#ITS NOT HARD TO CAST A DIVERSE CAST AND WRITE A GOOD FUCKING MOVIE
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Repeat after me:
STOP. USING. REPRESENTATION. AS. AN. EXCUSE. TO. NEGLECT. AND. MAKE. HIDEOUS. MOVIES.
#black widow#blackwidow movie#black widow movie#blackwidowmovie#black panther#blackpanther#blackwidow#blackpanthermovie#black panther movie#captain marvel#captainmarvel#carol danvers#caroldanvers#captain marvel movie#captainmarvelmovie#STOP DEFENDING BAD MOVIES JUST BECAUSE THERE IS DIVERSITY IN THE CAST#IF ITS BAD ITS FUCKING BAD#ITS NOT HARD TO CAST A DIVERSE CAST AND WRITE A GOOD FUCKING MOVIE#GOOD PLOT GOOD LOGIC GOOD CHARACTERS AREN'T HARD TO WRITE IF YOU ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT YOUR PROJECT#REPRESENTATION DOESN'T MEAN ITS GOOD#GOOD FUCKING LORD#star wars#starwars#starwars the force awakens#star wars the force awakens#the force awakens#rey
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Top 5 novels(or series)? 👀
i miss being a bookseller and talking about books irl so this ask makes me super happy! also this is going to be long and i apologize in advance
beauty queens by libba bray
my favorite book of all time. i read it WAY too young, like in 2011 at age 12, and it massively influenced my awareness of the world, personal philosophy, sense of humor, and creative identity. beauty queens is an ahead-of-its-time ya satire novel about teenage girls getting stuck on a deserted island and going feral (positive connotation).
it features a well-balanced main cast of about a dozen diverse young women, including the first trans character i ever encountered (because i read the book pretty young, it's actually how i found people can be trans at all). while this character's execution does include a few now-questionable tropes, she's written in incredibly good faith and i am so grateful for her being in this book. beauty queens also introduced me to perspectives from women of color, disabled women, and women from religious communities that i hadn't really gotten the chance to encounter in my bubble of a hometown. while the author is admittedly a cis white straight woman, she pours so much empathy and love and nuance into each individual beauty queen, and especially for 2011 i think she did a really good job.
in addition to All That Deep Meaningful Stuff, the book is like a james bond parody with a villain clearly meant to be sarah palin set in a hyper-capitalist satirization of america, characterized by super weird and out-of-the-box "commercial breaks." i describe it in my review as "weird, campy, tropey, and over-the-top," and warn that, "if you take everything very seriously, you will have trouble with this book."
my general creative philosophy is that art is at its best and most meaningful when you have no doubt anyone else could have made it. libba bray knows exactly what she wants to write, and she fucking does that, even if some people won't understand or enjoy it. the world is a better place because this book exists, which is true of everything on this list--but this deeply weird novel, seemingly lost to time, is my all-time favorite for a reason.
sharp objects by gillian flynn
gillian flynn is my favorite AUTHOR of all time. she wrote gone girl, sharp objects, and another lesser-known novel called dark places. sharp objects is a hard one to gush about without spoilers and/or triggers, but oh my god it is a masterpiece. its final line is my favorite final line in any media, ever. i am a huge lover of the domestic thriller genre, and while gone girl is more domestic thriller than sharp objects, i think this one is the better BOOK. huge trigger warning for self-harm if the title and cover aren't enough of a hint, but hoooo boy this book is the best kind of brutal
the illuminae files trilogy by jay kristoff & amie kaufman
these sci-fi ya thrillers are told entirely through transcripts, message logs, and other "found evidence" in a dossier meant to expose an evil corporation. the characters are clever and interesting, the conflict is layered, and there's some awesome space-horror a la alien movie. there's a love story and philosophical musings and wise-cracking idiot teenagers who i adore. there's a deranged ai and beautiful page layouts and the quote, "you have me. until the last star in the galaxy dies, you have me." these are great books for people who can't stand large chunks of prose, appreciators of comics and mixed-media storytelling, and the AUDIOBOOKS are like full-on radioplays with voice actors and sfx. all three novel hold their own while still feeling cohesive when read sequentially. so unique and so freaking cool
no exit by taylor adams
idiot college art student gets snowed in at a rest stop, realizes that someone is in the middle of trafficking a child and has to a) figure out who it is and b) stop them. this thriller is gory and fast-paced and darkly comedic and does the whole cat-and-mouse hero and villain thing that always lives in my head rent-free. it's gleefully violent and reminds me of films like kill bill and american psycho. i can't and won't spoil more but this book is so fun to read, especially if you enjoy media that doesn't take itself too seriously. the movie adaptation sucks and i'll be mad about it forever, especially because taylor adams comes from a screenwriting background and i doubt they let him touch the script. there's a thematically-relevant garfield clock and nail gun used several times as a murder weapon. in my storygraph review of this book, i summed up my love for it pretty well: "Sometimes a book just speaks to you. Probably not great that this one does it for me, but at least I had so much fun."
the stepford wives by ira levin
people discuss the stepford wives as a Cultural Concept, but i wish more people actually read the novella. it's really freaking good as a work of horror and satire. it's short, too. i've been dreaming up a stage adaptation for years.
other honorable mentions: the hunger games trilogy you know who wrote it, solutions and other problems by allie brosh, anya's ghost by vera brosgol, all of mary oliver's poetry, never saw me coming by vera kurian, in a dark dark wood by ruth ware, dead to her by sarah pinborough, annie on my mind by nancy garden
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Book Recs
I was gonna do one of these at the end of the year, but I’ve somehow managed to read 26 books this year already (12 novellas, 14 novels), almost all featuring queer authors and/or characters so this is already a long list.
Note: There’s a few on here I was kind of meh about, but in most of those cases it was a ‘book might be good but it’s not for me so i’ll mention it to put it on people’s radar anyway’ type of thing. Insert the usual necessary tumblr disclaimer about all of this being only my opinion and your opinions are valid too etc etc.
In order of when I read them:
Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir - Fantasy novella from the author of gideon the ninth that’s a twist on the classic princess trapped in a tower waiting for a prince story. Quite fun. (novella)
The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht - Dark fantasy about revenge and magic. m/m couple but like I said it’s pretty dark and twisted all around so definitely not a happy queer romantic story. My opinion was interesting premise that could have been executed better and probably should have been a full novel to embellish on the world building potential. (novella)
A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine - Probably tied with murderbot as the best things I read this year. Scifi, f/f couple, wonderfully done exploration of what it means to fall in love with a culture that is destroying your own. More of the many queer anti-imperialist books that have come out recently and certainly some of the best. The second one is a direct continuation of the first. (2 novels)
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson - This is the third in the Baru Cormorant series (The Masquerade) and was my favorite so far. The second and third book were originally one book that got split I believe and the second book didn’t stand alone as well (though was still great), but the third book really made up for that. Dark fantasy world starring a queer woc whose country and culture is destroyed by the imperial forces of that world colonizing and assimilating them. She vows revenge and decides to work her way up within her enemy’s ranks to enact it from within and bring an empire to ruins. Really really fascinating study of so many different aspects of our own world and the systems which enable and allow bigotry and how bigoted and violent narratives are used to control minorities. This is definitely a darker series and I was particularly impressed with some of the commentary on the racism prevalent in non-intersectional feminism as depicted through a fantasy world. Can’t wait for the last one to come out! (3 novels, 1 forthcoming)
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells - There’s six of them--5 novella and a novel--and the first is All Systems Red. Told from the point of view of a self-aware droid/android that is rented out by a corporation to provide protection in a dystopian capitalist hellhole future that isn’t that unlike our current capitalist dystopia but is in space. Muderbot hacked the chip that controlled it and instead of going rogue just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite tv shows. Murderbot is painfully relatable and the books are both funny and poignant. Highly recommended. (5 novellas and a novel).
Winter’s Orbit - Everina Maxwell - This was a m/m romance novel with a scifi backdrop of royal intrigue. Generally I’m more into scifi with a queer relationship in the background than vice versa, so it wasn’t my favorite, BUT I think it was still well written and someone looking for more of the romance angle would enjoy it. Has all your favorite romance tropes in it, especially the yearning. (novel)
The Divine Cities - Robert Jackson Bennett - Three book series. I’m very conflicted about this one. Set in a fantasy world where an enslaved nation overthrew the country enslaving them and now rules over them. It’s a story of what happens after the triumphant victory and within that it’s also a murder mystery tied into the dying magic of the conquered nation. It also has a six foot something naked oily viking man fist fight a cthulhu in a frozen river. The second book was by far my favorite, mostly due to the main character being brilliant. My conflict comes from the fact I don’t feel like the story treated its women and queer characters well. Like it had really great characters but it didn’t do great by them overall. That and the third book didn’t live up to the first two. But still definitely worth a read, can’t stress enough how cool some of the world building was. (3 novels)
Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant - This might be the only one on here I disliked. It’s got a doomed boat voyage and creepy underwater terror and monsters and a super diverse cast of characters, but I just didn’t enjoy the writing style. While having a diverse cast is great, there were a lot of moments where it felt like characters were pausing to explain things about themselves that felt like a tumblr post rather than a normal conversation you might have while actively being hunted by monsters. I also bounced off all the characters. But a lot of people seem to have liked it so if you’re into horror and want a book with a f/f main couple then maybe you’ll enjoy it. (novel)
Dead Djinn Universe - P. Djèlí Clark - Around the early 1900′s, a man in Egypt discovers a way to access another world and bring Djinn and mysterious clockwork beings called Angels through. As a result, Egypt tells the British to get fucked and Cairo becomes one of the most powerful cities in the world. So Egypt, magic, djinn, a steampunk-ish vibe, oh and the main character is a butch queer woman who enjoys wearing dapper suits and looking fabulous while she investigates supernatural events. Her girlfriend is also mysterious and badass. And she has a cat. There’s three novella (one of which technically might be considered a short story) and then the first novel. You should absolutely read the novellas first (A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili, The Haunting of Tram Car 015). Super fun and imaginative series. (3 novellas and a novel, more forthcoming)
River of Teeth & Taste of Marrow - Sarah Gailey - From the book description
“In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true. Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two. This was a terrible plan.”
Queer hippo riders!!!! Very much a western but with hippos. Main couple included a non-binary character. Loved the first one. The second one I was more meh about due to one of the characters I was supposed to like having obnoxious man pain that a woman had to take the brunt of the whole time. Also there were less hippos. But queer hippo riders! Definitely read the first one, and they’re both novellas so no reason not to read the second as well. (2 novellas)
A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers - I may be the only person who hasn’t read the long way to a small angry planet at this point, but I did grab her new novella and I loved it. It made me want to go sit out in the woods and feel peaceful. The world it’s set in feels like a peaceful post-apocalypse...or diverted apocalypse maybe. Humans built robots and robots gained sentience, but instead of rebelling they just up and left and went into the wilderness with a promise that the humans wouldn’t follow them.The remaining human society reshaped itself into something new and peaceful. It’s the story of a monk who leaves their habitual monking duties to go be a tea monk and then later wanders into the wilderness and becomes the first human in ages to meet a robot. Very sad there’s no fan art yet. (novella, more forthcoming)
The March North - Graydon Saunders - This was such a weird book that I’m not sure how to explain it. The prose style is hard to get used to and I suspect a lot of people will bounce off it in the first chapter. There’s no third person pronouns used at all and important events get mentioned once in passing and if you blink you’ll miss them. Set on a world where magic is extremely common to the point that rivers sometimes run with blood or fire and the local weeds are something out of a horror movie and most of the world is run by powerful sorcerer dictators, one country banded together (with the help of a few powerful sorcerers who were tired of all the bullshit) to form a free country where powerful sorcerers wouldn’t rule and the small magics of every day folks could be combined to work together. The story revolves around a Captain of the military force on the border who one day has three very powerful sorcerers sent to them by the main government with the hint that just maybe there’s about to be a big invasion (there is) with the implication of take these guys and go deal with this. The world building is extremely complex and very cool...when you can actually understand what the fuck is going on. There is also a murder sheep named Eustace who breathes fire and eats just about everything and is a Very Good Boy and belongs to the most terrifying sorcerer in the world who appears as a little old grandma with knitting. It had one of the most epic badass and wonderfully grotesque battles I’ve ever read. But yeah, it is not what I would call easy reading. Opinions may vary wildly. I did also read the second one (A Succession of Bad Days) in the series which was easier to follow and had a lot more details about the world, but overall I was more meh about it despite some cool aspects. The chapters and chapters of the extreme details of building a house that made up half the novel just weren’t my thing. (novels).
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson - In this world parallels universes exist and we’ve discovered how to travel between them, but the catch is you can only go to worlds where the ‘you’ there is already dead. This turns into an uncomfortable look at who would be the people most likely to have died on many worlds and how things like class and race would fit into that and what we would actually use this ability for (if you guessed stealing resources and the stock market you’d be correct). The main character is a queer woc who travels between worlds with the assistance of her handler (another queer woc) who she has the hots for. She accidentally stumbles on a whole lot of mess and conspiracy and gets swept up in that. Really enjoyed it. (novel)
Witchmark - C.L. Polk - Fantasy world reminiscent of Victorian England (I think?) where a young man with magical gifts runs away from his powerful family to avoid being exploited by them. He joins the army and fights in a war and comes home to try and live a quiet life as a doctor, but a murder pulls him into a larger mystery that upturns his life. Also he’s extremely gay and there’s a prevalent m/m romance. This one was a fun-but-not-mind-blowing one for me. (novel, 2 more in the series I haven’t read)
The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon - This was one of those that everyone loved but I couldn’t get into for some reason. I tried twice and only got about halfway through the second time. It’s got dragons and queer ladies and fantasy world and all the things I like, but I wasn’t that invested in the main story (which included the f/f couple) and was more interested in the smaller story about a woman trying to become a dragon rider. There are few things that beat out a lady and her dragon friend story for me and that was the storyline that felt neglected and took a different turn right when we got to the part I’d been waiting for. But, I know a lot of people whose reading opinions I respect who loved it, and if you like epic fantasy with dragons and queens and treachery and pirates and queer characters then I’d say you should definitely give it a try. (novel)
Bonus: I didn’t read these series this year, but if you haven’t read them yet, you should.
Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice) - Ann Leckie - Spaceship AI stuck in a human body out for revenge for their former captain, but that summary does not come close to doing it justice. Another one examining imperialism and also gender and race.(3 novels)
Kushiel's Legacy Series - Jacqueline Carey - This is two series, six books total, and starts with Kushiel's Dart. Alternate universe Renaissance-y Europe in a fantastical world where sex isn't shameful and sex workers are respected and prized. Lots of political intrigue and mystery. A lot of BDSM and kinky stuff too (the main character is a sexual masochist, oh and also bi!). I first read this series when I was fifteen or sixteen and it definitely made a big impression on me. Same author also wrote the Santa Olivia series which I’d also recommend. (6 novels)
The Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir - I mean, if you follow me, you know. If you don’t follow me you still probably know. I’d have felt remiss to have left them off though. Lesbian Necormancers in Space. Memes! Skeletons! Biceps! Go read them. (2 novels, 2 forthcoming, 1 short story)
Books On My To Read List:
Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho
Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse
This Is How You Lose the TIme War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee
Also, if anyone has any recs for scifi/fantasy books starring queer men (not necessarily having to do with a queer relationship) and written by queer men I’d love them. There’s a lot written by women, and some of them are great, but I’d love to read a story about queer men from their own perspective.
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One last unpopular opinion cause I need to get it out. tell me if I’m wrong pls. Whitewashing POC characters is 100% wrong. Why is it okay to change the race or ethnicity of a POC character? I’m talking about stuff where one of the characters isn’t Japanese anymore and they’re mostly black or occasionally some other race. If they’re making a dark skinned Japanese version I get that. But why change race/ethnicity. Isn’t that wrong too? What’s your opinion on this? Not trying to start shit I swear
I guess... hm, I will try to break down my thoughts and opinions on this. i’m not claiming i’m right, i’m merely stating this as someone who literally over thinks literally everything and anything I can. please let me know if i’ve said anything wrong or offensive as i’d like to correct it because i’m not trying to offend anyone here.
when it comes to anime specifically, westerners have this very quick ability to start saying that these characters are white. as we are all damn well aware, anime is created mostly by asian creators (japanese creators to be exact) and are often depicted to be happening in japan or in some fantasy land where terms like white, black, asian reallt don’t apply. there are some anime that take place in america, & we have anime like yuuri on ice that has multiple different countries represented, but i’d say for the most part all characters are japanese.
issues come into play when, typically seen as white people on twitter who are able to pass easily as anime characters appearance simply due to skin tone color and hair color. personally, I think anime tends to throw in funky hairstyles and hair colors and eye colors not because they’re trying to claim characters as white but because japan is a largely homogeneous country and with that they tend to have similar attributes (in which I mean hair type, eye color, and hair color). the lack of color diversity can lead media to look especially dull, for lack of better words, so mangaka & anime creators make these characters have every colored hair, eyes, and sometimes make them bipoc in the world and hair type to create visual contrast, engagement, and highlight important characters.
however, we westerners are quite self centered & think if a japanese character has blonde hair and blue eyes it makes them white! meaning that should white people cosplay this blonde hair and blue eyes character it’s okay! and due to racism, whenever poc individuals — especially black cosplayers — attempt their own version, they’re attacked with how the character isn’t whatever race the cosplayer is and are overall scum bags. the character isn’t even white the mass majority of the time either so I don’t understand the anger they have over that detail except they’re racist pigs.
now, about the race bending, I think it’s because we westerners want to see ourselves within these characters. they’re like headcanons, if you will. just like you might headcanon bakugou to eventually become hard of hearing or deaf, or how you headcanon that midoriya izuku will lose all his limbs and need a robot arm and legs, these are just personal headcanons that make the character more tuned to how everyone wishes them to be.
now this is a western issue so i speak largely for america.
the underlying issue, I think, is racism. white people, whether they like it or not, have a social advantage over everyone. things will always sort of be for them, look like them, accept them. white people will never have to wonder if the newest movie coming out will have a poc lead because they tend to have it be white people. white people never have to worry about if their foundation color is in stock or even exists in the first place because the system makes it so that it’s there for them, or if not, it’s just two blocks away. white people don’t have to worry about if they will see a face that looks like them on all forms of media because european standards are whats it. we are curated in a society where we should want the lighter hair, the lighter skin, the lighter eyes, the button nose, and thin figure. & I understand that beauty standards and ideas are shifting, but if you’re unable to see that people used to shame, put down, and harass other people for having such traits before (and even still right now harass people for having the features they want as well), I guess you’re one of the naive few.
now, because in western countries, not being able to see yourself in any characters on the tv shows (with real people or animated), some people choose to simply take it into their own hands. so they take their favorite characters and decide that they’ll give it a spin to make it look like them. I don’t think anyone really bends the race and goes “damn they should really be fucking latino, what a waste they’re not!” because I really don’t think anyone’s that...intense???? that’s not the right word, but I can’t seem to find it rn. it’s simply for fun and to show other people who also don’t see themselves in these forms of media a way in!
most importantly, I think, is that when characters are turned into different ethnicities it’s other people who come out and say they’re doing it wrong & taunt them with how they would feel if they turned someone white. if i’m being especially honest, most anime characters could definitely be white in my eyes had I never known it originates from japan simply because of the way they’re drawn. they’re putting down people who are simply expanding their creativity and wanting to see a familiar face because western media continues to fail in serving its largely ethnic population.
personally, I don’t think we westerners have the right to demand more black, latino, arabic, whatever characters in anime because the fact is japan owes us nothing. we should be demanding and continuing to harass america to include poc characters because we aren’t involved in japan. (& i’m not saying that japan should just continue to serve only pure japanese characters because they do have their own intermixed population that isn’t just of japanese decent, but I think if they want us to aid their voices i’m here for it, but I won’t be the one demanding anything from a country that isn’t mine when it comes to this form of media. )
so, to me, the reason why it’s okay for poc to change the race but not white people is because racism in america lol. white people got it good on screen & the fact that it really really bothers some people is a bit scary considering the stats on how many movies and tv shows involve main white casts.
my unpopular opinion to all this, however, is I really dislike latino!sero because the spanglish people use for him makes me think that no one writing him is actually any type of latino & i’m sorta tired and a bit offended by the sexy latin lover thing. plus it sorta seems to me that my fellow latinos only use that trope because white people think it’s hot & since they carry more weight then they think; creators keep it up to seem cool or whatever idk. so it’s not my cup of tea as a mexicana 😗✌🏽
edit:
I also think when people race bend characters to other forms of poc it’s a positive expression and something done to make people happy! but typically when the characters are bent to be “white” it’s done as an attack in a way towards poc people & not done because they want to be included in a world, ya know?
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probably not something you have too many opinions on, but while i really appreciate the directors attempts at making twilight less of a white ppl banaza, the fact that all the POC roles not dictated by the books are so typecasted makes me feel a bit icky. Like Alice being asian would've been nice sorta but that is also just making the short tiny almost manic pixie dream girl-esque one the asian one and yknow like- mike could've been POC! it wouldn't be that hard to avoid stereotypes, and its sorta sad they didn't i guess. The closest we get is Tyler and Laurent, but even then that's a bit iffy because remember that scene with charlie being an ass to tyler after the whole situation? and yknow, just everything with how laurent is treated.
@koyoakizuki I actually have plenty of opinions on this and have talked abt this before on my blog! sometimes the twilight fandom seems more WokeTm but sometimes it has a tendency to fall back into 2008 ass ideas of diversity, one of them being Asian alice.
I’m a fan of racebending white characters for the most part, but when you racebend a character because of stereotypes, that’s still fucked up. like as you said, making alice Asian because of her petite build and manic pixie dream girl demeanor is still playing into stereotypes and not a diversity flex at all. same goes for how the only Black male actors in the first movie were cast as dangers to bella (laurent and tyler).
I feel like the only racebending that worked in the first movie was for eric (I’m like 90% sure he was white in the book) but it only worked because he didn’t have many lines anyway.
I would love to say that the media is slowly — like, very slowly — working towards representing people of color better, but that only happens when people of color are directly involved in the casting/writing process. representation alone is so 2008, and it’s not enough. like it actually has to be good. maybe in the inevitable twilight remake we’ll get something better lmao
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Lin-Manuel Miranda: I’ve been writing in lockdown
In his head, Lin-Manuel Miranda has an alternative timeline of what he would be doing right now. The 40-year-old would have recently finished filming his directorial debut, for one, the Netflix adaption of the Broadway musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, which survived just ten days of shooting before everything shut down. Right now, he says, he should be in the edit.
Instead, he’s on a Zoom call, talking to GQ from his home about a filmed version of Hamilton, which wasn’t due out for another year, and he’s apologising for the fact that it doesn’t say “Lin-Manuel Miranda” on his screen, but “Lin-Sebastian’s dad”, as it “defaults to the time I did a parent-teacher conference”.
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So, Hamilton is coming to Disney+, which is incredibly exciting – and a year earlier than planned. Talk me through how that decision was made.
We realised pretty early, even when the show was off Broadway, this is going to be a tough ticket. And we sort of realised there’s value in capturing what it feels like in the theatre with this company. And the three days we shot this film was the week before the principals started to leave. We all left the following Friday. So it’s the best rehearsed cast maybe in the history of movies – we were performing and what we’d spent a year doing. When lockdown happened we had around 75 per cent of it – enough of an original, a rough cut, to be able to sell it to Disney and partner with Disney. We didn’t have a final edit. We didn't have a sound mix, which in a musical is pretty important. But once it became clear there was not going to be any theatre for the foreseeable future, we all kind of pivoted and said, “Oh, this is actually an opportunity to remind people of the power of theatre when there is none.” And so we got to editing and then it just became like racing. We turned in the final cut, like, two weeks ago.
How do you feel generally about the future for Broadway? Are you optimistic that it’s going to bounce back?
I’m optimistic. I’m not optimistic about any kind of timeline. Like I don’t know what theatre looks like on the other side of this, particularly in the absence of a vaccine. One of the books I've been reading during this lockdown is Will In The World, the biography of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. And I read it because I wanted to know what did Shakespeare do when the plague shut down the houses? Because there was that sort of meme going around, you know, “He wrote King Lear, what the fuck are you doing?” It’s not entirely accurate. He did write some sonnets. Those are pretty good. But it's, you know, that uncertainty. When we make our calling where people gather, it’s a real one. And what I'm encouraged by is honestly the fact that given that there are no shows right now, it’s actually a time to tackle some of the more systemic issues with our theatre we need to talk about. How to get an audience for Hamilton that is as diverse as the cast on stage. We're in talks, just for ourselves in this moment – at a time where we're talking about systemic racism in the United States – on how to make backstage look more like on-stage; how to address some of the inequities when it comes to black folks and people of colour in the theatre industry. It’s still so predominantly white backstage and at the top, so I think we're seeing people getting their houses in order because there's time to do it and no one has the excuse that we're very busy programming our season. So I can only speak for the Hamilton company, but we are hoping that when we come back, we come back into a world where we're addressing some of these issues and we're having the tough conversations.
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Yourself and Hamilton are natural kind of bedfellows with the Black Lives Matter movement. But you did take a bit of criticism for not maybe speaking out early enough? Was that just an oversight?
Yeah, absolutely. And I called it a moral failure. And I stand by that, you know. I had been tweeting about Black Lives Matter since 2015. I remember us rehearsing “My Shot” for the first time when we heard the there was an acquittal for the police officers who murdered Eric Garner and how heavy that felt in the room and how we cried in the room. But for some reason, the moral blind spot is not bringing Hamilton and its social channels as a brand in alliance with that earlier. And so, you know, I think we're making up for lost time in that regard. And you're right, there are natural bedfellows. We are a company made up of black and brown actors who reckon with the origins of our country every night on stage.
...
Something that always stays in my head is when you hosted SNL just before the 2016 presidential election and you sang at a picture of Trump in the corridor “Never gonna be president”, which was so funny at the time but is hard to watch now. How do you look back on that?
The night before we'd heard the Access Hollywood tapes. I don't think we've ever heard such vulgarity from a presidential candidate full stop. The fact that that was not career ending, I don't know what that says. But whatever it says ain't good. But, you know, it is unprecedented that a moment like that happened. And still millions of people said, “This is our guy.”
How are you feeling about the upcoming election?
I am feeling… I don't know. I'm feeling uncertain, as everyone else is. I think people are certainly energised. I think there is a lot of… I think a lot of what you're seeing in the streets and in the world is the country really loudly saying, “This guy does not speak for us” and “The integrity of our voting system is more important than ever.” And that's a big concern of mine. But I have no doubts that the majority of this country does not believe that this president speaks for them. It's just a matter of that being reflected in the voting booth or in the mail and voting situation that we will probably find ourselves in. We've seen there's no bottom. There's no bottom to the guy's actions. I feel positive that more people are speaking out. I feel positive seeing that the overwhelming majority of these protests have been powerful and peaceful and, like, with masks and people handing out sanitisers… I've seen the peaceful protests myself in my own neighbourhood. And none of that changes unless we actually dismantle the systems that set them up. You know, it has to be followed – the lip service has to be followed up by meaningful change. I'm encouraged when I see that Minneapolis is looking to reallocate those police funds to the community. I'm encouraged when I see action. It’s very easy to tweet, but much harder to dismantle these inequities.
...
I guess everyone would want to know if you’re working on another stage show. Any ideas in the locker for that?
Yeah, but I can't tell you. I mean, it's weird, because I kind of messed it up because Hamilton had such a public birth, right? Like, I didn't know the Obamas would call and say, “Do you have anything about America and can you perform it at this podium?” But I did. And so that that was the most public writing I've ever done, because I kind of showed everyone the ultrasound in 2009 and then I didn't finish it until 2015. So I can't write that way again, because the scrutiny on me is so much greater now. And, you know, the best idea to kill an impulse is to talk about it. But, yes, I'm writing some new things that I think would work nicely in the theatre and I have some time to do it.
OK, so without asking you to give the game away, can I ask how far you are through the writing process for it?
I'm writing the first three or four songs, which I'll rewrite once I find out what it's really about. You know, because you start thinking you know what it's about and then if you get lucky in a place, it starts to tell you what it's about. And you go, “Oh, shit, I thought I was writing it for this reason, but I'm really writing it for this reason.” So I'm writing the initial impulse songs right now and it'll tell me how much I did.
#lin manuel miranda#GQ#representation#hamilton#politics and advocacy#hamilfilm#unnamed new theatrical project#unnamed disney project#interviews
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COMIC SANS INTRO
Taglist (ask to be added/removed): @black-lakritz-dragon @marewriteblr @spacetimewraithwrites @emmaschoutenwrites
ID under the cut would’ve prefered to put it here, but the post is already super long, sorry
[ID: thirteen google presentation slides, all written in the font comic sans, black text on a white background.
1. Title: “Gay Space Pirates", subtitle: “thats it thats the story”
2. Title: “What.” Text:
Okay so, everyone is queer
Literally, there’s not a single cishet character in this story
I’m not sorry <3
Most of the cast are non-humans, but the ones that aren’t are super diverse
Transfem muslim gal, intersex nerd with vitiligo, nonbinary overweight dumbass, I’ve got them all
There are also some disabled and mute characters
Oh, also they’re all neurodivergent because I said so
3. Title: “Setting!”, Text:
So, humans discovered aliens are real
and joined their Intergalactic Union
(which is definitely not evil)
That happened about 300 years ago and humans are now vibing all over the galaxy
Sounds great, right?
Well, for most humans, sure, but the ones who had to stay behind on Earth because they couldn’t afford space travel don’t like it as much
The situation on Earth is kind of shitty, and some people want to leave
4. Title: “pLoT??”, Text:
Neb is one of those people
They got an amazing plan to “borrow” a spaceship and never look back
Problem: Neb didn’t account for a robot to suddenly accompany them
The plan kind of fails real bad, but in the end the two escape from Earth
And immediately get picked up by space pirates
Fortunately, they don’t get killed
Because those pirates could really use an extra pair of hands or two, for their biggest mission yet
Which is retrieving a weapon apparently powerful enough to destroy the universe before someone else does
Nobody knows what it actually looks like though
5. Title: “Neb”, Text:
Nonbinary, aro and ace (they/them)
overweight
has idiopathic hypersomnia (basically means they sleep a lot)
also chronic migraines
pretty impulsive and says what they think
has a hard time trusting others
dreamt of going to space for as long as they can remember
On the right side of this slide is a picrew image, showing a person with brown skin, dark brown eyes and black, curly hair. They’re wearing a red bandana as well as a torn yeans jacket and have multiple scars on their skin. The background is the nonbinary flag.
6. Title: “Ahdia”, Text:
Transfem, bigender and pan (she/they)
mute
mechanic of the ship and the only one with a sense for fashion
happy go lucky and just overall fun to be around
pretty laid back, but would absolutely hunt you down if you hurt one of her friends
proud holder of the single brain cell this crew has
On the right side is an image as well, it shows a woman with fairer, but still brownish skin and brown eyes wearing a black hijab and a long-sleeved light blue shirt with clouds on it. The background is the trans flag.
7. Title: “Cap”, Text:
intersex, queer (they/them)
First time they show up, they’re holding a soda and pizza
likes organization in theory
wants to appear like a badass, but is too chaotic for that
needs to wear glasses, but doesn’t bother
Captain of the crew that picks Neb up
certified mess
Again, an image of the right shows a person, this time with dark brown skin and vitiligo, dark brown eyes and long, black dread-locks. They have some silver piercings in their ears and wear a dark purple hoodie. The background is the rainbow flag with the brown stripes on top.
The next three slides feature two columns each, each with an own title.
Title: “Com”, Text:
AI of the ship
shy and nervous mess
wants to visit all kinds of planets
loves taking care of plants
panromantic and ace
uses she/her, but doesn’t really care about gender
spends most of her time watching trashy romance movies
Title: “Coal”, Text:
The robot Neb befriended
Realized they were self-aware not even a day ago and already got anxiety
easily overwhelmed by everything
Has no idea what to do with themself
they/them
someone tells them knitting is a thing and they never do anything else ever again
Title: “Laser”, Text:
genderfluid, uses he/him or she/her
weapon specialist and tired of it
suffers from chronic neurogenic pain
speaks in a very monotone voice
writes poetry, but nobody is allowed to read it
canonically wears crocs
Title: “Lifo”, Text:
gender? no thanks (uses fel/fels pronouns)
tiny, but deadly
lost an arm and half a leg and replaced them with robotic parts (same for fels spine)
usually very loud, but can be completely silent if fel wants
cook of the ship
loves collecting trinkets
Title: “Nova”, Text:
He’s absolutely enormous, huge, colossal and every other synonym for really big you can think of
looks like he can kill you, is actually a cinnamon roll
licensed medic and mom friend of the crew
I lied when I said Ahida is the only one with a brain cell, Nova knows what he’s doing too
loves painting
Title: “Mer”, Text:
Don’t tell anyone I said this, but Mer is my favorite
if the name wasn’t clear enough, his species is aquatic
he’s beauty, he’s grace, he’ll punch you in the face
killed a man and will do so again
don’t cross him, he will get his revenge and you will regret your actions
seems like he has everything under control, but really doesn’t
11. Title: “some of my favorite lines”, Text (in no particular order):
“What’s up with your display?” Their voice sounded more steady now, which was good.
“I do not understand.” Their voice on the other hand just sounded confused.
“Oh, right. You probably can’t see it. You’re currently displaying an error message. Which just reads ‘error’. Not very helpful.”
“Fuck. I didn’t deactivate it.”
“We could just go in and race to the top.”
“What? No. Why would we do that? We can’t afford to get caught, we need to make a plan, Coal.”
“You said you wanted an adventure. Plus, I do not think we could create a plan, seeing as we know next to nothing about its defence and security.”
They said that because of them? They were just rambling earlier, not really thinking about it, just talking to fill the silence.
“Okay. But if anything goes wrong, it’ll be your fault.”
“Uh, I don’t think so? Better not touch it, though.” As Lifo said that, Cap could see fel fighting against the desire to do just that. At least Com would be happy.
Chapter 13 - they did surgery on a grape Neb
“Oh. I’m the ship. Nice to meet you?”
Whatever the hell was going on, they didn’t sign up for this.
“I am fine.” Perfectly fine. Mhm.
Coal nodded, then just stood around?
"You're outnumbered now! Coal agreed to watch Love On A Foreign Planet with me. So, uh, get moving, Fishsticks."
They settled on two things they were pretty sure were edible: a soda labeled “SpacePop: the best soda in the universe” with a “multiple sunsets on Madoras” flavor and some leftover pizza. (They were pretty sure Madoras didn’t exist, they never heard of that planet before. Maybe they shouldn’t drink that soda after all.)
“I’m Laser, my gender is a burning trash can and my pronouns depend entirely on the mercy of the universe.”
12. Title: “Homegrown memes”, this slide is filled with six different memes.
A windows error message, but the title and text is just screaming. The two options are “AAA” or “AAA”. It’s labeled “Coal”.
A photo of two people in wedding clothes. They’re labeled “Laser and Lifo”, in the background is a person falling from the sky, labeled “Com”.
Spiderman (labeled “Mer”) is holding a screen labeled “dealing with a breakup like a normal person”, in the next frame that screen is being thrown away as spiderman looks at a pc being held by someone else labeled as “commiting murder”.
A person is being kicked into a lake by someone else. They’re labeled “Coal trying to figure out what to do now that they’re self-aware”. The person kicking them is labeled “the plot”.
The “is this a pigeon” meme, but the guy is labeled as “Cap”, the butterfly as “wearing a hoodie and truly horrendous shorts” and the caption now says “is this formal dress attire?”.
The last meme is a chart, with five rows and two columns.
Row 1: Regularly says fuck: Coal, Lifo
Row 2: has sworn of saying fuck, but said it at some point: Cap, Neb
Row 3: has not said fuck before, but can if so desired: Laser, Ahdia, Mer
Row 4: has not said fuck before and refuses to say it: Com, Nova
Row 5: legally cannot say fuck: also Coal
13. This slide is an image of Earth as seen from space. Above it white text reads “the End”. /end ID]
#writeblr#wip into#comic sans wip intro#wip introduction#writing community#science fiction#amwriting#my writing#gay space pirates#neb#coal#cap#laser#lifo#com#nova#mer#ahdia#my wiriting#my wips
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GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition
This post is also available on my wordpress.
Everyone ready for the very definitely final battle with the very definite ultimate enemy of the series? Yeah, me too!
8.03 – The Long Night
(2:00) I hope people may be able to forgive me for somewhat sparse commentary this episode. So much of it is fight scene, and so little of it is visible.
(2:44) Sam’s going on a West Wing-style walking tour of Winterfell. The main action’s in the back, and this isn’t the worst way to survey the exposition – watching Lyanna Mormont mobilise, learning that the enemy’s visible from the west wall, hearing the call for the gates to close. No story can show everything, there are points where we need the exposition, and this is more dynamic and better connected to the upcoming action than people standing around a table expositing. Or watching a flashback and expositing.
The visual handover from Sam to Tyrion here still makes me think of this as a relay race, though.
(3:49) The darkness and the tight shots are supposed to be atmospheric, but they fail in one key way – they don’t let us know what’s actually going on. You see a guy with a beard, that guy could be almost anyone, ‘cause you can only see about a quarter of his face, dimly. Shot selection tells me that this guy sure does have hands, though, so…I guess it’s not Jaime we’re looking at. (I think it was the Hound.)
(4:31) Peering through the pitch darkness of the cinematography, we can more or less make out the Unsullied getting into position for some serious Hollywood tactics.
(4:37) Looking at these teeny tiny little braziers in front of the catapults reminds me of something. Nobody’s mentioned fuel for fires this season as far as I can recall. We’ve had discussions about food for winter, but…firewood is appearing out of nowhere. Nobody’s talked about fuel as a resource, especially when it comes to fighting ice monsters. Nobody’s talked about the desirability of light for night fighting yet, or the need to keep people warm. There are all these ways the writers could have introduced real challenges for the main characters, let them show off how clever and thoughtful they are, and instead…
(5:03) This shot of Gray Worm here is the first of these shots of ranked soldiers that gives us a sense of the geography – look, you can see Winterfell and its walls in the background. Yay for giving us a visual cue of how these people are deployed, a necessary precondition of a conflict that is more than “smash the armies against each other!” Boo for stationing the Unsullied outside the freaking walls.
(5:29) First line of the episode! Thanks Edd!
(5:48) A rare sighting of the elusive direwolf.
(6:32) Wait, where are Dany and Jon watching this from? If that’s Winterfell, all lit up in the background there, then they made it a pretty good distance from the crypts to outside Winterfell’s walls in quite possibly hostile territory – ah, fuck it. Like we didn’t already know the show’s going to sacrifice worldbuilding, theme, and even character for individual “that looks cool” moments.
(6:55) Of course, the other big problem with not being able to see what’s going on is that the tension generated by fear of the unknown turns into “I’m just sitting here staring at a blank screen, aren’t I?” There’s a dark shape moving around out there, but damned if you can tell what it is. There’s nothing to look at, nothing much to hear. Hasn’t been for some minutes now.
(7:28) It turns out to be Melisandre, who’s here for some deus ex machina. Both in the sense that her presence is deus ex machina, and that she’s here to provide deus ex machina.
(7:37) Melisandre asks Jorah a simple yes or no question here. It takes Jorah three seconds to nod.
(7:43) Melisandre issues a simple instruction to Jorah here.
(7:57) Jorah follows that instruction here, fourteen seconds later. It’s too dark for us to see the expression of doubt working its way across Jorah’s face, and the directors actually pull back so his emoting is even less visible. Twenty seconds to get through this exchange. The action is just rocketing along.
Oh, and incidentally, what this shot does actually make clear is that there is no visible Dothraki leadership, just a few guys we vaguely recognise standing in the front ranks. The white guy has to take charge of their armies for them. Compare and contrast with Grey Worm, indisputably in charge of the Unsullied, but also the only Unsullied we know and recognise.
(8:19) Note that even though Jorah didn’t raise his voice, there are Dothraki several ranks back raising their arakhs. Best hearing on two continents.
(8:41) The moment when every viewer said “Praise R’hllor!” for we can finally see.
(9:17) The drama with Melisandre lighting all those swords ends here, with Jorah acknowledging Melisandre’s service and turning towards where the enemy will be approaching from.
(10:37) Melisandre and Davos exchange dialogue here. Because we wouldn’t have understood a) that Melisandre was let into Winterfell and b) Davos was unhappy about it without the full minute and a half of Melisandre riding to the castle walls and Davos hurrying down the steps to meet her.
There’s nothing extraordinary about Mel’s short little ride inside. Nothing extraordinary about Davos’ trip (and we can still barely see the emoting, because it’s too dark). Nothing that justifies ninety seconds of film here, not outside a moody character drama with these two in more important roles. Here, in a series where we’re about to start an apocalyptic scale battle (allegedly), have already been kept waiting ten minutes, and where these two are secondary characters at best, we need to keep it moving along. We have to prioritise. A shot of Mel riding towards the keep or entering, a shot of Davos’ angry face and him turning to go meet her, cut to the actual meeting. There we go.
(10:55) Melisandre stares meaningfully at Arya. Oh boy. It’s almost unbelieveable that thiswouldn’t be the worst writing of the entire series.
For context, these two last met back in season three. They shared one scene. Exchanged maybe three lines of dialogue. Melisandre has not mentioned Arya since, but focused her efforts on Stannis and Jon. Arya’s mentioned Mel a few times, mostly in the context of Gendry-related trauma. In seven and a half seasons of television, that’s one scene and half a dozen lines where these characters’ arcs have intersected in any meaningful way.
We are currently thirty seconds from what has been built up as the most important battle of the series kicking off in earnest.
You better believe I will have more to say on this later.
(11:45) Whatever you say about the tactics (because you cannot say anything good), this is much better use of light and darkness here, establishing the flaming swords as a visual representation of the army’s movement.
(13:05) And the subsequent dying of those flames as a representation of the army’s defeat, without having to show us every detail of the failure of the charge. Gee, who could have guessed a frontal charge by an inferior force into pitch darkness and snow might not have worked out so good? Certainly not our very clever main characters.
I find myself thinking of the Two Towers movie and the cavalry charges that marked the climax of the Helm’s Deep battle.
The other issue, which I’m not quite sure how to address, is the mass death of the Dothraki. Right here and now, at this point in the show, the Dothraki are the only culture not European-inspired and not played by white people. And also not covered up by armour all the time, see the book!canonically racially diverse Unsullied (and we’ll talk more about how they’re depicted by the end of the season). It’s the old ‘black guy dies first’ trope taken to horrible extremes. An entire polity and culture killed off because they served no further purpose in the plot (a plot where we’ve still got a pretty damned large cast, and yet only two people of colour with speaking roles). The only idea for “resolving” the challenges this group pose politically is to kill them off. That’s what this looks like right now.
Yet what we’re going to see over the next few episodes are the Dothraki randomly reappearing. The show got incredibly sloppy in its final season – I haven’t had a high opinion of the show since season five, and I’m finding it hard to believe how sloppy it got – but this is boggling. The writers kinda forgot they killed off the Dothraki, I guess.
So I’m not entirely sure how to critically approach this moment, beyond concluding that the writers just weren’t thinking about the role of the Dothraki in their own worldbuilding, and aren’t showing much in the way of broader sensitivities regarding killing off almost all characters of colour.
(14:13) Some survivors are galloping back, in complete and total silence. Nobody has anything to say about this, nobody’s inconveniently panicking at the state of the survivors. None of the survivors themselves are inconveniently panicking, or even trying to report any information. Every extra knows they can’t say a word in case it drowns out a main character speaking. It doesn’t feel real that every person on this battlefield would have the exact same reaction to the tension. Again I find myself thinking of Helm’s Deep, where a) the pre-battle silence didn’t last fifteen goddamn minutes and b) right in the middle of it, you had Gimli and Legolas with a moment of comic relief.
(14:30) Dany moves to act and protect the people who followed her all the way from Essos from being slaughtered by zombies. You know, I’ve just got a bad feeling about her intentions. Seems pretty suspicious to me.
(15:28) Finally! We finally see some zombies in this zombie apocalypse showdown! For a given value of the word “see”!
Mind you, if you’re here for my commentary, this might not be the best thing, because a lot of this episode is “and there was more zombie fighting, and there was more zombie fighting, so on, so forth…”
(16:10) The power of Jaime’s love for Brienne gives him enough fighting skills to assist her in combat despite missing his dominant hand. Essentially, a few training sessions with Bronn resolved Jaime’s physical difficulties arising from missing his fucking hand. Book!Jaime has trouble lacing up his clothes, rolling up letters, climbing ladders, crawling, things like that. I’m having trouble remembering similar from show!Jaime since, what, season four? And absolutely no trouble remembering the use of Jaime’s prosthetic hand as a gag mid-fight scene.
(16:17) Dragons first show up here. This is shown in closest proximity to Jaime, who had a bit of a run-in with Dany and Drogon last season. In a better structured show, this becomes a moment that shows how Jaime’s opinion of Daenerys and her use of power has changed over the course of that intervening season. Something that shows that even if the physical circumstances are very similar, the context of being in the middle of a battle with a woman spraying dragonfire on the ground has changed.
(16:47) Also in a better-written show, this moment where Sansa and Arya watch the dragons effectively barbecuing huge numbers of wights is where they realise “oh, holy shit, we really would have been fucked if Daenerys didn’t decide to help us.” Note that this is not exclusive of the realisation that Dany could do serious damage to a city or opposing army of regular human beings the exact same way.
(18:18) A wall of white fog advances over the battlefield. This is bad, as it further reduces visibility. Also something something Night King.
(19:55) Dolorous Edd is the first of the second-string cleanout to die.
(20:05) Sansa enters the crypts here, and we follow her through the darkness for fifteen seconds before getting a shot of, you know, the room she’s looking at. Sansa’s back isn’t doing much emoting. This is not like the shot of Dany’s back in 6.09, where the fighting in Meereen in the background gives context to the facial expressions we’re not seeing, generating tension for when we do actually get to see her face and the details of her reaction. This is just fifteen seconds of a woman’s back in a hallway too dark to see much at all. We don’t need to see every step Sansa takes in the hallway to understand she’s walking through the hallway. This can be, and should have been, tightened up.
I hate that I keep saying it, but it keeps fucking happening. Edit your show!
(20:41) In a similar vein, we don’t need thirty seconds of Sansa walking through the room and Tyrion walking through the room in order to establish that these characters are going to meet and exchange information. The actual ten-second unspoken exchange between Sansa, Tyrion and Missandei works well, though, and it’s something that works specifically because of the skill of the actors.
(22:55) Tactical situation – retreat into Winterfell itself. After most of the ground forces have been smashed. Flippin’ genius. Dany and Jon are flying through some icy fog and undead dragon noises.
(23:08) This aerial shot of the Unsullied protecting the retreat with their unsurpassed discipline would have been much more effective if the subject matter was visible. I am watching this in a darkened room, face inadvisably close to my computer, and I still can’t really tell what’s going on beyond movement in unison.
(23:28) Ah, you see, Jon calls out for Dany in the midst of battle, but Dany is focused on her goals. Another worrying sign. Everyone make your firebreaks!
(26:59) Tactical situation – trenches unlit. Nothing’s going to make the tactics any better here, and I don’t think the showrunners are even trying to balance the Rule of Cool with tactical plausibility, but they can string together action scenes. While those actions scenes inevitably reflect an ethos of “we’re going to make this as awesome as we possibly can” rather than “we’re going to use the rules of the setting we’ve established to make an awesome scene,” the only thing the fight scenes are suffering from are the fact that I don’t care about these characters any more. And that’s not a problem with the fight scenes.
(28:45) You know, if it was possible for a Watsonian character to be a Doylist MVP, I’m nominating Melisandre just for lighting the episode for us.
(30:02) “At least we’re already in a crypt.” I think that might have been the first joke of the episode! Seriously, though, it’s been half an hour before we had any gallows humour.
(30:37) This is actually related to my problems with Sansa this episode, and the marked contrast between her now and her back in season two. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she’s as bad as Cersei was during the Battle of the Blackwater by any means. Nevertheless, the writers seem to think that Sansa’s grim appraisal of the situation is clear-eyed and praiseworthy. As she says, “It’s the most heroic thing we can do right now, look the truth in the face.” (At 31:05.)
What Sansa got better, even in “Blackwater” (written by GRRM), was the importance of keeping up morale. Sansa here is not a comforting or inspirational figure. It’s a bit of a slap in the face that this character, who was so good at giving small bits of comfort to others when she had nothing else to give and because there was nothing else she could do, has gone backwards.
(31:44) Missandei points out, quite rightly, that without Dany’s assistance this battle would already be lost. In spite of being right, and clearly so, this doesn’t actually provoke any re-evaluation of attitude. It’s just a one-liner. It doesn’t mean anything.
(32:51) This Theon and Bran scene, seriously. Alfie Allen has been consistently Too Good For This since season three, and here he is in a scene with a character directed to show minimal emotion. It’s not a good contrast.
Related problem: it is incredibly hard to relate to a character who is totally unaffected by sitting out as bait for the unkillable superzombie while his family are fighting and potentially dying and the world potentially ending.
(33:54) More than half an hour into this final battle, we’re at last seeing the Night’s King and the zombie dragon.
(36:09) Tactical situation – zombies are now charging the walls. Dragons intermittently swooping around but largely ineffective.
(38:55) We’re even past most of the dodgy tactics, now, and we’re seeing our characters on the losing side of the fight. The show’s doing a good job of conveying this right now. Like I said earlier, I’m finding these scenes unsatisfying because the character development earlier has resulted in me honestly not caring very much.
(39:55) I didn’t comment on the first shot, but now it’s a bit more prominent, I’m also glad that the showrunners remembered that Sandor has fire-related trauma. As in, this isn’t a matter of cowardice, this is a matter of being overwhelmed by PTSD.
(41:39) “We’re fighting Death! We can’t beat Death!” “Tell [Arya] that!” I’m going to be generous and count that as foreshadowing, or at least intentional dramatic irony. Guess what this makes this statement! That’s right! The FIRST bit of foreshadowing directly and in hindsight unambiguously related to Arya’s defeat of the Night King. (No, Melisandre’s “eyes” speech is not foreshadowing that meets that criteria. That’s a blatant retcon.) 42 minutes into the episode where she kills him.
(42:10) Lyanna Mormont is the second of our second-string cleanout to die. It’s slow, painful, and gruesome. You can hear the cracking. This show certainly is edgy.
(42:57) Hey, my favourite shots of the episode! After a lot of murky flying through icy fog, the dragon chase breaks into the clear moonlight above the clouds. It’s just nice to look at, and a good way to kick into the actual dragon fight. Reorients things effectively.
Just…try not to pay attention to how neither Dany’s nor Jon’s hair is moving much in the breeze.
(44:03) Arya starts sneaking through the wight-infested halls of Winterfell here.
(46:26) Some of Arya’s blood drips on the stone floor. The zombie hears that. Just to establish the level of senses we’re talking about.
(48:33) And four and a half minutes later, scene change. No dialogue. No idea how this affected the broader tactical situation except in Arya’s continued survival. While I understand the value of having a tense scene of a main character sneaking through the halls of their own home in fear for their life and increasingly unsure how long they can keep it up, four and a half minutes? That’s about half the amount of time as we spent watching the fight outside of Winterfell.
The cut to the crypts establishes that the fighting has reached the entrance of the crypt.
(49:50) And for contrast, that scene watching the characters in the crypt realise that the fighting had come to them took a minute and a half. Again, no dialogue, but there were more characters whose reactions we could see.
(52:11) You know, with the sheer number of wights it was established the defenders were facing, and the apparent disintegration of the defending forces, I’m kind of wondering why there are so many empty rooms about the place.
(52:30) Third to die in our second-string cleanout is Beric Dondarrion, who was stabbed a few minutes ago in a do-not-pass moment to save Arya and Sandor.
(53:36) Melisandre here retcons the eyes speech to mean that Arya will kill the Night King. 52 minutes into the episode where Arya kills the Night King. There was never any reason to think of that speech as relating to the Night King until right this second. It is a blatant retcon.
This is bullshit. Or tripe, but whatever it is, it came out of a bovine’s digestive system. More when the moment itself comes, but for the moment let’s focus on how this affects Melisandre’s characterisation.
Again, since she mete Arya in season three, her storyline has been focused on Stannis and Jon. Once Stannis failed, she brought Jon back from the dead. Last season, she showed up to Dany’s plot basically to say “hey, Jon’s important, the relationship between Dany and Jon is important, and I’ll see you all for my death scene next season!” And now it turns out, on the strength of one interaction, more than four seasons ago, Melisandre’s story was actually about Arya? Without any sort of emotional reaction from Melisandre, to boot. If you’re thinking this isn’t playing fair with character development…I think you’re right.
(54:03) “What do we say to the God of Death?” “Not today.” That is the only good thing the show does with that. The only thing. And even that, I think, is laden with a misunderstanding of the evil the Night King represents in the book – the Others of the books are slavers who force humans and animals alike to do their bidding even after death. Which is how Dany maintains a thematic connection to the primary threat of the series even when she’s not on the same continent as the action. Her work in Slaver’s Bay is prep work for the end of the series.
(54:56) The fight now arrives at the godswood.
(55:13) Here we see undead!Viserion’s fire blast through the walls of Winterfell.
(56:21) I haven’t mentioned it for a while, but it is seriously nearly impossible to see what’s going on. Vital, climactic dragon fight, and we don’t actually get to see it.
(58:04) The Night King tanks a full on blast of dragon fire. He can do this because reasons. And these reasons are “the showrunners wanted to subvert expectations.”
(59:03) Well, now that a faceful of dragonfire has failed for reasons unknown, it’s time for Jon to step in. Okay, that makes a good amount of sense. Jon’s entire storyline has dealt with the threat of the White Walkers. Hell, Jon and the Night King even had their staredown back in season five. So clearly it’s time for Jon to take on the Night King directly.
(59:46) Nope! Jon does not fight the Night King. Instead he gets surrounded by garden variety wights.
(1:00:00) This little breathing space where everyone the protagonists have managed to kill stands right back up again does work well as a darkest hour.
(1:01:31) Meanwhile, in the crypts, nobody has apparently realised that the dead bodies there might also be raised. Also nobody down there has any idea how to fight or any weapons on hand, so this was well thought through all round.
(1:04:22) Jorah Mormont out of fucking nowhere to rescue Dany.
(1:07:10) Ramin Djawadi here starts his bid for the real MVP of the episode. Though we all know that he’s the MVP of the entire season.
(1:09:01) Try to ignore how Jon’s ducking behind stone pillars to avoid Viserion’s fire, despite this exact fire blasting through those exact walls fifteen minutes ago.
(1:11:21) Alfie Allen, still too good for this.
(1:12:57) Jon comes face to face with zombie Viserion. Ah, okay! So if he’s not going to kill the Night King, he’s at least going to take out a zombie dragon, right? Well. Not happy with that as a culmination of his story, but, you know, still damned impressive.
(1:13:02) Jon ducking behind this little ridge of rubble here isn’t quite as bad as Indy hopping in that fridge…but it’s getting there.
(1:13:25) Fourth to die in the second-string cleanout is Theon.
(1:15:31) Oh. So Jon’s only going to scream at Viserion. Not fight him. Um. That’s…not at all a satisfying conclusion to Jon’s arc vis a vis the White Walkers. Not remotely.
Seven and a half seasons of buildup, and what Jon accomplishes in the fight itself is roughly equivalent to the achievements of any given surviving named character who participated in the battle. I don’t like “the main characters do everything,” but the main characters have got to do something. In particular, when a main character spends the entirety of his arc focusing on the one context, it really does feel unfair to the viewers when he doesn’t play a meaningful part in the resolution of that plot.
I will say this much: my expectations were certainly subverted. I expected the writers to play fair with storytellling conventions of setup and payoff.
(1:15:41) So. The wights could hear a drop of blood fall from across a room. The White Walkers can’t hear a girl running and screaming halfway across a forest. And this is honestly one of the least of the problems here.
(1:15:52) And so Arya kills the Night King. Arya. Who has had no meaningful story connection with the fight against the White Walkers. She was the last member of House Stark to return to Winterfell and the least involved in the preparations to fight. This comes perhaps a little bit out of left field.
The showrunners later stated that they chose Arya to kill the Night King specifically to subvert expectations. Meaning that they set up seven and a half seasons of other people being more involved with this plot and Arya not being very involved with this plot only to throw it away for a “fooled you!” While I’m sure it was satisfying to the writers, it’s not very much fun for a viewer. When we invest years in watching characters realise the extent of their problems and seek to solve them, having the writers yank the payoff away right at the very end with a “nope! Someone else solved it!’ is not a good return.
Plus, while “wow, wouldn’t have picked that!” is the end result, it’s not the “I wouldn’t have picked that!” which comes from creative use of foreshadowing and careful structural and thematic development so that everything falls into place in an unexpected yet logical way. This is the “I wouldn’t have picked that!” which resulted from there being nothing to pick at all. It’s a plot twist divorced from the plot.
(1:17:46) Fifth to die in the second-string cleanout is Jorah Mormont. Emilia Clarke doing her damnedest, as well. In a scene where everyone’s standing around like stunned mullets, Dany’s open grief is quite the contrast.
(1:18:59) I like the shot of the dawn here, which really helps to convey that yes, this is over and done.
Structurally, should it have been over and done? Almost certainly not! You could definitely do some scouring of the Shire, the post-action action which demonstrates the effects of the central conflict on our leads, but in terms of plot, this should have been it. There is no conflict greater in scale than this. The fight against the White Walkers should not have been a distraction from the fight over the Iron Throne. The fact that it was is just….did the showrunners read the books?
(1:19:45) Sixth and last to die in the second-string cleanout is Melisandre. Which closes out the episode.
Next time, the season starts to go really off the rails.
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March 15, 2021: Clash of the Titans (Review: Part Two)
So, now that I got that off my chest...
Let’s talk about the actual movie, huh? Because I don’t hate it...but it’s not my favorite adaptation of Greek myths at the same time. And OK, let’s get off of the classics horse for a little bit, and I’ll think about this in terms of a movie on its own merits. It’s...fine. It’s OK, it’s actually not bad at all. I guess ignoring Greek mythology here is a little hard for me, but I’ll work through it.
In truth, I kind of just want to jump into it. Said most of what I needed to in the first part of that review. Check that out here if you want to read my version of an adaptation of the Perseus story. If you want, obviously, because it’s REALLY LONG, fair warning.
Review (2/2)
Cast and Acting: 8/10
OK, HOW is this movie go goddamn stacked with talent? Like, holy shit! Harry Hamlin as the lead is OK; he does a decent job as Perseus, but he doesn’t really give the character any memorable personality, if I’m gonna be honest. Judi Bowker manages a little better with Andromeda, but in both cases, I think it’s just the material the actors were given, rather than their actual talent. Oh, and Neil McCarthy as Calibos was also pretty good! Almost forgot him, to be honest. He’s weirdly one of the standouts, performance-wise. But yeah, back to that whole “stacked with talent” thing...Maggie Smith, Jack Gwilim, and Burgess Meredith are all in here, and they’re expectedly great. I mean, Gwilim doesn’t really get a chance to shine that much, but he’s still fine in this movie. And Maggie Smith is pretty fantastic, as is Meredith. Didn’t expect either of them in this movie. So, imagine my surprise when FUCKING LAURENCE OLIVIER WAS IN IT! Like, holy shit, dude! And Olivier is sort of dialed in, and sort of...not. This is later in his career, sure, so I wasn’t necessarily expecting him to be on, but he was still Laurence Olivier, he was still very good! But was he perfect? Eh. His grandiose performance doesn’t quite fit with the movie, and I really couldn’t see Zeus as much as I could see Olivier. It’s an issue, but not a monumental one.
Plot and Writing: 6/10
...I AM SORRY. I know, I KNOW, I shouldn’t be judging the writing and plot of this movie this harshly, but I just think it could’ve been done better, seriously. And beyond that, the writing of this movie (done by Alan Beverley Cross) is fine, but it fells...dated. And yeah, obviously this is essentially a period piece, but this movie feels like it’s been ripped out of the 1960s, not the early ‘80s. And that might be because this is the same writer as Jason and the Argonauts, WHICH DEFINITELY SHOWS. This movie feels like a slightly updated version of that one, and I’m not a massive fan of that. Also, his wife was Maggie Smith, so that’s interesting. But yeah...I dunno. I think this could’ve been better, is all.
Directing and Cinematography: 7/10
Gotta be honest, I thought Desmond Davis’ directing and Ted Moore‘s cinematography were both...OK. Nothing spectacular, not gonna lie. I really only thought that they were OK, not great. Competent, not excelling in the field and all that. Once again, it could’ve been better, is what I’m saying. Most of the better aesthetics of this film some from what’s in the shots, not how it’s shot, and not the position of the camera. Which means...
Production and Art Design: 9/10
Yeah, this movie LOOKS fantastic, absolutely no question there. This is a great-looking film, and Ray Harryhausen is a huge part of that, obviously. I mean, come on, it’s Ray Harryhausen, he’s awesome. But outside of my obvious fan-crush on Harryhausen and stop-motion animation, the film also does look legitimately good! Calibos’ makeup, alongside that of the Grey sisters, is pretty solid. The outfits are good, the sets look great, I love Olympus’ simple set-up...it’s just a great looking movie! I have a lot of issues with this movie, but the look isn’t one of them. If I had one problem, though...the Kraken looks goofy. THE KRAKEN LOOKS GOOFY, OK? He just does, to me.
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Music and Editing: 8/10
This is some great music. Really, Laurence Rosenthal did a wonderful job here. It’s RPG background music for sure, even though I don’t consider it playlist caliber for me. It’s a diverse and sprightly soundtrack, and it’s a memorable score for sure. Editing is pretty good as well, as done by Timothy Gee. Not necessarily something that I’m writing home about, but it is good. Honestly, no specific comments with this one, in terms of editing.
I am weirdly OK with a 76% here.
And that’s not even slightly related to the inaccuracies to the original myths. I genuinely think this movie is only OK. DEFINITELY a worse movie than Jason and the Argonauts and Disney’s Hercules, and both of those are extremely inaccurate to the myths. I just think this is a mediocre movie with some fun nostalgic effects. That’s just how I feel about it.
But if this movie did anything, it’s put me in the mood form films with good effects and makeup! Let’s keep the trend up, huh? Maybe even get a good movie out of it.
March 16, 2021: Legend (1985)
#clash of the titans 1981#clash of the titans#desmond davis#greek mythology#perseus#harry hamlin#andromeda#judi bowker#burgess meredith#maggie smith#laurence olivier#ray harryhausen#fantasy march#user365#365 movie challenge#365 movies 365 days#365 Days 365 Movies#365 movies a year#365days365movies
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I would just like to clear, I don't hate the BBC Dracula 2020 Show. In fact, I actually like the idea of Dracula being set in modern times like in the show, but I would like it a lot better if it wasn't written like a fucking reader insert fanfiction.
Don't get me wrong, I love me some reader inserts every once in a while but they're meant to be on Wattpad. Sometimes, you can find really fucking good fanfictions that could genuinly be movies, but this really just feels like someone wrote an erotic fanfiction for Dracula. It almost reminds me of a worse version of 50 Shades of Grey with less kinky sex.
First and foremost Agatha Van Hesling. I actually kinda liked her personality, how driven she was and determined to never give up, but she was literally created for a love interest. In Dracula by Bram Stocker, Sister Agatha is a nun that nurses Jonathan back to health, claiming he was 'sick in the head' as he ranted of what he had seen and warning others of Dracula. She doesn't even have a last name.
However there is a Dr. Van Hesling in the book, hes dutch(???) Professor that mentors and taught(????) Jack Seward who was in love with Lucy, who was fed off of and eventually killed and eventually undead by the means of the one and only Dracula. Dr Van Hesling plays a large role in the plot of the book. He has an open mind and was able to draw connections between things that some others couldn't, as he had access to more sources and could speak to most off the charecters involved. He's the first person to present the idea of a vampire, and Lucy turning into one. Thanks to Jonathan he was able to identify the vampire feeding on Lucy as Dracula and finds out how to kill the vampires.
So basically Agatha was literally fabricataed for the sole perpose of being there, to fall in love with Dracula or something.
I know we all are horny for Dracula. I'm horny for Dracula. Vampires are fucking hot but the sexiest part of vampires is that they ya know. Kill you and are mercily and heartless. The show does show that in a lot of parts and even decapiates a nun and yeets it into a gaggle of nuns which i fucking died at. But it also, humanizes him way to much, hes literally a monster. The scene in the boat with lord whats his name really portrayed that. It was really,,,, weird cause me being a kinky fucker I don't find the particular phrases of "you're going to need to be quiet now," and " youre doing so well" that creepy and if anything a little hot but looking at the circumstance and the look on that kids face, it was like r e a l y fucked up. Which is why i liked that scene. It showed just how fucked up Dracula is.
To be fair i did like Cleas Bangs acting and casting as Dracula. He had a certain charm that was ever so s l i g h t l y off. I heard people say he just 'made up an accent' but fuck you guys its a fucking danish accent you incolent twats anyways. He could be really funny at times and i actually apprecited it.
However the casting AND acting of the modern parts is absolute shit. Ep.3 is where i kinda gave up on the show and finsihed it for the sake of torturing myself. FIRST OF FUCKING ALL LUCY i cannot fathom how P I S S E D i am about Lucy. Why did they have to make her a phone obsessed basic asshole with no regards to anyones emotions besides her own and the extent of her personality is 'getting likes on socail media is all i care about because it makes me feel validated so im gonna wallo in self pity because i was obiously written by white man in his 50s that would have made me white if he wasnt forved to throw in diversity points" like shut the fuck up steven king.
Also lucy and mina never meet??? Theyre in different fucking time lines??? Theyre friendship and love for eachother was fucking golden how dare you rob that form me and give me a garbage bag full of shit with a shiny little bow on top in its place jesus f u ck.
The cemetary scene was o k ay i gues?? I liked the little nod to the book with the bloofer lady and the concept of random sprits being undead because of unfinished buisness. But this really just felt like it was slapped in the show for the sake of going on a date with Dracula in cemetary. I actually kinda apperacted it but it just felt awkward.
Also who the f u ck is Lucy's friend? The gay one??? Like,,,, is that supposed to Arthur???? His chatecter was so fu king weird and offset he just didnt feel like he should be in there. Hes literally just there for a-50-year-old-man's-interpretation-of-young-women-now-a-days verson of Lucy to have a gay best ffriend.
Ok i not even sure if i want to talk about Quincy. It just hurts. It physically hurts me to think about how d i r t y they did my baby. His charecter is the defination of american chivalry, just as great as regular chivarly but with a little extra cowboy vibe. Quincy is jist the biggest,,,, sweet haert,, like he asked lucy to marry him in his cool american cowboy voice cause he knew lucy loved it and it always made her laugh. And even when she turned him down becayse her heart belonged to arthur, he stayed. All he wanted was for lucy to be happy and all he requested was that they stay frirnds. Hes also invovled with taking fkwn dracula although hes not a main charecter percice ly as he doesnt have any entires in the book he still has an amaizing precence and sometimes while reading the book ill be readying one of dr sewards passanges and think "huh i wonder what quncys doin. I hope hes dooin good. Cowboy vibes n stuffs" amd boy dles he do that. Everh dracula film adaptataion robs us. R O B S U S of quincy morris best scene. In the middle of dr van helsing ranting about vampires( thats basically what half of the book is. I could write a 4p minute mono louge of his rambling jesus how does sweard take note of all this) quincy litterally just walks out. And nobodg really pays any notice beside glancing ag his leave and shrugging at one anouther and going back tl listneing tl van helsing explaining his vampire fan theories quincy moris , the quincy morris from texathe untited states of the amerkca the land and the free and also cowboys.stands outside of the bouilding and pints his gun up at. Dracula whos in the shape of a fucking bat eves ddopping outside the window and just fucking,,shoots it. Now he doesnt hit it cause thatt wouldnt be as fun as brutally stabbing the fucker witja wooden stake. But S T I L L. And the fucking bullet hits the window that everybodys in anprobably causes arthur to shit himself the ppoor boy. Can you belive that theh didnt fucking flim thatfor any dracul? Now i i under stands why not put in this adaptation because quincy is only mentionsed like three god damned times. And when theh DK mention him jesusnshit they literally jsut made him some popular jock from amwrica just to conter jacks white twinky ass and then they had him propose to lucy in the middle of a fucking night club and she says yes???? Lile ok jut throw Arthur out a window then cause cause fu c k him i guess. And then after lucy dies he jjsy fucking moves ?? The only thing thta makes this version of qincy quinccy is the fu king name and fact hes from america
Ok now jack fucking seward. He reminds me of when ylu forget you had a pb&j in your back pack so in the bos after school you pull it out cause yoyr hungry and yoyr mom put WAY to much jelly on it so now its like. All obsorbed into the bread and joggy and squished. Just sad and really white. They even had some kid call him whate bread and they werent fucking wrong. His obly personality traits were ' omg i love lucy but shes a hoe ;,,,((' and being connected to Zoe.
Now last and definately least the god forbaden ending. Just thinking about it gives me a fucking head ache. So , jesus, zoe, who is agathas great niece or someshit, a d looks exactly like her (its literally the same fucking actress) is a detective lile scitist reasearching dracula. So dracula is illedatly attracted to her becasue he thinks shes like agathas reincarnation or soenshit. So he tries tk drink her blood at one point and spits it all out and pukes and sjit cause her blood is poisonous bevaise she has fucking c an c e r. So later we find out that draculas weaknesses ( the sun crucifix) arnt actually real hes just afraid of dying so he has like irration fears or some shit so for some fucking reason. They deside. Its a good iea to end the show with this:
Dracula fucking drinks all of zoes blood killing her and himself because her blood poisonus. And ghe fucking emd scene is them like,,, in the sun???? Or soemt hi ng??? And theyre naked and like presumably fucked and dracula says some shit like " its doesnt have to hurt" and i almost tore my wrist open wiith my teeth because of how shitty this ending is.
Not lnly is it disrespectful to zoe but agatha, agathas whole thing was K I L I N G. dracula she wanted him fucking D E A D she woULDNT FUCK HKM
And like just after finding out that he can be in the sunlight with out fucking dying and that crosses just make him umcomfortable or some shit he just desides to kill himself??? DUDE YOU JUST FOUND OUT YOURE PROACTICALLY MORE INVINCABLE THAN YOU WERE BEFORE AND YOU JSUT FUCKING OFF YOUR SELF ??? HE COULD HAVE FUCKING RULED ENGLAD AND SPEAD VAMPIRISM OLL LVER THE FUCKING COUNTFY AND WORLD KF HE TRIED HARD ENOUGH AND HE KILLS HIMSELF BECAUSE THEY WANTED A STUPID SAPPY ENDING
anyway if anyone actually goes through the effort of reafing my god damn eS S A Y about Dracula that i finkshed typing (im not gonna bother editing tbh) at 4 fucking am. Then thank you and please get a life
#vampire#dracula#dracula2020#bbc dracula#bbc dracula 2020#3 am essays cause im pissed#dracula bram stoker#bram stoker#draculaxreader apparnetly
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none of this is revised properly, so expect a lot of meandering. this is me yelling into the void.
i’m indifferent to marvel and this genre in general: i haven’t read the comics; i’ve watched many of the marvel movies, but not all of them. my favorite is black panther, and i also like guardians of the galaxy—maybe doctor strange, too (while i have a few issues with it, i ultimately enjoyed the journey and would rewatch it)...?
that said, i appreciate how you don’t necessarily have to see all of the movies to understand the gist of what's going on. sure, you’ll get more out of it if you do, but i don’t think it’s necessary. i enjoyed all of the cameos and the revisited scenes that i recognized in endgame.
other things that i liked in endgame—ones that i immediately thought of...
the final battle is awesome — the music is wonderful, and i loved seeing everyone united and together; it's a great moment
time heist — because TIME TRAVEL
nebula! — i really enjoyed seeing her confront her old self; i’m guessing she opened up an alternate reality by killing her old self, and i wonder if that will be addressed in the future
gamora + nebula — UHHH, I JUST LOVE THEM
nebula + iron man — the lil football scene was cute
the ancient one — hate how she’s whitewashed; love tilda swinton; pretty much screamed when she reappeared... ;;;_____;;;
doctor strange + iron man — they play off of one another well in infinity war, and i liked seeing them here too
iron man — i don’t like what it means for pepper and their daughter, but ultimately i like the way his story ends
hulk in a cardigan + glasses
rocket + thor — their moments together in infinity war are delightful; while i think their dialogue is a bit iffy at times in endgame (i.e. the whole "you think you lost ppl??? i've lost ppl too!!!" bit because comparing losses on top of everything that's lobbed at thor in this film KINDA pisses me off)
starting with thanos’ death — i didn’t expect it, and it got me engaged in the beginning
INFINITY WAR
i thought infinity war was okay...? maybe less than okay now after endgame.
i liked the final battle. i loved how intense it was, and even though i wasn’t familiar with wanda or vision or their relationship, i felt for them. i enjoyed seeing the guardians of the galaxy crew + iron man + spider-man + doctor strange team up a lot; i liked seeing all of the black panther characters again, too.
there are some parts of it that i didn’t like when i first watched it, but i decided to wait until i watched endgame before picking at / thinking more deeply about them. after watching the sequel, though, my thoughts are pretty much the same.
thanos as the villain protagonist — it’s an intriguing way to tell the story, and i’m all for it in theory, but it ultimately doesn’t work for me. for him to work, i have to be able to empathize with him and understand his cause. i have to believe in him and his goal. he believes in what he’s doing, sure, but can i?
no. i can’t because literally what the fuck. the entire concept of “too many people in the world, not enough resources” is bullshit, and it doesn’t help that thanos’ thinking echoes that of malthus / ehrlich which is false and is also rooted in racism + classism. SO YOU KNOW... THAT’S COOL, I GUESS.
it might be? asking too much of the writing to address thanos’ argument on a philosophical level, but just having the other heroes call him a “madman” all the time—! it kind of drove me nuts as i was watching because it doesn’t highlight the fundamental flaws of thanos’ thinking in the first place. it’s a good vs. evil story, it’s “not supposed to be that deep,” i get it, but it just really bothers me how this film reduces the overpopulation myth into “oh, he’s just crazy” because UH... there are actual people in the world who subscribe to thanos’ thinking as fact and, frankly, it’s dangerous to lay the argument out like that and not challenge it on a higher level.
there’s thanos’ thought process and then there’s just... thanos himself.
i’m supposed to feel for this guy? why? because he’s abused his daughters over and over again...? he even tortures nebula in this film???
which leads me to how he acquires the soul stone. to obtain it, you have to sacrifice someone you love. okay, i buy it, fine. but thanos loving gamora? what.
what the fuck. he abused her, he manipulated her—i??? sorry, that’s not love. gamora even says in the film, “this isn’t love,” and you know what?! SHE’S RIGHT. as far as i’m concerned, thanos shouldn’t have gotten the stone, and if the stone accepts him as its keeper just because he flings gamora off a cliff then the soul stone can go fuck itself.
in retrospect, the whole “fling your loved one off a cliff to get the soul stone” is dumb as hell, but i bought the concept while watching, so it’s fine, i guess.
whatever... he gets all the stones in the end... and then there’s the next movie.
ENDGAME
as i said before, i liked thanos’ death in the beginning. it’s unexpected and it made me curious as to where the movie would go from there.
after that, it’s a five year time skip.
when they mentioned time travel, i was excited! the film kind of drags to get to the actual time traveling, however. i get that it’s important to establish how it all works, etc. but BOY. does it take a while. i was shocked when i saw this movie would be 3 hrs. long, but now i kind of understand why.
the time travel is fine. i chuckled at don cheadle’s bit with the “why don’t we just strangle baby thanos” and that’s as much as i liked from this part of the film.
just... the way grief is addressed and handled here... what.
hawkeye. it’s one thing for the other avengers to be, “we don’t know where he is or what he’s been up to.” it’s another thing entirely for them to be aware of what he’s been doing and then DO NOTHING ABOUT IT FOR FIVE YEARS. just—what?! this isn’t a priority for them? natasha and the others are just fine with hawkeye killing people as a way of dealing with the loss of his family? and no, it doesn’t matter that those guys he’s slaughtering are criminals or whatever—because UH, and i can’t believe i have to say this: killing people is not a good way to deal with grief??? not to mention the others clearly recognize it as something very troubling themselves—and THEN THEY DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. BECAUSE..... . . .. . WHY???
“i think we’re supposed to assume...” no, sorry. i’m not asking to have everything spelled out to me, but give me something. was hawkeye too hard to track (even though it seems they find him immediately in tokyo, but OKAY), were they too depressed over what happened, were they too scared to confront him—what was it that made them leave him like that for five years?
(don’t get me started on hawkeye in tokyo. yes, let’s just have him—a white man—slaughter japanese criminals because samurai swords are COOL and so is tokyo. fuck off. thanks for reminding me again just how diverse the main cast of this film is.)
it’s the same thing with thor. just... what?!
none of you wanted to reach out to him in the last five years and see how he’s been coping??? the people of new asgard were just... okay? with seeing him once a month? they were just okay??? knowing he was drowning himself in alcohol???!! what the fuck. like valkyrie is there in new asgard while all of this with thor is happening, what. WHAT.
it’s not like i expect hawkeye or thor or everyone else to be totally fine and dandy after all that’s happened, but it really irritates me how it seems like nobody’s tried to help or reach out to either of them in all these years. if they did, just imply it better???
moving on, it’s endearing to see thor power through his own misgivings and self-doubts during the movie, but those fat jokes can fuck off. because you know it’s not like REAL PEOPLE deal with depression or guilt or anxiety through food. it’s not like weight gain is a REAL LIFE thing that happens to people who are depressed or stressed or anything. YEAH, LET’S MAKE FUN OF HOW FAT HE IS BECAUSE HAHAHAHAHA FAT JOKES. FUCK YOU. at one point, thor reunites with his mother in the past, who literally recognizes his grief/emotions + mentions how the future hasn’t been kind to him, but HAHAHA DON’T FORGET TO HAVE HER MENTION HOW HE SHOULD EAT A SALAD BEFORE HE LEAVES.
it’s lazy humor, and that’s how i feel about most of endgame’s jokes. i think there were one or two moments that got a real laugh out of me and that’s it.
it just infuriates me how everyone else’s pain and anguish is allowed to be taken seriously, but not thor because HAHA HE’S SO FAT NOW. this picking on thor happens throughout the movie, and... it’s just been a LONG TIME since i was actively annoyed while watching a film, and even thinking about it now upsets me A LOT.
maybe i wouldn’t think the first portion of the film to be so slow if i enjoyed these different reunions, etc. but i was so worn down by the above points that i just wanted the time travel bit to start already so we could leave this behind and move on.
like i said before, i enjoyed traveling to older films, revisiting scenes, seeing different versions of the characters, etc. it’s really cool to see just how many people they brought back for endgame.
but natasha and hawkeye, though. what the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?! THERE’S TWO PARTS TO THIS...
so... you have to sacrifice someone you love to get the soul stone. SACRIFICE... .. . . AS IN.. .. . WILLINGLY.. . . . SURRENDERING... SOMETHING... sorry but it looked like natasha fucking sacrificed herself instead of hawkeye sacrificing her? SHE KICKED OFF THE ROCK SO HE WOULD LET GO OF HER WHILE HE HIMSELF DIDN’T WANT TO LET GO. HOW IS THIS A REAL SACRIFICE OF A LOVED ONE??? NEITHER OF THEM WANTED TO GIVE UP EACH OTHER, NEITHER OF THEM WERE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE SACRIFICE THAT NEEDED TO BE MADE.
like thanos’ acquisition of the soul stone is bullshit because he didn’t truly love gamora but at least he willingly made that sacrifice. i mean, if you want an actual version of what the soul stone rule dictates, go back to infinity war with wanda and vision: they love each other and, in the end, despite her reluctance, wanda ultimately chooses to destroy the mind stone, sacrificing vision, because she knows thanos can’t have it!
also... UH, WHY NATASHA??? yeah, because i needed that again after gamora. because i needed that again after ALL THE OTHER DEAD DAUGHTERS OR WIVES OR WHATEVER + MAN PAIN, DELICIOUS MAN PAIN that happens in the other films. HAHA.
not to mention using the same shot on natasha as the one on gamora in infinity war—just a broken body lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a cliff. cool, cool. not infuriating at all.
again, i like the time travel in this movie; it all makes sense. but i didn’t really get how evil!nebula was able to teleport thanos and his entire ship to the present...? i guess they engineered more of the particles they stole from good!nebula or something...?
finally, steve rogers. uhhh... i don’t think i would’ve minded his ending so much if the overall tone / message of the movie were more consistent...?
in the beginning, after the five year time skip, he’s at some kind of support group, and he says something like, “you need to try and take little steps, you have to move on” after all that has happened. that’s a powerful message, and it’s suitable for endgame.
the message is contradicted somewhat in the beginning, since the heroes choose to undo what thanos did. but throughout the film, the characters go back in time and revisit the past: past selves, past events, past mistakes—people of the past that are no longer with them in the future. eventually they all have to say goodbye and return to the present without them: move on, knowing and accepting that there’s some things that you can’t redo or change.
steve and peggy also address this concept in another captain america movie. they reunite, when she’s old and lying in bed, and she tells him basically the same thing he says in the support group...?
PEGGY (CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER)
The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.
this message pretty much speaks to the journey of most of the characters. thor with his mother, wanda with vision, hawkeye with natasha (ignoring how i hate how everything happened), etc.
but by going back in time and choosing to stay with peggy, it doesn’t seem like steve aligns with that message at all...? and it’s weird because he’s the one to bring it up in this movie—and it’s echoed in his other major films? so having steve ultimately not being able to move on from peggy and the life he could’ve lived is...??? it just seems to contradict endgame and everything else in it, and it’s just... weird to have the movie end like that. i’m not sure how i feel. it’s sweet, but... IDK. it feels very abrupt.
i enjoyed the big final battles of both movies, but the journey to get to those moments is just as important... and sometimes it’s a rocky one. anyways, i felt very mixed / frustrated after watching endgame, and writing all of this down helped. i’ll probably delete it all later.
#p.#a very long ramble / rant about infinity war + endgame#now that i finally watched endgame#this should go without saying but: i'm yelling into the void; feel free to ignore; i might delete later#eta: okay now that it's been some time i'm gonna dump this in my general tag so i can find it more easily#the avengers#marvel
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I think I might start watching bf5 so can you tell me why I should watch it
bro you’re going to get a giant block of text because hot wheels battle force 5 is a series that is really near and dear to my heart.
ok first off the plot is kinda simple but it’s really fun: it’s a group of six teens that have to drive cars real fast and battle some aliens. the second season gets more complicated but its. fun.
the aliens are called the sark (robots led by a tyrant), and the vandals (tribal dictatorship). there’s never any doubt about them being evil—not only are they conquerors that have destroyed worlds, the vandals practice slavery (which is a minor spoiler) and the sark are led by zemerik who is. just a fucking asshole. however, the show plays with this tradition model of heroes vs villains a lot in s2: zemerik Because Of Reasons ends up on the heroes’s side. this does not mean they trust him. they have to help kallus (the leader of the vandals), too, but they know for a fact the second there isn’t a greater evil to unite against, they’re back to throwing fists.
there’s another race of aliens called the sentients which are like. gods. they created the universe and all the battle zones—this is the place where our heroes fight/race the bad guys. also ps battlezones are some of the COOLEST concepts we get out of this show. they’re usually unique in design but there are reasons our heroes sometimes revisit them that makes narrative sense. battlezones are unlocked by battlekeys, and getting the battle key is pretty much the premise for every episode in s1, except for a couple near the end that build into the main conflict of s2. anyways, back the sentients. they’re dicks. i don’t trust them. they also have slaves but it’s like. lowkey slavery? it’s. yeah. also, they are 2 kinds of sentients: the blue ones and the red ones. the red ones you THINK are dicks but then u find out the blue ones. weren’t that nice either. so it’s. spicy. sentients also had like. a couple of civil wars.
anyways, let’s talk about our main heroes!
there’s vert wheeler
he’s kind of a dork and you can tell he’s probably like. 18. he’s the leader and he’s kinda arrogant but he always manages to keep his team together. he makes bad jokes sometimes and you can argue he’s a little op but honestly? as skilled as he is he clearly needs a team at his back. i stan him so hard. he drives the saber which is a car with a chainsaw on it. a chainsaw.
vert’s second is command is agura ibaden, this beautiful lady:
she made me into a lesbian. she doubts herself sometimes and gets a couple of episodes about learning to be in control and eventually she’s a great leader in her own right. she drives the tangler which is a beast of a vehicle and she’s good at planning and hitting the enemy in ways they don’t expect. i love her so much.
next up we have the cortez brothers, spinner and sherman.
they’re latino but it’s implied they’re mexican because spinner’s gamer name references a specific city in mexico. also, side note, bf5 was ridiculously popular in mexico. like. reruns every other hour. it was the life. but anyways, they’re the technical brains of the team. spinner is good with computers and sherman is an engineering genius. although they’re both the tech support, i love that they have different skills!! they love each other very much but they also get on each other’s nerves. in one episode they dare each other to eat increasingly gross things it’s hilarious and they’re peak sibling culture. also sherman is big and still the brains! there are however a couple food jokes about him which is :( but they’re not like. his entire characterization! he’s complex and i love him. they drive the buster which is. basically a tank.
anyways, next up is zoom takazumi, resident ninja
alkjd actually he’s a mixed martial arts fighter! he’s the youngest and i would protect him with my LIFE. also i don’t have the episode on hand right this moment but he’s south asian! yay diversity. he gets flak for being the baby of the team but he really finds himself and he’s an awesome scout. also i love alessandro juliani, his VA so. stan him. he drives the chopper which is a bike that becomes a helicopter. i don’t make it sound very cool but it IS.
we also have stanford isaac rhodes
he’s our moron representation. he’s vain, self obsessed, and thinks he should be in charge (the villains literally. know him as “the vain one” it’s hilarious). if the writing for this show were weaker, i’d hate him. however! he learns to not be such a dick. he becomes ride or die for his friends. as much as he thinks he should be in charge and clashes with agura, he learns to be better! i appreciate this dumbass white boy. he drives the reverb which has guns. a car. with sonic guns. this show goes ridiculously hard.
in s2 we get two more characters, tezz and aj.
tezz volitov is like stanford, but ridiculously smart. he strands himself on an alien mood at the age of NINE, and spends the next 9 years alone. it’s kinda sad. it takes him a while, but he eventually learns how to be a good teammate and i love him so much. he’s also russian, i think, but he’s. probably not white? it’s complicated. this is an issue i got with the show but i’ll tack it onto them wanting to be diverse whilst being white people. tezz drives the splitwire which i. legit want. it’s so fucking COOL.
finally, we have aj who i dont have a gif for, i just realized. he’s white n blonde, tho so. just imagine that. he doesn’t have too big of a role in the series, but he’s vert’s friend so i trust him and also the times he does show up he doesn’t steal the spotlight or anything, which i respect. they knew he was a bland white guy and they committed to that.
but yeah the characters are really interesting. also, the animation? is god tier for a show from 2010 that had the graveyard time slot. there are so many little details and the SCORING IS TO DIE FOR, also the way they color skin tones? is something you rarely see in 3D cartoons. they understood that dark skin in different lighting doesn’t react the same as white skin. there is no moment in the show where you can’t see the difference in the skin tone of the characters. it’s amazing and i love it so much.
a couple of details from the animation bc i love it
but yeah! this show is very colorful and what i call “lovingly animated”
another great things about it are. the jokes. the way they write dialogue is literally. to die for:
“bro, what would you do without me?” “live to see my next birthday”
“who wants to help me destroy a pack of killer robots?”
“a great warrior has fallen. an ally, an enemy, but, mostly a dismal failure, and a loser”
“believe it or not, i’m too exhausted to humiliate you”
“you’re risking our lives based on artwork made of STICK FIGURES?”
“if a 50ft statue of one of us showed up in a battlezone, what would we do?” “i’d blog about it” “no one reads your blog”
“the brains of this operation?” “he’s the left hemisphere. i’m the right”
some of them have visual elements which i love in jokes!!
but yeah. this is long enough i guess.
to sum up:
diverse cast
great animation
great music
solid plot
solid writing
funny joaks
some AMAZING foreshadowing
the webisodes are funny and cute
the theme song SLAPS
WORDBUILDING TO DIE FOR
there’s so much i’m leaving out because this show is SO MUCH AND SO GOOD but yeah. i made some gifs if you want to see the flavor of this show
there’s no romance like. at all. the focus is solely on the action and i love it
however, i am known for being a salty little bitch so issues™
could have used more women
there are a couple of jokes which are kinda cheesy
the diversity is the kind written by white people so take that as you will. also it’s a show that’s like. as good as white people can write. nothing super revolutionary.
it doesn’t entirely have. a solid ending. it has a tv movie that wraps it up but 1. it’s in spanish (yours truly wrote a translation) 2. it includes a cliffhanger which was. unnecessary. it’s more that they wanted to leave the door open for more but. didn’t make it. however! all the main conflicts get resolved so it’s not too a big issue
there’s probably more stuff but honestly? it’s a solid kids show. flaws n strengths. i love it
#kinggharrow#s.ask#battle force 5#this took me like. an entire hour#long post#also u can go down my battle force 5 tag for more of my thoughts on it#also also if u watch it i will gif whatever u want. anything.
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Gay Young Adult reviews “Love, Simon”
I went and saw Love, Simon tonight.
I was one of two people in the theater. The other was a clearly homosexual man probably in his late-thirties that looked like Gavin from Drake and Josh.
Warning, Spoilers Ahead.
Going into this movie, I was prepared to hate it. I am not the type of gay into the whole gay scene or at least to the extent it feels like... most other gay guys my age are into. And frankly, the movie was setting itself up to being something I’d hate. It had what I call a “coloring book cast,” a movie that tries to be diverse to the extent of what seems like obvious pandering. I mean, one of the black characters is dressed like Wonder Woman. Perhaps it was a cheap pandering to the people who care too much about that stuff. BUT, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the characters were not written as if to pander to people. I suppose I’ve been burnt out by diversity in media being sensationalized that I become too critical of that stuff for myself. This movie does diversity completely right. Perhaps because the characters feel SO GROUNDED in reality... it just didn’t register.
Though, there was also that “WHY DOES STRAIGHT HAVE TO BE THE DEFAULT?” ad that was so fucking annoying.
We’ll get to that.
One of the modern plights of movies and film and television, to me, is writing. Acting in most movies has been top-notch but you can act like a prodigy but your movie will still be shit if the writing is terrible. This movie does not have that. I was worried that the movie would be extremely disconnected to portraying the movie’s characters as teenagers. For the most part, it doesn’t do that. The characters TALK and ACT like people my age! There was one character, Leah, who finds out Simon is gay. She had always thought he was straight and, later, when they are talking about it, she describes getting rid of the idea of him being heterosexual as “chopping Hetero Simon up with a mental machete” which, frankly, is something some of my friends would certainly say.
Simon has a well-written family. What obviously is most important to a gay teenager were his parents. Each has a great scene with Simon, post-coming out.
His father made jokes at the expense of homosexuals. Nothing brutal, nothing really mean. Frankly, I wouldn’t be bothered by any of them if my friends were saying them. But, I think I, too, would be bothered if my Dad were to make those jokes (actually, I know I would since he does it). His father gets deeply distraught realizing he might have made Simon feel uncomfortable about his homosexuality.
His mother has one of, if not, the best lines in the movie. And I really wish that they did not include the line in trailers for the movie. Simon asks her if she had known he was gay. She says all she knew was that he had a secret and described that he was “holding his breath.” Around my parents, that’s all I felt. Holding my breath. Hesitant. Describing the “closet” like that was fucking powerful. And when she said “now you get to exhale” because he was out, I started to feel my heart race. It was one of the most powerful scenes in the movie.
There was this one cringey scene that, yeah probably was a bit of pandering where his mom is noted as a “heavy liberal” and cuts to her holding a sign that says something about the patriarchy. But... whatever, honestly, its never brought up again and... admittedly doesn’t even work with her character so why did they include it in the first place?
That leads to Simon.
Simon is most certainly a gay teenager. That much is clear. Simon is blackmailed by some loser kid (like an actual loser) so as not to have secret conversations Simon has had with another anonymous gay kid at the school. Simon makes up lies to keep the loser kid an “option” to one of Simon’s friends. She turns the loser down, eventually, leading the loser to get so embarassed by the entire school, he reveals Simon’s conversations to the whole school. He is devastated, being outed, and the mysterious other gay kid completely cuts Simon off.
One of my biggest fears was having that happen with my parents. Someone just revealing it on the internet. I was so worried that my younger brother would find out at school and tell my parents. (thankfully, soon after I realized I was gay, he started to be homeschooled). That “breath” was hard to “exhale” if you get me.
Another thing of note was a fantasy scene Simon had thinking about being out in college. There was a dance scene to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” that went way too long but it was literally a pride parade in his fantasy college dorm. The movie kind of pokes fun at it when Simon snaps out of it and says “this is lame” or “not THAT gay” or something.
I am super uncomfortable with that sort of “parade gay” or “proud gay” shit. I liked that Simon was, too. It made me feel a little cleared of that alienation.
The movie has two amazing shots.
The first is the motif of the “potential boys” that Simon’s mysterious pen pal is. There’s a scene towards the end of the movie where we see all of the potentials reading Simon’s declaration of his lack of shame for being gay and furthermore, a plea for his crush to come out of the limelight.
Through the movie we see the mysterious boy take on the “mask” of these potentials. It would cut to the boy writing emails to Simon as any of these guys. One time is a soccer friend of his. Another its a boy in the play with him. It cuts great.
The second was by far my favorite. In the beginning of the movie, Simon introduces himself as an average teenager. To be honest, it was a little TOO on the nose (one of the lines was “my friends and I drink way too much iced coffee.” One of the few parts of the movie where it just didn’t feel REAL at all. No one says that unironically.) Regardless, this introduction returns word for word in the movie later on. We, the audience, learn that this introduction is actually the first email Simon sends to his mysterious boy.
Next, I mentioned the “WHY IS STRAIGHT THE DEFAULT?” cringe ad, earlier.
There is a scene in the movie where Simon asks this to himself and it cuts to fantasy scenes of his friends coming out as straight to their parents. And them freaking out. However, the scene loses whatever little power it had when... their parents are all in heterosexual relationships... so... why would they care? The question is a shit question either way.
However.
There’s a redeeming factor to this.
Simon himSELF recognizes that the question is stupid later on. Kind of. He notes, swiftly, at the end of the movie that “he was asking the question because he was afraid” not because it was something he should actually care about.
So yeah, I guess its kind of redeemed. But why advertise on that stupid shit anyway? THAT was pandering, fuck it.
Now, let’s talk about something I think is a bit important.
Lets talk about the F word.
“Fuck” is only allowed to be used once in a PG-13 movie. For whatever reason.
However, I almost really like this rule. It allows the word to carry a lot of weight. It reminds me of BoJack Horsemans’ team’s rule on the word “fuck.” (Search it up) And boy did this movie use it well.
“FUCK” is used by Simon at the climax of the movie. When Simon finally gets angry at that kid for outting him. He goes on a good monologue about how coming out was supposed to be on Simon’s rules. And he was robbed of that.
Again, that resonated with me. I wasn’t outed but I was pretty much outted... which is contradictory. Let’s just say i was dragged by my eager friends at age thirteen. Not like my voice was doing any favors for me.
It was a powerful scene. And you LOVE cheering him on. At the end of the movie, too.
Lastly, Simon has a GREAT FUCKING TASTE in music.
At the end of the movie, you can see a Ladyhawke poster in his room. I fucking FLIPPED that they had a poster of hers there. His favorite Christmas song is “Someday at Christmas” by the Jackson 5. AMAZING FUCKING SONG.
Also, the set design in this movie? AMAZING. SO. REAL. SO FUCKING REAL. Everything felt so real, except his bedroom was kind of a dream bedroom. But I was fully immersed in Simon’s world because of that. The set designer better have gotten a raise for it. It was awesome. I loved it. So much.
Overall, this movie is NOT a desperate pander to the very-real issue of “minority sensationilization.” It is NOT a shit movie. It was an EXCELLENT film on the “gay teenager” and I’m happy that it was one of, if not the first, movie to focus on gay teenagers. It works. It resonated powerfully with me.
Especially for gay people my age, I would suggest watching it.
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A Love Letter to Black Panther
Disclaimer: Y'all gon' get tired of hearing me scream, "WAKANDA FOREVERRRRRRR!"
Because I mean it. Bless this movie, man. This is everything I have ever dreamt of seeing from a black superhero with an all black cast. They couldn't have done a better job. This movie is a vision, fully realized. It's going to leave a very important impact on pop culture at large and I am so here for that. I've been a black nerd since birth, and to be given a big budget film with a 90% black cast that is backed by a studio giant is so gratifying I can see why some people left the theater in tears of joy. It's not that we haven't had black films before that did well. It's not that we're not giving credit to Blade for being a (mostly) successful film franchise with a black hero at the helm. It's all the elements lining up from having Ryan Coogler direct to grabbing actually African cast members to being marketed during the Superbowl--which is the most expensive ad time you can buy on television--to seeing an amazing integration of tradition, science fiction, and modern topics that are relevant to the black community. I sound like I'm overstating things, but I truly am so happy with how this film turned out. It wasn't a cheap cash grab. It was a genuine attempt to weave a story about African and black culture based around a whole lot of ass-whuppin' and I can't wait to dive in. Follow me, Wakandans.
Naturally, spoiler alert.
Let's start with the man himself, the King of Wakanda, T'Challa. First of all, I knew I'd love him since Civil War. Most people went for Tony or Steve and came out of that movie going, "OH MY GOD BLACK PANTHER IS THE FUCKING BADDEST I CANNOT WAIT FOR HIS SOLO MOVIE DUDE." We all knew he was a total badass, but what I left this movie with was a sincere love for the mercy and compassion he showed us in this film. It's very easy in a position with that kind of power to let it corrupt you and become jaded, but the gestures he made in this film were so lovely. I love that he was outraged by his father trying to erase history with what happened to his uncle and cousin. He was genuinely angry and hurt by it all and in the end, he showed so much kindness by letting Kilmonger see the sunrise before he died that it was honestly touching. I love T'Challa because he has such a big heart. It’s an incredibly important perspective to provide, as much of the world still sees black men as angry, dangerous thugs incapable of kindness. He has flaws as well, like his anger issues and naivete, and that's what makes his journey so compelling. It's very easy to write a royalty character as above it all, but that's why Thor: Ragnarok was so well received recently: they knocked Thor off his princely pedestal and brought him down to our level. We understand what T'Challa is going through even though we aren't royalty. He has a homeland to protect and a family to look after in his father's absence, much like we have our own responsibilities trying to tug us in a thousand different ways. I love that he challenged his father and brought about a new era, extending his help to the world. T'Challa is an excellent character and Chadwick Boseman did a hell of a job with him.
As a black woman, you know what's coming next. My girls Nakia, Okoye, and Shuri. Where do I even start? First of all, let me raise my fist for some lovely dark-skinned women getting the spotlight in a major superhero film franchise. Now, don't get me wrong--I absolutely freaking LOVED Tessa Thompson in Thor: Ragnarok. She slayed. But my heart is just bursting with pride at these beautiful badass women who are given weight, agency, and attention in this film. I have absolutely nothing against light-skinned women at all, but I do acknowledge that they tend to get roles easier than dark-skinned women because society still has this idiotic aversion to them because of the establishment's idea of beauty. It was such a rush to see each woman on screen having inner conflict and deciding what side of the line they would stand on. I love Nakia's stubborn nature and her hesitance to join the fray, but the second T'Challa was gone, she switched into spy mode and she did the damn thing. She saved the people who cared about her, she saved Ross, and she stood up for her country as well as the other people out there who needed her help. You are a diamond, Nakia. Okoye is probably going to come out of this film as the runaway favorite, if you ask me. I mean, Danai Gurira is already worshiped for her role as the amazing Michonne on The Walking Dead, but seeing her here, slicing and stabbing and beating the tar out of everyone while struggling with her loyalty to the Wakandan throne just gives me all the feels. I adored her sharp tongue and her grumpy frown and her impossible awesomeness. Then there's Shuri. I can't express my delight with her. She was such an adorable, witty addition to the team. I fully admit that I fell for the low-hanging fruit: the "WHAT ARE THOOOOOOOSE!" joke was hilarious even though I know no one over the age of thirty is going to have a single clue what she was referencing. I loved her calling Ross "colonizer." Shuri was throwing shade left and right and it was glorious. Furthermore, having her be the gadget gal of the film was brilliantly done. I loved her enthusiasm and her amazing tech. I loved that she bravely fought even though she was inexperienced. She was such a great character and I look forward to seeing beautiful little girls idolizing her mind and her strength in the future.
Kilmonger is definitely one of the strongest villains in the MCU so far. Most people ding Marvel for having thin villains, and that's not an unfair assessment. In my opinion, it's Cutting Room Floor issues. When you have to tell a story in two and a half hours, sometimes there's just too much content that you're excited to fit in and you just can't get it in there, so you take out chunks related to the villain to avoid the hero having an unsatisfying character arc. It's not a great idea, because then your villain isn't three dimensional and it can diminish the overall enjoyment of the film. Kilmonger is the answer to that problem. He had a reason for what he did, and while it wasn't an excuse for his cruelty, it definitely made you think about the fact that every good villain is a hero in his own mind. Kilmonger's plan even tempted someone in T'Challa's camp because it had a serious amount of relevance not only to Africans but black people all over the world. Wanting to stomp out oppression, especially in this day and age, is a trap I think a lot of people can fall into. I love the almost Shakespearean tragedy of it all, that maybe this could have been avoided if T'Chaka stayed behind and explained to the boy where he came from and that he had no choice. It probably wouldn't have worked, but just abandoning the kid with his dead father was ice-cold, and it's more tragic that it was done out of good intentions in T'Chaka's mind. I love that T'Challa sympathized with Erik and even offered to save him in the end. That has weight. That's excellent writing. I do admit, though, that Michael B. Jordan is definitely a young actor, because he was hamming it up pretty hard in certain scenes, but overall the kid did well with the role.
The costume design and scenery were just breathtaking. Man, I love the visuals we got to see. African culture is so vibrant and interesting. I'm really delighted knowing millions of people will get some exposure to all the different aspects and traditions it has to offer.
The soundtrack is killer. From the score to the tracks, it was done truly well.
Andy Serkis as Claw (although I don't appreciate the bait and switch, I can live with it; Marvel always kills their villains that are not Loki and even he is probably going to die in Infinity War). I knew he was an oddball in Age of Ultron, but damn, was he a complete nutcase. I appreciate how completely insane he was the whole time with no real explanation as to why. The simple glee on his face when he giggles, "I made it rain!" was just flawless. He might have the market corned for wackiest Marvel villain thus far. I'm sad that we only got to enjoy two performances from Serkis, but they were still entertaining as hell.
The action sequences had me floored. This is one thing I've always adored about Marvel films. The pacing is always excellent and they know how to wow you. If you follow me at all, you'll know one of the numerous reasons I hated the Justice League movie is that there was NO imagination in ANY of the fight scenes. Black Panther offers some of the best and most creative scenes to enjoy, from hand to hand combat to flipping cars with a fucking vibranium spear. I was cringing and twitching in my seat like I was playing a VR of Tekken, for God's sake. These fight scenes were so well done (though I will ding the film for lighting issues; the jungle scene suffered badly from that problem, as did at least one other one to my chagrin) and I loved everyone's various weapons and fighting styles.
MY BOY BUCKY AT THE END CREDITS YOOOOOOOO. I am infatuated with the idea that the Wakandans analyzed him and have been slowly helping him recover from being brainwashed and abused. It made my cold, petrified heart all warm inside when he smiled and looked out over the water. I just want Bucky to be happy, okay?! Leave me alone!
Well, I've gone on long enough, haven't I? I regret nothing, honestly. This is like The Dark Knight all over again: one of those rare instances when the hype for something was so crazy that we were sure it couldn't deliver, but not only did it deliver, it kicked the hell out of all expectations. I can't wait to see where the road will lead from here. My wish and hope is that this movie does so damn well that Hollywood opens its damned eyes and listens to what we have been saying since the beginning: we want diversity and we want it well done and we want it now. Stop relying on the old ideals of a market that we outgrew decades ago. Black people are just as complex and interesting as everyone else on the planet, and it's time you woke up. We've been doing it ourselves with all kinds of various projects from comic books to novels to short films and you can either lead, follow, or get out the way, as Jidenna once said. Your move, Hollywood.
WAKANDA FOREVER.
#Black Panther#marvel#Marvel Cinematic Universe#T'Challa#representation matters#movie review#sorta#film review#Black Panther So Lit#spoiler alert#spoilers
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1 3 and 10 c:
Ahh, thank you for the ask! c:
1. What is your favorite DC movie and why? And least favorite?
Justice League vs. Teen Titans! Because I’m simply biased as hell.
To ALL of its elements! Azarath! In a MOVIE! Arella’s story got RECOGNIZEd– even ANIMATED! It gave Raven’s gem a BACKSTORY! It’s everything I’ve ever wanted out of a Teen Titans animation.
(Azarath being animated in a movie fulfilled my SOUL, you have NO fucking idea. It was AMAZING. And so well animated too? So pretty? So peaceful? So nice to look at? Holy god, I want ten thousand hours of documentaries on that place??? legitimate tears in my eyes when we saw it. honestly, it was just… it was so good.)
Not to mention, while the production value was Kinda Eh, the writing was really clever and the Moments (silly, fun, heartfelt, freaky, dramatic) were all really well done. It captured the “Heart” of those feelings, emotive and raw and honest. I actually enjoyed the fun moments. Myself. And wasn’t just “distantly admiring people being happy”. Do you know how much of an ACCOMPLISHMENT that is?
The music was really cool. Not to reveal my Immortal Inner Emo Kid. But “Down to Nothing” is a really good song. (One of my only problems with this movie is that it was shoddily edited in the scene, and it’s a shame, because it really is a good song… {lD it was kinda my anthem for a long, long time after this movie. “Help me: believe in something, cuz I am: broken, I’m down to nothing. And it’s just so hard to be this way, but it’s just as hard to change. So: help me, believe in sooomethiiing….”)
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(Because it’s in this movie, I grin a bit whenever Ciaran randomly shuffles it up. But also because I just really like the song itself.)
Also really cool: Trigon was an abusive asshole. Ultra mega props for that element; not just making him a Bad Guy because he’s Powerful and Wants to Rule the World, but legitimately showing that he was a BAD “GUY” *and* a Bad Parent.
Also nice, Damian felt less shoehorned in than Certain Other Really Recent Robins were in the comics…. (The reason for that may have been glossed over and a touch cliche, but it worked for the movie. It did what it needed to, nothing more and nothing less.)
Good thing too, because Damian being A Kid was really nice to see. (Raven too, let’s be real. Those kids need more “fun” in their lives.) Bond the children! BOND THEM, GODDAMN IT. That’s what any good Teen Titans story really needs; friends who are a FAMILY. They love each other, even if it’s hard-earned and hard-kept.
Focused on the PEOPLE, and their WELL-BEING, just as much as (if not MORESO!) than “ohshit, Big Bad Guy to deal with here”.
(the rest is under a cut, because godDAMN. I got rambly once I started talking about Raven.)
And perhaps most important of all to me: Raven’s characterization was amazing. Truly a masterpiece. Any time you’ve got a comic character with 7 different tones and 3-4 Literal Deaths and like 28 different writers having handled her: It takes a LOT of work to pick and choose what you want to do with them. It takes a lot of WISDOM and even prowess to triangulate your Own Characterization between such dramatic differences. Raven has been cold and distant; warm and soft; sharp and bitter; lost and clueless; wise and knowledgeable; she’s a very LAYERED and COMPLEX character even in each individual VERSION.
And the movie portrayed so many of her key characteristics so wonderfully. It’s a very “complete” picture of my absolutely Iconic Favorite Character, it encompasses so much of my Favorite Parts of her throughout her entire history, and it was just such a delight to experience. I, in my unpopular opinion (at least among my contemporary Cartoon-First Generation of Teen Titans Fans), actually really liked her voice actress, too? So subtle. So snarky. So soft, even with its edge of attitude. It was such a good fit for such a good incarnation!
And then there’s the fact that they included Jaime (who does well on his own, but honestly always seemed like a natural fit to the team), Kori (a Key Titan, let’s be honest), and even Gar (because his playfulness is a key part of Whole-Team Characterization too honestly; it wouldn’t be the same without him). It was a good setup, even with the comics this continuity’s based on being totally cracked.
And Cyborg showed up. Despite working “in the big Leagues” now. Thanks for throwing us that bone, at least. lD
And Damian? They did a great job of giving him character developement. Much needed. Good shit. If he can’t be with Dick!Bats in this verse (and I deeply prefer Dick as Nightwing anyways), that’s a really good fit for him. Learning to be human. Getting comfortable with Some Normalcy. Good and relateable.
That movie was just. Ahhh. SO Good. X3 As a Teen Titans fan especially, but also just as a person who likes a good Team Becoming Family story.
I love it. It has its caveats, but none of them dampen my obnoxiously heartfelt love for this thing.
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(…yikes .after THAT essay, the rest of my answers are going to feel so shallow.)
All that bias aside though, my other favorite DC movie is definitely Wonder Woman. Hands down. Undoubtedly, no contest, no holds bar. It was a phenomenally well-told story with a lot of wit and compelling characters that used absolutely MASTERFUL rising action, and felt GENUINE. It was told from the heart as well as the camera, and it was told beautifully. Smoothly. It felt godly and human all at once. I can’t explain it very well, but it was genuinely one of the best movies I have ever seen.
I never got very into Wonder Woman, but from what I know of the 80’s and the Really Recent comics: It also captured her backstory, her personality, and her Style of Heroism really well. But even without being very familiar with her as a character? It’s a gorgeously well-done movie.
( Note: I still haven’t seen Justice League yet, but from what I’ve heard, I’ll probably end up liking that one too.)
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Least favorite? I don’t know, honestly.
(My least favorite superhero movie is that one Marvel one with Vision, because I literally fell asleep while watching it. That’s the first time in my entire life I’ve fallen asleep while watching ANYTHING.)
But for DC, even the silly obnoxiously-radioactive-colored Batman and Robin has its place in history.
Can I just say, maybe… “the Injustice: Gods Among Us cutscenes”?- raven’s voice really grates my nerves, and not even in a Fun Creepy Way.- Whose idea was it to have SUPERMAN go evil? Like? ?? Who thought that was in any way a reasonable idea. - the story in that game felt really cobbled together. The comics are a lot more interesting, fun, and though there’s a lot of, like, Random Occurrences that seem to happen Exclusively For The Drama, in the game there are a lot of ill-explained things and general Random Chaos. Not my kinda story.
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3. Which DC character should be introduced in movies/shows? Or have a movie/show of their own?
I mean. My automatic response is “Raven”, but I only ever want to see that if it’s being done right. The way CW wanted to do it kinda ripped the heart of everything I know/love about her to shreds. (”Relateable normal teen girl sudden has powers”? What? What??? That’s literally NONE of Raven’s backstory, shoo. Begone. Good riddance.)
That aside, I’d honestly probably watch the HELL out of a Nightwing show. Or movie. Just LET DICK BE HIMSELF. Without being attached at the history AND HIP to Bruce!
Or Death? or Sandman? I don’t know how well they’d translate to TV; Nightwing would certainly be the safer bet. Neil Gaiman’s writing is half as great as it is because of the WRITING. The style. The narrations… But, I mean: Coraline was just wonderful~ So why not a Sandman movie, too? Given the right director, and the right special effects team…?
(Constantine would’ve been next on my list, for a better movie anyway. but he’s already getting some decent recognition. So whoop whoop. Good shit. Nice Decision, DC. I Approve.)
10. Which DC character portrayal do you think is better in the comics than in the movies?
Batman. By far.
I’m just sick of all this manpain and gritty, utterly-unyielding violence, and… politics? Where’s the humanity?
Aren’t these writers forgetting that he’s someone who has suffered, and is doing all this, not just to beat up bad guys and look cool, but to save others from what theyd do? To HELP PEOPLE, not to growl like a man-tiger and punch things?
You can be badass and still have a heart, you know. Comics!Bruce does. (Most of the time.) And that’s a big part of why I like reading Batman comics so much.
And on that note, the conspicuous lack of Robins in (most) movies is an insult to comic history. Batman’s family-seeking and protect-the-children tendancies make for a much more interesting franchise, honestly. Give us a colorful cast! (Literally!) Give us diversity! Give us more stories with more characters so it has more facets than just “some guy wants to kill people; can’t have that”!)
As a sidenote: what I’ve seen of Gotham, it’s doing a really good job of encapsulating his Heroic Tendencies as well as his “sense of Duty” to Gotham and its people, while keeping him human AND super cool. That’s an important balance.
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Has meme culture killed the parody film?
My perpetual fear of the dark stopped me watching horror films until my late teens. At age 17 or 18, I decided that being able to enter into conversations with friends about Paranormal Activity outweighed not being able to sleep at night. I put together a highlight reel of the genre, starting with entry-level slashers like Scream before working my way through critics’ lists of contemporary horror films. One film that kept reappearing was Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods.
The film starts in a conventional fashion. A group of college students go to spend a weekend in a deserted cabin. You can probably guess how that pans out. Only it doesn’t. It transpires (spoiler alert) that a group of scientists are trying to fulfil an annual ritual sacrifice of the six slasher film archetypes: the athlete, the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin; so they unleash an array of textbook horror elements on the unsuspecting archetypes.
Goddard has been hesitant to describe The Cabin in the Woods as a parody, but it’s clear from the outset that the film is building on the conceits of various genre touchstones – tropes I had come to recognise after watching just a few horror films. Admittedly, Goddard’s film is fairly tame by most parody movie standards; while it draws attention to horror’s more familiar trappings, it doesn’t explicitly spoof anything in particular, which might explain its largely positive critical reception.
If you trawl the internet for critical writing on the cultural value of parody films, you won’t find much; even the terms frequently used to describe parody films, such as ‘spoof’ and ‘lampoon’, have broadly negative and reductive connotations. While there are a few well-regarded forays into the genre – The Cabin in the Woods being a prime example – because of their dependence on other texts, parody films are rarely discussed on their own merits.
In 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story took aim at the music biopic, specifically the critical and commercial hit Walk the Line. Up until the release of Straight Outta Compton in 2015, Walk the Line was the most successful music biopic to come out of Hollywood. It’s a good film, but its reputation took a knock when Walk Hard ruthlessly satirised the genre’s tendency to water down the lives of complex individuals like Johnny Cash, presenting a conventional three-act view of fame and excess. When Dewey is seen having sex with an anonymous woman, he exclaims “God damn it, this is a fucking dark period!”
In launching a fierce (and very funny) attack on the films that inspired it, Walk Hard held a mirror to film culture, clearly indicating which narrative conventions were passé and had to go. But the recent success of a film like Bohemian Rhapsody, which presents a glossy greatest hits version of the Queen story, proves that some clichés are hard to shake. The impact of parody films is often short-lived. Even Tropic Thunder, for all the controversy surrounding its use of blackface, was unappreciated in terms of its observations about the crass opportunism and tokenism of Hollywood.
The decline of the parody genre is also depriving Black artists of a vital creative space. If the likes of Walk Hard and Tropic Thunder are necessitated by an over-saturation of certain tropes, then Black parody films are necessitated by an over-saturation of films made by and for white people. In particular, the Wayan brothers’ Scary Movie, which remains one of the highest-grossing films by a Black director, felt like a remedy to the white-washed slasher films that came before it.
Scary Movie is diversely cast, with Shawn and Marlon Wayans occupying two of the lead roles; the latter’s Shorty may be an exaggerated caricature of a Black stoner, but because the film assumes a parodic form the character becomes a playful send-up of the kind of negative stereotypes that white filmmakers have long perpetuated.
Taking this idea even further, White Chicks could very well be the Wayans’ magnum opus. The film’s premise subverts the historically racist practice of blackface, with Shawn and Marlon “whiteing-up” for an undercover FBI mission. White Chicks boldly resists the dominant gaze of mainstream cinema, instead offering a critical portrayal of whiteness through a Black lens.
In 2016 Marlon Wayans made up another notable entry to the Black parody genre, Fifty Shades of Black. While the film was largely dismissed by critics, its more culturally-relevant moments went under the radar. The film ends with Hannah Steele (Kali Hawk) whipping Christian Black (Marlon Wayans) while shouting, “This is for Kerry Washington in Django Unchained!” This raises questions about how exactly the sex-slave dynamic is meant to play out in front of Black audiences.
Throughout their careers, the Wayans have strived to unlock the potential of the parody genre as an educational tool: it is one of the few arenas where Black filmmakers can create a palatable form of artistic criticism and express their grievances towards mainstream American cinema.
This article may be overdue. Compared with the saturation of the genre in the 2000s, where four instalments of the Scary Movie franchise were released between 2000 and 2004, the past few years have seen only a handful of parody films released, most notably Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and The Spy Who Dumped Me.
Parody films don’t attract audiences like they used to: while Epic Movie grossed $18.6 million in its opening weekend back in 2007, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping grossed just $9.5 million in 2016, failing to recoup its $20 million budget. This is a reflection of wider trends; with the constant cannibalisation of contemporary film and television happening online in the form of memes, it seems there’s simply no longer a place for the parody genre.
Memes are an increasingly core component of film marketing. Though critically panned, 2018’s Bird Box was reportedly viewed 26 million times on Netflix in the US in its first week of release. Why? Possibly because after being exposed to a constant stream of Bird Box memes on social media, audiences – myself included – were intrigued to see it. There have even been claims that Netflix used bot accounts to create the memes.
Of course, the memefication of cinema is not limited to mainstream Hollywood cinema. In January of last year I went to see Uncut Gems and loved it. But due to what Mashable calls the “enduring power of Uncut Gems memes”, I interact with images from the film on a near-weekly basis. As the devastating events of 2020 unfolded, empathetic loser Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) became an unlikely conduit through which people could express their feelings.
Memes are an easy and accessible way to ascertain information and convey certain unassailable truths about the human experience. But isolating an image of Howard Ratner to produce a quick visual punchline means that audiences are side-stepping the wider emotional context of the Safdie brothers’ film.
Can memes be satirical in the same way that parody films can? A 2019 article on Digital Spy suggested that contemporary audiences “don’t need the Wayans brothers, or Mel Brooks”; by creating memes, they’re “doing it plenty fine for [themselves]”. I’m not sure I agree.
True, memes depend on irony. But as David Foster Wallace pointed out, irony does not try to construct “anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks”. In this sense, memes are blank parody. They take the skeletal form of a film or TV show and appropriate it without building upon it. Conversely, parody films are constructive. They reinterpret and reinvent their source(s) of inspiration and in doing so highlight which tropes have become overused or outdated.
We should move away from binary preconceptions of parody films and appreciate their role in the evolution of cinema. After all, parody is ultimately the recognition that we exist in a world where everything has already been seen and screened.
The post Has meme culture killed the parody film? appeared first on Little White Lies.
source https://lwlies.com/articles/meme-culture-parody-films-wayans-brothers/
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