are big enough and strong enough to do that – see above. So, why there aren’t more corpses?

Because either this was some sort of a trap for McBride after the moon pirate ambush failed, or it is a plot oversight. I am leaning towards the latter, but, still, common sense? You are going into space in an enclosed, closed, and self-sustaining space station, from which you cannot readily escape – and you are taking some of Earth’s biggest, strongest, and meanest monkeys with you. Obviously, there were some people alive long enough to send-out the mayday signal received by Cepheus, so something went even wronger after that – and it was the plot of AA.

Where were we? Oh yes, en route from Mars to Neptune. Some reviewers have hinted pre-release of AA that there is going to be a twist in the plot. After all the plot twists in MCU’s AoS, I was skeptical about this development, and I was right. The plot twist, apparently, was Space-Com’s turning onto the McBride family, as presented by three-slash-four of the most incompetent assassins that I have ever seen in movies and/or TV series. Some people point out that in this manner Roy’s journey mirrors his father’s – both men leave a trail of corpses in their wake even though they don’t intentionally mean to – but the way, for example, that Roy kills the assassins is really pitiful and annoying. Sometimes, McBride-son is more than competent enough to survive a crash alongside the crashing space station, to space-surf through the rings of Neptune, or to use the nuclear explosion of his father’s Lima project to jump-start his own journey home upon his now-battered space ship. However, when it comes to dealing with his father…

Now, let us not deny: McBride-father, Clifford, is a grade-a asshat, who abandoned his family, (namely, Roy and Roy’s mother, Clifford’s wife), in pursuit of his dream, of finding extraterrestrial life. He failed. In the world of AA, produced, co-written and directed by James Grey, there is no life on other planets, humanity is alone. Frankly, it makes the world of AA very depressing…which may be what Mr. Grey was planning all along, but we digress. The point is that Roy is smart enough, and competent enough, to do the above-mentioned feats of epic awesomeness and daring-do, yet he wasn’t smart enough to realize that his father might need some sort of meds, or to be subdued in some manner, or something, before they are going back home? Yes, Clifford is crazy enough, (or sane enough?) to play along until they are actually in space, after which he begins to fight his son tooth and claw, ready to kill both of them until Roy submits and cuts Clifford lose and off into the space he goes, where he has lived and killed and now will die. This very depressing, but is also a metaphor – Clifford is an albatross on Roy’s neck that needs to be cut loose for Roy to become a fully-rounded grown-up and get over his trauma of neglect. Sophocles’ king Oedipus rolls his eyes and gives Roy a Shirley Temple – lad, we have all been there, and you sure that your missus isn’t (kind of) reminiscent of your late mum? Sometime between concluding the Martian plot arc and starting the – Neptunian one, the movie’s script have done a complete turnaround, and rather than making the McBride-father a proper character, they reduced him to a plot device instead. Roy came to Neptune to prevent his (former?) superiors from killing his father and blowing up the Lima experiment – and he did just that on both counts. As far as plot twists go, this one ranks right there among the worst ones of MCU, for example, and we still have not hit upon one more very important plot hole.

Uranus. No, not ‘your anus’, be still my splitting sides, ha-ha, but Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, the one right there in the middle between Saturn and Neptune. Named after a figure in Greek mythology, the grandfather of Zeus and Hera, Uranus has the third largest planetary radius and the fourth largest planetary mass in the Solar System – a very notable planet, put otherwise. AA mentions it zero times and it is not shown at all in the entire movie, even though AA shows us some clear-cut shots of Jupiter and Saturn, never mind Neptune, which is the backdrop for the movie’s final act. What gives? It is a planet, so political correctness cannot be blamed for this one, (it may meddle with all sorts of aspects of Western life, but astronomy? Not so much), so I’m guessing that Mr. James Gray, who was making AA into the movie that was completely Sad and Solemn and Serious just couldn’t endure the thought that people in the audience will have involuntary chuckles when they hear the word ‘Uranus’ and promptly refused to have anything with the movie until the offending name, and the offending planet, were removed from the script, period. Consequently, ‘Ad Astra’ takes place in some alternate universe, where Earth is a part of Solar System that has no Uranus either because it never been in the first place, (yes, the formation of the Solar System and etc. during the Big Bang as we know it was touch and go during that initial time period), or because humans have blown it up somehow. And before you say that it’s impossible for our race slash species to blow up an entire planet I can only say that a) we haven’t invented the right way to do it yet, and b) we haven’t tried yet either, intentionally or otherwise. That said, if in the world of AA humanity did manage to blow up Uranus to a point where not even space/ice dust was left of it, (in real life, Uranus, just as Neptune, is an ice giant, whereas Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, and Pluto isn’t even a planet anymore according to some sources), you would think that at some point of the movie this would’ve come up, because, hey, it’s an entire planet!.. Anything else?

No, that is it, actually. AA is a movie that has no humor, very little normal social interactions, is intentionally depressing as f- Hell, and sometimes unintentionally bizarre. Characters have no back story, they come and go in the great epic that is life and times of Roy McBride, just as they did in an equally great epic that was the life and times of Clifford McBride, an insane murderous fanatic and sociopath, (but hey! Product placement of NatGeo magazines! Money talks, baby!), so by cutting his father loose, literally and metaphorically, Roy now gets the chance to be his own man – a surprisingly small and simple message for such a pretentious movie.

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

AFO: Cougar vs. grey wolf - Sep 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In case of Canada’s current PM, Justin Trudeau, this is because he has worn blackface/brownface in the past, and now it came back to bite him in the ass. The photos really show him in an unflattering light, but are they causing him to lose?

Well, if he loses, those photos will certainly be one of the reasons, but not the only one. As compared to the U.S., where each new presidential election is a bigger show than the lost one, (a tendency that became really obvious since Bill Clinton became impeached), Canadian elections… are not. Maybe it is because Canada is still subjected to the U.K., whose queen (or king) can always interfere, overtly or covertly, unlike the U.S., which is its’ own, independent country, but another reason is that Canada and its’ politicians tend not to blame anyone else when things go wrong in their lives; Hell, Trudeau has already apologized for those photos and this approach seems to be working – certainly, at least some people are turning onto Mr. Scheer for failing to apologize in his turn – it happens. Where were we?

Oh yes, someone has pointed out that when in the past I was doing my going-through of the AFO episode list, I forgot to cover the ‘cougar vs. wolf’ episode, so I might as well do it for closure…

Right. So, in one corner we had the cougar, (also known as puma and mountain lion), and in the other – the grey wolf. (As opposed to its’ more ambiguous cousin the red wolf, I suppose). The grey wolf lost. Why?

…Because the wolf is not an individualistic fighter, but a team one. ‘The Velvet Claw’ series and the companion book are somewhat outdated by 2019, especially when it comes to taxonomy of carnivores, but they are correct in that the cats are individualistic fighters, and the dogs are not. The puma, the lynx, the tiger, and the domestic cat have their differences, but even at a first glance a complete amateur of zoology/biology will I.D. them as relatives, and their lifestyles are very similar too. The only outliers among the cat clan are the African lions and the African cheetahs, (for a while, there were lions and cheetahs in Asia too, but now the cheetahs seem to be extinct there, and the lions are doing barely better. Sad, this is), because they do live in social groups – the cheetahs in family coalitions, the lions are more derived. Why this is so, is another question, but for now let us focus on the fact that the wild cats, small and big, tend to be solitary. And dogs?

This is where it gets blurry. Actually, most wild dog species are solitary, behaving as, say, the red fox does – we’re talking small carnivores that live on their own or in family groups; some of them, such as the raccoon dog of Far East, (initially), and the maned wolf of South America, can look very exotic, but their lifestyles are similar. And then there are the pack hunters.

Who are they? They are the domestic dog, the wolf, (grey and red), the coyote, the jackals, also – the African wild dog, and the dhole of Asia. This is it, right?

…No, because there’s also the bush dog of South America; proportionally, it may be related closest to the aforementioned maned wolf, but whereas the maned wolf looks like a wolf, or a dog, on stilts, the bush dog looks like a mix between a basset hound and an otter; it doesn’t even bark, more like chirps and squeaks, and it can swim and attack its’ prey items in water, as well as on land. A very atypical dog, but then again, South America has plenty of atypical carnivores, period – but we digress.

Such outliers as the bush dog aside, most pack hunting dogs look the same – streamlined, long-legged, long-muzzled, big-eared and long-tailed… built not for strength, but for speed and endurance. These carnivores evolved to act in a pack, overwhelming their prey through numbers, and using their jaws to tear and rip it to pieces, sometimes even eating it while the prey animal is still alive. They are hunters rather than fighters, especially when it comes to other carnivores, such as big cats and bears, although when it comes to dominance fights within the packs…they are ritualized, actually, and usually are resolved through shows of strength… and then…

Well, there is a video clip on YouTube that shows a wolf pack taking down a coyote. While externally wolves and coyotes are similar, wolves are larger and bulkier than coyotes are… although now scientists know that they do interbreed with each other as well as the domestic dog species, creating such animals as the eastern wolf, the eastern coyote, and the red wolf. The last species may actually be a species, having evolved into taxonomic and biological independence from both grey wolves and coyotes, but we digress. Wolves have evolved to function within a social unit – their pack, with which they bring down their prey items, from rabbits and hares to white-tailed deer, elk, and even the American bison. On their own, wolves are not very effective, as compared to the great cats and bears.

…Now a puma, technically, is not a ‘great cat’ – it is a ‘small cat’: it cannot roar, it can mew like a domestic cat, (or a bobcat), does, and while the jaguar, (can be twice as heavy as the puma) dominates the parts of the New World in which it lives, the puma does not. It can break even with an American black bear, (sometimes), but a grizzly (or brown) bear overpowers it more often than not, and the same goes for the jaguar, (which is unquestionably the bigger and more powerful animal of the two), and even wolf packs. Pause. ‘Packs’ is the key word here. A wolf pack can stand up not just to the puma, but also to the American black bear, (the grizzly/brown bear is a tougher question to answer), but a solitary wolf is no match for even the puma – which is precisely what has happened down in the CGI simulation of that AFO episode. While the rest of the carnivores are a mixed bag, (though, again, the ‘jaguar vs anaconda’ episode was something else), solitary pack hunters, (it even sounds as an oxymoron), are fair game and just are not… up to their best game, (pardon the tautology here), when facing-off with anyone by themselves. The grey wolf just couldn’t win by itself, especially against a mountain lion, which might be small and light by ‘great cat’ standards, but it still packs a punch well above its’ weight. The ‘puma vs. grey wolf’ episode was actually good, because it was honest and straightforward – whatever else you can say about AFO, at least there weren’t any inconsistences and partisanship as there was, (sort of), in DW, but that is another story…

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