3 Short Paragraphs: Angel Has Fallen

2019, Ric Roman Waugh (Snitch) -- download

Mike Banning has been trying to quit his job since the beginning of this franchise. It started in Olympus Has Fallen, where he persevered to save the POTUS after a horrible attack on the White House. He stuck around for London Has Fallen, when a number of world leaders are killed and POTUS has kidnapped. When we return, he's still protecting the POTUS, but the presidency has moved on to Trumbull (Morgan Freeman). Mike is not as old as his boss, but he's more broken down, suffering from the effects of so many years of extremely dangerous service. So, of course, we toss him immediately into the fray, as an assassination attempt on President Trumbull plays out. And then, to add insult to literal injury, Mike is implicated.

The first two were about attacks on the US from outside, this is about an attack from within. In the Movie Universe, progressive presidents have been moving the US away from its aggressive stance, towards a more moderate one, a more just one, the one that much of the American people still believe they represent. When America plays in fewer wars, they buy less guns, and the Military Industrial Complex loses money. An old buddy of Banning is a profiteer in said Complex, and is seeing his own American Dream die because of the POTUS and his plans. So, die he must. He doesn't.

Gone are the reasons to watch this movie, no connection to the first beyond characters, no style choices beyond Generic Actioner, not even a closed room movie. I watched it because I had to round out the commitment I already made, sort of like I finish off so many books, "just because". But as mentioned in the last movie, they are often Easy Clicks, when dancing around the HDD full of Movies I Should Watch Instead. And yes, it satisfies something base inside of me. I like Gerard Butler, for pretty much the role he plays here (aging, full of ouch) and I like Danny Huston, who has done a lot of Generic Actioners, despite my brain type-casting him as a thoughtful supporting member, via Silver City and 21 Grams.

3 Short Paragraphs: Den of Thieves

2018, Christian Gudegast (writer London Has Fallen) -- Netflix

*flick flick flick*

Too heavy, already seen, too heavy, too heavy, too heavy, Marmy wants to see, etc. Those are my usual "flicking through the channels" thoughts as I sit in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon.And some days I am just in the mood for a "generic crime movie". So, I like Pablo Shreiber and Gerard Butler, so why not. And I got exactly what I was looking for; something to turn the brain off and make mental notes on the generic nature of crime movies set in LA.

A bunch of bad guys rob an armoured car, geared up like it was a video game inspired by the famous scene from Heat. Some people get killed including one of the bad guys. Next morning, enter Gerard Butler and his Major Case Squad. First impressions -- tough guy, bad guy, possibly even the actual bad guys or maybe they are even going to be worse than the actual bad guys, and the armoured car robbers will be robbed by them. In watching these kind of movies, there are thousand cliche directions these movies go, even when they are trying to do the unexpected. Alas, this movie went in ways I didn't even expect.

At its core, it's a heist movie. Pablo Shreiber is leading a squad of his own, all ex-cons with military training. They stole the truck, not primarily for its money, but to bolster the real job -- where they will steal from the Federal Reserve. There's a complicated plan involving lots of misdirection. Meanwhile Butler and his squad, all tattooed and grimy and chasing hookers when they should be home with their wives, are on Shreiber, knowing something is up, but not sure what. At the end, the real end of the movie, where bad guys shoot at good guys and key characters are lost, we find there was an entirely different misdirect, one that I both admired and rolled my eyes at rather heavily. Why does everyone have to be trying to setup a franchise?

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt C

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

Pt A is here. Pt B is here.


And They're Back !!

The Expanse S4, 2019, Amazon

This is my show. I watch it by myself (as opposed to Marmy next to me and if she IS next to me, she's on Reddit), few others I know watch it and Kent is not enamoured with it. My brain is somewhat enthralled with the idea of small space opera, where the entire universe is contained within the single solar system. I have been faithfully watching since the first season, and actually racing the story by picking up the novels in the meantime.

As I expected, from my notes in the first season, the show did end up becoming majorly about the politics, especially when the three powers of the universe (Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets) had to deal with the incursion of an alien molecule wanted only to alter and destroy humanity. That storyline culminated with the "defeated" protomolecule creating massive Stargate-style rings in/through which people found gateways to a thousand other worlds. Suddenly the small solar system, where resources were tight and land, real earthy land, scarce, was cracked opened massively.

Season 4 picks up in a small story on a single Earth-like planet that was discovered, and immediately colonized by folks displaced by the wars in the first three seasons. But an Earth corporation legally laid claim to  the planet, and sent a security detail to deal with the squatters. The powers at be, send the main characters, the crew of the small, liberated, Martian ship Rocinante. Captain Holden is (barely) trusted  by all three governments (having been the whistleblower on the horrors of the protomolecule) and is asked to help mediate peaceful negotiation between the two groups. Meanwhile, political turmoil has expanded in the main system as a splinter group of the Outer Planets Alliance is causing chaos.

This the first Expanse season that takes place primarily on the ground, but it also absorbs the key plots from a separate book, to lay the plans for the next season. So much is going on here, as we pick at the threads of so many plots & character storylines. Are the squatters criminals "stealing" a lucrative planet (valuable mineral everywhere), or just plucky underdogs finally getting somewhere? What's up with the planet itself, and all the ruins of ancient technology? After generations of terraforming their planet, Martians are losing their definition of self, as they can now just hop in a ship and find a brand new, empty planet already fit for habitation. Bobbie Draper, recently discharged Martian Marine (she sided with Earthlings against the protomolecule) is dealing with her own loss of identity & becoming a civilian. And the OPA (Outer Planets Alliance) having only recently been recognized as a proper government (instead of just protectorates of Mars and Earth) is dealing with internal strife over OPA identity. Everything that defined them -- making lives for themselves on asteroids and in space stations -- is in jeopardy when there are so many more planets to colonize. They fear becoming, as a people (Belters), only historical notes and one man  (Inaros) is not willing to give up his hatred of the Inner Planets, and sets the OPA on a course to war.

Amazon saved the show from extinction (cancelled by SyFy) and it returned with the next arc in the series. The universe is no longer a single system, but it still focuses around the small crew of the small ship, and all the people that satellite around them. There aren't a whole lot of differences that appear with the change of Motherships, and they are smart to keep what fans want -- a whole lot of focus on their favourite characters.

Jack Ryan S2, 2019, Amazon

Jack has had a lot of faces: Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. There is enough there to establish the character -- the CIA analyst who ends up in the field. At first blush, John Krasinski is the perfect choice, as he is slightly nerdy (i.e. Analyst) looking but also equally buff (i.e. ex-Marine) and fills out the role very well.

Season 1 re-introduced the character, not bothering to recreate the wheel, but I found it strange that we are here, 30 years since the first cinematic viewing & original novels, just expecting the audience to get who he is. So, not an origin story but an updated continuance, skipping past the novels where Republican Ryan ends up as the President.

Season 2 tenuously uses his skillset and character to portray a general political upset in Venezuela and how a few Americans, if not the country at large, fly in to save the day. But, propagandic leanings aside, it was a decent, tense, well produced spy thriller season. As a whole, it is entirely unsatisfying, dancing about in tone and intent, with little care for the characters or story. But the high production values overshadow it enough to make acceptable entertainment value.

Lost in Space S2, 2018, Netflix

That last sentence pretty much defines how I feel about THIS show as well. The first season's post was lost to the hiatus mind, and while it left me entirely unsatisfied, there was a enough of the enjoyment of Shows Set in Space that had me come back. Besides, the leads are charming and charismatic enough, that I enjoy watching them act.

So, the Robinsons from the first season, are a family of smart people chosen to leave a dying Earth (we never really understand the dying, from ... what??) along with all kinds of other families, and head to a distant world to begin a colony. I never understood if this was abandonment or early setup, but considering the amount of free space in these colony ships, it all felt a little ... elitist. Anywayz, while on said journey, alien robots attack, the ship the Robinson family is on (each family gets their own ship!) crashes on a planet and is ... lost !

Turns out they were not the only ship lost in this particular system, and eventually a bunch of them get back together, both in space (in the space station cum mothership) and on another planet in the system. While I was not a big fan of the original series, its key premise always seemed to be that he Robinsons (as in Caruso) were alone, lost in space. These Robinsons keep on getting lost, and then almost immediately found, and then lost again.

The haphazard style of the first season is back, aaaaaaand I am beginning the think this is particular to the Netflix was of doing things. There is no real tone to the show, and it dances around a lot. I guess that lends itself to binging, allowing the easily bored (myself included) to find something they like, somewhere, bringing them back for another season. The Netflix Producers are less concerned with finely tuned quality, and more concerned with just enough effort to recoup costs. I guess how the obviously, clearly styled Marvel shows lost more and more viewers as time went by, while terrible, yet less rigidly designed shows keep viewers coming back, says something for what Netflix wants to make.

And yes, posting about this show is less about the show, and more about how I am pretty much in a pattern of watching shows that leave me mostly unsatisfied, but with a modicum of entertainment, enough so to keep me coming back, hoping for .... more? I could blame it on life stresses and the need to be easily entertained, but that's the cheap way out.

I need to start being more discerning. Just because something is a Space Show, and I like some of the characters, doesn't mean I have to watch it.

[We Agree] 6 Underground

2019, d. Michael Bay  - Netflix

The opening 20 minutes of 6 Underground is frenetic, aggressive, and overly self-satisfied. Bay produces a car chase sequence that not only isn't exciting but is genuinely upsetting in how it wastes all its talents and resources just to keep slapping us in the face with juvenile gags, purposeless dialogue (meant to pass as witty banter, I think), and protagonists who seem to constantly and senselessly endanger the public, and are pretty glib about doing so. The crashes are overblown, often absurd (Bay remarkably limits himself to only one Baysplosion here), but seemed to require a lot of effort, all for usually a 1-3 second cut so you can't even really marvel at them. This type of quick-cut filmmaking wasn't even really that enjoyable at the height of Bay's powers and now it just seems so passe.

It's not that the premise is stupid, because any premise can work if you treat it right, but Bay can't take anything seriously, and when he tries he can't stop himself from overly indulging in effects, explosions, wisecracks or dumb gags. There's no room for real emotion or sentimentality.

But yeah, this movie is bad. The story has terrible pacing. It keeps interrupting any momentum it gains with flashbacks and origin stories. There's no real character building, because that would entail spending any amount of time getting to know them with any earnestness. Halfway through the film we don't know these characters or have any reason to care about them or their safety.

Ryan Reynolds' voiceover continually pops in to tell us... something... but nothing ever meaningful. It's supposed to be background or insight but only serves to fill any quiet moment (like an establishing shot) with noise.

I got one laugh (when there was that nerdy kid sitting with them at dinner and Reynolds calls out that they perhaps shouldn't be talking about their plans in front of him) and I really only found the parkour sequences exciting (and for all the effort that went into car chases and gun fights, they're astonishingly tedious).  I guess the giant magnet was interesting, except Bay kept overindulging in juvenile gags and improbable effects.

Just...what a fucking waste of time, money, talent, resources.

(Toast's take)

Horse Girl

2020, d. Jeff Baena - Netflix

Sarah's family has a history of mental health issues, and lately Sarah has been having spells of lost time, troubled sleep and sleepwalking. It's also possible she's being abducted by aliens and experimented upon.

It's the specificity in Sarah's character that I like so much about this film. She's sweet and awkward, but obviously nervous because of the emotional traumas she's experienced. Those specifics are a necessary part of the film's deft obfuscation of reality. Is it her psychosis that we're seeing or is she really being abducted?

I honestly think the time is trying to say why can't it be both. It's certainly saying that this is Sarah's truth, whatever we may think of it. Sometimes it's hard to have understanding of someone's struggle with mental health, but it doesn't mean we can't have compassion. I think that is ultimately what this is about. It's not about accepting or relating to Sarah's truth but having compassion for what she is experiencing.

Alison Brie is phenomenal, delivering a complex and rich performance which, as co-writer, doubtlessly is something she's been needing to get out. I won't say risky or brave, instead it's confident and self-aware.

I haven't been exceptionally pleased with any of Jeff Baena's films I've seen so far (Joshy, The Little Hours), but there's exceptional growth here as a filmmaker, if still a little clunkiness that I'm sure increased budgets and more technical experience will smooth out.

It's a twisty, mysterious, boggling and beautiful film, resting somewhere between mumblecore drama and retro-90's thriller, but certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Sort of the trippy, experimental 80's sci-fi vibe if not quite as beholden to aesthetic as, say, Beyond The Black Rainbow or Under The Skin.

3 Short Paragraphs: Time Trap

2017, Mark Dennis, Ben Foster (Strings) -- Netflix

I think it's well established that I am a fan of time travel movies. THIS blog started as a back of the streetcar argument nee raving about a time travel movie. Well, at least it did in the previous timeline, as the evidence doesn't match up with my actual recollection. How did Kent do his post in May, mine was in July and the first actual posts were in MARCH ?!?! I think some agents of time have been having some hijinx at my expense. But even the time bureau cannot wipe away my enjoyment of time travel fiction, especially thought indie level, where the idea is often more important than the executio or budget.

That said, I think the execution of this lofty idea (ok, not really that lofty, but I imagine the back of the streetcar pitch was lofty) is decent enough, if rather low key. The movie begins with Hopper, the archaeology prof bringing his students into the desert with him for his pet obsession -- the trail of some missing hippies from times past. There is something about going into the desert to discover a mystery that lends itself to indie scifi creators. But nevermind that, in the entrance to a cave the Prof finds a man frozen mid-stride. And like a fool, he follows. Days later, the students, who he had sent away are returning with their own group of friends, and tag-alongs, to find out what happened to Prof. Inside the caves, they discover something inexplicable, something that changes their lives forever.

There is no point in going into this movie without spoiling everything. If you don't want to know how it goes, just let me tell you it was a fun, twisty flick, a little naive at times, a little lofty (i already said that) at other times and one that solidifies that time related movies never truly leave their cast untouched. You see, what they find is a cave system where time travels faster, or slower, in many different parts of the system. They are not the first who were trapped in here, and trapped they definitely are having gazed up through a chimney to see flashes of light, strobes of night and day moving by at breakneck pace, showing them exactly how much time is passing them by. By the time (pun intended) they have an idea of what is going on, they start running into others investigating the same phenomena, people who are also out of time, and who are seeking to break the power this place has. Oh, and cave folks.

3 Short Paragraphs: Fighting with my Family

2019, Stephen Merchant (Hello Ladies) -- download

But Toasty, why are you watching a wrastlin' movie? You don't even like wrestling (sorry rob). Yes, that is true, but I heard it was a standard British feel-good comedy, and we were in the mood for something light, so we gave it a chance. It might also be my totally inappropriate Hollywood crush on Florence Pugh. For someone so new to the business, a few small parts in standard British fare, she sure has sprung into the spotlight, with her roles in Midsommar (yet to watch; i know i know) and Little Women (an Oscar nomination!) and her coming part in Black Widow. Personally, I think she's going to have a brief moment in the Hollywood spotlight, and the return to making small, British films that mean more to her.

Anywayz, yes this definitely was a typical British feel-good movie. Saraya is being raised by her cringe-trashy wrestler parents (played by Lena Headey and Nick Frost), along with her brother, to join the family business -- a really really small wrestling league/group in Norwich, England. Her family is really REALLY into this, while she feels dragged along. At tryouts for the WWE, nobody is more surprised than Saraya that she is picked, rather than her brother, than Saraya herself. But despite tension and resentment, she owes it to the family to try. Off to America she goes, encouraged by words from The Rock.

This is bio-pic light, because unknown to me, her character Paige was a real WWE wrestler. We get to see how Saraya deals with being the small town English girl shoved into the bright sunlight of the Florida training camp, her being more gothy than her fellow tryouts. I almost see this part as a metaphor for Pugh's current state, and maybe more than a little inspiration to pursue her career in Hollywood. After the typical setbacks, Paige comes at the whole WWE thing renewed and with even more vigorous, and becomes the famous star that actual wrestling fans will have to explain to me.

Bonus Paragraph: There are small home-video clips in the rolling credits scenes, that confirmed that Headey and Frost did a spectacular job playing the utter cringe  nature of her parents. They are utterly unashamed of who they were (criminals) and who they are (wrestlers) and surprisingly, that's the most feel-good part of it.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt B

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

Pt A is here. 

The First Season; Binged

The Witcher, 2019, Netflix

Every so often, I enter a search into Reddit / Google for "generic fantasy novel". Usually that generates a debate between what is generic or not, and how most people are searching for things that go against the tropes. Not me; give me more heroic adventurer types, sword wielding grim warriors, elves & dwarves and monsters to be slain. One of those times, it led me to a Polish series about a professional monster killer, a man from of an ancient order, corrupted by magic potions and wandering the countryside, taking bounties on things that prey on the people. The stories were faery tale adjacent, as if someone was reinterpreting Grimm for their D&D game, and Mary Sue-ing the Hell out of the stories. I loved the books. Not long after reading, the games appeared, or I discovered the games -- not sure exactly of my timelines. The games never took hold of me. I am currently on my second attempt to get through The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, which should have all the hallmarks for a game I would love, but for some reason I cannot get into.

And then Netflix came along to adapt it for the English audiences. This is not the first time the books have been tackled for the small screen. In the early 2000s, there was The Hexer, a poorly received TV series based on the books. I watched a few episodes; it was terrible. Netflix chose to represent for fans of the books and/or the games. Hell, even Henry Cavill himself is a big fan of the games, which lends at least a familiarity with the source, if not a genuine love. Netflix even did the bathtub scene from the game.

Big surprise, but I was a fan. This is definitely another series intending to ride the coat tails of Game of Thrones and while it doesn't (not as cinematic; Netflix does not yet seem completely capable of epic), it still does a solid Generic Fantasy story for me.

It takes a while to get into, and to be honest, their playing with timeline presentation doesn't help. Sure, Westworld did it, but remember, Netflix doesn't do epic very well, so it ends up coming across as confusing and disjointed. By the time (pun intended) we catch on, its time to draw the story lines together. So, Geralt of Rivia, a grimdark monster killer for hire. Yennefer of Vengerberg, a not-young sorceress, bought from her family (as a twisted, deformed young woman) recreates herself in power and manipulation. Princess Ciri of Cintra, granddaughter of the Queen, and the last surviving member of the royal family after the country is invaded by Nilfgaard. These are the three storylines and timelines we chase. This is a world of elves, and dwarves (but I don't think we see any) and fantastical creatures, some monstrous, some benign. This is a world of great magic. And the first season is about introducing characters, and setting and world building. Unfortunately, its a little light on story, as the next season, when all is gathered together, is where the real story begins.

But it still works, for the most part. We get all the elements we want from The Witcher: swordplay, and nasty monsters, spell play and beautiful sorceresses (the milieu is very *cough* classic), we even get Dandelion the bard, but under the not-translated name of Jaskier. And while I am not sure we fans needed it, we got a really catch tune. So, go ahead, toss a coin to your witcher.

The Watchmen, 2019, HBO

Now, if you want epic, HBO does epic and it does it well. This was easily the best thing I saw on TV this year, in that it gave me what I wanted from a franchise related story, but also gave me something challenging and exciting and just so... fucking... well... done.

This is not a sequel to the movie, though you can see some inspiration taken from Zack Snyder's visuals. This is a straight up sequel to the comics, but thirty years later. This is the world that came after Adrian Veidt dropped a psychic alien squid on top of NYC, killing millions in the psionic blast. This is a world of costumed vigilantes, but not exactly superheroes. This is also the world that suffered and benefited from the fallout of Veidt's act. The cold war was ended, and there seems to have been a lasting peace between nations, as Ozymandias continued to worry people of alien incursions via regular "squid fall", basically rains of pollywog sized squid babies.

But of course, all is never quite right with the world. In a Thor's hammer sized hit-on-the-head reminder, we always believe things are great while marginalized folks still get the shaft. This show was so woke some people could not get past it's political agenda, but to be honest, it was that which kept me attached. This is often an uncomfortable watching, as it starts with a view into a part of history I didn't even know existed -- the Tulsa Race Riots (which in itself, is a white washing of a name for an event) where white Tulsans attacked a prosperous black neighbourhood, killing indiscriminately and burning down the neighbourhood. In the series, Tulsa is providing reparations to the descendents of the terror, while its police force deals with the reemergence of a white supremacist group called the Seventh Kavalry, and yes, the K is intentional.

This is pure Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) with lots of plots and subplots and weirdness and amazing characters and incredible performances. Time and stories twist around, not quite Westworld style but confusing enough to cause big grins when you start cluing in. In a world where Dr. Manhattan no longer perceives time as a linear stream, but as all, at once, this kind of makes sense.

This is not a superhero TV show, despite some imagery of masked vigilantes, but it is a show about the legacy of allowing people to dress up and fight for justice, and the ramifications and fictions that would be built around them. Remember Hooded Justice from the comic? Turns out his hangman motif is not quite what it seemed, and was accepted as. Nor who and what he was.

As usual, I am trying to remember what stood out. I am such an in-the-moment kind of guy. But Jeremy Irons as the older Adrian Veidt, Regina King as a masked crusader working for the Tulsa police department, Jean Smart as the ex-superhero now FBI agent, and Tim Blake Nelson as "Mirror Guy". And of course, the Excalibur cannot be unseen.

Dracula, 2020, Netflix

In a world where the Universal Monsters Reboots have failed in numerous attempts, we are not going to get a proper Dracula in Modern Day movie. And then comes along an unexpected British produced, Netflix delivered version in the vein (pun intended) of Sherlock, in that it is done by Gatiss and Moffat. It both succeeds and utterly fails in an attempt to gives us something new in the recently post-vampire world.

So, British-style, in that we get only three longish episodes. The first episode is just, in my humble opinions, brilliant. They give us the familiar story of Jonathan Harker visiting Count Dracula to solidify a real estate deal. But we are getting the story via a requested narration, by a forthright nun to a very Renfieldish Harker. We get the familiar visitation story, with so many nods to previous versions, I got dizzy. We have the classic Hammer stories, we have Francis Ford Coppola's, we even have a little bit of the 1979 Frank Langella Drac. It was compelling and humorous, chilling and inventive.

The second episode places us on the Demeter, the ship that transports Dracula's coffin & soil. The retelling is almost a Murder on the Orient Express meets The Thing in that Dracula is picking off the other passengers one by one, while making the rest believe each is the murderer. All along Dracula is portraying more and more of the vampiric powers we are familiar with, while manipulating and altering them. For example, how does an ancient shut-in vampire expect to know about the world and age outside of Transylvania, late 1800s? By imbibing the knowledge he needs from the blood of his victims. With the knowledge taken, he slaughters everyone left on board.

And then he arrives on the coast of England and the helicopter is flying overhead.

*record scratch*

Yeah, the third episode was just ... weak. Modern day Dracula, played by 50ish Clays Bang (what a name!) is supposed to be seducing young, beautiful, irreverent Lucy while being foiled by the Harker Foundation led by Zoe Van Helsing, the descendant of the nun from the first two episodes. Yawn. They take a nice reworking attempt, and want to smoosh it into the sexy, seductive trope we have been dispensing with for a decade. Wasted.

Well, at least he didn't sparkle.

Raising Dion, 2019, Netflix

This was a thoroughly unexpected, enjoyable superhero origin story where the hero of the story is an eight year old boy coming into his powers. I have previously mentioned enjoying genre and crime TV from other countries, because it gives me a familiar experience but in a new light. In the age of Marvel, we are used to seeing how a youngish, usually male, usually white main character discovers he has powers, and how to handle them. But take an average, very grounded eight year old kid being raised by his mother, after his father, cameo-ed by Michael B Jordan, was killed saving a woman from drowning.

I imagine dad's insurance keeps them afloat, as he was a successful tech engineer, but it doesn't mean things aren't still tough. Mom is young, too young to be widowed, and while she gets support from dad's best friend (played by Jason Ritter) and her own sister, things are not helped when Dion discovers he can move things with his mind, go incorporeal and even more. Best Friend gets introduced soon enough; Dion and him bond over superhero names and how to train. But then a conspiracy involving aurora borealis over Iceland emerges and things get really interesting.

The core story is fun enough, with twists and turns, but the meat of this show was Dion and his mother. Dion is just a rambunctious little hellion, constantly pushing himself to the boundaries of what his mother can handle. She gets some help from Best Friend and from Dion's own best friend, Esperanza, a mouthy little girl confined ot a motorized wheelchair. But Dion is eight; lack of control is inherent. Mom dances the line from barely keeping it together with the drama these powers bring, while showing immense strength in front of all this.

I am very very glad Netflix is giving this one a second season. Please give all the monies intended for Dracula to this one please, and while you are at it, fund a TV show for Fast Color, which I briefly thought THIS was the TV adaptation of, as the use of colour and lights to depict their superpowers fooled me. Also, how many black centric superhero shows are out there, a sad comment on our supposed progression.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Terminator: Dark Fate

2019, Tim Miller (Deadpool) -- download

I could literally transplant the first paragraph of my writeup for Terminator: Genisys as the opening paragraph for this movie. Both had a brief period of hype, a claim to resurrect the franchise with something entirely new, a failed opening at the box office and then a quiet fade into On Demand and Streaming. Sorry guys, I guess few people care any longer.

And yet, much like I enjoyed the last one, I rather enjoyed this one. It's not perfect, but what is these days. Well, actually there are many many Very Good movies, but with genre we often accept what we get. That's another post. ANYWAYZ, this is a Trump-era movie, made by Miller to piss off the Red Hat Legion, set in Mexico and (re)placing the focus from Sara Connor to a new, young Mexican woman. She will not bear the leader of the rebellion against the machines, she will be the leader of the rebellion. I like that; fuck you, neckbeard fan boys.

This movie also washes away, much like the last did, all the movies after the 2nd. This is still the world where Arny came for Sara Connor, where Kyle Reese saved her, where her own son rescued her from the hospital, but not long after, while they were on the run, another Terminator appeared and killed John. Even with John dead, 1997 comes and goes with no apocalypse, but that doesn't mean she lets her guard down. Come 2019, Sara Connor is old, grizzled and very very angry. Thus Grace (MacKenzie Davis, Halt & Catch Fire) appears, a Terminator-adjacent warrior from another future where we are again fighting the machines. She's human, but augmented. And just behind her comes an Uber-T1000 (Gabriel Luna, Agents of SHIELD), all liquid metal with an internal, independent skeletal chassis; alas no flaming skull. Grace shows up to find & protect Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes, Cumbia Ninja) but other than that, they have no goal in mind, beyond stay alive. Old Sara saves their ass, leading them to the source of her unlikely coincidental appearance, someone who has been feeding her the time & locations of other Terminator incursions for the last 30 years. Its the old Arny model, the one that killed John. Old in much of the sense of the word, in that his human skin has aged, but also his expanding his sentience, settled into a life protecting a woman & her son. Sara hates him, but acknowledges he can help. And thus, they combine forces to protect Dani.

There's a lot there, enough already for the three (not short) paragraphs. But what I liked about his movie was more than the small movie appeal, the less-than-blockbuster nature that the first also was, but that it played a tune on many notes. For one, it felt a lot like Logan, visually and tonally, with a weight and fatigue, yes for the franchise as well as the seemingly unending battle for the future. The future is very Who-vian, in that there seems to be fixed events. You can change the future, delay things, but these events always eventually happen, in some form or another. This is not the Skynet future we know, just another rising of the machines, another death of humanity and another appearance of a warrior to lead the survivors. And again, the paradox of she who is sent back to protect the warrior actually begins the cycle.

Note: If I can say one bad thing about this movie is that Miller majorly skimped on the special effects budget. This was so below even current TV capabilities and quality, it was extremely distracting. Everytime Liquid Terminator appeared, he was rubbery and off-colour, looking like a test-pattern instead of the final work. Not sure why this happened.

Shanghai Fortress vs Wandering Earth

2019, Hua-Tao Teng (Love is Not Blind) -- Netflix
2019, Frant Gwo (Lee's Adventure) -- download/Netflix

*record scratch*

Of note, I had to kill the idea of doing three paragraphs on just the one movie, as so much of the two have merged together in my mind. Both are grand, sweeping, epic Chinese science fiction movies in the tradition of the Hollywood Blockbuster. Both are utterly ridiculous.

Oi. Where do I go on this one? How about the current immense funding of Hollywood movies by  Chinese corporations, under the auspices of building blockbusters that will do well in the "after market" ? How about how different the melodrama of one region of the world is from this part of the world ? How about the blatant, unapologetic rip-off of Independence Day 2 as if Shanghai Fortress was intentionally meant to be the sequel. How about the inherent low expectations of scifi mega-blockbusters? Just complaining about how bad it (they) was/were, considering I am the guy who still enjoys the Total Recall re-make, seems kind of weak.

But... Oh. Migawd. As mentioned, the premise of Shanghai Fortress really runs parallel to Independence Day 2, a movie that was significantly funded by China. In both movies, we pick up after Earth has successfully fought off an alien invasion, and has had the time and resources to create a defense force, both in people and in the latter movie, a proper force field. The movies are about this defense, in anticipation of a second major attack from the aliens. There is also something about the discovery of space-rocks beneath the city of Shanghai, which is a great power source, and probably what the aliens were coming here for in the first place. The problem is that all this setup happened in the first movie, the one that doesn't exist. The one we should probably have seen. But, ignoring that, we get our main characters, a cast of young, beautiful drone pilots, who are also repair engineers, who are also a military ground squad, who are also pilots of advanced warplanes, who are also... well, they are whoever the plot needs them to be when everyone else either dies or proves too incapable of saving the world. And then the aliens DO come back.

Conversely, The Wandering Earth. Woo-boy, the premise -- the mightily over-the-top idea of attaching rockets to the entire planet Earth and flying the whole thing through place to another solar system. Why? Because the sun is dying and if they don't, then we will freeze, along with the rest of the solar system. But its hard to get past this premise. For one, I highly doubt the surface of the Earth is that stable. We like to think of it as a big, solid rock, when in fact, when we factor in scale, its a rather fragile egg. Any rocket powerful enough to move the planet would just punch through the mantle. Also, move. They need them to MOVE THE PLANET! To get the planet to leave the solar system we would have to reach incredible velocity, or it would end up taking generations before reaching whatever next solar system we could settle into. And if we leave the sun behind for that long, wouldn't we just freeze anyway?

But no, let's ignore that and just focus on the movie itself. The Wandering Earth takes place in the final days before The Earth departs its current location and heads off into space. Generations have focused their resources on building the engines, as The Sun dies out and the planet gets colder. The Chosen Few have moved into secure facilities beneath each giant rocket. Yeah, that is where I want to be when they first test these gargantuan scale rockets -- right under them. Again, ignore that. Our cast are some minor functional staff, a young guy and his sister, she who has never seen the surface, tragic orphans being raised by their grampa. While he is conning a way so the two can go upstairs, drama happens when some of the rockets begin failing. And they get mixed up with it all.

Both movies are about young, beautiful, relatively inexperienced people ending up at the centre of situations that will either save the planet or doom it. Surprisingly enough, the movie with the most ridiculous premise (The Wandering Earth) has the most relatable characters, in that they are more down to earth, even if the situations they are in are astronomically big. Heh. Down to Earth. Meanwhile Shanghai Fortress gives us a cast of young heartthrobs who are supposed to be exemplary examples of youth raised under the Chinese flag. Apparently they are perfect at everything, despite tragic circumstances, despite being young. It reminded me of those 80s/90s TV shows where the main characters were always assigned the task to fix anything, even if it was outside their wheelhouse; why are you sending the pilot to fix the space station, instead of an actual engineer?!? At least in tWE, the kids just end up there, and have to just make do.

I am actually rather surprised at myself in that while watching each movie, tWE staggered me at how silly the idea was, with SF being an acceptably by-the-books alien invasion story, yet when I think back to them, the former just feels so much better thought through. I can actually accept the mega silly choices they make in tWE vs the just-for-the-optics choices they make in SF.

As these mega blockbuster movies continue to be made, and as China tries to create its very own "aftermarket" in the rest of the world, I wonder what kind of features we are going to start seeing over here. When will we get our first (American) traditional superhero movie? Will we get a Too Fast franchise heist actioner? What will we get?

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt A

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

The Dropped

Being someone who watches far too much TV, and there being far too much TV for me to consume, I sometimes drop a show that doesn't keep my attention. Its not that I find it terrible, it just doesn't keep me there. Really really bad is rarely the reason I stop watching, in fact, often a reason I just keep on watching.

Evil, 2019, CBS

David is a Man of God, not quite a priest, not quite an exorcist, but employed by the Vatican to deal with cases of miracle, or anti-miracle (possession) for that matter. Kristen is a forensic psychologist hired by the state as an expert witness. After being drawn together during one of her cases, where the criminal acts as if possessed, she ends up working with David and his team. And together, the fight crime.

The crux of a show like Evil is to supposed to be about exploring which is worse -- the evil that men do, or the evil that men are influenced to do, by otherworldly entities. Y'know, the oldest excuse in the book -- the Devil Made Me Do It. It would be so much easier if we could attach all the atrocities in the world to something other than the nature of mankind. Man kind. The show wants to have utterly objective Kristen fall prey to questioning, to doubt and to come to an understanding there is more than her science. It wants David, with his faith in the Evil his Foe is capable of, to be subjected to how much worse the (more than?) average person can be.

There are some very sweetly evil things about this show, such as Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) as Dr. Townsend, someone we know right away is A Devil, but who performs all his greatest evils through very earthly acts. Emerson is vile, scathingly so, slick and very serpentine. When I stopped watching, he had just seduced Kristen's mother, making the woman believe Kristen's fear of the man was a daughter thing. Kristen also has her very own Incubus, a demon that invades her dreams, but whose impact carries over into the real world. This is possibly the creepiest aspect of the show, and they really need to draw more upon this aspect and spread it around the rest of the show.

The problem I found was that the show just wasn't sure what direction it wanted to go. The tonal shifts were wrought with a lack of dedication. And I am just not sure whether the characters truly felt committed to their beliefs, which is likely intentional, but comes off as a lack of clarity in the underlining story.

Prodigal Son, 2019, Fox

Malcom is a profiler for the NYPD, a quirky, eccentric man like all profilers are. He's a mild shade of Will Graham (Red Dragon) with one distinct aspect -- he is the son of a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon (Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon; note: how the heck did they get him for mid-grade TV ?!?!). His dad has been locked up since he is a child, and Malcom refuses to interact with him, until he is faced with profiling a copy-cat serial killer.

Once the door is opened to Malcom working with his dad, the door never shuts. The Surgeon, who lives quite the luxurious lifestyle behind bars, feels a need to reconnect with his distraught family. It plays out as manipulative. Malcom is angry, confrontational and fragile. I got the idea they might try and flip the circumstances on us, with Malcom eventually ending up as the serial killer and The Surgeon assisting the police, but alas the show didn't seem that well thought out. It might be worth binging on Netflix, when it eventually ends up there, but not worth the effort of weekly DLing/watching.

Daybreak, 2019, Netflix

Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie drama comedy based on a graphic novel sounds right down my alley. It was diminished somewhat by the focus on teenagers, as in adults all went zombified and all that remains are the various cliques of kids, but I gave it a shot. It was actually better than I thought it would be, having a bit of heart, but only just a tiny bit. So, eventually it was just supplanted by the next shiny, likely more murderous thing -- I am currently on another Murder Show binge.

Josh was the New Kid in a Glendale, California school when the zombie plague hit. He was the nice kid, the Canadian kid, in love with the school dear, Sam, a British girl whom everyone loved. When we start off, Josh is holed up in  his well protected house, stocked full of survival goods, expositioning us everything we need to know, Zombieland style. We learn what we need about the zombies, about the survivors and about how all the high school cliques (jocks, goths, nerds, etc.) have become the survivor factions that control his area of Glendale. Sam is missing and Josh just needs to find her.

This is a bright and sunny apocalypse. Sure, all the adults are dead and/or flesh eating zombies, and sure the clique that once controlled how they went to high school now controls all of their world, but there is plenty of food to be found and chance to recreate themselves. There must have been plenty of prozac in the water, cuz nobody seems all that bent out of shape by the end of the world. Once the first few episodes went past the world building, introducing the gay kid (pacifist samurai), the little kid (genius pyromaniac), psycho kid(s), etc. it held little depth to keep me coming back. And it got cancelled so I doubt it will go far, as too many of these shows save too much for the later yet unknown seasons.

The I-Land, 2019, Netflix

The trailer for the show mocks the Fyre Festival debacle, but doesn't tell you much more. Luckily, Netflix does trailer-independent previews when you mouse-over, which revealed a Lost rip off with a bunch of pretty people waking up on a tropical island, not sure who they are nor how they got there. Insert instant conflict. Insert lazy channel-flicking fodder, or at least the new digital version of it, as Kent referenced. What the Hell, let's see what it's about. Its likely to have A Twist.

Episode Three revealed this somewhat expected twist, but not before pitting all these pretty, amnesiac people against each other. Yep, almost instantly they reacted to each other like it was an episode of the other popular island TV show, Survivor, which I assume is intentional but just ended up being batshit. It was supposed to be subtly hinting at he underlying people sans memories, but it came off as these people people being stupid and antagonistic. For example, in Episode Two, one of the characters discovers what looks like an abandoned hotel or apartment complex -- instant shelter and likely some mouldy supplies. Instead, one alpha character yells about having just finished building a beach side camp for them, so they never go to the buildings.

Episode Three's twist, that they are all inside a chemically induced virtual reality, that they are all convicts participating (against their will) in an experiment, to prove that without the life baggage, they can be Good People (bzzzzzt), proves to be even more inane. After the reveal and the stupidity around it, I was out. Maybe some rainy, channel flicking day will bring me back.

V Wars, 2019, Netflix

After a couple of successes, Netflix must just be looking for the next graphic novel adaptation they can fund or just snatch up. As highlighted above, many are likely to be terrible. But the comic landscape is vast and genre-plenty, so there is lots to try out. We may be post-vampire, but there are still a couple of years to milk it before all the vamp fans fade out.

Dr. Luther Swann (Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries) is an epidemiologist who is asked to fly north quickly, to find out why some of his counterparts at an Arctic research site have gone silent. Sounds odd, but its entirely a plot of convenience. They need to get Swann to the site of where everything begins; the show doesn't care about the logic of that. So Swann, and his best buddy the pilot, fly off to find the base abandoned, signs of violence and a weird, black ash/mold/motes floating in the air. Be worried? Weirded out? Yes. Protect yourself? Bzzzzzt. But eventually they clue in and admit what they have exposed themselves to.

Back in civilization, they are quarantined. Pilot Buddy shows signs of suffering from some unknown disease, while Swann is just fine. They are released, as nothing shows up to have caused their discomfort.

And then the killing begins. Way Up North, the site dug into old ice and uncovered frozen prions. Both men are infected, but Swann is immune. Meanwhile Pilot Buddy turns into a vampire, which is slowly revealed over the first few episodes. The best friends become enemies when Swann won't help cover up his buddy's blood hungry murders. Things get worse when Swann transmits it to his wife, after some recovery sex, and has to kill her to protect his son. Thus the vampire plague is released.

I stopped watching before I knew the exact path this show was to take, but I assumed it was going to spread as quick as a cold virus, eventually separating the new vampire species from the cattle. Thus, the Wars of V Wars. It was so very very Canadian, and not in the fun, self-aware state of so many shows I watch. It was overly serious, not well thought out, conspiracy trope filled and definitely C-grade. Not being of any higher quality, The Strain, the Guillermo del Toro penned (with a co-writer) series from a few years ago at least had a more compelling plot. This did not. Again, it might end up being a rainy day or flu day (Corona? Vampire?) binge watch.

The Feed, 2019, Amazon

This is the only British show in the mix, and the only truly scifi show. It is set the Near Future when the Google/Facebook/Twitter analog technology The Feed is everything. This is your Black Mirror level creepy technology that is implanted in your brain at birth giving you constant, instant access to the social media tool, communication and even being able to augment reality by replacing what you see with what they/you want to see. Sounds scary/grand until a conspiracy begins to grow, one the points to someone being to control the Feed and anyone connected to it.

The show centres around the Hatfield family (I really hope the McCoys show up) who invented the tech and are the Bezos/Gates analog family. They are at the point where the technology is starting to become more than just social media, where it is beginning to play a part in world politics, so of course it has its protestors. Something seedy is going on, and Daddy Hatfield (David Thewlis, Kingdom of Heaven) seems to know what, and its affecting his family, but he won't let them in on what he really knows. But Tom, the son who really didn't want to have anything to do with the family, gets directly wrapped up in it when his wife shows signs of being manipulated through The Feed.

The problem with shows like this, whether American or British, is that they like to dribble out the actual story while piling on the fictional technology. But, being TV, they only have so much budget so they can really only show you so much, which ends up with us being stuck with lots of lots of filler scenes. Unless you get a stellar cast, great directing or at the very least, a very atmospheric style it gets boring real quick. This one was definitely Black Mirror-lite and I tired of it.

***

And that was just the shows I dropped throughout 2019. Imagine what I can get bored with as this year proceeds !

Crisis on Infinite Earths

(A 2019/2020 CW Superhero Crossover Event)

I've loved superheroes about as long as I've loved Star Wars, which is as long as I can remember.  It pains me to admit that I'm a bit fatigued on both.  It's not that I'm disinterested in either (I just rewatched an episode of The Mandalorian again last night), but part of the joy of both superheroes and Star Wars for me was obsessing over minutiae, revisiting and appreciating the finer details, and delighting in the hinted at larger realities.  With SO MUCH CONTENT being released ALL THE TIME, and being an adult with job, kids, pets, and plenty of other things to do, there's next to no time to obsess, revisit, appreciate, and, sadly, delight.  It's mainly just "consume" at this point.

I've been waiting nearly my entire life for something like Crisis on Infinite Earths to appear in media.  Fans have historically spent so much time and effort complaining or trying to resolve continuities between different superhero TV shows and movies, that the solution has always been to acknowledge that they all exist in a multiverse, that they're all the star of their own stories, and those stories all differ from each other (and the comics) for fair reason.  In a very simple way, it validates their existence in relation to each other (they shouldn't have to, but us fans are a pedantic lot).  You may have been sad there's no more Smallville, but the Arrowverse didn't invalidate anything about that show.  You may be wondering how Titans and Doom Patrol and the DCEU all connect.  Well, they don't, except they're all part of a multiverse.  This always should have been implicit to fans, but it's only been through the efforts of the MCU and Arrowverse (and shows like Fringe) that the idea of parallel realities have been accepted by the mainstream and something films and movies could explore without the expectation of audiences rebuffing it.

The Crisis in comics was a way to flatten all the disparate realities and alternate earths of the DC multiverse into one reality, which helped as a hard reboot for the brand and a new jumping-on point for readers.  It was also a one-time even epic that's never been duplicated on the same scale (because it's literally impossible for it to happen, the conditions for its creation were so specific).  The point of the big Arrowverse/CW Crisis on Infinite Earths should very much be that same thing... if perhaps a softer reboot of the Arrowverse given Arrow's end, bridging the different realities of Supergirl, Batwoman, Flash and Black Lightning into one, making the potential for crossovers much simpler.  As well, it should make for a good jumping-on point for viewers of one program to get to the others, but I'll have to catch up on the returning seasons of Batwoman, Supergirl, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Black Lightning to see if any of them are friendlier to new viewers.(I would hazard a guess that the answer is "no" as they were all so mired in their own story lines, that this disruption probably only acts as a speedbump in their season arcs).

This Crisis has been teased since the first season of The Flash where a future newspaper headline announced Flash's disappearance following a crisis (Barry Allen notoriously died in the comic book Crisis on Infinite Earths).  The last crossover, 2018's "Elseworlds" (which I didn't review due to it being the dark year of this blog), introduced the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) who wound up making a bargain with Oliver Queen which has weighed heavily on the character in his show ever since.  Oliver's deal with the Monitor has been the core focus of Arrow season 8, making for a tightly focused season that makes me wish every season of Arrow had only be 10-13 episodes long.  Likewise, this season of The Flash has also focused much on the forthcoming Crisis, and how the spectre of Barry's foretold disappearance/death loomed, with the Monitor dropping hints about whats coming throughout (not to mention the occasional trip into the multiverse to bear witness to an alternate Earth getting wiped away.


Which all leads to the 5-part crossover Crisis... quite literally the biggest such event in television history.  It took a year of planning by the production teams for the five series involved, and the nerd news sphere was abuzz practically daily in the months leading into the crossover.  We would see glimpses of new comics-approximate costumes characters would be wearing, we would get news of certain actors from old TV shows and movies confirming their appearance as their legendary (or not so legendary) characters.  The anticipation coming into Crisis, and the potential of what it could be were both huge!

And yet, after three years of increasingly sizeable crossovers, we certainly knew just how big these things could get, which is to say there were still a lot of warehouse and rooftop fights and things were still very much TV quality and not nearly up to snuff of a major motion picture.  For people hoping for something akin to Avengers:Infinity War and Endgame, there's definitely disappointment.  Crisis isn't an epic to draw in new viewers, it's fan service for the regular viewers (and hopefully a draw for lapsed viewers or comic book nerds who never gave the Arrowverse a chance).

All the talk of cameos and guest appearances didn't amount to much except the briefest of scenes as the "red wave" would consume one earth or the other.  My hope was that these characters would be integrated into the proceedings more than they were.  The few exceptions were a brief return to the Smallville universe, Kevin Conroy's first live action appearance as a dystopian Batman, and Brandon Routh returning as Superman for the first time since the failed franchise rekindling in 2006, leading to him doing double duty as both Superman and Ray Palmer.  The best integrated cameo was Tom Ellis' Lucifer having a very specific story purpose for his cameo, and a true sense of history with Matt Ryan's John Constantine (plus his flirtation with both Mia Queen and Diggle brought them into the scene nicely).

One of the issues with each of these crossovers is the crossover isn't just a mini-series in and of itself. Instead, each part is an episode of one of the ongoing shows, as well as a part in the crossover.  As such, each entry needs to service the cast of that show on top of servicing the crossover, which leads to fractured focus.  Crisis should, however, be jumping between characters, as many as they possibly can get to, to see how the events are impacting them, but it doesn't quite do that.  As such, characters feel tacked on (like Black Lightning or Killer Frost) and not purposeful.

This also leads to a lack of creativity with the crux of the crossover.  The Monitor has been looking for the 7 paragons of the Multiverse for the past year (and beyond) to help save it.  A whole multiverse of infinite possibilities at their disposal and the most of the 7 paragons are regular actors from 3 of the CW shows (Sara Lance, Barry Allen, Batwoman, Supergirl, J'onn J'onzz, (Brandon Routh) Superman) and the one wildcard in Ryan Choi (Osric Chau)

There's a lot of ridiculousness in the crossover, some of it good, a lot of it bad.  I love the crossovers for the character interactions.  Bringing all these random characters together, some having pre-existing dynamics, others less so, some with none, gives a lot for the writers to work with.  Since the effects budget of television is limited, these encounters are really the blockbuster part of the crossover... that's where the fun is at.  And these shows generally deliver.  Like Ray Palmer discovering meeting his Superman doppleganger face-to-face was fantastic.  Batwoman being the relative newbie had the most meeting of others to do.  Supergirl's Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) is actually the crossover MVP, a really delightful pain in the ass that lends a great X-factor to the proceedings (and one of its biggest surprises).

But the crossover doesn't hold whenever it really needs to get into its action, or its cosmic events.  The big culmination of the Crisis in part 4 takes place largely in a quarry outside Vancouver, which is given a cheap filter to attempt for something otherworldly but never looked anything other than a quarry outside Vancouver.  There are frequent fights against shadow demons, unexplained forces of the Anti-monitor, who are no real threat at all, given that a single punch is enough to dissipate them.  While it allows every participant, powered or not, to participate in the fight, it makes for rather silly and tedious sequences when Supergirl is just as effective as regular human Ryan Choi in combat.

I want Crisis to be far more epic than it was, to let go of the confines of its production reality and really drive a story home.  For how much Arrow and Flash led into this crossover, neither really play into those narratives satisfactorily.  I mean, Arrow's whole purpose was leading into Oliver's death, which was handled with a terribly anticlimactic rooftop fight (another fucking rooftop fight) at the end of the first chapter.  Oliver's end isn't finished there, however, as he later returns as the Spectre, a character not at all set up previously in the Arrowverse, and very poorly introduced here.  It's one of the biggest swings-and-misses of the crossover.

I think the big Crisis event would have worked even better had it a focal character to work through it.  Perhaps focusing on Ryan Choi as he's drawn into this world of superheroes.  Or else if the event was in fact a mini-series (say in 3 parts containing the more epic scope of it) with character-specific crossovers in all the other shows, thus giving room to set up things like the Spectre. (It sounds like Black Lightning managed to do this, but I won't be able to see it until the season winds up on Netflix in the summer). As is it's uncohesive and a little frantic.

Chapter 1 is the setup, the perfunctory gathering of heroes and establishing the threat (which has been established in Arrow and Flash already).   But as the Supergirl entry, it gets mired in trying to save first Clark and Lois on Argo City, and then trying to save "Earth 38" (Supergirl's earth) from the Anti-Matter wave by emigrating the people of that earth to "Earth 1" (the main Arrowverse earth).  There's no real repercussions of all that migration (the impact of such a massive migration, plus the sudden awareness for Earth 1 inhabitants of the multiverse, since Earth 1 eventually gets destroyed as well.  It's a hollow victory.   There's a side visit to "Earth 95" where Sara encounters a "dark reality" Oliver... while I hoped for more alternate reality versions of characters, this one was a bit thin.   This chapter also climaxes with a nonsensical indoor battle inside an abandoned shopping mall (or office building lobby) that's supposed to be a high tech tower that's holding back the anti-matter wave.  Shortly after the indoor battle progresses to a rooftop battle resulting in Oliver's anticlimactic (first) death.

The next chapter deals with the fallout of Oliver's death, as Mia and Barry try to find an Earth with a functional Lazarus pit, much to Sara's objections.  It also adds Lex Luthor to the mix who steals the Book of Destiny and tries to kill every Superman in the multiverse.  We get another alternate reality, Earth 74 where we meet a not-that-different Rory and a rusted-out Waverider with a Len Snart (Wentworth Miller, yay) voiced AI.  Chapter 4 also introduces the quest for the Paragons of reality, but also reintroduces the Book of Destiny from the Elseworlds crossover.  This episode gives us the visit to the Smallville universe, Earth 99 Batman (Conroy) and Earth 96 Superman (Routh).  It's a full episode of side journeys that are meaningful to the main story and to some of the characters, with a lot of fun aspects (Superman vs. Superman fight) plus it puts a nice focus on the Arrowverse Lois and Clark who will be getting their own spinoff.  It's pretty much what I wanted out of every episode of the Crisis crossover but only really worked here.  The quest for paragons should have continued with the next chapter 

Where Chapter 1 opened with various Earths being destroyed (Batman 89, Titans, Batman 66), the third part starts with Earth 205, the short-lived Birds of Prey universe.  I was expecting more of these. Being the Flash episode, Frost, Cisco and Elongated Man join the mix, and they immediately resolve the identity of the last three Paragons. Sigh.  Layla Michaels, Diggle's wife, now Harbinger, has been corrupted by the Anti-Monitor, so added to the reveal that Oliver both died and then was returned via the Lazarus Pit last episode, Diggle's having a bad day.  As established in Arrowverse canon, Oliver's soul needs to be returned to his body leading to the Earth 666 world and Lucifer encounter.  The Flash team brings with it the corniest entry, and having to deal with so much of what The Flash set up this season it kind of grinds down the momentum of the crossover.  But it has its moments, particularly the treadmill sequence with Flash, Earth 90 Flash and Black Lightning is so comic booky (perhaps it's my nostalgia for the 90's Flash TV show, that this is such a bittersweet sendoff too, as I'm sure the Smallville moment in the last chapter tweaked the fans of that show).  And I love Cress Williams joining this crew.  The chapter ends with the end of everything, sending only the Paragons to the vanishing point, a point in space outside of time, and one great surprise ending.


The fourth chapter treads similar ground to Avengers:Endgame with characters entering the Speed Force and interfering in the "greatest hits" moments of theirs or other characters' lives.  It's rather tremendous fan service, while having some narrative purpose (ultimately, like so much of Crisis, the logic of the purpose of these proceedings are a conundrum).  It also provides an origin story for the Monitor and the whole event and further's Oliver's journey.  It's got some great bits, but also some bits that painfully expose the budgetary limits of the CW niche programming.

Ultimately, what I wanted out from Crisis was not seeing what happens (mainly because I knew it's budget couldn't live up to what I wanted it to be), but to see where it winds up.  And where it winds up in the fifth chapter is close to what I was hoping for... a unified Earth that presents itself as something significantly different than what we've seen before.  All the main shows - Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman - are all part of the same reality now.  Only the Paragons are aware that it's a new reality (causing Kara much confusion), but J'onn, being a powerful telepath, is able to mind-jog people into remembering, which I think would be pretty traumatic, and is a bit of a terrible cheat, methinks.

The new reality kicks in with Lex Luthor having been rewritten a world-renowned good dude, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, much to Kara's shock.  Later proceedings are interrupted by a Giant Beebo storming down the streets like a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, which sends characters of all different walks into a delightful action sequence.  The moments leading into the Beebo reveal had me thinking Starro the Conqueror (literally a giant outer space starfish) was going to show up.  That it was Beebo was just as delightful, and it sets a bit more of a comic-bookish tone to the new reality of the DCCW universe (no longer the "Arrowverse" without Arrow leading it), and that the possibility of Starro appearing (or anything else larger than life like that) certainly not as out of the question as it may have been before.  (I miss Legends tackling oddball elements of DC Comics rather than weird generic mystical shit).

As great as it would have been to flatten out ALL TV and Movie realities into one realities, that wasn't really tenable.  The final part of the crossover ends dropping some highlights as to the realities of the known Multiverse, including the new Stargirl TV show, Titans, Doom Patrol, and Swamp Thing.  Even though Ezra Miller's Flash makes a delightful guest appearance in part four, this end summary wisely avoids making any predictions about what reality/realities the current DC Cinematic Universe(s) would occupy.  (Miller's appearance happened post-production at a Warner Bros. executive's request, but I can't help but think how much more awesome this crossover would have been adding in Zachary Levi's Shazam as a paragon, and likely how willing Levi would have been to participate.  I believe the shows producers just avoided the DCCU altogether when preparing expecting that they wouldn't be allowed to even touch it, given how much an impact the movies have had on ongoing stories and character in the Arrowverse over the years).

If anything, my biggest issue with Crisis was in how it was presented, broken up into three nightly parts prior to the December holidays, and then two parts on one night two weeks into the new year.  It really impacted the flow and progress.  I probably would have watched the whole thing over again had it all come out before the holidays.  It's not perfect, it's not the Avengers, it may not appeal much to outsiders, it may not be well told, and it may not pay off on a lot of the build up (both in universe and in the meta commentary) but it has its moments (both of the "hell yeah" and "bwahaha"), and it does its fan service relatively nicely, and it ends exactly how it should which kind of turned my whole opinion on it around...somewhat.

I was thinking that Crisis may be a stopping point for the DCCW for me, but it's energized the reality just enough to keep my toes in it and see how it builds out/carries on without Arrow.

We Agree: Star Wars Ep9: Rise of the Skywalker

2019, JJ Abrams (Star Trek) -- Cinema

Yes, I know and I prefer my way of (mis)spelling the movie title; just cuz.

I told myself, and Kent in comments, that I c/would not write about this movie yet as I was just not sure and not until I had seen it another time. But that is not likely to happen any time soon, so here I am writing down some thoughts. Thoughts that are along the line of We Agree.

So, recap (well, personal not previous movies). I am the guy who really enjoys Ep1: The Phantom Menace. But I rather despise the next two movies in the prequel trilogy, so much so that I rarely re-watch them. For some reason, I have never done a ReWatch tagged write up of the primary centre mass of the movies, but I am that guy who remembers the lead-up and the utter joy at seeing the original movie, tagging along with my older brother Kenny, when I was 10 years old. I am A Fan. Thus, Ep7 was OK, I liked humming the familiar tune, but I missed getting goosebumps from the opening brass. And I was definitely in one of the minorities (not often a Straight White Cis Guy can say that) in that I really really liked Ep8. I cannot argue the fanboys for not liking it, and prefer to not acknowledge the frothing neckbeards for the hate. I really need to post a ReWatch to cover my feelings on it, as I saw it during The Great Hiatus of Late 2017 Early 2018.

So, the one sentence summary, considering I am still in the Only Seen It Once state? It was fine, it was just fine. Yeah, that is probably my greatest issue with it, in that is was just fine.

So, recap. Proper recap. Luke is dead, most of the Resistance is dead (massive side note: I had to do some wiki reading to understand exactly why there was even a Resistance when this trilogy began. If the Empire was defeated, and the New Republic was in charge, who were they resisting? Wouldn't they just be policing the Galaxy? Well, when the First Order began rising, the New Republic did little to stop them. Let them be, they thought, they can have the fringe worlds and we will rule ours. But being a galactic bureaucracy just led to them appearing weak in the eyes of many worlds, which then decided (or were forced) to secede to the First Order. The New Republic continued to turn a blind eye, so thus rose The Resistance, to actively defend against the depredations of the New/Old Empire), the New Republic themselves are dead, Snoke is dead, Han is dead and any allies the Resistance had seemingly turned away. Ben/Ren is in charge of the First Order. All seems rather bleak.

***SPOILY SPOIL SPOILERS***

We begin with Ben Ren finding a magic triangle, that reminded me somewhat of the magical sphere that Starlord finds in Guardians of the Galaxy Pt 1. But this one leads him to a hidden planet where (OMINOUS MUSIC !!) he finds the barely living corpse of Darth Sidious himself, Emperor Palpatine. Oooooo, Fanboys had a theory on the Internet and got sooooo pissy when things didn't lead that way, so Insert One Sheev Palpatine (his name is Sheev?!?!?) as the Big Bad, the guy who created Snoke but who really wanted Kylo Ren to join the Dark Side, and rule at his side. Also, Palpatine was able to secretly build a fleet of classic Star Destroyers without anyone finding his secret planet. Even if he did it Ancient Pharoah style and killed the builders after they were finished, I am sure someone would notice the loss of an engineering force large enough to create THOUSANDS of Star Destroyers, let alone the depletion of resources for it. But who cares, come stand by my side, hisses Emperor Space Zombie.

Back in Resistance Town, the Good Guys are learning the Deep Dark Secret at pretty much the same time as we are, and they also learn the only way to find him is via the Magic Triangle. Now, off on a Quest to find the only other MT. Don't get me wrong, Quests are fun, in the grand Star Wars tradition, and everyone gets to go together and see new, albeit another desert, planets. The first acts of the movie are just fun fun fun, But if The Force Awakens hummed a familiar tone, The Rise of Skywalker was performing an updated cover of the original tune. This is everything all the Fanboys wanted, including the retcon-ing of decisions made in the last, so that People Get What They Wanted.

The only clue to where the Magical Triangle might be is the last known location of a "Jedi Hunter". After a first unfortunate encounter with Ren, where Rey reveals (to the audience, really) her connection to Palpatine, via a blast of Force Lightning. After that, and a cryptic clue on a dagger (how D&D), the next step is now hidden inside C3PO, but locked behind a directive he cannot contradict without a mind wipe. It's a false device for dramatic effect, but it does address whether droids are considers "people" or not. There is tragedy in him losing his mind, but there is more weight to them choosing to not do it without consent. And the clue is revealed; the Magical Triangle is inside the ruins of the Death Star 2. An end of Act 2 battle between Rey and Ren continues the love / hate / goo goo eyes between the two, but does culminate in an act of compassion. Alas it also dashes the Key to the Planet of the Sith.

As Kent pointed out, so so much happens in this movie, that we rarely get a moment to rest and recupe, rarely do we get a moment to consider what has gone on so far. Its all rushing towards a final confrontation, a final ending to this trilogy, a final ending to Old Republic vs New Republic, Empire vs Resistance, Rey vs Ren, etc. etc. A final ending to nine movies. And I guess we get exactly what we wanted. We get the end of Palpatine, for real this time. We get the story of Rey they all wanted. They. We get an end to Kylo Ren and for a brief moment, a redemption arc for Ben Solo. We get Poe's acknowledgement of his own over confidence, which can only be redeemed when he relies on others. We even get a kiss and a laugh between Rey and Ben.

But did I get a satisfactory ending. Again, I am not entirely sure yet. Maybe we will know when I do the ReWatch.