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magpiejay1234 · 2 months

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Anyway, in Frustrated Jacob's KH3 playthrough, there was the one-off line from Goofy about how they wouldn't be much of a use, because they don't have Keyblades, hence why they will eventually get them.

This is kind of silly, since they become pivotally important against the not-actually-final Master Xehanort fight, so ehh.

The other issue is of course, as Jacob said in his Untitled Video rewatch streams, is that MoM does not really need a Keyblade to achieve his goals, which makes his character more bizzare, since he single-handedly caused Keyblades to become the main attraction of the franchise.

I suppose we already discussed about the 13 guardians of light, and expansion of trios into quartets, but it will be really weird for all characters to have Keyblades, and eventually go to a place in the story where Keyblades have become clearly outmoded.

I suppose the good part of this could be that, after learning elemental Darkness in MoM, Sora would then branch out to really old classic FF tactics, and spells, like Ultima Spell, or various special moves. That could be a cool lore build up, since it would imply Sora would need to go beyond both light, and dark, and learn everything possible.

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Anyway, rewatching the ending was fun. So Xehanort had to have his darkness literally manifest into his own being, triggering the Re:Mind events, have him defeated, have Eraqus beat him ideologically, and then have him recognize Sora as the new proper chosen kid of this iteration, because he embodies the good elements of both himself, and Eraqus.

Of course, the whole thing is supposed to be metanarratively about Nomura (Xehanort) reconciling with Sakaguchi (Eraqus), so ehh.

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I suppose I will add more criticisms here, but his weird dislike towards Demon Tide/Towers becoming the new Darkside does not make much sense to me, since it is literally the third iteration of Heartless we see in Destiny Islands (it is the thing that eventually destroys it), making them the third iteration of Heartless in the franchise overall.

They also showcase how corruptive form of darkness works, it transforms everything into a hive mind first, then degenerates them to pure energy/matter (hence the cores of Demon Tides), eventually erasing them, and their host world, leaving nothing but primordial matter/energy to eventually restart the universe.

The whole thing is kind of funny, since considering Buddhist themes of KH, you would think the franchise would consider humility to be good thing against pride, but the most common enemies achieve their strongest, world-destroying form by being a totalitarian mass, not through becoming Sith-like selfish individuals, despite being as emotional them. It is the emotionless Nobodies who become selfish backstabbers, not negative emotion filled Heartless.

Imagine, for a moment, that your sense of self suddenly vanishes, and you achieve nothing but euphoria because you are part of a raving mad mass. As you get further into your hysteria, your body starts to dissolve, and you start to actually melt away, and by the time you are completely transformed into energy, and matter, everything you hold dear was destroyed...by your own hands, and hysteric mass you were a part of. It is just a weirdly dark concept that I kind of wonder if Nomura was inspired by his FF VS 13 dilemma for this reinterpretation of this concept, even though the concept itself comes from KH1.

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As a side note, final CGI shot does indeed have different hair color for Roxas (his hair finally matches his brown eyebrows for once since KH2) among other things, but since I greatly dislike the models in CGI cutscenes, I can't fully appreciate it.

Of course, this opens the can of worms about the divergent character progression of same face cast. Like, how Vanitas is going to look like now, considering his design already diverged from KH3 Sora. Are we going to make him, and Ventus look more Italian (like basing them off their Italian VAs or something), with Ephemer looking more English. Is Young Xehanort going to look like young Christopher Lloyd, or Ben Diskin now.

I guess people will be really confused in the inevitable KH2 remake when Roxas looks like Sora with Ventus's hairstyle as he always intended to be.

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Okay so other tidbits:

**Jacob constantly harps on the Ventus vs. Vanitas clash, but Nomura retroactively retconned Vanitas back into being the darkness inside Ventus, that got somehow exalted by one of the 13 Darknesses, specifically the homicidal one. I'm giving some slack for Nomura since it seems Union X writers didn't know Nomura's long-term plans deeply, but this plotline will get more convoluted, because it is set up for the post-MoM arc, not the MoM arc itself. So it won't get resolved for decades. So feel free to write an entire backstory for Ventus about his pre-Union X days.

**Mechanics of Xion's revival pisses Jacob off, but he seems to be frustrated by the most obvious part, Xion absorbing the memories of her past iteration from Roxas's heart inside Sora's heart, which makes sense given how Xion actually works (parasitically absorbing memories of everyone around her). It is obviously very weird, and bizzare, but it is perfectly accurate to canon.

Xion having some semblance of personality before the memory reabsorbption is a bit weird, but Secret Reports imply it was because of the limited experiences Xion had with Saix, and presumably Vexen, which is not particularly well thought, but works okay.

For everything else, Jacob has some point, though as others pointed out, Secret Reports confirm Saix intentionally goaded the real Org 13 to remake Xion, so the problem is really how Saix remembers Xion, than anything else.

(We already discussed why Xion isn't a world antagonist before, she was presumably supposed to be Xaldin's replacement in-game, but that plotline got deleted at the last minute.)

(Possibly other junior Org members, Repliku, and Vanitas, were also originally intended to be replacements of Vexen, and Demyx after their demotion to back-up status, but those two already had established roles in-game. They could have given Xion a last minute appearance, possibly during the Saix-Axel scene, before the final fight, though.)

**Riku Replica being the only replica who actually leaves his replica is kind of weird though, it is also weird that he is the only one leaving a blank polymer replica, whereas other replicas we see already have some features (even first form Xion has a face). This implies either prime time Riku Replica knew how to reset it to factory settings (this seems to be canon explanation), or they intentionally gave past Riku Replica a sh**ty placeholder one that might be weaker than his original specialized replica body.

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Further addendum:

This post was actually made before all others, since I started Jacob's playthrough from the end, so this is not chronologically in order.

Anyway, the Goofy-Donald Keyblade thing is actually established in San Fransokyo with the Keyblade Hero 3 joke, and later on in Mysterious Tower, though since Yen Sid's Tower was supposed to be playable originally, I guess the set up would have been more extensive.

I'm still iffy on it, since we already going to have one more Keyblade wielder in the form of Isa for plot reasons, so having every recurring character besides Jiminy, and Naminé (who will likely also have a Keyblade), on top of at least of half of Foretellers possibly defecting to Sora's side, all the returning Dandelions, and possibly recompleted post-Luxufication Braig alongside rest of DiZ apprentices... it is a bit too much.

This thing technically started all way back in KH1's development as we discussed before, back when Oblivion was called as Riku's Keyblade, and was presumably intended to be his true Keyblade, though in the actual storyline it technically started in CoM with Riku, and Repliku retaining Soul Eater, and got turbocharged in KH2 with Xemnas's "Warriors of the Keyblade" speech, but at least back then Nomura had the idea of keeping some characters without it.

By the end of MoM arc, I guess the only past characters without Keyblades will be Maleficent, Remy, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Jiminy, Pluto, Daisy, Minnie, Fairy Godmother, Merlin, most of FF cast, Sora, and Riku's Dream Eater homunculi, various Chirities, Ansem DiZ, and some, but not all of HPO, and that's even a maybe. Pete will almost certainly get his, and Scrooge will probably be revealed to have been a Keyblade wielder all along (though that wouldn't be surprising, both in-canon, and Scrooge's other iterations).

I guess this is partly why Godmother's role is increased, so we could still have a powerful magic user (who, being a fairy, is technically mostly composed of magic herself) that doesn't have much reason to have a Keyblade thematically, or in terms of power level (being the personification of selfless love). Of course, Cinderella can theoritically become a Keyblade wielder, so that would go into jeopardy, but for now we are safe.

#keyache #shitposting

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auramgmt · 4 months

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Unveiling the Artistry: A Comprehensive Guide to Advertising Production in Thailand

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edgar-allan-possum · 2 years

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Animated Masters of the Universe core Man-E-Faces, presumably based on his upcoming appearance in the CGI He-Man cartoon. The information book said he raised Teela in this version so it should be interesting to see the dynamic between them.

#he man and the masters of the universe #masters of the universe #motu #cgi motu #man-e-faces

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greentrickster · 3 years

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I have now watched both The Yingyang Master and The Ying-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity on Netflix, and I have a few thoughts. None of them are actually bad thoughts (you know, beyond “Oh, my poor pummeled heart!”), I just thought I’d share. Even though everyone’s probably said everything important about them already because they’ve been out for awhile, oh well, my turn now!

First important thing when talking about these movies: yes, both star the characters Boya and Qingming. No, they are not set in the same universe. They’re two very different adaptations based on the same source material. You don’t have to watch one to understand the other. Both have fantasy elements, enjoyable stories, great actors, fantastic settings of historical fantasy China, and an evil serpent. Boya and Qingming both have aspects of their personality that are consistent between both movies. There’s more, but that’s all I feel like talking about at the moment, they’re adaptations of the same source material, if they didn’t have similarities that would probably be a problem. Both movies also tend to go for blood-splatter but not gore, which I appreciated because I’m very squeamish.

Now, on to my more specific, but still overall pretty generalized thoughts on the movies - no spoilers!

The Yingyang Master

A more high fantasy setting (just, you know, historical China instead of historical Europe), this one has a much more whimsical feel to it over all - you can believe that this world and culture have existed as-is for hundreds of years and will continue to do so for hundreds more. It’s a story about good versus evil at its core, but it also successfully feels like a functional world, if one where demons are a fact of life and there are people who can do a form of magic. There are a lot of demons, done either with fantastic make-up or pretty decent CGI, depending on the character. The CGI is such that it’s not going to fool you into thinking it’s real, but the characters done this way are lively, expressive, and full of personality; when one of them gets hurt or dies, it’s very much the sad or tragic event it’s meant to be. I also really enjoyed the magic in this movie, as even in the fight scenes it’s often used quite creatively, employing tactics beyond offense, offense, and more offense. For all its serious moments and excellent fights, however, it also has a lot of really enjoyable humour that had me laughing aloud multiple times. Honestly, after one watch-through my only complaint is, oof, that ending. If you like a story that ends more bitter than sweet, then you’ll enjoy this a lot. It’s not a bad or even hopeless ending, I just like mine a little sugarier. Though, like... if the directors wanted to do a sequel to this movie and give that a happier ending, I will naturally take back my complaints with a smile (please please please make a sequel, I want one!!!).

The Ying-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

To start off, I’m aware of the controversy this movie has going for it, but I choose to ignore it for at least this post because it’s not what I want to talk about. While also a fantasy, this movie’s world feels less whimsical and more lived-in - this feels like a world that could fit into a more magical version of our world’s past. There’s grime in the streets and wear on the buildings, this is a world that moves through time. The magic the Ying-Yang Masters use isn’t quite as fancy or complex as in The Yingyang Master, but there’s a greater emphasis and focus on the guardian spirits and tools the masters use. Rather than the high fantasy feel the other movie has, this one is a murder mystery that just so happens to occur within a fantasy setting, with a darker, more serious tone to match. Though, when the story wants to have a more light-hearted, funny moment, it very much lands the humour, and it had me laugh aloud on several occasions. It also got me to freaking cry, actual tears crying, not allowed, illegal, Most Tragic Love Story, Would Highly Recommend if you want a love plot that will make you feel pain. I appreciated the happier ending to this movie as well - while it still has a melancholy tinge to it, it feels appropriate for the events that have just transpired, and overall feels more hopeful. Also, like... it’s got that good, good enemies-to-friends content going on like whoa man. The BrOTP is powerful with this movie, and I am here for it! Also, you know how I said it ends more conclusively, and am now saying it’s actually a pretty satisfying ending? Well I still want a sequel, more content please! <3

Concluding thoughts

These movies honestly tie for me in regards to which one I like better. If the Yingyang Master ended on a more positive note, I would say it’s the one I like better, but that’s purely because fantasy has long been my favorite genre and it’s the best live-action fantasy movie I’ve ever seen, especially for one targeted at an older audience! However, that’s a purely subjective opinion. More objectively, they’re just both really good movies with their own strengths and weaknesses, good humour, epic fights, and engaging characters - which one is right for you depends solely on whether you’re in the mood for high fantasy or fantasy murder mystery. And, you know, whether movies like this are your sort of thing at all. Either way, I enjoyed watching them, and would definitely encourage you to as well if one or both sound interesting to you!

#the ying yang master #the ying yang master: dream of eternity #movie review #my thoughts #long post

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Netflix’s He-Man Isn’t for Parents, It’s For a New Generation

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The Masters of the Universe franchise is experiencing a major resurgence, with three new series on Netflix after a drought of animated content after the 2002 MOTU series ended in 2004. The new era has been an altogether unexpected one for the franchise. Leading off with a new version of She-Ra, a character not seen in animation since the ‘80s, the show boldly aimed its stories at a new and more diverse group of viewers. Even with its eschewing of direct connections to He-Man the show delighted in its references and use of the wider MOTU mythology.

Then we got Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Where many updates of old franchises simply take concepts and do a modern take on them, Revelation instead was a love letter to fans of the franchise. It wasn’t a reboot of He-Man, it was a continuation of the original show. It was filled to the brim with references and callbacks, both obvious and deep cut. This was a show that wasn’t just using nostalgia as a marketing tactic, it was actively courting its original audience and making something specific for them.

Now we come to Netflix’s new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Another kids series like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power but this time utilizing the flagship elements of the franchise. That gang’s all here – He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Man at Arms, Cringer, Evil-Lyn, etc. In some ways this is the more prototypical example of a nostalgic reboot, one that takes certain elements of the past and remixes them for a new generation. However this show goes even farther than She-Ra in its straying from the source material.

The new He-Man has its own unique story-telling sense. The plot isn’t a retread of what came before, in this version Adam doesn’t remember his past and discovers the powers of He-Man in his teens. Where before only he wielded the power of Grayskull, now a whole team is able to call on its power, turning the show from one with a clear main character to an ensemble piece. It boldly reimagines the look of classic characters, still retaining key visual markers, but breathing new and modern design sensibilities in them, much of this aided by the show’s use of CGI instead of traditional animation.

Jeff Matsuda, co-executive producer of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, knew full well that while it was essential to honor the original series and core aspects of the franchise, the important thing was to create something that the new generation of kids could own for themselves.

“We have ours,” Jeff explains, referring to longtime fans of the franchise, “and all the iterations, but it’s nice for kids (because) they want to own something themselves. I have kids and if it’s something that has to do with their dad, they’re ‘ah, no, thanks.’ They want something of their own to enjoy.”

This doesn’t mean the new series is He-Man in name only. Showrunner Rob David makes it clear that they’re standing on the shoulders of the many creative’s who’ve had a hand in the franchise. The new creative team’s goal however was to take everything that came before, distill it to its core essence, and find a way of reimagining it, “for a kid today who needs it to reflect both that kid’s hopes, dreams, world, and aspirations on their terms.”

One of the biggest elements of that was changing He-Man a.k.a. Adam himself. In the original series He-Man is a larger than life hero who begins the series fully formed and ready to take on evil with very few doubts in his mind. David wanted the new version of He-Man to reflect how the concept of a hero has changed over the years.

“Our need for heroes is not for instant perfect heroes. It is to show the challenge and journey of becoming a hero.”

This core ethos for the show meant sweeping changes to the story. One example of this is in the changes to the character of Duncan aka Man-At-Arms. In the original series he was an older mentor to He-Man and the father of Teela. In the new series, he and Adam are the same age and there’s no relation to Teela. These changes were made to aid Adam’s larger arc of having to grow into being a hero. He couldn’t have someone like Man-At-Arms around to protect him. However, the new Man-At-Arms does maintain his role of being a master inventor so a core part of the original character is still there.

This would have left the new series without a mentor character, something David stressed was something that couldn’t be discarded from a MOTU series. This led to Cringer, formerly a comedic sidekick, to fill that mentor role. This keeps that core mentor element but also lets the series bring a new take to the story with the concept of a whole team utilizing the power of Grayskull.

“The archetypes are always there even when they’re re-imagined for a new audience,” David says.

In keeping with this being a new take on He-Man, the creative team didn’t just look for inspiration from the original series but drew on multiple new sources. One easily recognizable influence is the genre of Tokusatsu, Japanese special effects series that include Super Sentai (better known in America for being adapted into Power Rangers.) He-Man and the rest of the cast all have colorful stock transformation sequences that play in most of the episodes. They wear armor and each character has their own stock attack animation sequences.

Matsuda says this wasn’t completely intentional but, “being Japanese, I grew up with a lot of that stuff. Sometimes I’d be like, ‘why do I love it when there’s a team of people that all have a specific color for each person?”’

He also points to Goonies and Stranger Things as inspiration for the team dynamic of the series.

“Anytime you have kids becoming friends and hanging out, it is exactly where I love to be.”

While a small group of fans may argue that the series should stick close to its roots, a franchise like He-Man needs to reinvent itself to stay relevant. It can’t just keep going back to the well and redoing the same old stories. The creative team of Netflix’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe made sure to draw inspiration from the past because without that it wouldn’t be MOTU, but they also weren’t afraid to take the franchise in a new direction. Especially with two other recent MOTU shows for fans to watch and enjoy, this was the perfect and right time for the franchise to take a chance.

The franchise also can’t keep being made exclusively for older fans. This series, like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power before it, is wisely aimed at the new generation and in the long run the franchise will benefit from it. What may seem new and different now is something that, in 20 or 30 years, will be another beloved part of a long franchise. That isn’t to say old school fans can’t enjoy the series, there’s a lot to love about it if you’re a hardcore fan or just an adult looking to watch a fun show, but it’s nice to know that today’s generation will have a He-Man series to call their own.

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He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Netflix’s He-Man Isn’t for Parents, It’s For a New Generation appeared first on Den of Geek.

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yourfanvivitran · 4 years

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It should come as no surprise that John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon were students in the same film class, that they created Dark Star together, and that they both had a great affinity for 1951’s The Thing From Another World. If you put Ridley Scott’s Alien, which O’Bannon wrote, next to Carpenter’s The Thing, the parallels cannot be contended. A group of people, bound together almost exclusively by their careers, are isolated and trapped in their own environment with a murderous monster. One by one, they are picked off by this alien beast and are forced to pull out all the stops just to survive. The tension in both movies is suffocating. The suspense stays well after the credits roll.

So, why did Alien excel and why did The Thing fail?

Alien was heralded as a science fiction-horror masterpiece, raking in over $200 million at the box office. The Thing, although now recognized as one of Carpenter’s best films to rival even the likes of Halloween, barely exceeded its $15 million budget by $4 million. What’s more is that critics panned The Thing almost unanimously after its 1982 release. And to what point?

When you compare the 2 movies, it objectively doesn’t make much sense. When you sit down and watch The Thing, without even thinking of its much more popular predecessor, it still doesn’t quite add up. There is not much I can say about The Thing that hasn’t already been said before. It’s well-known, now - the writing, the acting, the practical effects, the cinematography? Masterfully done. No arguments. So what went wrong?

The most popularly accepted explanation was that it just wasn’t the right year for it. In 1982, The Thing had to contend with the Summer of Spielberg, being critiqued alongside horror giant Poltergeist and science fiction treasure E.T. How could a stark and grim story of distrust and gore stand alongside such beloved classics?

But in tandem with these films and also calling back to the success of Alien, Carpenter cites reception from various focus groups: they hated the ending.

It should be assumed at this point that if you have not yet seen The Thing, you are sorely missing out. All the same, however, be wary of spoilers.

The end of The Thing is bitter, to put it lightly. Childs (Keith David) trudges through Antarctic snow, lit by the burning wreckage of Outpost 31, towards R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russel) who sits alone, already half buried. They observe their inevitable deaths, and drink to the supposed demise of their shapeshifting predator.

A lot is left out to die in the snow.

According to Carpenter, this ending was seen by test audiences as too dismal. And rightfully so, when you take into consideration the other popular releases of 1982. Carol Anne is ultimately saved, along with the rest of her family, at the end of Poltergeist. Elliot embraces E.T. before he finally returns home. And going further back, even Ripley is able to escape the xenomorph by the skin of her teeth and secure herself the title as one of the greatest “Final Girls” ever put to the silver screen.

And what of MacReady and Childs?

Well, that’s up to your imagination, Carpenter told a test audience member who asked who the final host was at the end of the movie.

“Oh, god. I hate that,” they responded.

As a writer, this loose ends style of concluding a story is almost expected from a lot of modern works. It’s written this way in order to haunt the reader, to linger and adhere itself to the real world in the most sardonic of ways. Think Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” or Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” This almost anticlimactic close of the curtain arrived in the literary world long before it found its place in film, but it’s a big point of contention in mainstream criticism.

Dark or incomplete conclusions have been met with the most scathing of responses. Beware the black cutaway of Sopranos fame. Or the near-universal outcry against the third Mass Effect game that grew so much, the developers created a morsel of DLC content that maybe kind of confirmed a more optimistic fate for our dear Shepard.

But even for the horror genre, The Thing seemed unprecedented. The only fate darker to fall upon a mainstream protagonist was Ben’s untimely death in Night of the Living Dead. The tragedy of both movies is palpable - all this trouble to survive against inhuman killers, all this trouble to outlive something gruesome and maybe even make the world a better place, and what was left to show for it?

In short, Carpenter’s science fiction terror was too much of a bummer.

I personally did not take much of a liking to horror until much later in life. My parents didn’t filter the media I consumed as much as they probably should have, and I was scarred early on by movies as cheesy and entertaining as The Lost Boys and Blade. It wasn’t until late adolescence and into college that I set out to catch up.

My roommate at the time of this resolution had been a fan of horror her whole life, her favorites being Halloween, Candyman, and The Thing. Having already known a good deal about the former two, I decided to strap in for The Thing for the first time ever.

These days, I always have several soap boxes on retainer, just waiting for the next unwitting recipient of my usually-beer-induced rants. Brian Jones was killed, Jaws single handedly endangered sharks, banning books is a stupid practice, representation in media is important, etc. Predictably, one of these soap boxes is the general lack of appreciation of The Thing, both at the time of its release and today (it does not even make the top 100 on Rotten Tomatoes’s highest rated horror movies).

And yet, at the same time, if The Thing had achieved the credit it deserved upon release, I may not like it as much as I do today.

I make a point to not read too much about movies I am feverishly anticipating, and revel in the feeling of going into a well-known movie knowing as little as possible. Most of the time, it makes for the best viewing experience, but I’m sure I don’t even have to point this out.

This was my experience seeing The Thing for the first time. I was on winter break, staying at my parents’ house for the holidays. Everyone else had gone to bed, and I stayed up late in the living room, curled up under layers of blankets, content in perfect darkness save for the television.

I had no idea what to expect, as I had not been spoiled by any TV show making any blatant references and had not done any prior reading into the film itself. And I was absolutely delighted from beginning to end.

What stays with me the most is the special effects. It’s true what they say - that practical effects hold up better than CGI alone. And the production team didn’t cut any corners in this department. Stan Winston and his team, who were later responsible for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, helped construct one of the best animatronics in the movie. Rob Bottin, who brought this constantly-morphing creature to life from conception to every last slimy detail, went on to be hailed as a genius in his special effects career. And there is definitely something to be said for the work of cinematographer Dean Cundey whose masterful control of lighting and framing is best seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The extent of my knowledge of the titular creature was that it was an alien. That it was an alien who could consume multiple life forms and take on their shapes was both exciting and terrifying. There’s creative genius in this premise that thrills the science fiction lover in me, and also fascinates the bookworm in me. I had been a fan of Agatha Christie novels as a teenager, and to see a new and outrageous take on the And Then There Were None structure was incredibly novel to me.

The appeal wasn’t just that there was something out there, lying in wait to torturously pick off it’s victims one-by-one. It was that it could have been anyone.

At its core, horror as we know it has deep roots in whodunnit style murder mystery. With the rise of the giallo and the sensation of the slasher, horror movies of this nature are far from uncommon and can be seen as late as 1996 with the Scream franchise. Carpenter himself spurned a new kind of fear with his breakout success with Halloween by refusing to give a bodily face to its main antagonist. Here, with The Thing, he takes the eponymous killer character to the next level by giving it the genetically inherent function of deceiving its prey. Not knowing the true face of your murderer has proven to be inherently bone-chilling.

Even now, hundreds of horror movies under my belt later and still constantly learning, I keep coming back to The Thing. I really cannot think of another movie in my wide array of favorites that I love more than The Thing, and I truly believe it has everything to do with me not knowing anything about it upon my first viewing. Every other movie I can name on my (similar to the subject) constantly changing top 10 list of most beloved horror flicks was, at some point, spoiled for me in some capacity.

Think of how often the twins in The Shining are referenced in cartoons, of all the head spinning jokes made in reference to The Exorcist. Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs has become so infamous, that I knew his dialogue (and Buffalo Bill’s) long before I ever saw the movie in full.

I don’t blame these references for ruining these movies. As a super fan, I understand that compulsion to pay tribute. It’s no one’s fault and to their credit that these films take lives of their own. But the repercussions don’t age well in terms of initial viewing experiences.

All that being said, I truly cherish how much I was not exposed to this movie. The unpredictability of the creature and the quiet, looming despair that comes with it create a horror unlike any other.

Although it was a box office flop, The Thing is now a welcome and praised name in both science fiction and horror. Even Quentin Tarantino made it known that The Hateful Eight was primarily inspired on several fronts by Carpenter’s underrated work. However, it has not pervaded pop culture like so many other horror classics have left their indelible mark on film vernacular. And to that end, I hope it remains in that slight shadow of anonymity for all future enthusiasts.

#john carpenter #the thing #alien #horror #horror movie #horror film #horror genre

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Spider-Man: Far From Home Thoughts Part 3 a.k.a. Iron Man Junior: Far From Spider-Man

This will be the final part of this essay series and here I’m going to go through how this film holds up as an adaptation of the source material.

Shockingly the answer will be that it’s fucking awful.

I’ve already made what must be over a dozen posts about how terrible Far From Home is as an adaptation and representation of Spider-Man but screw it let’s go over it more!

Before I start to rant let me qualify something.

When you are adapting a character as famous, iconic and beloved as Spider-Man you don’t have to be a 1:1 translation of the source material. But you 100% do have to respect the spirit of the source material as much as practicality will allow. You have to respect the essential ideas, original intention and core themes and concepts underpinning the character and his world.

That is the root of my objections in this post and so many others.

Homecoming and Far From Home misunderstand Spider-Man on a fundamental level. Or worse they do understand him and actively chose to ignore what he’s about, what he represents.

He’s all about great power and great responsibility within the context of being a relatively relatable Average Joe.

This isn’t making him an everyman the way Bilbo Baggins or Luke Skywalker are. For Spider-Man he has to much more accurately reflect the average person and the world the average person lives in. He has to live in a real city, he has to worry about bills, laundry, studies, getting a job, holding a job, maintaining friendships and romantic relationships. He just has to be Spider-Man ON TOP of that and that must clash with his normal life. Being Spider-Man is one more additional responsibility he must juggle.

Before I rip this film to shreds for so aggressively NOT doing that let me get a few scant positives out of the way.

First of all the action scenes were not just generally improved from Homecoming, but honestly felt more like Spider-Man. I could easily see the way Peter and Mysterio attacked, defended, countered, etc, being something from the comics. Particular praise must go to the Berlin action sequence.

For many years Spider-Man fans have understandably claimed that Mysterio would be the perfect villain for the big screen due to his skill set being about generating great visuals. And we were right because we get not just a classic Mysterio action sequence in Berlin but outright one of the all time best ones from any version of Spider-Man. The film even drops us some appreciated fan service, firstly by putting Peter in his red and blue costume so it feels like the comic come to life and secondly via the giant Mysterio hand ripped straight out of ASM #66-67. The snow globe sequence in particular, if it wasn’t from a comic (and off the top of my head I can’t recall it being so) was simply inspired.

Equally Mysterio’s look was a different yet ultimately brilliant realization of the comic book. To an extent Mysterio is also a spiritually faithful rendition of the comic book character. In the comics he was a special effects master, stuntman and failed actor who craved fame and was frustrated by the lack of recognition he got.

In the movie he created highly realistic holographic technology, was frustrated by it’s small scale use, the lack of recognition he got for it and with a whole crew of helpers fabricated his Mysterio identity in the hopes of becoming the most famous superhero in the world, although he was himself rarely in the costume.

Traditionally Mysterio is a practical effects guy and this makes the most sense given how he physically fights Spider-Man, but the updating of that to holographic technology is fine and dandy because CGI has, for better or worse, supplanted practical effects. Even in the 1994 cartoon when that wasn’t the case the showmakers gave Mysterio holographic tech.

Him not being a stuntman is more of a mixed bag. On the one hand being a stuntman is what enables him to sort of fight Spider-Man himself, but on the other hand outside of his debut Mysterio’s usually been more effective when not physically fighting people but rather tricking them and manipulating them. So if you are focussing more on that aspect of the character dropping the stuntman angle is fine.

In fact one of the two things (and we will talk more about the other later) which does spiritually undermine this version of Mysterio is his lack of explicit connection to Hollywood. However he is still an actor just not a professional actor in the film or TV industry. And a great actor at that as he is so capable of fooling everyone.

We might also argue that having a crew of helpers undermined Mysterio’s independence and intelligence, but I think it works for the movie fro 2 reasons. First of all in a movie for general audiences suspension of disbelief doesn’t stretch as far so savant characters are less acceptable. Mysterio is 100% a savant. He’s a skilled actor, stuntman, manipulator and technician who knows holographic technology, robotics and all manner of things like that. In the movies you could maybe buy someone having a grasp of the purely technical side of things, but even Tony Stark wasn’t an expert on biology or chemistry, maybe he knew enough to get by but remember he needed to read up on stuff in Avengers 2012.

By giving Mysterio a group supporting him it makes it more believable that this villain is capable of all these things. More poignantly, and you can see this especially when they were ‘rehearsing’ for the London attack, it renders Beck something of a director, thus subtextually giving him yet more connection to the world of film. Again it’s just a shame this was not more explicit and instead his abilities and motives stem from...well we will get there.

On a final note Mysterio can in truth be one of the creepier Spider-Man villains and you don’t really get that vibe outside of the Berlin fight scene (and even then only a little bit). I think that’s fine as he was still manipulative which is one of Mysterio’s better skills in the comics.

So there is a lot this version of Mysterio has going for him, he’s faithful in the idea but not in certain details. Unfortunately those details sink this take.

Other positives include the set up of Chameleon as the stoic and silent agent Dmitri within SHIELD. This will not only pay off in MCU Spider-Man 3 but will is also a great example of irony and foreshadowing. Chameleon was introduced as a saboteur and enemy agent so him being a mole within SHIELD lends itself well to his character and the fact that he is an imposter amidst imposters (the Skrulls) is deliciously ironic.

Also this movie gave us the best version of Ned and Betty’s relationship ever because no one died or got cheated on. Finally I liked Aunt May running a homeless shelter. It gives her something to do and is a very fitting role for her.

I want to go back to Mysterio for a moment though as this isn’t really a positive or a negative of his character.

He’s a very tricky character to adapt. In his debut he is pretends to be a powerful new superhero who wants to bring down Spider-Man whom he’s obviously framed.

In a movie I can understand how framing Spider-Man might not sustain a 2+ hour movie.* However the bigger question to ask is whether or not you bother with having Mysterio framed as a hero or not.

In the 90s it was easier as Spider-Man and his mythos wasn’t so prevalent so people simply know a lot of stuff via osmosis, and in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon the showmakers simply present him as a criminal off the bat.

If you do go with him pretending to be a hero it’s tricky to pull off without feeling like you are going through the motions.

All of which is me saying the movie is faithful to the comics in presenting Mysterio as initially pretending t be a hero but I don’t know how good of an idea that is. I don’t know anyone who walked into the movie not knowing he was the bad guy.

That’s about it for positives.

So...FUCK THIS MOVIE!

Once again in this Spider-Man movie everything revolves around Iron Man.

I’ve written in posts past how this undermines Spider-Man’s agency simply as a character in a movie but as far as adaptations go this is beyond insulting.

Spider-Man was in part created to be an independent superhero. In part created to literally NOT have the kind of relationship he has with Iron Man in this movie.

I cannot describe how much of a fundamental misunderstanding of Spider-Man’s character it is to have Iron Man be utterly integral to who everything about him.

He’s so goddam integral that Peter’s alleged character arc in this movie is about becoming him (in the most obnoxious of ways too, see Part 2) and he is the wellspring from which 99% of this movie springs from even though he’s fucking dead. I mean my god the plot device everyone is after is Tony Stark’s glasses!

Spider-Man doesn’t get to be his own man even when Iron Man is literally not alive!

Shit even Mysterio is motivated and built to be a dark reflection of Iron Man. And this kills his character not just because it denies him independence because it makes his ambitions entirely too big scale to work as a Spider-Man villain. His motivation is to gain access to Tony’s magic glasses. At least Vulture with a tweak could have worked as a regular Spider-Man villain. He had the working class down to Earth and relatable ambitions and lifestyle down. Mysterio is doing everything to both spite Tony and become him.

Jesus, even Iron Man’s dead weight and most irrelevant supporting character Happy Hogan is not just in this movie but plot relevant...for the second movie in a row! He’s even dating Spider-Man’ aunt. At this point given how she’s never even mentioned him is Uncle Ben even dead in this universe or did he just run off with a somehow even sexier 50 year old?

Oh...and let’s talk about Uncle Ben, whom I was naive enough to think was going to be referenced when that gravestone appeared but noooooope, fucking Iron Man again.

From Endgame onwards disgusting posts and articles were written about how Iron Man’s death now truly makes him MCU’s Uncle Ben. Because you see he was Peter’s father figure and he died...so that’s the same thing. Nevermind that he didn’t die because Peter was inactive and selfish, or the fact that his death didn’t widow his aunt, or anything like that. Shit Peter doesn’t even seem that upset about it beyond 1 or 2 scenes. And yet that’s one or two scenes more than we’ve ever seen Uncle Ben get referenced. Think about that we’ve seen Iron Man mourned more than Uncle Ben in a SPIDER-MAN movie!

We see that more than we see Aunt May even. Aunt May is just there in the MCU movies which is not just a waste of Tomei as a talented actress but it is again insulting as an adaptation. Even in Spider-Man 3 and ASM2 she had more to do and delivered a good scene or two. In these movies she’s eye candy and nothing more. She is more relevant as a punch line about how men are attracted to her than as her own character.

And now that we are on the subject of supporting characters, I talk about this more in other posts, but Michelle is so bad. The romance comes out of nowhere there is no justification given for their respective feelings for one another and to say she’s not Mary Jane would be redundant.

She fails to be anything like Mary Jane on any level beyond her nickname. This is not okay for several reasons. Among them is the fact that the Spider-man movies have had a problematic habit of treating the love interests as interchangeable characters as opposed to being their own distinct characters. Worse we’re screwing up Mary Jane not only a second time on film but worse than before. This is the Lois Lane of the Spider-Man mythos, she’s an iconic beloved character integral to the over all story of Spider-Man. And we’re treating her as so insignificant as to able to present an OC with her initials and claim that’s good enough.

As for the other supporting characters they continue to be broken. Like how the fuck did Betty Brant wind up the relatively most faithful character? Ned is just a repurposed Ganke except now they’re writing him as a lame Disney Channel sidekick character so he’s not even got the depth of comic book Ganke and Flash...oh Flash. He’s not just irrelevant to the movie, he’s not even really a bully in this film. He’s just a preppy docuchebag no one takes seriously and in fact gets treated as the butt monkey on more than one occasion. The only redeemable moments for his character were when he sang Spider-Man’s praises and was stoked that Spidey follows his social media channel.

All the characters feel like shallow attempts to make Spider-Man ‘about youth’ which as I’ve said countless times in the past, he provably isn’t about and never was. But this film not only continues to lean on that misinterpretation but lean harder on it. Like the premise of this movie is literally about Spider-Man trying to enjoy his summer vacation and school field trip.

But the film fucks up Spider-Man’s defining values in so many other ways.

Of course there is the blip.

People were so hype for Spider-Man to be in the MCU but hindsight is painful because that fact just hurt Spider-Man movies on a fundamental level.

In Marvel comics, we never know for sure if any of Spider-Man’s friends or family died in the Infinity Gauntlet and no one remembered it happening anyway. It also didn’t happen in a Spider-Man story so it could be safely ignored as is the nature of a shared universe.

But in the movies Far From Home acting as MCU Chapter 23 creates an ongoing problem for these Spider-Man movies. The fact that Spider-Man and everyone he knows died and came back but also there were some people who are five years older than him now creates a fundamental dissonance undermining the more grounded, relatable angle of his character. The only solution of which is to simply wilfully ignore the elephant in the room that represents that dissonance. In short these Spider-Man movies would’ve been better off not being connected to the MCU or at least being on it’s fringes.

This applies to even the post credits scene of the movie as now in our movies that are supposed to be about the grounded and relatable hero we have fucking aliens! And they were there the whole time. The movie even gleefully plants its flag in rejection of the idea of having a more grounded Spider-Man by saying Spider-Man ISN’T a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man by virtue of having gone to space. I was okay with that in Infinity War as that was not a Spider-Man movie but by actively rejecting that idea in this movie it showcases how the film makers treat Spider-Man as a more generic hero who can be anything and everything...and therefore nothing. There are no definitions to the type of things he will get involved with.

You might counter outside of the opening school scenes and post-credit sequence the alien involvement isn’t that much of a problem because all the interdimensional and alien stuff wasn’t real in the movie.

But that leads us to the next problem. Spider-Man as a globetrotting super spy agent. Again...this is not Spider-Man. Spider-Man is more domestic, more down to Earth and sans space travel there is nothing less grounded and down to Earth that globetrotting and secret agents. There is a reason James Bond is indulgent escapism!

Worse the spy stuff essentially hijacks the movie, it’s not even something that flows out from Peter’s character or world, it comes out of nowhere to appropriate his story.

Speaking of which...SHIELD have to hijack Spider-Man because...Spider-Man doesn’t want to get involved...

...what?...

I will repeat that.

Spider-Man, the character defined by a low level burglar he chose not to stop who then killed his uncle thus teaching him that having super powers gives him a responsibility to use it to help others...chooses to not help out against giant elemental monsters threatening all life on Earth...because he wants to enjoy his vacation...

...words simply cannot do justice to how beyond broken that is as an interpretation of Spider-Man.

This isn’t even a case of he quits because being a hero has taken such a toll on him and he’s had a wobble.

This is him still deciding to be Spider-Man but actively tries to avoid it because he wants to have fun for an extended period of time. MAYBE that’s okay. MAYBE him deciding to not take his suit along on vacation could be justified and in character.

But when presented the means to be Spider-Man and a major crisis that requires his help (it isn’t like there is a small group of equally or more powerful heroes to cover for him) for him to simply reject it, to have to be forced into helping and when he reluctantly does only doing the bare minimum until he realizes people he cares about are in danger...no.

Just no, whoever was responsible for that characterization you should not be allowed to write for Spider-Man.

It’s not even consistent with Homecoming’s already misinterpreted version of Peter Parker. In Homecoming Peter was screwed up because his intervention made everything worse near 100% of the time but even that’s better than presenting Peter as choosing to not intervene at all for purely selfish and unsympathetic reasons. And to rub it in our faces when he does choose to intervene he does it with more high tech Stark crap. No him making the suit himself doesn’t make it okay, Spider-Man shouldn’t be using technology from other people like that nor consistently having access to such high-tech. It goes against the idea of him being independent and of being grounded.

The Stark tech crap is also relevant to what is a major contender for the single worst scene of any Spider-Man film to date. The drone strike on a bus.

In this movie about the superhero who’s supposed to be relatable and like us, Joe Average, we have a scene where he uses a pair of high tech bequeathed to him by his dead superhero father figure accidentally to launch an orbital drone strike on a fellow school student on his bus because he’s about to ruin his chances with hooking up with a girl. Then he has to engage in wacky hijinks to save the kid and everyone else.

Do I need to say more about that scene? To call it jumping a shark would be an insult to other shark jumping moments. It shatters the verisimilitude of the movie maybe even more than the blip.

Let’s switch back to Peter’s personality in this movie. I’ve already talked a lot about it in prior posts but I do have two more things to point out.

The first of these is that we have less quips than in prior Spider-Man movies. And I don’t just mean the most recent ones I mean of any of the movies going back to 2002. And by less I mean 0. Spider-Man NEVER quips or jokes in this movie. Ever. It’s like they’ve grown to understand Spider-Man even less than in the last movie!

The second and more significant is how stupid Peter is when it comes to his secret identity. In the comics Spider-Man is famously secretive about his identity, to the point where it’s almost paranoid.

Here though he isn’t concerned about SHIELD or random SHEILD agents knowing who he is, or Mysterio, or everyone in a bar or anyone looking at the bridge in London where he unmaskes makes out (awkwardly) with Michelle.

The movie pretends like it cares about this aspect of his character by having Peter point out if he goes out as Spider-Man abroad people will deduce it’s him.

Not only is this an attempt by him to weasel out of hero duties but it’s moot because Betty immediately figures it out (leading to the cringe Night Monkey gag which doesn’t even make sense since monkeys don’t crawl on walls or shoot webs!), Michelle figures it out and Peter was cavalier with his identity before and after that scene.

All culminating in just everyone knowing his identity which like in the comics fundamentally fucks up the idea of him as the everyman even more. Forget space aliens and spy shit now he’s a celebrity. Celebrities are the exact opposite of the everyman, that’s why they’re friggin celebrities!

Big take away from this movie as an adaptation?

It was fucking insulting for it to have been dedicated to Lee and Ditko.

Fuck this movie. Fuck this direction for Spider-Man. Fuck Marvel for ruining Spider-Man again.

*That being said I did once hear a brilliant pitch for Spider-Man 4 wherein Mysterio frames Spider-Man and the police call in aid from Kraven the Hunter to catch him.

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emperorsfoot · 1 year

Note

Have you seen any official confirmation that the CGI MOTU show on Netflix is cancelled? If so, do you think it has anything to do with Kevin Conroy passing away?

So, the rumors that the show is officially canceled came from a tweet by one of the writers.

That tweet was then used as the main source in an article by ForEternia.Com that said the show was cancelled.

But that is a large jump from "not renewed" to "cancelled" and the same writer had to come back to Twitter to clarify her earlier tweet because For Eternia misrepresented what she said.

To clarify:

Netflix has not renewed the series beyond the original 26 episodes.

Mattel still retains control of the series and can take it to another company to partner with to create future season of the same series.

The fact that it was not renewed by Netflix does not mean the project was canceled by Mattel.

(Please signal boost this post to save a confused fan)

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scifigeneration · 4 years

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Eco-disaster films in the 21st century - helpful or harmful?

by Ari Mattes

A scene from the 2017 film Geostorm: many societies have historically attempted to deal with collective trauma by replaying and restaging it in art. Warner Bros., Electric Entertainment, Rat Pac-Dune Entertainment

It seems like every time we switch on the idiot box we are confronted with news footage of another disaster. Bushfires in Australia. A hurricane in North America. A tsunami in Indonesia.

Part of this, of course, is merely a reflection of the sensationalist rationale of commercial news in the first place – in order to sell advertising space, this news needs to be sufficiently engaging to keep people from switching the channel.

But the unfortunate reality of global warming means that natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe. And Hollywood cinema has kept pace, offering some recent spectacular depictions of natural disaster in the context of global warming.

Climate change is central to the narrative of the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow directed by Roland Emmerich. In it, a changing climate leads to a series of extreme storms in a precursor to a cataclysmic shift into a new Ice Age.

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The 2015 film San Andreas, meanwhile, looks at the effects of a massive earthquake throughout California.

Geostorm (2017) posits a scientific response to global warming - through the international development of a planetary network of satellites that can control the weather - and what happens when it becomes weaponised.

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The latest in this genre of big budget, Hollywood eco-disaster movies is Moonfall slated to begin production in 2020. Emmerich will be directing the $150 million project, which follows a team attempting to stop the moon from colliding with earth after it has been struck by an asteroid.

The script has been co-written by Emmerich and his regular collaborator Harald Kloser - with whom Emmerich wrote the disaster epic 2012, a 2009 film about the race to save the planet as the earth’s core heats up.

Emmerich has described Moonfall as a cross between 2012 and Independence Day (minus the extra-terrestrial element). It’s unclear whether global warming will feature directly in its plot, but given Emmerich’s record of making ecologically aware films, it seems likely.

How, then, do such films help and/or hinder us in managing our anxieties regarding the progressive deterioration of the planet? As natural disasters become more commonplace, is there a point at which we will become too distressed by the real to reproduce it as entertaining spectacle?

A woman wears a mask to protect herself from bushfire-related smoke haze in Sydney this month. Paul Braven/AAP

‘Bad stars’

The term disaster, with its etymology from ancient Greek for “bad star,” has always elicited cosmic allusions. Disaster suggests that the universe is awry; the planets are out of alignment, bad stars are causing chaos and disorder.

The secularisation of disaster in the modern era, through the notion of risk and insurance, attempts to sever this connection to the word’s planetary origins, envisioning it on the scale of the manageable “accident”, which can be insured against.

Yet, in the context of global warming, and following the large-scale atrocities of the 20th century such as the two world wars, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust, it’s clear that disasters are far from manageable. One of the ways we have sought to manage our anxieties about disaster is through popular film.

A photo made available by the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum shows a view of the mushroom cloud photographed from the ground during the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum handout/EPA

The Hollywood disaster film genre has undergone, roughly, two major cycles. The first was in the 1970s. It included blockbuster melodramas like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and the Airport films (so brilliantly parodied in Flying High).

These cinematic disasters were often instigated by some kind of natural element – an earthquake, or a tidal wave. But they were also often structured around the malfunctioning of technologies in human-built environments (The China Syndrome being a prime example).

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The heroes in these films were usually strong, hard-boiled men. Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure, for example, leads, as though by sheer willpower alone, a group to safety following the capsizing of the eponymous ship. As viewers, we are awed by his grim determination in overcoming adversity amid often stark images of people dying.

The second cinematic cycle begins in the 1990s with ecologically sensitive films like Twister, which follows a group of meteorologists as they chase violent tornadoes across Oklahoma, and Dante’s Peak, about the disastrous effects of the eruption of a volcano on a small Washington town. Such films prefigure later, more explicit global warming eco-disaster films, like Emmerich’s masterful The Day After Tomorrow.

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While the earlier disaster films were characterised by their ensemble casts and soap-opera like structures, these newer ones dedicate more energy towards showing the disasters (using elaborate CGI and high definition), and imagining social and governmental responses to them.

Affectively, they depend upon the pathos of groups working together to overcome adversity. As in a Christian vigil, the viewer of these films takes solace from participating in this community of suffering.

The Vigil, 1884. Oil on canvas, by John Pettie. Wikimedia Commons

The pleasure of disaster on film

On one level, popular film as “entertainment” offers us reprieve from the petty banalities, inconsistencies and disappointments of everyday life, by giving us a vision of a world ordered into timely narrative. Events are tied together in a fundamentally meaningful fashion.

We are able to defer the concerns of the ordinary for a couple of hours, and participate in a viscerally stimulating and pathos-laden experience. The unwieldy disasters we see in the real world are thereby represented in a contained fashion, allowing us the illusion of conceptual and emotional mastery. But at the same time, this process pacifies us, numbing us to, and distracting us from, reality.

Similarly, our response to disaster films is ambivalent. On one hand, we enjoy watching the ultimately effective responses of the state to the disaster. In The Day After Tomorrow, for example, following some initial bumbling, the US government saves millions of Americans by organising a deal for US migration to Mexico(!)

On the other hand, epic images of full-scale disaster are the visual and visceral centrepieces of these films, and awe and terrify us. Indeed, our most intense pleasure in these films emerges from their sublime images of destruction.

Watching San Francisco fall to pieces in San Andreas is awe inspiring. In The Day After Tomorrow, one of the most sublime sequences involves the ocean swelling and rolling through Manhattan, gathering people and vehicles in its stead after crashing into the Statue of Liberty.

Watching San Francisco fall to pieces in San Andreas is awe-inspiring. New Line Cinema, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment

These pleasures in destruction and restoration occur within the context of a more saccharine kind of empathy we feel with the masses of faceless victims. By the films’ endings, we can take solace in the images and acts of community building and collective overcoming. Along with the victims, we mourn worlds destroyed, and are hopeful about worlds beginning to be rebuilt.

The economics of disaster

Hollywood disaster films often feature antagonists who are stubborn bureaucrats and greedy capitalists, but also US presidents who are calm, compassionate and measured, taking an appropriate amount of time to decide how to act and then acting decisively.

In The Day After Tomorrow, this is firstly President Blake (Perry King), who makes cool-headed decisions about the future of America and dies when his motorcade is caught in a storm and destroyed. Later, President Becker (Kenneth Welsh) is magically transformed from a pig-headed obstructionist after he assumes the presidency.

Perry King in The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Twentieth Century Fox, Centropolis Entertainment, Lions Gate Films

This, of course, contrasts with real-life presidential responses to disaster. In 2017, following Hurricane Maria’s devastating effects on Puerto Rico, Donald Trump criticised Puerto Ricans for the economic burden Maria gifted the US government, while simultaneously implying the event wasn’t very bad – not a “real catastrophe” compared to Katrina. This was all while delivering his emergency address on Puerto Rican soil!

At a time in which solidarity and compassion were expected, Trump was criticised by many for making the issue about the US’s economic burden; and yet, like many things Trump does, this inadvertently raised some critical issues surrounding the economics of disaster in the modern era.

US President Donald Trump speaks next to Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello and US First Lady Melania Trump at the Luis Muniz aerial base in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in October 2017. Thais Llorca / POOL/EPA

The imagination of disaster – its preempting, in a sense, its prediction – offers insurers (and the reinsurers who back them), following rapidly updated actuarial tables, a unique opportunity to capitalise on risk.

At the same time, disasters are a boon to some capitalist investors, who are able to buy into the development of new infrastructure for a profit.

Disaster in this way is a chief “innovator”, sucking up surplus capital, offering the most literal realisation of what conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter celebrated as one of the virtues of capitalism – its capacity for “creative destruction”.

Technology and disaster

French philosopher Paul Virilio has argued that the invention of every technology is simultaneously the invention of its accident. The invention of the car, for instance, invents the car crash. While the disaster film is acutely aware of these failures built into every technology, the genre’s relationship towards technology is more complex than outright critique.

Perhaps the most striking ambivalence of disaster films concerns the role – and virtues – of technology in facilitating and overcoming disaster. This is explicitly worked through in “man-made” disaster films like The China Syndrome, The Towering Inferno, and, more recently, Deepwater Horizon.

Natural disaster films like The Day After Tomorrow and Geostorm envision global warming as the product of devastating technological practices, and offer technological solutions to this. In Geostorm, the network of satellites that control the weather malfunction, and rapidly become the cause of even greater disaster as the film progresses.

Geostorm (2017) envisions global warming as the product of devastating technological practices, and offers technological solutions to this. Warner Bros., Electric Entertainment, RatPac-Dune Entertainment

And yet, at a higher level, these films are entirely dependent on cutting edge visual and aural technologies to stage the awe inspiring disasters in the first place. They also require a great deal of investment - of capital, and human labour - and, therefore, create a great deal of waste.

Disaster cinema, in unconsciously teasing out the relationship between technophilia and technophobia, forces us to confront one of most pressing dilemmas of the age of the Anthropocene: should we reflect on and think through the causes of disaster, or use technology to act in the hope of preventing future disasters?

A discourse of technological “solutions” to climate change fits squarely into the logic critiqued by philosopher Timothy Morton in his book Dark Ecology.

Technology, in the first place, depends on the extraction of power from nature, and the conversion of the natural into waste-creating power. Suggesting that something can cohere with a technological “problem: solution” framework is thus perhaps part of the problem itself.

Indeed, the myth that there can be a “growth”-oriented solution to global warming is convincingly undone in one of the key academic works on global warming discourse, Anneleen Kevis and Matthias Lievens’ The Limits of the Green Economy.

By studying Hollywood’s mediations of disaster – its attempts at containment and emotional management – we can perhaps begin to learn something about the ongoing tensions and contradictions that define ecological existence in modernity.

The future of disaster

The sheer frequency of contemporary natural disasters raises the question - is there a point at which we will lose our appetite for watching them staged on film?

I suspect the answer is a resounding “no.” Following September 11, it was commonplace to hear people say the footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre looked like it was from a movie. But what movie? The documentary photo-realism of the footage barely resembled Hollywood’s slick action and disaster spectacles.

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More notably, Hollywood films began to adopt the September 11 style after the event itself, with the hand-held, found-footage style realism of films like Cloverfield becoming a cliche by the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

This, once again, exemplifies the comforting finitude popular film narratives offer viewers. The more frequent disasters become, the greater will be the need for emotional management by the corporations that produce popular news and entertainment.

The more desperate people become about global warming - and the emergence of grassroots activist groups like Extinction Rebellion suggests people are becoming increasingly desperate - the more popular media corporations will assuage our anxieties with carefully ordered, pacifying spectacles.

For the last week or so, people have been walking around Sydney with their heads down, eyes red from the smoke, wearing masks to filter the air.

Pedestrians are seen wearing masks as smoke haze from bushfires in New South Wales blankets the CBD in Sydney this week. Steven Saphore)/AAP

This is like something from a disaster film - and similar scenes of the effects and aftermath of catastrophe are continuing to appear around the globe.

Yet, there is no evidence this will curb Hollywood’s appetite for disaster. In fact, cultures and societies - like individuals - have historically attempted to deal with collective trauma by replaying and restaging it in art, from the Chauvet cave paintings to The Longest Day. This may make people feel both better and more helpless at the same time.

About The Author:

Ari Mattes is a Lecturer in Communications and Media at the University of Notre Dame Australia

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#movies #science fiction #featured #science fiction and fantasy #climate science

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we-are-what-they-grow-beyond · 4 years

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some seriously self indulgent TROS thoughts that no one asked for: spoilers ahead!

(i’m gonna try tag every spoiler tag I can think of just in case anyone out there does care, but tbh this is really just for me lol)

the following is going to be a very ‘off the cuff’ series of ramblings so I apologise if it’s all over the place

Overall.. I think I liked it? I left the cinema feeling euphoric, which is honestly all I wanted from ix. While there were very few immediate things that I took offence to as I was watching it [unlike TLJ] I have a bad feeling that some doubts about certain scenes and character choices are gonna creep into my brain in the next few days. Like the longer I think about it, the worse it’s gonna get.

The beginning was a mess. I think every single person who has seen it can agree on that much. There was so much exposition and heavy handed course correction from TLJ that it felt laboured and disjointed. The pacing was at this crazy breakneck speed.. we must have visited at least six different planets in the first fifteen minutes. I think that Poe’s ‘hyperdrive jumping’ [?] sequence really set the tone for the first act - just a constant barrage of different locations and characters.

And I understand that they had to do this. The events of TLJ left them no choice, they needed to establish every main character’s position [both physically and mentally], portray the current state of the war as well as rebuild a believable rapport between our core trio all within the first fifteen minutes if they wanted to give the last act any chance of sticking the landing. And to some extent I think they achieved this. In all that running around on different planets, bickering amongst the trio and the funny asides from Threepio - it really felt like something straight out of the OT. For the first time since TFA I cared about these characters.

However. In doing this, they continually broke the cardinal rule of screenwriting; show don’t tell. While watching the first act I felt weighed down with information, like every five seconds another character would pop in with a monologue that sent them on another wild goose chase in which they had to find another hundred things that I would inevitably struggle to remember. ‘So now they need to go here, to see where Luke went, because he wanted to find this guy, who has this object, that will bring them to this other place, so that they can see Palpatine?’ It was so heavily reliant on dialogue alone that it ultimately lead to this sense of utter messiness.

Where the film thrived was in it’s action set pieces. I adored the way the force was portrayed in this film. The scene in the desert in which Ben [yes Ben, but more on that later] and Rey pulled that First Order Transport out of the sky sent shivers down my spine. We have never seen the force used like this before and the amount of power Rey held was absolutely staggering. I loved it.

The saber battle on top of the Death Star was a visual highlight. Even though I felt like I’d seen most of it in TV Spots the urgency never went away. The moodiness of the water and mist cut through by the blue and red light was beautiful.

The one shot of Poe, Finn and Chewie running through the Destroyer hallway felt like an echo back to everything that lies at the heart and soul of this saga.

We’ve been begging for more space battles and boy did we get a good one. When Lando and Chewie sauntered in on the Falcon with their thousands of rebel support ships set to the theme I was sobbing. There were so many little references in that one shot, from Rebels to Resistance to even Wedge Antilles - My heart swelled.

But where I really broke was on Ahch-To. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ was its treatment of Luke. Every time I watch it again that shot of his submerged X wing infuriates me beyond measure as Johnson never chose to do anything with it [despite there being an obvious answer]. We finally got that scene in this film, the scene I was so desperate for; a callback to perhaps my favourite moment in the whole skywalker saga entangled with an apology for TLJ’s treatment of our favourite jedi master. Set to Yoda’s Theme, I felt like for a split second like I was watching Empire, and that meant the world to me. Thank you J.J.

The characterisation is perhaps the most divisive part of the film for me. It took so many risks, it’s going to take quite some time for me to properly digest them all.

I want to start with our beloved Leia. The CGI, although perhaps not quite as seamless as some reviewers are making it out to be, worked well enough. With the knowledge of Carrie’s passing, it’s easy to poke holes in the performance - I found the beginning of her screen time particularly jarring, with her mostly addressing Rey with one word answers. I knew that there was supposed to be an emotional weight to all her scenes, as there she was, our princess, somehow miraculously on our screens for one final time. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel as if she was truly there in body or soul, and the emotional power of her scenes suffered as a result. Maybe in time, as we forget about the circumstances under which this film had to be made, this obvious detachment might fade away. And I sincerely hope it does, because the backstory they gave her is what truly deserves to be remembered about Leia in this film. The flashback scene of her training with Luke was glorious, the cgi really worked well here, and for the first time we saw Leia as a fully fledged jedi. This is something I could never ever have even imagined and I’m so pleased they did it, it would have meant so much to me as a young girl. As for her death, I believe they did the best they could with it. She ultimately died saving her son, protecting both the light and her family - two themes that have been so central to this entire forty two year saga. I don’t think they could have done much more.

I was shocked to see Harrison in this, surprised isn't even the right word. But this bewilderment that I felt thankfully didn’t overshadow his integral role in the so called ‘Bendemption’ arc, in fact I think it really tied the whole thing together nicely. I have hated the idea of Kylo’s possible redemption since the moment we found out his true heritage during TFA, I thought it was too simple, too obvious. But the way in which it was dealt with here was wonderful. It showed Kylo to be entirely complex and ambiguous, and at the end of it we saw Ben for what he was, a young and vulnerable young man who ultimately made some terrible choices, the conflict in him was brilliantly acted. It was ultimately his parents that pulled him back to the light, not just Rey, and that fact alone saved this story arc for me.

[I refuse to talk about the kiss. I hated it. It didn’t need to happen.]

Rey is a difficult one. Was the Palpatine bloodline convenient? Yes. Terribly so. Did it make sense story wise? Only kind of. But, I think it drew a definitive line under the nine film conflict which was ultimately at its core just Skywalker vs Palpatine, so in that sense I’m happy it happened in the way it did.

[Sheev on an aesthetic level looked dreadful I thought. Proper rubbery. And the logistics of how he survived/who all those chanting followers were/where he got all those Imperial star destroyers from is extremely questionable. I try not to dwell on it.]

My mixed feelings about Finn and Poe cannot be overstated. The film did a good job at giving them more to do, we really got to see John and Oscar bounce off each other and at the end of the day, that is my kryptonite. However, Finn had little to no character development throughout the whole trilogy. All he did was figure out that he didn’t want to be aligned with the First Order anymore, deciding he wanted to fight for what is right. But the thing is, we saw him make that decision about ten minutes into TFA. It didn’t need to be rehashed again and again in every film. We wanted more - we wanted him to be force sensitive, we wanted him to form meaningful connections with others. On some level they delivered on that, we saw a little force sensitivity, he got his own back with Hux, he found his tribe in Jannah and the other deserters.. but it felt like an afterthought. Nothing was ever dwelled upon- even his confession to Rey [whatever it was] was completely forgotten about in the end. Finn as a whole felt like an afterthought.

[Don’t even get me started on Rose, Kelly deserved so much more. I was embarrassed by the amount of screen time she had.]

As for Poe.. Oscar did a brilliant job in this, he successfully harkened back to our favourite scoundrel Han Solo stereotype and I felt that gave the trio’s dynamic a clear anchor. His interactions with both Finn, Threepio and Chewie as he kept crashing the falcon really made me laugh, it was nice to have some actual humour littered throughout, unlike the goofy slapstick stuff in TLJ. But.. the Zorii love interest and backstory made zero sense canonically. Zero. Aside from the ‘can i kiss you’ stuff being extremely contrived, there is physically no actual way Poe could have ever been a spice runner on this new planet that I can’t remember the name of. He lived on Yavin his whole life until he came of age to join the New Republic Navy, and from there Leia recruited him into the Resistance. This much has been documented in countless books and comics. J.J really decided to throw that all away so that they could what.. get that universal key thing? Did they even use it? Was there any other point of Zorii’s character other than that key? Not really. Don’t try to tell me that Kes and Shara’s son ran away from home to become a criminal for no reason. Just don’t. [He was still wearing Shara’s ring throughout and they didn’t do anything with it.. I wonder will we get more of an answer to this in the novelisation?]

[While I’m on the subject of the comics and novels, the decision to kill off Snap was brave. I really loved him in the comics and I’m sad he’s now gone and Karé is now alone. Not that any of that was mentioned but-]

Lando was used just the correct amount. I’m happy he got the ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ line, and I think any more screen time and we could have seen some holes in Billy’s performance. [sorry Billy]

Chewie had some great moments in this surprisingly. He was essentially just an extra in TLJ so it was quite refreshing to have him be a key player again. [I had forgotten about the clips from the trailer that showed him aboard the Destroyer, so when he ‘died’ I really thought he was dead for a moment and I was so angry that that was how he went lol.] But his reaction to Leia’s death was so touching and although it was a tad fan-servicey, I loved the fact that he finally got the medal he missed out on in ANH. It made me chuckle.

The same can be said of Anthony Daniels as C3PO and all of the other droids. I felt as though they really clawed them back into the mix this time - Threepio’s worrisome queries were wonderfully nostalgic and not to mention hilarious, and D-0 was a great new addition. The droids always brought a levity to star wars, it was their job, and they did this to great effect in this film. There was some questionable switching around of R2 and BB8 which I didn’t appreciate - there is absolutely no way that BB8 wouldn’t be Poe’s astromech for the battle against the Final Order but I’m willing to let it slide.. [also why was he on Tatooine with Rey at the end?]

It really sounds like I had more problems with this film than highlights, and I promise that’s not the case. In the end, it made me feel happy, like I was watching something akin to the OT again, and yes some parts of it were clumsy, but the heart of it was there. It all really comes down to whether or not you believe a film must be ‘good’ in order to be.. good. With something as big and sentimental as star wars I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. Return of the Jedi was an utter mess- but yet we all still worship it and the characters it gave us. Why can’t the same thing be said for TROS? It was clunky, but it was surprising, and powerful and fun. It gave us the characters we loved and some interesting new ones, some top-tier lightsaber battles and a conclusive ending to the saga that has defined so many lives. At the end of the day I think that’s all it needed to be.

#star wars tros #tros #tros spoilers #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker #sw #sw spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker spoilers #do you think i have enough tags lmao #i just really don't want to spoil it for people #rey #kylo #finn #poe #idk i feel like i have enough now

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myhahnestopinion · 5 years

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THE AARONS 2018 - Best Film

I watched 102 films from 2018, which met my personal goal, broke my personal record, and won another competition between myself and my good friend. 102 seems like a proper purview to declare these entries my favorite films of the year, the crème de la crème, the top 10% of the top 100%. Here are the Aarons for Best Film:

#10. Roma

“Intimate” is a good word to describe Roma. A passion project for director Alfonso Cuarón, Roma was inspired by his own childhood nanny and his mother, and filmed in his native Mexico. The film depicts the tumultuous breakdown of social relationships within the country’s history, but keeps the focus on the dissolution and reformation of familial bonds. “Intimate” is indeed a good word to describe Cuarón’s deeply moving film, but “intricate” just might be better. Roma is never short of gorgeous for every single shot in the movie, every bit of staging and every camera-pan planned down to the tiniest background detail, making each the breath-taking black-and-white painting of a true auteur. It perhaps would be best experienced on the big screen, but credit to Netflix for funding such a personal, profound film, which means, if you’re looking to watch one of the best films of last year, you don’t have to roam very far.

#9. Isle of Dogs

Wes Anderson should stop filming movies. To clarify, Wes Anderson should stop filming movies in live-action, as the stop-motion medium is where his visual panache, off-beat humor, and oddball characters most brightly shine. Isle of Dogs, like a best friend for man, puts a smile on one’s face that never departs throughout its stylish adventure, even in the most unexpectedly dark moments of its animated dog-eat-dog world. While concerns over its depiction of Japanese culture are worth discussing, its impeccable voice cast, including Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Murry, deadpanning their way through its gorgeously hand-crafted sequences makes for a doggone good time at the movies.

#8. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Certainly the most unconventional choice for me this year, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s placement on this list is not the product of some nihilistic capitulation to chaos theory; in fact, it is thoughtfulness that made the movie stand out to me so much. An encouragement for empathy, a validation of the value of all living creatures, and a condemnation of cupidity, wrapped up in big-budget special effect sequences and culminating in a Gothic-Horror influenced haunted house set piece, the latest sequel in the series hit all the right sensibilities for me with a combination I never thought possible and a blockbuster boldness that recalls why The Last Jedi became my favorite Star Wars. While others may look upon this movie and see a fallen franchise, I see a king’s ransom of cinematic riches that means the world to me.

#7. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

The Mission: Impossible franchise was last seen on this list in the very first Aarons for Rogue Nation, an action film so masterfully crafted that one can’t help but be ecstatic at the series’ decision to shift from a rotating set of action directors to the singular efforts of director Christopher McQuarrie. Indeed, McQuarrie just may have outdone his prior masterpiece with the jaw-dropping Fallout, whose spectacular set pieces, shot with confidence and flourish and bolstered by the crazed energy of star Tom Cruise, blows every other blockbuster this year, and perhaps since Rogue Nation, out of the water. Fallout not only manages the impressive feat of making a sixth franchise entry feel tense and unpredictable, but also finds new emotional heights to strengthen its thrills through Ethan Hunt’s uncompromising drive to save everyone. It’s an explosive experience, whose only potential fallout is the impossible task McQuarrie has set for himself for surpassing it in his next two confirmed installments.

#6. Black Panther

Black Panther was nothing short of a phenomenon, even among the movie-going domination of its larger cinematic universe, and rightfully so. The worldbuilding, taking inspiration from real-life African cultures and heightened by fun futuristic technology, is so elaborate, and its supporting cast (including Letitia Wright, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, and Danai Gurira) so well-defined that Black Panther feels like a universe in its own right, even as it deftly weaves through the larger Marvel world. The film’s true power comes from how it breaks the mold, from its unforgettable villain who is not just a physical, but philosophical, foe to the hero, through its nuanced tackling of socio-political stances, to, of course, the impact of its increased representation. In vision, in stature, and, yes, in box office, Black Panther is king.

#5. First Reformed

First Reformed’s methodical pacing and meticulous framing, both evocative of its reflection on faith, slowly melt away to reveal a film that’s darker and more disruptive than one is initially led to believe. Similar to director Paul Schrader’s other written work Taxi Driver, First Reformed’s examination of existential questions and the descent into extremism is harrowing; unlike that other work, it is perhaps also hopeful. Ethan Hawke’s soulful performance gives extra gravitas to the film’s contention of hope and despair and its interweaving of contemporary issues with long-standing questions, thematic material that lingers in the mind long after its stunning final moments. Shot in awe-inspiring Academy ratio, First Reformed’s masterfulness cannot be improved upon, even as one cannot wait for the team of Paul Schrader and Ethan Hawke to re-form for their next collaborative effort.

#4. Love, Simon

Love, Simon’s placement on this list perhaps cannot be properly explained in prose, only in the unintelligible garble of the uncontrollable emotions that it elicits. It’s a flooring of feelings, of sadness, of fear, of nervousness, of hope, of happiness, that no movie has produced in me since The Perks of Being a Wallflower, one of my top 5 favorite films. The soundtrack is lively and the characters’ charming, but Love, Simon becomes a peak coming-of-age movie by perfectly capturing the uncertainty of a young crush and the joy of young love. It’s calming comfort food in all the right ways, sure to be rewatched nearly as often as the aforementioned Perks, which is why Love, Simon is a film loved by Aaron.

#3. A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place was a silent surprise, both in the way it slowly built up curiosity and critical acclaim, and in the way its stillness stands in sharp contrast to any other movie-going experience of recent memory. It’s sublime in its simplicity as a lean and mean horror thrill ride tied to the beating heart of a tender family drama, and stylish in its scares as an unexpectedly impressive directorial debut for John Krasinski. The film’s risks, including its harsh opening, its reliance on non-verbal dialogue, and its fist-pumping (and shotgun-pumping) closing moments, come with great reward that elevate it to an instant horror classic. A Quiet Place’s tension and tenderhearted moments may stun the audience into silence, but I will not be quiet about its placement near the top of this list!

#2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Sony’s incessant need to exploit their Spider-Man franchise is chock full of bad ideas. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, as illustrated by the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs adaptation, the 21 Jump Street film franchise, and The Lego Movie, are very good at turning bad ideas into masterpieces. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse takes that Lego Movie enthusiasm and spins it into another irreverent and self-referential screenplay, crammed full of jokes that draw from all the oddities of its venerable franchise, while also never losing sight of the hero’s journey of Miles Morales at its core. Credit, of course, is also due to directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsay, and Rodney Rothman, who brought that screenplay to life with amazing animation that combines stunning hand-drawn and CGI work to mimic the film’s comic book origins. It’s beautiful, boisterous, and features John Mulaney as a talking cartoon pig. Amped up by a killer soundtrack, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is such a crowning creative achievement that one can’t wait for Sony to get back into the franchise for a second verse.

AND THE BEST FILM OF 2018 IS...

#1. Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade is horrible. No, not the movie Eighth Grade; that should be evident by its place as my favorite film of the year. Eighth grade, the year in school, is horrible and we all know it. Bo Burnham, the musical comedian who makes his screenwriting and directing debut with this movie, especially knows it. It’s a time of anxiety, insecurity, uncertainty, a time of pursuing increased agency but still being constrained by the limitations of youth. A time where it feels like no one understands what you’re going through. Except when you find a movie like Eighth Grade, that channels all that mess into an disconcertingly perfect bout of pity and insight that exposes the comical and affirming nature of all of it. And yet, while Eighth Grade deftly portrays those universal experiences, it remains uniquely and powerfully tied to its particular era, understanding the ways in which mass communication, the endless information of the internet, and the failings of modern society have provoked the latest cycle of those anxieties in unprecedented ways. Eighth Grade’s empathy and its hilarity will likely make it a mainstay for the modern generation, and puts it at the top of its class for the year 2018.

NEXT UP: THE 2018 AARONS FOR WORST FILM!

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jewelridersarchive · 5 years

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Why do we love seeing new versions of the same thing? Is it simple nostalgia? Is it the desire to engage with some sort of content that once moved us in a new and different way? Is it new creators wanting to stamp something they loved from their own childhood with their mark? Or is it all of the above?

I’m not immune to loving reboots. I devoured the new DuckTales on Disney XD, I’m reading the new Rainbow Brite comics from Dynamite, I’m watching the new iteration of Will & Grace, and continue to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Reboots are fun; they not only allow fans who loved something to have a nostalgia party, but also allow potential new fans entry points into what sometimes appears to be never-ending streams of content (I’m looking at you, Transformers). But things seem out of hand when even ReBoot, the mid-90s CGI cartoon, has a reboot on Netflix (ReBoot: The Guardian Code). Have reboots become the “safe,” risk-averse way companies can cash in on portfolio properties that already have known fanbases? It’s the equivalent of an artist only drawing fanart because they know it will get thousands of likes versus hundreds on original content.

And I fully admit some level of fatigue with franchises that just keep chugging along, seemingly forever. Every movie that comes out seems to want to be a tentpole franchise builder. Or a reboot of an existing franchise, or a soft reboot that only takes some elements going forward, or an alternate universe or…well, you get the idea.

I love original content. One of the best shows I watched this year was Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls (yes, I know I’m rather late to the game). It was a bright spot of originality, something new and not tied to any other content or previous iteration. Many of the anime I watch and enjoy are either original or straight adaptations of an existing manga. I think original content and ideas are important in entertainment. They allow a generation to experience a piece of entertainment in its prime, and have something uniquely “theirs.” Kids of the 60s had Star Trek, kids of the 70s had Star Wars, kids of 80s will always be the original audience for Jem & the Holograms and He-Man/She-Ra, kids of the 90s will always have X-Men TAS and Sailor Moon. (And PGJR, of course haha). No matter if they are rebooted down the road or not, that original experience belongs to the original viewers.

Which is why it’s always hilarious to me when people who hate on the new version of something say “It’s ruining my childhood!” Your childhood is whatever it was, frozen in time. Those original cartoons obviously still exist, and if you have the desire you can watch most of them. A reboot doesn’t destroy the original, no matter how many changes it makes to the original idea. The best reboots can often give us (as adults) what we thought we were watching as children. And often, the reboot can drive traffic back to seek out the original, as adults want to share with children the version they loved at that age.

Which brings us to She-Ra. I didn’t watch any He-Man or She-Ra as a child, for whatever reason. I found He-Man & the Masters of the Universe through the 2002 anime-influenced incarnation (also a great reboot IMO), then went back and watched the 1983 cartoon, followed by the 1985 She-Ra: Princess of Power. I loved it all. Sure, sometimes it was goofy, and there was lots of animation reuse in the older versions, but the core concepts were really strong. They are classic good vs evil, freedom vs tyranny stories, told with engaging casts and crazy creative worlds.

I powered through all 93 episodes of She-Ra during the summer of 2010 while I studied for my board exams. It holds the special place of being the series I turned to to relieve the stress of studying. I love the 80s fantasy girl designs, the color schemes, the powers, the sheer kookiness of the side characters. She-Ra was the OG American magical girl, and I finally understood what all the fuss over this franchise was about. She-Ra feels iconic in the way that characters like Wonder Woman and Sailor Moon do. Yes, she starts out as a spin-off of the successful He-Man franchise, but he makes very few appearances in She-Ra’s cartoon.

But after her initial run, She-Ra remained a virtually dormant property for the next 30 years. He-Man had two different reboots in 1991 and 2002, but She-Ra was stuck in limbo. Only once the Masters of the Universe Classics collectible figure from Mattel released in 2010 did She-Ra finally see the light of day again. Story-wise, the bios on the back of the toy packages gave us a little info about She-Ra’s further adventures, but it wasn’t until the 2012/2013 Masters of the Universe comic from DC that She-Ra comes back, this time in the guise of the villainous Despara. It’s a dark but interesting take on the characters; an exploration of what being raised by the Evil Horde would really do to a person.

Interestingly, this seems to be the jumping-off point for the new “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” animated series from Dreamworks and Netflix. This show takes as its central theme the relationship between Adora and Catra. When Adora finds the sword that lets her turn into She-Ra, she leaves the Horde – an organization to which she has devoted her life. Almost more importantly, she leaves behind Catra, her best friend. It’s this broken relationship that informs the emotional tone of the rest of the show.

Unlike the 80s version, this time around the Rebellion knows Adora’s identity as She-Ra. It’s an interesting change – shows of the 80s were obsessed with secret identities, and sometimes it could get ridiculous making up excuses for what happened to the other identity of the character every time. Thankfully, that is avoided here, and instead of angst over whether or not you can let people know the real you, we are treated to relationships that ask whether we can accept someone who we know has wronged us before.

Much has been made over this update’s reworking of the body types and ethnicities of the main princesses. While I confess not loving all the updated designs and missing the 80s fairytale warrior goddesses of the original, I understand and fully support the change. Reboots are about viewing something old through the lens of today, and audiences of today want to see themselves in the media they watch or read. We can’t (and shouldn’t) go back to mostly-white casts. The world is a rainbow of colors, and the show feels richer for including them.

Speaking of rainbows, I have to mention the new show’s decidedly queer bent. The relationship between Adora and Catra is somewhere between ex-best-friends and ex-girlfriends in tone. Netossa and Spinerella, long shipped by the fandom, are finally outed in a true relationship this time around. Other characters like Scorpia, Bow, and Entrapta all tap into queer mannerisms and norms as well. The end result is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in children’s entertainment, and I couldn’t be happier. I wish I’d had something similar as a child, but I’m grateful today’s queer kids have their own heroes.

When we talk about a successful reboot, what are we looking for? Here’s what I think a good reboot need to accomplish.

Bring the characters and concepts of the original property up to date for current audiences.

Explore the characters or world in new and different ways.

Add depth to the original concept.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power does all of these in spades. I think it’s the nicest treatment an 80s female-driven property has gotten in a reboot. The show is full of strong characters with interesting dynamics, great writing, and interesting world building. Yes, some of the episodes can be a bit predictable and the designs are not always my favorite, but everything works together toward a greater whole. I won’t spoil the story for you, because seriously if you haven’t watched this, get thee to Netflix and enjoy!

For the Honor of Grayskull!

Chris

P.S. Can you imagine getting a ✨Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders✨ reboot that brought all this to the table? I’d die!

Read the complete blog at The Jewel Riders Archive! http://www.jewelridersarchive.com/posts/she-ra-the-princesses-of-power-and-reboot-culture/

#jewel riders #princess gwenevere and the jewel riders #princess gwenevere #unicorn #unicorns #animation #mattel #She-ra #she ra #princess of power #heman #he man #he-man #masters of the universe

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