#the wasp's design is quite the same as ant-man but it's pretty
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The Best and Worst Things About Each MCU Movie
These are all just my stinky opinions. You are allowed to disagree, you are allowed to agree. Most of these are jokes anyway. I’m honestly just happy you’re reading this. Minor Spoilers Ahead!
Iron Man (2008) -
Best: This movie almost perfectly sets the tone for the entire universe that has at that point yet to have been created. Looking back, you can imagine the feeling of “Where are they going to go from here?” and I think that’s one of the most important things that this movie needed to accomplish.
Worst: What the fuck is Jeff Bridges doing? What’s his endgame here? I get he’s trying to take over Stark Industries but how’s he gonna do that from inside that giant metal suit he uses to kill people inside their cars?
Incredible Hulk (2008) -
Best: Tim Roth is in it and I think that is pretty cool.
Worst: I haven’t actually seen it, but the cgi looks god awful, what the hell.
Iron Man 2 (2010) -
Best: Sam Rockwell is so goddamn annoying in this movie and I think that’s amazing, he’s such a little stinker.
Worst: I remember basically nothing else about this movie except some guy talking about birds, idk.
Thor (2011) -
Best: It introduces Loki, probably one of the most beloved villains in the entire franchise.
Worst: This movie is so goddamn boring and it’s my least favorite and I hate it. Don’t @ me.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) -
Best: The first good chunk of this movie is actually a really compelling character study on Steve Rogers and what makes him a good man. Seeing him basically being paraded as this propaganda figure and watching him struggle with this is one of the most compelling things about him as a person. Really wish they kept this up for the entire movie.
Worst: The red skull is really boring guys. He’s red, that’s it. Give me something else to work with man.
Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) -
Best: This movie proved that you can have a superhero team up with this many people and have it fucking work. It doesn’t matter if you hate or love this movie, you cannot deny the effects it has on the genre.
Worst: It’s shot like a bad CW show. It looks so ugly.
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Best: This one is actually my favorite of the bunch. Exploring the question of what makes Iron Man, the suit or the person, is shown really well here. I thoroughly dig it.
Worst: That scene where Harley flip flops about whether or not he really knows Tony makes me so irrationally angry.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Best: It’s slightly better than Thor, and I actually can feel myself start to have a good time whenever Loki’s on screen.
Worst: Once again, this movie is insanely forgettable. Christopher fucking Eccleston is in this movie and I could not tell you a single thing about this character.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) -
Best: This movie has one of the best hand-to-hand fight scenes in the entire MCU. You know the one I’m talking about. It gives me chills, I love it.
Worst: Having the government stand-in that Steve questions in the beginning of the movie actually be a front for N*zis that he can just beat up, and not an actual metaphor for the issues with the government today? You ain’t slick.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1 (2014) -
Best: This is the mcu movie basically anyone can enjoy. Anybody can watch this movie and find something to love about it. The characters, the messages about family and learning to be okay with feeling love, the jokes, hell, even the space setting. THE MUSIC. It’s the full package baby.
Worst: Chris Pratt has an unfortunate cameo in this one.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) -
Best: I have a couple of things. A) The party scene where we get to watch the Avengers talk and be friends with each other and act like people. B) I love James Spader no matter what he is doing.
Worst: Why is everyone quipping? Why is the robot quipping? Why would they massacre my boy like that?
Ant-man (2015) -
Best: I want Paul Rudd to marry me, best dad in the mcu.
Worst: The moment Edgar Wright left this project.
Captain America: Civil War (2016) -
Best: Introduces two great characters, Spider-man and Black Panther. These two get a lot of love when it comes to designing their characters in this movie and it makes me very happy.
Worst: It made the fandom very unhappy and I don’t like picking sides. It feels like watching your many parents get divorced for two hours.
Doctor Strange (2016) -
Best: The magic looks really fucking cool in this movie. Also, the ending with Dormammu is up there for one of my favorite endings of an mcu movie. Having Doctor Strange actually outsmart the villain instead of actually fighting him is endlessly more satisfying.
Worst: Could not tell you a thing else about this movie other than I heard Tilda Swinton plays a character that’s probably not supposed to be white.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) -
Best: Guys, I gotta come clean about something. I actually like this one better than Volume 1. I know, I know, a good majority of people do not feel this way, but I feel a lot more emotionally attached to the movie, and that’s mainly because of two characters: Yondu Udonta and Rocket Racoon. Rocket realizing that he’s an asshole but his found family still loves him gets me, man. I can’t help it. Helps that Ego is a great villain as well. Also the cinematography is some of the best in the mcu.
Worst: No Howard the Duck.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) -
Best: I think the best thing about this movie is just the solidness of it all. No one part stands out as the best because most everything about this movie is pretty damn good. Michael Keaton will knock your socks off, go watch it.
Worst: Donald Glover is in it to tease a Miles Morales reveal, BUT NOTHING HAS HAPPENED ABOUT IT SINCE.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) -
Best: Taika Waititi knows how to do shit right, lemme tell ya. Taking away Thor’s hammer from the beginning was probably one of the smartest choices in the movie, and this is a movie of smart choices.
Worst: Jeff Goldblum isn’t in it more.
Black Panther (2018) -
Best: Erik Killmonger is easily the best villain in a Marvel movie, and you can quote me on that. An amazing performance from Michael B. Jordan. It’s also the first Marvel movie I saw in theatres (I know, I was very late to the game)
Worst: Everett K. Ross is CIA propaganda and the last fight scene on the train tracks looks like shit.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) -
Best: It’s really hard to sum up exactly what my thoughts are on this movie. I think one of the movie’s best qualities is the bigness of it. This movie feels huge, there’s a lot of different stuff to love here. If you like Wakanda, there’s a whole epic battle set in Wakanda. If you’re more a fan of the space stuff, we got a whole lotta space stuff. The best part of this movie is there’s probably gonna be something that everyone can enjoy packed in here.
Worst: I also think the bigness of this movie is also one of it’s larger weaknesses. Because there’s so much stuff in this movie, not all of it is fully fleshed out. Tony Stark gets a lot to do in this movie, but Steve Rogers sort of feels sidelined at parts. There’s a perfect balance that I don’t think was quite hit.
Ant-man and The Wasp (2018) -
Best: I still really love Paul Rudd in this movie, and I think his relationship with Cassie is still really cute. World’s Greatest Grandma indeed.
Worst: This movie really had its work cut out for itself, coming off the heels of Infinity War, so it sort of falls short in that respect. I don’t want to criticize it too harshly, it is what it is, nothing insanely memorable.
Captain Marvel (2019) -
Best: I still think this is a pretty good movie, despite what a lot of people think. I struggle a lot with believing that I have to prove myself to others, so having Carol finally realize that she doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone was really important to me, and probably a lot of other women.
Worst: There were parts where I wasn’t as engaged, like the scenes in the Kree empire. That made some of the movie feel off to me, it’s a bit unbalanced.
Avengers: Endgame (2019) -
Best: This movie 100% achieves what it sets out to do, and that is to be a huge cinematic event. I don’t even really see this movie as a movie, it’s more like one huge experience. My viewing had one of the most energetic crowds I’ve ever seen a movie with.
Worst: I don’t really think this movie holds up to multiple re-watches. Granted, I saw it in theatres three times. I don’t think any subsequent viewings are ever going to pack that same punch that my first viewing had, and that makes it harder to come back to. Also Steve had a totally lame ending.
Spider-man: Far From Home (2019) -
Best: After ending on such a downer note in the last movie, this felt like a weight being lifted off my chest. Jake Gyllenhaal gives an insanely energetic performance that I absolutely adore. (Also seeing it with my dad was fun, he would nudge me every time they switched locations to tell me he’d been there)(Also when I saw it with my sibling a kid ran out of the theatre during the Mysterio mind-fuck sequence, some just can’t handle that lifestyle)
Worst: Peter Parker and MJ remind me of how perpetually single I am.
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WandaVision (2021) Review
I’m sorry but someone needs to address the elephant in the room - if Wanda and Vision are in a relationship, does that mean Vision - a robot - has a penis? Look, I cannot be the only one thinking this, right? Right??
Plot: Living idealized suburban lives, super-powered beings Wanda and Vision begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems.
So Marvel’s first Disney+ series has reached its finale, and I’m certain many fans will be left disappointed due to all the outlandish rumours and theories that the fanbase are known to come up with not coming to fruition, but I personally admire this show for sticking true to its guns by being something that is very different compared to anything that Marvel has done before. Well, mostly. When its different, its hugely different, however when it gets to the usual MCU antics its pretty generic Marvel.
At the beginning the show left a lot of audiences scratching their heads as to what was going, as in the first few episodes especially there isn’t much of a plot per se, and instead we are taken through the various stages of American TV sitcoms, starting with the black and white old-school The Dick Van Dyke Show styled format, with the first episode going as far as being filmed in front of a live audience just like they would’ve back in those olden days.....at least that’s what history tells us happened back in those days, honestly take that with a grain of salt as I wasn’t even alive back in the 60s so for all I know history is a massive conspiracy and all of this is a massive pile of tosh! But setting deceitful plot schemes, supposedly everyone back in the 60′s were black and white and there was no colour in the world... okay, I’m kidding, I’m not that stupid, but I digress. As I was saying before I rudely interrupted myself, we are taken through various phases of American tele-sitcoms and eventually entering into the usual MCU territory. What works at the beginning of the series is the way it pays homage to those sitcoms back in the day, and I’m certain there was a lot fun has on set by the production designers recreating visual look of those old shows and also with the actors biting into every opportunity of playing up to acting style that was used back then, with the winks to the camera and the purposeful pauses as they wait for the laugh track to die down, or there’s an episode akin to Modern Family and The Office where our stars act as if they’re in a mockumentary and even answer questions to the camera to great comedic effect.
In between this sitcom format we constantly get little clues and teases towards what may actually be going, and there is this sense of constant mystery that really motivates you to get excited for the next episode (as Disney+ releases their shows one episode per week) and as such WandaVision turned out the be very exciting simply from trying to come up with the most out-there theories of what’s to come. And it seems like the showrunners were fully aware of this by playing up to the fanbase by ending episodes on massive cliff-hangers (people who have seen this series can now easily agree with me that “Please Stand By” is an even bigger Marvel villain than Thanos!) as well as featuring certain surprises and appearances that suggest much bigger plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, so to be fair this show really felt good simply from the anticipation factor and the discussion that it built among audiences. Naturally with huge anticipation it’s difficult to then fulfil that promise, and as such to the second half of the series where the show goes full Marvel on us, we do kind of get stuck in more mediocre territory, with the final episode especially serving some disappointment by ending with the typical generic Marvel superhero battle we’ve all come to expect at this point. In other words, WandaVision comes off a tad anti-climactic at the end, but its the journey that makes it worthwhile.
Typically to most Marvel projects, you can expect the cast to be great, and here in WandaVision that’s the same case. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are both stellar as Wanda and Vision, and first and foremost this show is about their romance and their love, and gosh aren’t them two just the biggest lovebirds! So adorable with only me and my girlfriend offering competition as the more gushier and sickly cheesy couple! Hey, we’re cheesy and proud, that’s all I’m saying!!! Anyway, the show is mainly about Olsen and her character’s grief and evolution, and Olsen proves her chops as a leading lady and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she’ll get up to in the Doctor Strange sequel. Bettany is both innocent yet smooth as her robotic boyfriend, and basically proves that if you want to get with one of the Olsen sisters, you have to accept every single chip that Bill Gates sends you to have a shot. We also see the return of a couple other MCU side characters, with Kat Dennings and Randall Park returning as Darcy and Jimmy Woo and to be honest WandaVision gives these characters proper justice. Kat Dennings in the Thor films always came off more annoying rather than funny, yet here on the show her character is both useful and her humour is sarcastic yet funny. And Jimmy Woo in the Ant-Man & the Wasp was stuck in the stereotype of the goofy FBI agent who is stupid and oblivious to everything, however here you can tell his character has become more wiser and better at his job, yet still with the wit and charm that Randall Park usually provides (and he’s the learnt the card trick from Ant-Man!!). We also have Teyonah Parris appearing as grown up Monica Rambeau who we saw as a young girl in Captain Marvel, and Parris is quite pleasant and does well with what she has, but I’m hoping she gets to have more interesting material to work with in the future Marvel projects she appears in. Then there is Kathryn Hahn as the mysterious nosy neighbour character, and though I don’t want to spoil anything about her role, I’ll say that Hahn gets to overact her face off and also gets a fun musical at one point that is annoyingly catchy!
WandaVision is a great sign showing Marvel attempting to branch out and go to new and different places, however with its ending it still proves that they need to learn how to break away from the repetitive formula they have gotten themselves stuck in. All we need is Deadpool proclaiming “Big CGI fight coming up!”
Overall score: 7/10
#wandavision#elisabeth olsen#paul bettany#marvel#2021#marvel cinematic universe#mcu#wandavision finale#wandavision review#wandavision finale review#disney+#tv show#doctor strange and the multiverse of madness#marvel multiverse#x-men#action#comedy#drama#jac shaeffer#kathryn hahn#teyonah parris#kat dennings#evan peters#randall park#sitcom#homage#emma caulfield#scarlet witch#tv review#2021 in tv
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javid headcanons
hey so I haven’t updated in forever (I have reasons just not good ones ngl) (also I’ve been absent on all of my blogs so don’t think y’all are special ;))
but for now here are some wholesome Javid (modern) headcanons that aren’t really supposed to be anything in particular they’re just kind of cute
they skip around from high school to married life and everything in between
also this is so long because I love imagining my two pure boys in love
tw: idk why but there’s more cussing than usual (but I wouldn’t consider it excessive)
———————
- okay so first off, Davey is a mess
- like how does one date??? like he can barely stand his own life how can he share it with someone else????
- especially someone so perfect nice like Jack
- but this isn’t Jack’s first rodeo and God bless him he just smiles when Davey’s awkward and will kiss his cheek or something and Davey will never be sure how he landed someone so nice perfect
- they don’t like the hassle of splitting the bill on dates so they alternate on who pays for the date
- Davey brought Jack sunflowers once for his designated date day and on Jack’s next designated date day, Davey received a painting of said flowers
- as they continuously date, though, they begin learning each other’s favorite flowers
- like Jack loves stargazer lilies but Davey can’t have lilies because of Sarah’s cat, Cheerio (never forget Cheerio)
- Davey favorite flowers are baby’s breath
- on prom night, Sarah and Katherine surprise the two with matching stargazer/baby’s breath boutonniere and they just go soft
- OKAY BUT DAVEY GETS SO SAD AT THE END OF PROM NIGHT BECAUSE HE’LL HAVE TO THROW IT AWAY BECAUSE CHEERIO GETS INTO EVERYTHING SO HE JUST THROWS IT IN THE TRASH AND THEN ON HIS
- AND JACK’S WEDDING DAY, JACK SURPRISES HIM BY SHOWING THE TWO MATCHING BOUTONNIERES now pressed and dead BUT HE CAN’T HELP BUT BE SPEECHLESS BY HIS NOW HUSBAND AND AHHHH
- “wait... oh my God I kissed you that night after you went dumpster diving!”
- also real quick, Sarah is Davey’s “best man” and he’s all like Sarah, you can wear a dress, you don’t have to wear a suit like Jack’s best man (Crutchie)
- and Sarah just glared and is like “bitch don’t take this from me”
- she was the best looking in the wedding photos rocking her amazing suit btw
- but back to when they’re just bfs
- when they first start being together Davey isn’t really sure what to think because they’re more than friends, but is it right to say Jack’s his boyfriend yet? (they hadn’t even had their first kiss yet)
- so he goes for a few weeks with them just have a few dates (are they dates though???) until Jack calls him his boyfriend in front of the other newsies (because he can register Davey’s apprehensiveness so he makes the first move)
- and Davey is just like ???!!?!!
- “you- you just called me the-the” and he can’t even register at the moment because the heart eyes are strong
- and Jack is just grinning and is just like “yeah, I just called you the b word. That’s okay with you right?”
- And Davey could just melt into a puddle and is internally like “HOLY SHIT WTF WHAT IS GOING ON I AM GOING TO IMPLODE BEFORE I DESERVE THIS NERD” but he just holds Jack’s hand and kisses the top of it and is like “yeah, I consider you my b word too”
- then Race says whispers “my bitch” to Spot and ruins the whole moment
(okay that sounded so awkward with the whole b word thing but I really wanted to make that joke because I love that meme(?) so allow me)
- their first kiss took a lot of time to build up to, but they both wanted to make sure it’d be perfect so it was on their last day of Junior year and they just spend thirty seconds afterwards just staring into each other’s eyes with their foreheads touching while holding the other’s hands
- Katherine takes a picture of the “first kiss aftermath” posts it to instagram (with their permission) with the caption “FINALLY!!!” with a billion heart emojis
- everyone who didn’t know the two were together scream in the comments
- Jack has to make a follow up post of Davey kissing his cheek and him winking with a huge smile of his face with the caption “my boyfriend ❤️”
- Race, ofc, comments “I thought he was your bitch”
- they’re not really into PDA except simple hand holding and small pecks on lips/face every so often
- Jack’s favorite sign of affection is rubbing his thumb along the top of Davey’s hand especially when Davey gets really anxious because it helps him calm down and remember to breathe
- Davey loves to run his hands through Jack’s hair because it is so soft and sometimes Jack won’t cut it for a while and it’ll curl at the ends and Davey loves playing with them
- they usually only do this though when in private or around close friends because they feel like they’re shoving their relationship down people’s throats with obvious actions
- sometimes someone like Finch will fake gag and Katherine will punch him and he won’t do it again because damn Katherine punches hard
- Jack’s favorite dates are when they just order take out and sit on the couch all night to watch movies
- Jack has made Davey’s watch Brother Bear probably 300 times, but while Jack loves every second of the movie, Davey just smiles and powers through
- it is a good movie though (go watch it if you haven’t you are going to cry your eyes out)
- Davey likes to watch the action movies and superhero movies like Marvel
- (they totally went to see Infinity War and Davey was so broken after like he just stayed in bed cuddling with Jack for hours balling his eyes out)
- (then they went to see Ant-man and the Wasp and the cycle repeated)
- Davey’s favorite dates though are packing some sandwiches and apples/chips and just going to the park and having a picnic or going stargazing
- in NYC, they don’t see many stars so for Davey’s birthday, Jack picked him up in the middle of the night once and drove them to the middle of nowhere to stargaze
- for Jack’s birthday, Davey wants to do something special, but isn’t really sure what to do until Sarah gives him an idea
- it’s Jack’s 18th birthday so he gets a big box and fills it up with “18 things I love about you” and Jack cries reading the little notes Davey writes
- it’s things like a box of new color pencils with a note saying “you add so much color to the lives of everyone you meet” and also a fidget spinner with a note taped on saying “once start something, you won’t quit until it’s finished. but you also get annoying pretty quick ;)” so it’s just a bunch of useless junk but the sentiment and thoughtfulness of it is what makes it special
- did I say Jack cried? I meant to say Jack BAWLED
- like some of the little tear marks never came out of the pieces of paper
- when they decide they want to get married, they just kind of propose to each other
- like one night they are just like “hey, here’s a wild idea, but I love you like a lot and want to spend the rest of my days with you so let’s get married”
- and a month later, they surprise each other with rings so they both have engagement rings
- (low key inspired by AKB/Scott Bixby because that shit is adorable)
- but every relationship has to have some turbulence but it took me a while to come up with something because I don’t want these boys to be mad at each other :(
- so first off, they don’t argue long about the stupid stuff because they realized early that none of that is worth it because they make each other happy and that’s rare to come by these days
- but there are some persistent things they argue about ike Davey never taking care of himself (especially during their college days)
- poor boy doesn’t get enough sleep :(
- Jack’s hamartia is the fact that he can’t stand injustice/assholes
- so he’s often come home with a bloody lip or black eye
- Davey understands, but he wishes Jack wouldn’t get himself hurt so much
- (so they basically both have the same problem they just experience it in different ways)
- it’s when Jack calls Davey from jail when they have a big fight
tw: vague attempted sexual assault
- “A bar fight? What the hell, Jack?!”
- it was the worse Davey had ever seen him with his jaw swollen and bruises littering his whole body
- “Not my fault that motherfucker-“
- “You can’t just fight anyone who is rude or is racist! I hate people like that too, but you can’t punch them a few times and expect them to change in an instant. Some fights you just shouldn’t pick!”
- Jack had never seen Davey so mad so he takes a deep breath and reaches through the bars of the holding cell and grabs Davey’s shoulder calmly
- “Dave... the drink was drugged. I saw the guy put somethin in the woman’s drink when I was passin by the bar. I warned her, but then he came up and started makin a scene. Started making him the victim. He practically demanded that I let him take the girl home as if I could give him permission. Poor girl was so shocked and scared, and he wasn’t backin off. It was just me and him for a while and then his buddies showed up. Some other people tried to help me, and then the cops showed up. Fuckers pinned it all on me and I was in here before I could even let a word out.”
- Davey is speechless by Jack’s story and he was pretty sure he fell in love all over again
- “I jus hope that girl’s okay. She was cryin when I was being put into car in handcuffs. The other guy was only brought in for questioning. Said I was the one who started it and they believed me, saying only kids my age would start trouble like that. Apparently he’s a mechanic at the building down the road. Probably gives these cops discounts or somethin. It’s a load of shit if you ask me.”
- “I know, Jack. Let’s just get you out of here so you can heal up. Knowing you, you’ll probably have another black eye soon enough. Have to heal this one up so you don’t keep the next one waiting.”
- when they’re in their car, Davey reaches across and kisses his swollen jaw
- “I’m sorry about yelling at you, I didn’t know. You’re an amazing person, I should’ve known you wouldn’t just get in a random fight.”
tw over
- ahhh they’re so in love!!!!
- the best thing though is that they’re each other’s support systems
- like every night they go to bed and just cuddle and whenever one has had a bad day, the other will just open their arms and hug them and kiss them for as long as they need
- there’s just so much reassurance and small little compliments between the two
- a lot of stuff has happened during their lives and sometimes it just catches up to them, but the other is always there to catch him
- it’s just full of all-rounded, pure-hearted goodness
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As 2018 came to an end I tried over the last days to catch up on some of the movies I wanted to see this year. There are still a lot of movies I haven’t seen yet, and I only included movies that were released this year, except for one (that is released in Germany, I know some already had their release in the US in 2017). So, time for some movies reviews. And let me know what you have watched this year, what you can recommend, and what I have missed.
Arrival
Technical this movie was released in 2017, but I really wanted to include it in this list because it was so GOOD. The plot looks like your average Sci-Fi movie (overnight spaceships appear on earth), but it really isn’t. First of all the way the spaceships and the aliens are designed is really unique, and really gives you this feeling of something otherworldly. The main character is a linguist and her job is it to find out how to communicate with the aliens. I don’t think I ever thought as much about language as I did while watching this movie. And this movie had one of the best plot twists ever. First of all I didn’t see it coming (and yeah that says something), second it really changes how you watch this movie and third it changes the movie on an emotional level. I cried so much. 10/10
Your Name
It’s been a while since I watched an Anime movie, and this was one of the few that had a theatrical release in Germany (it’s also the most successfull Anime movie ever in Japan I think). The story centers around two teenagers, a girl from the countryside and a boy from Tokyo, who for some reason are able to switch their bodies for a day, which happens two or three times a week. They start to leave messages for the other while being in the other body and the starts as every other body-switch-comedy until at some point the body switch stops and the boy can no longer reach the girl. He starts to investigate and I won’t tell you more because the movie developed into a direction I hadn’t seen coming. It’s a beautiful, moving movie, and even if you normally don’t watch Animes you should make an exception for this one. 10/10
Black Panther
I admit that before this movie I knew little to nothing about this character, and while the trailer looked cool I had no huge interest in the movie. I only saw it because it was the last Marvel release before “Infinity War” and I wondered if there were any hints towards “Infinity War” (there aren’t). And then this movie completely blew me away. It is easily in my top 3 of all Marvel movies and I also think it is the best Marvel origin story. I loved Wakanda, I loved the world building, the music, the costumes, everything. This movie also has the best villian of any comic book movie. Because, let’s face it, most villians are forgettable. Killmonger however is different. Because never before I watched a movie where at some point I had to agree with the villian. Sure his methods were wrong, but not his motivation. And I think that if you make a movie about the first black superhero the question about race will always be the elephant in the room. Other directors might have a less serious, less political movie, but not Ryan Coogler. He asks complicated questions about race, about privilege, about responsibility, where there are no easy answers. This is both a big fun superhero movie, but it is also deeply political, because it can be both. And it is also a movie that you can totally watch without ever seeing a Marvel movie before, so don’t take that as an excuse. 10/10
The Shape of Water
I love Del Toro, I love the stories he tells, I love the way he uses colours in his movies, and this is no exception (though I think it is not his best movie). This movie is a fairytale. I don’t think it ever tries to be more, and it tells you so in the beginning, so don’t expect it to be more. It totally works that way, but the characters pretty much stay in the roles they have been given. It is also a story about outsiders, about the ones who don’t fit in our society, because they are women, or disabled, or people of color, or queer, or... fishman. This movie might be set in 50ies but in many ways the issues it adresses are still relevant. And the villian is very white, very male, very straight. And very American. I don’t think the movie was very sublte in its political messages. It’s a great movie, but I don’t think it was the best movie of the year. 9/10
Call Me By Your Name
Many moons ago I read the book this movie is based on. I’m not a huge fan of adaptions in general, because many times the book is simply better and not every story works on a big screen. However this movie somehow managed to evoke the same feeling in me that I had while reading the book. It is very sensual, and it also takes its time to tell its story (but so does the book). I really have to praise both Timothee Chalamet and Arnie Hammer, because so much is told through their faces alone. Quite a beautiful love story. 10/10
Lady Bird
I think this movie worked for me on a very personal level. It is set in 2002 and centers around a 17-year-old-girl and typical teenager problems. I was 13 in 2002 so this felt a bit like a trip down memory lane. Nothing about this story is new, and there are dozen of other coming of age movies, and yet this movie felt to me very personal and intimitate. It centers a lot around the relationship between the young girl and her mother, but never takes sides. Absolutely loved Laurie Metcalf in this movie, who played the mother. If you are not interested in young adult and/or coming of age stories or in general teenage girls this movie won’t work for you. But I loved it. 9/10
Annihilation
I probably wouldn’t have seen this movie in the theater and mostly watched it because it is on Netflix. It is visually stunning, and if you have the chance watch it on a big screen. The trailer made it look like a horror movie which it isn’t. Instead it is very dark Sci-Fi, with some (body)horror elements. The movie made me really uncomfortable and I think that was the intention of the director, but I failed to emotional connect with it. It is an interesting movie but read some trigger warnings before you watch it. 7/10
Avengers: Infinity War
This was probably the movie I was most exicted for this year. This movie really doesn’t work without context: if you never seen a Marvel movie before or maybe just one or two it won’t work for you. This movies depends that you know these characters, that you know their stories and their relationships to each other. All the emotional build-up happened in the movies before, so that this movie could largely concentrate on the plot. Give it to the Russo brothers to handle such a huge ensemble cast (though of course not every character got the same amount of screen time, but that’s ok). It is a hard to judge this movie because it really doesn’t work on its own. One of the few times the entire theater was silent during the end credits. If you love Marvel you will love this movie. 8/10
Deadpool 2
I might be in the minority but I liked the first Deadpool movie better. Maybe because the first was so new and unusual, but the second time a lot of the jokes didn’t work for me. Also the entire story arc around Vanessa.... please don’t. I don’t think this movie was bad, but I enjoyed the first one more. 7/10
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Someone said this is Star Wars fan fiction made into a movie and I think they are right. It is a fun and entertaining movie, but it kinda felt... unnecessary. If you are a hugh fan of Han Solo you will probably like this movie but as a general Star Wars fan... they could and should have released this story as a novel or comic and investigate the money for this movie in a more original story. 6/10
Ant-Man and The Wasp
First of all you can totally watch this movie if you haven’t seen “Infinity War”, just skip the post credit scenes. Second, it was a fun movie. Just as the first one. Hope aka Wasp played a bigger role, which I really liked. Compared to other Marvel movies this one felt small (pun inteneded) and focused a lot on personal relationships rather than saving the world. It is entertaining but doesn’t have the impact as “Black Panther” had. 7/10
Bohemian Rhapsody
I loved the casting, loved the costumes, the sets, the music. It was for the most part a very entertaining, very moving story. But if you are interested in Queen and/or Freddie Mercury please read additional to this movie a biography. A lot of the story felt to me very generic for a music movie. And they did a huge change towards the end of the movie, to make the story look more dramatic I guess, that I didn’t really like. 7/10
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Though it wasn’t perfect I really liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie and somehow everything I liked about it isn’t in this movie. We hardly learn anything about the French wizarding culture even though the story takes place in Paris. The Beasts are complete unneccessary for the story except for the Niffler. Characters make choices that seem illogical (Queenie). Major plot holes/logic errors (McGonagall, Creedence etc). Too much plot crammed into one movie. Some really problematic aspects (Nagini, Leta’s parents etc). And while the first Fantastic Beats movie worked on its own, this one was so full of Potter references you were probably lost if you never read the books. As a huge Potter fan I do hope J.K. Rowling has a master plan for the plot to make sense, and that next time an experienced script writer helps her to muddle through all of her ideas. 6,5/10
Mortal Engines
I saw this movie because a friend of mine wanted to see it and the Speampunk aesthetic looked really interesting to me. The look, the costumes, the music, the effetcs of this movie are great. The casting is ok. But man the story. Nothing you haven’t seen a million times before. The movie really had potional because of the world it is set it but unfortunately it wastes it. If you like Steampunk you can watch it but don’t expect too much of the story. 5/10
#arrival#your name#black panther#call me by your name#lady bird#annihilation#the shape of water#ant-man and the wasp#infinity war#mortal engines#solo#deadpool 2#fantastic beasts: the crimes of grindelwald#bohemian rhapsody
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Igniting Writing ‘Connections’ Contest 2021, Submission by Yoghan
The Tired Bee
I was 12 and I watched my father carefully as he rowed on the tranquil lake. It was late summer, August; the buzzing wings of dragonflies snapped past us. I pulled back and rocked the small canoe. Dad turned and looked at me and reassured me with a wink. I still wasn’t too sure I wanted to be doing this.
Our family had been spending summers on Bear Mountain, a small park and recreational community close to the Pennsylvania border, for as long as I could remember. We all came together, about 40 of us, each summer to swim, play, bask in the sun and reconnect as a family.
I was one of the younger kids and usually excluded from my older cousins’ activities. Consequently, I either babysat the younger ones or hung out with my dad.
On this particular summer afternoon, we’d gotten a canoe and decided to explore a little bit of the park itself. We let the gentle rhythm of the lake pull us into a narrow river that wound around the camping grounds. Tall evergreens, pines all of the sort, dotted the banks on either side and the trip was cosy and peaceful. The cloudy skies overhead provided slight relief from the August heat. I stopped rowing, sat back and closed my eyes while I heard Dad rowing quietly.
Suddenly I heard a buzzing, close to my ear. A frantic, desperate humming coming from the right side of my head. I bolted up straight and stared at Dad.
He pointed toward me with his chin. “Don’t move and he’ll not bother you.” He kept rowing.
I thought to myself, “What is he talking about?” I looked around me and then saw it. A bee. A bee on my shoulder. Actually, to be accurate, a yellowjacket. These are large and very aggressive bees, marked by bright black and yellow bands on their bodies. I lived in terror of bees, wasps and hornets. It was more than fear, it was a pathological terror that I could not explain, nor my parents, teachers or doctors cure me of. I sat there, turned into a living statue. My eyes must have looked like saucers. I hissed at Dad to do something.
He just rowed and shook his head. “He’s tired. It’s a hot day and all living creatures need rest. He’s most probably been flying up the lake and needs to give himself a break. This is a pretty big park. Once he’s rested enough, he’ll keep on going.”
Was I hearing correctly? Did my ears betray me, or was my father telling me to just let a large yellowjacket sit on my shoulder? I grimaced and he simply looked away and kept rowing. The terror gripped me like a cold hand over my heart and I swivelled my head slowly toward the right and squinted a peek. There he sat, in all his living yellow and black glory. Wings folded neatly against his body. As I watched him I was fascinated by how perfectly formed he seemed. Somehow, my curiosity overpowered my fear and I relaxed. No sooner had I done that than he began fluttering, tested his wings and flew off.
I was able to track his flight for a few moments and sure enough, he crossed the water and headed into the woods. I sat back and looked at Dad.
“I told you,” was all he said. We rowed away.
More than 30 years have passed since that day. That moment, that moment of connection, had taken root in my heart. In the ensuing years, I thought long and hard about that tired little bee. I realised that for the first time in my life I felt connected to something larger than myself and the bee was part of the reason. I came to believe he was sent to teach me not to fear, that we are all one, all part of the same design the Creator provided. I realised that nature is an aspect of the Creation and that we are all the Creator’s children… small or big, human or insect. No man is an island.
Oh, yes, my morbid fear of bees and wasps? It lessened. Until one day not long ago I learned that I was born with no immunity to insect venom. My doctor’s words felt like a bucket of cold water splashed over my head: the sting of a bee, wasp or hornet would kill me. The saliva or venom of smaller insects like fire ants and mosquitoes may cause seizures, as I found out later when bitten by a fire ant: a full cardiac arrest. And of the bees, wasps and hornets? Never been stung, not once. They tend to buzz past me and I always get a sense that they are in quite a hurry.
Lore holds that the bee symbolises service and their movement from one plant to another symbolises the interconnectedness of all living things. This is a lesson that I will always carry in my heart.
#igniting writing#teen writers#writing for teens#creative writing#writing group#writing club#writing competition#writing contest#writing challenge#connections#wokingham
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Best Movies Coming to Netflix in April 2021
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When 2021 began, many movie lovers were hopeful April would be the month of the rebound. James Bond was scheduled to (finally) return at the beginning of the month, and Marvel’s Black Widow was waiting at just the end of it. This of course did not happen.
Nevertheless, for those looking for more bite-sized distractions over the usual binging blur on streaming services, there is still relief coming on Netflix. While all of the below movies are relatively recent, chances are you haven’t seen any of them in a long time, if at all. So sit back, relax, and find out the best options to Netflix and chill this April.
Insidious (2011)
April 1
As the movie that arguably ushered in the horror movie renaissance of the 2010s—or at least cemented the Blumhouse Productions formula—Insidious has become strangely overlooked. This is probably due to director James Wan and star Patrick Wilson refining this style to even greater success a few years later with The Conjuring. Nevertheless, Insidious is a creepy delight, one which reworked Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist for the 21st century with its vision of a haunted house in suburbia. The logline, though is what really made this scary: it isn’t the house that’s haunted… it’s your son. With their lad pursued by a demon from a place called “the Further,” a father (Wilson) and mother (Rose Byrne) will have to confront some repressed supernatural trauma and team-up with Lin Shaye’s marvelous ghost hunter. Just beware the Woman in Black.
Legally Blonde (2001)
April 1
Legally Blonde remains the best kind of comedy: one that’s as socially relevant as it is fun. The feminist comedy about a “sorority girl” who decides to go to Harvard Law School to get her ex-boyfriend back became an immediate classic when it hit theaters in 2001. Starring Reese Witherspoon as protagonist Elle Woods, and based on a book of the same name by Amanda Brown, Legally Blonde came out at a time when most pop culture feminism took the form of Strong Female Characters who had to be traditionally masculine in order to be taken seriously as female role models.
Legally Blonde, by contrast, gave us a character who not only didn’t have to give up her femininity to be seen as smart, competent, and powerful, but whose exhibition of those qualities stems from her femininity. The film would go on to launch several sequels (one theatrical and one straight-to-home video release), with another one in development, plus a musical. But the original movie’s cultural legacy lives on far beyond that.
The Pianist (2002)
April 1
We cannot in good conscience recommend this movie without noting the film is directed by the reprehensible Roman Polanski. If that is a deal-breaker, please move on. However, there is a powerful piece of cinema here, and in a subject matter the director is all too familiar with: the Holocaust. Starring Adrien Brody in the role that won him an Oscar, the film provides a searing biographical portrait of Władysław Szpilman, a Polish classical composer of Jewish descent. After the Germans invaded his homeland, Szpilman is confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, where he first continues performing for Polish radio and then spends the last two years of the war in hiding, evading Nazi detection and death in the concentration camps. It’s unforgettable for those who can watch.
Yes Man (2008)
April 1
This Jim Carrey comedy based on a memoir by Danny Wallace sees a buttoned up businessman make a covenant to say ‘yes’ to every opportunity he is presented with. While it’s structurally pretty similar to his earlier hit Liar Liar, this is good-natured, classic Carrey which might just provide some much needed escapism during these dark times. The director is Peyton Reed, who went on to make Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and although the story—essentially a romance co-starring Zooey Deschanel in manic pixie dream girl mode—is formulaic, Reed brings a pace and energy that keeps it buzzing until the end.
The Master (2012)
April 15
Paul Thomas Anderson’s deliciously opaque satire of Scientology (or sympathetic love letter to the misled?) has new poignancy in 2021. With its depiction of a traumatized veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) falling for the bait of a charismatic charlatan (Philip Seymour Hoffman), it rings truer than ever. It also still features bizarrely fascinating performances from both Phoenix and Hoffman, with the latter being particularly bombastic as a science fiction writer who’s become a profit. It’s never really clear if he believes his own line of BS, but what is obvious is the one to really watch out for is Amy Adams as Hoffman’s lethally smiling wife.
Crimson Peak (2015)
April 16
Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro took things back to the late 1800s for his Gothic romance film Crimson Peak. This horror-tinged drama stars Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston as star-crossed lovers, and Jessica Chastain as Tom’s conniving sister and lady of a haunted castle in the English countryside. Like a Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe flick from the ’60s, Crimson Peak begins as an unlikely love story but soon devolves into a nightmare come to life for Wasikowska’s Edith, who discovers that there’s more to her new husband, his sister, and their home than meets the eye.
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While not quite on par with del Toro’s other films from a narrative perspective, Crimson Peak is a masterclass in atmosphere and spooky imagery. The movie is less a jump scare-heavy cheap thrill and more of an unnerving slow-burn. It may feel a bit dated to modern audiences, but those who like a good haunted house story will find plenty to love in this picture.
Rush (2013)
April 16
A little bit Ford v. Ferrari before Ford v. Ferrari was a film, Rush is a surprisingly underrated biopic from director Ron Howard. With its traditional Hollywood filmmaker operating at top performance, Rush provides a highly dramatized portrayal of a rivalry between two Formula One drivers, British wheelman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), and Austrian driver Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). In real-life, the pair began as good drinking mates on the Formula Three circuit before becoming superstar rivals at a higher level between 1973 and ’79. The film tracks their speed, bravado, and sometimes horrific crashes with steady doses of adrenaline. And hey, it stars Thor and Baron Zemo!
Synchronic (2020)
April 16
Synchronic is the fourth and most ambitious film yet from the directing-writing-producing (and sometimes acting) team of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. The pair have explored the grip of addiction and the passage of time in all of their features to date, and this sci-fi/horror hybrid continues with those themes. Anthony Mackie (the MCU’s Falcon) stars as Steve, a New Orleans paramedic who learns he has six weeks to live just as he and his partner Dennis (Jamie Dornan) respond to a series of bizarre deaths linked to a new designer drug called Synchronic. What the drug does and how it affects the two friends personally propels Steve on a mind-bending, frightening, yet ultimately compassionate journey, told extremely well here with strong performances and shocking imagery.
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Marvel Producer on Changes Made to Ghost From Comics in 'Ant-Man & the Wasp'
Ant-Man and the Wasp will bring the Marvel Comics villain Ghost into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this Ghost is quite a bit different from the original.
Ghost was traditionally an Iron Man villain who specialized in corporate espionage. The differences begin with the fact that Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Ghost is a woman, played by Hannah John-Kamen.
Ant-Man and the Wasp producer Stephen Broussard provided some more insight into what sets this GHost apart.
“Hannah John-Kamen has been announced for playing a new interpretation of Ghost which was a classic character created by Bob Layton which was primarily an Iron Man villain based on tech based on light,” Broussard explained. “He had this suit in the comics, and in the comics Ghost was a character of mystery. You didn’t really know the alter ego of that person. You didn’t know their real name.
“We thought that was a cool opportunity to create a character that was all about mystery and kind of, ‘What are the origins? and ‘What is the backstory? What is the goals and agendas of this person?’ It was a great vehicle for the kind of the story you wanted to tell because Ghost in the comics itself was a mystery. So she’s very different from what has come before in the comics but in ways that kind of...Suffice it to say that she is on a path and she is on a mission at odds with our heroes on this journey but of a similar goal, of a similar aim, at the worst possible time for Scott Lang.”
One thing that remains the same is Ghost’s suit.
“The power set is the same and the look is actually pretty classic,” Broussard said. “It’s a reinterpretation but like a modernization. Our design team does a great job. When you think of Ghost you think of the hood. You think of the white suit and everything like that and Hanna wears it very well. She’s awesome. She’s really, really badass.”
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An Ant of a Man
As celebrity after celebrity falls into public scandal over allegations of assault and harassment against women, it seems prudent to revisit the controversial case of Dr Henry “Hank” Pym; the original Ant-Man. In 1981 Jim Shooter ran a controversial story about the “hero,” culminating with Avengers #213, in which Pym strikes his wife (Janet Van Dyne AKA the Wasp) in the face. It was an issue that would live in infamy.
Since its publication, Shooter has disavowed the scene as accidental- blaming a misinterpretation of his script on the artist for the panel in question. He has stated that Hank Pym is “not a wife-beater,” which, whether he believes that or not, is easily refutable. Attempts have been made to retcon this story, to vindicate Hank Pym with excuses of mental illness or mind control, but ultimately they cannot. Interestingly, we see the same apologism applied to the infamous domestic abusers of today.
Understand first that Pym was not a wildly popular character. In the course of his career with the Avengers he was frequently “revamped” with either power upgrades or costume changes. Nothing seemed to stick. Shortly preceding this story, Ant-Man (AKA Goliath at the time) had rebranded himself again to “Yellowjacket" after suffering a nervous breakdown. Pym had the not-so-original distinction of being a genius inventor as well as a super-powered crusader and in this he was maybe fourth ranked, behind Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner at least.
Very rarely did he save the day and he was often defeated in battle. Pym was responsible for the construction of Ultron, an artificial intelligence that proved to be one of the team's worst enemies. As Shooter himself pointed out, Janet, by contrast, was good at everything and took effortlessly to the superheroic lifestyle. In short, he just kinda sucked.
So, when the crushing weight of Dr Hank Pym’s inferiority complex finally made him snap, who did he take it out on? Women- and I can back that up, literally, by examining the previous issue. In issue #212, Pym establishes a pattern of abuse. When they are late for a meeting at the Avengers Mansion, Hank becomes furious with Janet because she's taking too long to get ready. To express his frustration, he fires a potentially deadly weapon at her:
Now, I'm pretty sure this qualifies as domestic abuse already. I mean, imagine this was a gun or an assault rifle instead of some goofy sci-fi blaster. By firing it at her in close quarters like that he is casually threatening her life. Whether he wants to harm her or not, she could be harmed and that's his true desire, to instill fear.
Hank proceeds to the meeting, where he rants at his teammates about being marginalized as a founding member while the Wasp grows increasingly concerned with his state of mind. Later, they end up in a battle with some magical villainess and Hank desperately tries to prove his valiance on the field. Finally, just as Captain America is about to talk their antagonist down non-violently, the courageous Yellowjacket shoots her in the back.
“What? Did you say something, Cap? I didn't hear you. Must be this new costume, heh…” The team is so appalled that they decide to court-martial Pym over it, which is the subject of the subsequent issue, the one at hand.
After the hearing is set, Cap and Iron Man both reflect on Ant-Man’s fate. Cap remembers a time in the war when he almost harmed a civilian child and Stark wonders how anyone could get over creating a death machine like Ultron. Really, though he doesn't outright say so, Iron Man is comparing Ant-Man to himself- for he too is a designer of dangerous weapons. The writing on Shooter's part here is quite good, as their different perspectives on this character give insight into their own. It's hard for me to believe that any part of this was a “mistake.”
Later, after trying to talk him into bed and being rejected, Wasp steals into her husband's lab to sneak a peek at his secret project. When he discovers her there he is very upset, which is important, because it establishes that he didn't want to clue her in:
By now he's basically a full-blown supervillain. His project, the one he's been working on in secret, is a killer adamantium robot designed to take out his fellow Avengers. The plan was to attack them during his court-martial before they could formally expel him. Then, in the heat of battle, Pym himself would strike the victory blow, having built a weak spot into the robot’s frame. The Avengers would be so impressed by this that they forget all about him shooting an unarmed woman in the back.
Well, Janet isn't impressed, so what does this “Goliath” of a hero do? He just attacks his own unsuspecting wife right there with his new indestructible kill-bot:
For the record, that's four acts of violence against women already and we haven't even gotten to the panel yet. Here it is, the shot Shooter says was misfired, the one Sienkiewicz allegedly lamented upon, the one that they didn't have time to redo before it went to the presses, the one for which so many excuses are made:
Dude, F@¢# Henry Pym, dude. Seriously.
So, how was this inaccurately depicted? Jim Shooter said “Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration”. I find that unlikely.
In the final pages, Hank brings Janet to his hearing wearing sunglasses to hide her black eye. Iron Man then states that all active members of the Avengers have to be present according to official policy. The more I think about it, there is no other reason for him to say this than to establish that Janet would have been in the room anyway, even if she hadn't discovered her husband's plot. Hank then tries to blame Cap for the incident but nobody buys it and he deploys his diversion:
The automaton attacks the Avengers, once again putting Janet in deliberate physical danger which was clearly his plan all along. There was never a time where this scheme didn't involve harming his wife in some way. We are to believe that he shoots at his wife, tries to crush her with his fist and lets a murderous drone loose on her twice, purposefully, but when he slapped her in the face that one time it was unintentional.
So if it wasn't an error, then why did Jim Shooter say it was? Well, his side of the tale comes from an article he wrote in 2011 in which he asserts that “Ant-Man is not a wife-beater”. According to him, he was already receiving angry letters over the story before it was finished. He recalls talking to a psychologist on a plane about the characters and their hangups. Perhaps this stranger gave him the idea and he doesn't want to admit it.
These comics were published under the CCA, which held to a strict standard of moral clarity where heroes were not to do “evil” things. It is quite possible they required Shooter's explanation as a cover at the time for violating those standards of publication.
My favorite plausible motive though, is that he just hated the character. Pym was redundant, he was unpopular, and his “sidekick” was more compelling than he was. He was a failure, not just as a superhero, but as a concept. What if Shooter couldn't get permission to kill Ant-Man? What if he knew that even if he did, the editors would just miraculously resurrect him, as happens so often in comics. Unlike similar protagonists, Hank Pym has never redeemed himself for these misdeeds in the eyes of the reader. His exile stuck.
What if Shooter just had a really good story to tell, one that raised awareness about domestic abuse, one that challenged the tone of the medium and one that ended in a tragedy they'd never let him print in a million years? What if he just got sick of angry letters?
In a final cop-out, he claims not to have even written the end of the story himself.
Oh, you probably want to know the end of the story, huh? Despite designing it with a deliberate flaw, Ant-Man is bested by his own creation. Like Ultron, this robot defeats the whole team and, once again, he is responsible; except this time he doesn't have a justification. This time he endangered them because he's weak, because he's insecure and because he's objectively worthless. Then, moments before the android can dispatch him with a direct blow:
That's right, Janet freakin’ Van Dyne saves the day. Of course, Hank despairs and is expelled from the Avengers immediately, but in the end he finally, sadly, admits that it wasn't his failures that really bothered him, it was Janet's success. In this panel he erases all doubt that he is a violent misogynist, more than any other preceding it. This is where he truly proves to be an ant of a man:
In the end, Janet realizes what everyone around her has been saying for years- that she can do better than this douchebag. She divorces him instantly and returns to the Avengers without him, a sidekick no more. Wasp confidently nominates herself for chairperson and is unanimously voted their new leader. She becomes a badass in her own right, as opposed to the easily captured damsel. It didn't usher in a new era of feminism in comics or anything and it would still be decades before mature themes like these were more commonplace in them, but it did begin a new era for the Wasp and it is the heroism she exhibited afterwards that defines her to this day.
Regardless of any errors in publication the message of this arc is clear; if the ant-men of the world won't make way for the wasps, they're liable to end up with a sting in their pride. This is probably one of the most important books of its time and, in my opinion, Jim Shooter should be proud of himself for having had the guts to push a subject like this past the censors. If you ask me, the only mistake he made was recanting it.
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Blog #4 - Interdisciplinary Work
During my studies of a Bachelor of Animation, I was told to do some work for another group of students, outside our Trimester level. We all set up what we were working on across two classes and were asked to check out what everyone else was doing and pick whatever looked cool to you. What no one informed me of was that the team we worked with had to be from another artistic discipline (web design, game design, audio engineering, or film… not animation) halfway through the trimester as I was happily working with another animation team, I was suddenly told to split from the team, and check out a game development team. Since the secondary animation team was horribly understaffed I felt bad about it and tried to work with three teams for about a week, while thinking up what to do with the game dev team, eventually I broke off from the animation team.
Long story short, the game dev team quickly realised that character designer/ animator me wasn’t going to draw good spaceships, so they told me: Draw some aliens. So I did.
Here is a quick stock of alien sketches I did for the game dev team.
So before I was asked to draw aliens, I took a crack at drawing a spaceship, I promised it would in fact just be a metal chicken, and I’m sure I did indeed deliver a metal chicken. I recall a lecturer from my Tafe days showing me the works of Feng Zhu, who taught art students, and drew vehicles inspired by the animal kingdom, mostly fish. So… I drew a chicken, because I like chickens.
Understandably, I couldn’t go far with my brazenly absurd and above all…well, bad spaceships.
So, when I got the note that I should shift to character design instead I breathed a sigh of relief, then sighed again for disappointment, as this was still very much a science fiction game, and drawing monsters tends to be rather different from drawing monsters… and my strengths are in drawing humans, animals, furries and monsters. Aliens would be difficult step, but hey, at least I’m drawing something organic, can’t complain.
So back in Tafe, I was running with a group making a cartoony sci fi platformer, and I’d drawn astronauts, T-Rexes and common Greymen. So I thought I might as well throw in a grey to start off with.
As I’d been spending months writing essays and blogs and building things in 3DsMax, it had been an unreasonably long time since I’d actually drawn something, seeing as Greys are rather neutral humanoids, they are a good alien to experiment with how you are going to play with proportions for a given set of characters. These guys were scrapped pretty quickly, but I have no problem with that.
So after I’d drawn the greys, I thought “bugs are sci fi, right?” and totally was not thinking of the movie I saw that weekend and drew two entirely random bugs. I was trying to determine if the bugs in the game would be centaurian (hexapeds with two arms and four legs) or four-armed bipeds. I like my bugs nice and chunky, so I drew the limbs a little thicker. My wasp I feel doesn’t look particularly exciting. So I moved on to other bugs.
Recalling that some people are terrified of moths and butterflies, I thought I try drawing a vicious moth-man. Had I bothered to look up moth-man legends I might have actually drawn something scary, but instead I came up with this hilariously bad joke of a moth alien.
So I came to the conclusion that if I was going to draw a decent bug-alien, I would have to make it something big and strong and tough. So I thought of beetles, they’re tough, and pretty huge. I drew out the form being mostly triangular, with a greatly exaggerated upper body; and found out I prefer four-armed Biped aliens to centaurian bugs. Since I am not an entomologist, I just threw in all the insect mouth-parts I could think of on a human-skull-shaped head and gave it horn-like antennae. In order to further exaggerate the ludicrously tiny legs, I just left him with actual beetle legs, which don’t really look like they have feet. I made the abdomen rather small, and mostly for balancing purposes, and just threw a bunch of spikes on him where I felt they were needed. Strangely the whole dev team liked all of my bugs, but the War Beetle was definitely the best loved.
Reptilians are a given, after greys and bugs, and apparently before Lion-Men, according to my alien conspiracy friends. This one is a standard grunt, mostly modelled off Ratchet and Clank robots and a certain Ratchet Deadlocked skin called W3rm. What isn’t from the game wasn’t playing last weekend is that he is in fact bearded dragon, holding a crappy gun, because I just can’t draw guns at the moment. Swords? No problem. Guns… problem. I tried to draw him in an IDGAF bad-boy pose… I don’t think it worked; however the dev team liked it.
The dev team was strangely insistent on my drawing an eldritch monstrosity inspired by a cephalopod. I frankly, do not understand this wave of interest in the works of H.P Lovecraft, I consider the man a racist jerk with serious mother issues. Plus I’ve never read anything of his as I just don’t have an interest in his stuff. So yeah, I drew some cephalopods with bat wings on their heads. That’s probably as close to drawing Cthulhu, Shubniggurath, shoggoths or any other abominations of R’yleh I don’t care to learn the names of. Understandably, the dev team didn’t pick either, because… well, look at them.
When I informed the dev team that I’m not particularly great with aliens, I let them know that without a doubt I was going to draw a cyborg dragon. My only real concerns with this picture are that the not enough of him is robotic, particularly is right arm, jaw and wings. Also the silhouette isn’t very good, I doesn’t clearly show off his six limbs. However the dev team was quite entranced with him, likening him to Charizard of Pokémon fame.
Now for the final coloured versions of the top 3 characters the developers chose.
To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing with colours, and I began with red for all of these guys, and used the Photoshop Hue and Saturation tool to change layer colours until I went through the rainbow, saving out .pngs, and picked out my favourite colours from there.
Red Army Ant
I redrew the arms, and shoved a gun in his hands, it shoots plasma. I’m not amazing with guns, but whatever, I gave it a shot (hehehehe…) I picked red colour, because ants are usually red or black in colour.
Dread Scarab War Beetle
I call this colouration ‘dread scarab’ because red and black are scary. I wanted the viewer to feel as if the spikes are either poisonous, or covered in blood.
This guy I decided to redraw the cyber-dragon with a more dynamic pose, in order to show off the 6 robotic wings and make the arms easier to read. I felt that the war beetle was already super beefy, so I toned down the shoulder length. Then I made the tricked out gun and connected up a wire to a small machine by his heart. I completely forgot my initial ‘harlequin’ bionic setup, and put the other leg on the same size as the wholly robotic arm, but I still think it works. I also drew some crappy fire.
I hope you have enjoyed my concept art blog :)
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In early July, a video game writer named Jessica Price embarked on a lengthy Twitter thread about the storytelling differences between games meant to be played as single-player experiences and games meant to be played by lots and lots of people at once, like Guild Wars 2, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Price was a writer for.
Price’s thread received a perhaps too-haughty response from gaming YouTuber Deroir, who disagreed with some of what Price had to say. Price — who is, after all, a woman on the internet and thus is subject to a stunning amount of social media pushback and condescension — put Deroir on blast, first tweeting: “Today in being a female game dev: ‘Allow me–a person who does not work with you–explain to you how you do your job,’” and later following up with: “like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me–as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it–is getting instablocked. PSA.”
The Guild Wars 2 community erupted in outrage at Price, who had either stuck up for herself against the endless onslaught of needling criticism that comes with being a woman online or had abused a position of authority to call a popular member of the gaming community an asshat by implication. (Price’s tweet didn’t directly call Deroir an asshat, but it was hard to miss her meaning.)
A few days later, ArenaNet, the company that makes Guild Wars 2, fired Price and her co-worker Peter Fries, who had defended Price in several Twitter threads. Price told Polygon that she was not given a chance to explain herself, or to apologize. She was simply fired, as was Fries.
The broad outlines of the controversy drew comparisons to Gamergate, the controversial movement that began in 2014 and involved a bunch of gamer and alt-right trolls using the cover of concern for ethics in video gaming as an excuse to harass women in the industry and to claim that calls for better representation and diversity within gaming were destroying video games.
Was Price’s firing a result of Gamergate’s actions? Not directly, no. Deroir was not a Gamergate adherent, and he wasn’t agitating for Price to be removed. Plus, plenty of people who found Price to be in the wrong weren’t Gamergaters.
But the answer to that question also has to be yes, because of how thoroughly the matter was discussed in Gamergate’s favored corners of the internet, which mostly jumped to Deroir’s defense, and because of how completely Gamergate changed the way games are talked about online and how women in the industry have to think about what might happen to them, something Price touches on in her Polygon interview.
In the years since 2014, Gamergate has metastasized and evolved into what feels like the entire alt-right movement, to the degree that many of the names boosted by the hyped-up controversy, names like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich, saw their stars only rise when they became central to online communities that backed the presidential candidacy of one Donald Trump. Gamergate went from a fringe movement that struck most people who heard about it as a weirdo curiosity to something that took over the country, as Vox’s Ezra Klein predicted it would with eerie accuracy in late 2014.
Gamergate didn’t manage to completely eliminate more diverse storytelling in games, as at least one silly controversy from this year would indicate, but it did slightly paralyze the video game industry. And that paralysis has begun to spread to other spheres of our culture.
Members of the movement have developed a tactic that they have deployed again and again to drive dissension in assorted online communities, using a mix of asymmetric warfare (in which they stage lots and lots of small strikes at giant corporations that don’t quite know what to do in response), the general lack of accountability applied to the movement’s various decentralized figures, and a tendency to turn progressive concerns inside out, in a weird attempt to reach parity. Gamergate didn’t really have anything to do with Price’s firing directly, but it also did, because Gamergate is now everywhere and everything.
The movement arguably elected a president. And just this past week, in a much higher-profile case than the firing of Jessica Price, it got director James Gunn fired from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.
James Gunn attends the premiere of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney
Perhaps the above mention of “Mike Cernovich” has already pinged some part of your brain that remembers keywords from the news and headlines of the past few days; it was Cernovich who helped engineer a push to have Gunn fired from the third Guardians of the Galaxy film, by dredging up and encouraging his followers to circulate several of Gunn’s old tweets. Many of the tweets contain jokes about topics like rape and pedophilia.
Gunn’s roots are in over-the-top shlock cinema (he began his career at the famed low-budget genre movie company Troma, and his first credit is for writing Tromeo and Juliet). He directed the first two Guardians movies to general acclaim, and both his overall positivity and his general disdain for Trump have earned him more than a few left-leaning fans on social media platforms.
But that same disdain for Trump — and, of all things, the widespread pushback against a tweet in which filmmaker Mark Duplass praised conservative writer Ben Shapiro, which inspired Gunn to chime in on the fray — made Gunn a target for folks like Cernovich.
To be clear, Gunn’s past jokes are awful. They have surfaced before — most notably in 2012, when Gunn was hired to helm the first Guardians film. A blog post he had written in 2011 about which comic book characters fans would most like to have sex with drew ire from numerous left-leaning critics and social media personalities. Gunn ultimately apologized for his comments, and vowed to do better.
Later, in 2017, he told BuzzFeed that in the early days of his tenure at Marvel, he’d abandoned the persona that aimed to be a provocateur and adopted the persona that evolved into his current Twitter self. As described by BuzzFeed’s Adam B. Vary:
“I protect myself by writing scenes where people shoot people in the face,” Gunn said, chuckling. “And if I have to think around shooting someone in the face, it’s harder, but I think it’s more rewarding for me.” He cleared his throat. “I felt like Guardians forced me into a much deeper way of thinking about, you know, my relationship to people, I suppose. I was a very nasty guy on Twitter. It was a lot fucking edgy, in-your-face, dirty stuff. I suddenly was working for Marvel and Disney, and that didn’t seem like something I could do anymore. I thought that that would be a hindrance on my life. But the truth was it was a big, huge opening for me. I realized, a lot of that stuff is a way that I push away people. When I was forced into being this” — he moved his hand over his chest — “I felt more fully myself.”
And what’s “this”?
”Sensitive, I guess?” he said. “Positive. I mean, I really do love people. And by not having jokes to make about whatever was that offensive topic of the week, that forced me into just being who I really was, which was a pretty positive person. It felt like a relief.”
Yet all those old tweets remained on Twitter. Considering both Gunn’s 2011 blog post and the way he talks about his old tweets, it seems hard to believe that neither Marvel Studios nor its parent company, Disney, knew of their existence.
But when Cernovich surfaced a whole bunch of them last week in a graphic designed to strip them of as much context as possible, more and more conservative and alt-right personalities started passing them around, and Disney’s Alan Horn finally announced on Friday that Gunn would no longer be working for the company. (Gunn, for his part, made one of the better, “Yeah, I fucked up!” statements in a decade that seems to provide a new one every other week.)
Then Cernovich and his friends turned their sights on other comedy figures with provocative jokes in their past, like Michael Ian Black, Patton Oswalt, and Dan Harmon. Few of these men suffered consequences as severe as Gunn did for past jokes. But all were hounded endlessly on social media. Harmon even left Twitter.
I don’t particularly want to defend Gunn here. A lot of his old Twitter material is truly awful. It often takes the shape of a joke without actually being funny, which is deadly to anybody playing with comedic land mines like gags about child molestation and rape. Meanwhile, it’s also hard to believe that a white dude who directed two of the biggest movies of all time won’t get another chance in Hollywood, even if he has to step back and spend a year or two making indie movies.
But the way Gunn was fired sticks in my craw, just a little bit. It’s the biggest example yet of Gamergate and its ilk forcing a major public figure out of the job that made them a major public figure. By stripping events like this of their context, Cernovich and company might think they’re forcing the left to confront its own hypocrisies, or winning smaller battles in a larger culture war, or simply driving critics of the president off social media.
But make no mistake, they’re also destabilizing reality.
The cancellation of Roseanne in the wake of Roseanne Barr’s offensive tweet has been compared to Gunn’s firing. It shouldn’t be. ABC
The recent event that Gunn’s dismissal has drawn the most comparison to is ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr from the now-canceled TV show that bore her name. (The series will live on as a spinoff titled The Conners, sans Barr.)
In that case, too, an awful tweet (in this case, a racist remark about former Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett) led to somebody who seemed protected by recent success being removed from the franchise that had yielded said success. And in that case, too, the person fired had worked for the Walt Disney Company, the biggest behemoth in the entertainment industry, one that’s about to swallow another behemoth like it’s a tiny little goldfish.
But pull back some of the layers and the two events couldn’t be more dissimilar. The most obvious difference is the timing. Gunn wrote his tweets in the late 2000s and early 2010s, before he was hired by Marvel and long before he became a critic of Trump. Barr’s tweet was published the morning she was fired.
This is not to say that Gunn’s tweets are excusable but, instead, to point to all the instances in which Barr posted horrible tweets shortly before ABC picked up a new season of Roseanne, only for Disney and ABC officials to laugh them off. If Disney meant to establish a precedent with what happened with Barr, it was essentially, “If you have skeletons in your closet, whatever. Just don’t add any new ones.” Gunn, if nothing else, had seemed scrupulous about the “not adding any new ones” part (that we know of so far, at least).
An even bigger difference between Gunn’s and Barr’s tweets concerns the context of the tweets and the intention behind them. Most of us might judge Gunn’s tweets as bad jokes, sure, but they’re mostly recognizable as jokes, and jokes in the style of 2000s Gen-X comedians trying like hell to provoke a reaction by being as “edgy” and offensive as possible.
What’s been interesting, too, is watching many of the comedians in question — including Gunn and Black but also folks like Sarah Silverman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — try to figure out how to navigate an era when the ironic offensiveness they trafficked in has been co-opted by a movement that insists they always meant it, deep down. Most have become vocal Trump critics. But few have managed the transition very easily.
This is the danger in making jokes rooted in ironic offensiveness, even when you’re a master of the form (like Silverman is). At a certain point, somebody is always laughing right alongside you and taking from the joke the message that racism is okay if it’s funny, or that provoking a reaction from someone by joking about rape is funnier than the joke itself.
Ironic offensiveness is far too easy to twist into the idea that nothing is worth caring about, and that getting those who do care to lash out is the funniest thing possible. That idea is now the basis of an entire internet culture that kept splintering, with one of those splinters becoming dedicated to trolling above all else. It eventually got to a point where nobody was sure who was serious and who was joking, or if there was even a difference.
Start to unpack the comedy of the figures listed above, or of their modern comedic descendants and fellow travelers like the terrifically funny hosts of the leftist podcast Chapo Trap House, and you’ll find that somewhere, deep down, they care deeply. The ironic offensiveness and shocking humor is meant to spur a reaction that hopefully guides you to a similar sense of caring and sincerity. But that requires genuine engagement and thought, and it’s easy to opt out of genuine engagement and thought when you’re laughing, in favor of taking the joke at face value.
This, I think, is what happened to Barr, who went from being an incisive comedian to being a millionaire many times over to being someone who promoted some of the same conspiracy theory nonsense that Cernovich peddles. (It’s no mistake that many of the tweets Cernovich surfaced to try to tank Michael Ian Black’s career involved him simply talking about pizza — in the worldview of Cernovich and Barr, there is a massive left-wing conspiracy to engage in pedophilia and protect fellow pedophiles, often using “pizza” as a code word for child sex.) Gunn didn’t really believe what he was saying; Barr did.
But does that context matter? Or does the statement itself matter? The fact is, both Barr and Gunn said horrible things. If we draw hard moral lines in the sand, if we insist that certain things matter to us and are important to uphold as ethical guidelines, does it ever matter that somebody might genuinely move past something bad they did in the past, might become a better person? Or are we all, always, defined by our darkest, worst moments?
Gamergate briefly devoured the internet in 2014. But it never really went away. Shutterstock
A little over a week ago, the most popular Gamergate subreddit, Kotaku in Action, briefly went offline. The user who had created the subreddit in the first place, david-me, then posted to r/Drama (a subreddit dedicated to tracing internal Reddit action and excitement) saying that he had shut down KIA. Explaining his logic, he wrote, in part:
KiA is one of the many cancerous growths that have infiltrated reddit. The internet. The world. I did this. Now I am undoing it. This abomination should have always been aborted.
So in this moment with years of contemplation, I am Stopping it. I’m closing shop and I can’t allow anyone to exploit my handicap. I’ve watched and read every day. Every single day. The mods are good at what they do, but they are moderating over a sub that should not exist. The users have created content that should not be. Topics that do not require debate. And often times molded by outside forces.
We are better than this. I should have been better than this. Just look at the comment history of any users history. The hate is spread by very few, but very often. Overwhelmingly so.
Reddit and it’s Admins are Me. They are the stewards of hate and divisiveness and they let it go. They go so far as to even claim there is nothing they can do about it. Those with upvotes could have been stopped by others with equally powerful downvotes. Fallacy. 100 evil people with 100,000 upvotes can not be defeated by 100,000 with 100 downvotes.
Reddit stepped in. It restored Kotaku in Action, and by extension restored one of Gamergate’s most prominent platforms. The subreddit hadn’t directly violated Reddit’s hate speech rules, even if it was constantly dancing on the very edge of them. If Kotaku in Action is a cancer, as its founder alleges, then it is one that remains free to spread unchecked.
When I was covering the early days of Gamergate, I believed the core of its argument was, in essence, that caring is a waste of time — that wanting video games to have more diverse characters and the industry that makes them to have better representation across the board was a pointless exercise. Gamergate adherents seemed to believe the focus of the industry should be making better games, an argument that ignored that for many, having more diverse games was necessary for having better games.
I was wrong. The core argument of Gamergate, and of the alt-right more generally, has always been that caring is hypocritical. Deep down, both movements believe that everybody is racist and sexist and homophobic, that the left, especially, is simply trying to lord a moral superiority over everybody else when, in secret cabals, they kidnap babies and run child molestation rings out of the basements of pizza restaurants. This idea is referred to as “virtue signaling,” meaning that there is no such thing as real virtue, only a pretend virtue that people deploy to try to win points with mainstream society, when everybody would be better off dropping the pretense and letting their most offensive freak flags fly.
And it’s tricky to combat the idea of virtue signaling, because of course we all virtue-signal all the time. Parents virtue-signal to teach their children, and corporations virtue-signal to make their products seem more palatable to a rapidly diversifying America, and I virtue-signal every time I tweet something that says I’m supportive of, say, the Black Lives Matter movement without joining affiliated protests.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want the broader goals of BLM to be realized immediately, or that corporations won’t take your money regardless of color or creed, or that parents shouldn’t teach their children not to resort to violence when others say or do something they don’t like.
Virtue signaling is still virtue, even if in your heart, you’re so angry or upset that you feel like punching someone. Cynicism about the motivations behind good acts doesn’t erase that the acts are good. We all do all sorts of things for a variety of complicated reasons. It doesn’t erase the fact that the net result of those actions ultimately has very little to do with our motivations.
The argument of Cernovich and his cronies is, ultimately, that none of us is actually good, that we are all venal and horrible, and that we live in a world where we should all, always, be pitted against each other, defined only by our worst selves. And because nobody is ever going to fire Cernovich for all the times he’s tweeted about rape, because he’s a self-made media personality, the war becomes ever more asymmetric. The only people who can hold Gamergate and its adherents accountable are members of the movement, who will occasionally toss someone out but almost always do so under the pretense of a game or, worse, a joke.
There are real people whose lives are ruined, each and every day, by Cernovich and his ilk, and our modern corporate media climate continues to have no idea what to do about it, because the battles are deliberately constructed to strip away context and to predetermine their outcomes from the first.
Twitter isn’t actually everywhere, but it feels like it can be everywhere. Andrew Burton/Getty
I began this article with the story of Jessica Price instead of the story of James Gunn for a reason. It’s entirely possible you haven’t heard of either, but if you’ve only heard of one, it’s almost certainly James Gunn. Yet the devastation to Price’s career will be much more substantial than whatever happens to Gunn, who will at least be collecting residuals from the Guardians movies for the rest of time.
Price’s situation is a valuable lesson in how so much of this works because the circumstances of her firing are muddier and harder to prosecute. Yes, the representative of a corporation that sells a service probably shouldn’t be calling her customers asshats. But any woman with a large enough social media profile knows just how quickly a seemingly innocuous, “Actually…” can turn into a massive dogpile of Twitter yahoos with nothing better to do. What happened to Price ostensibly has nothing to do with Gamergate. But its shadow lurks nonetheless, because it is now everywhere.
Could Price have handled things better? Probably. Should she have been fired for how she did handle them? I find that a lot harder to argue. It suggests that every employee of every organization with a vaguely public-facing persona has to be 100 percent perfect all of the time across all platforms, or else. And if you remove enough context from just about anything, you can make somebody look as bad as you want, unless they’re anodyne and milquetoast all of the time, which leads to sitting US senators suggesting that perhaps James Gunn should be investigated for pedophilia “if the tweets are true.”
The idea, I guess, is that we should all just turn off the internet and step away from social media when things get too hairy. But I would hope we all realize how impossible that is most of the time, and it’s in that imbalance that Cernovich and his pals forever create dissension and uncertainty.
I said above that what Cernovich wants to do is destabilize reality; that might seem like a big leap, but think about it. We’ve already gone from “these are bad jokes” to “if the tweets are true,” from carefully examining the thing in context to quickly glancing at the thing with as little context as possible, so that it looks as bad as it could possibly be. And when you’re fighting a culture war, and grasping for requital, I suppose that’s fair. Culture wars, too, have their victims.
But this still leaves us with a world where the terms of the game are set by a bunch of people who argue not in good faith, but in a way designed to force everybody into the same bad-faith basket. They are interested not in finding a deeper truth but in the easy cynicism of believing that everybody is as dark-hearted and frightened as them, that the world is a place that can never be made better, so why even try? Flood the zone with enough bad information and turn reality into enough of a game and you can make anything you want seem believable, until bad jokes become a dark harbinger of a horrific reality looming just over the horizon.
I’ve never believed that approach can win in the long run. I’ve always believed that in the end, some sort of truth will hold fast, and the fever will break. But sometimes, of late, I wonder if I’m wrong — and the only thing that stops me from convincing myself is the fear that accepting even guarded optimism as futile would only turn me into one of them, forever spiraling and never reaching bottom.
Original Source -> James Gunn’s firing shows we’re still living in the Gamergate era
via The Conservative Brief
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Emmys 2018: Walton Goggins, Hollywood’s Ultimate Journeyman, Is Finally a Breakout Star (Exclusive)
Walton Goggins delivered one of ET's Standout Performances of the 2017-18 season.
Walton Goggins is, perhaps, Hollywood’s ultimate journeyman.
The actor, who has bounced between film and TV for the past 29 years after first appearing in a 1989 episode of The Heat of the Night, has been this way “since I was a young man,” he tells ET by phone, acknowledging, in some way, that he’s been “that guy from that show” for most of his career. In fact, to many, he has become known for supporting roles on The Shield, Justified and Sons of Anarchy -- three shows that have earned Goggins critical praise and steady work if not “it” status or covers of magazines.
Then, in 2015, all of that changed thanks to, yes, another supporting role, but this time as Sheriff Chris Mannix in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. It was his second time working with Tarantino, after an even smaller role in Django Unchained. But this time he ran away with the entire film, stealing scenes from Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell.
While on set of The Hateful Eight, outside of Telluride, Colorado, Goggins was offered the opportunity to star opposite Danny McBride in Vice Principals, a new comedy marking the return of McBride, Jody Hill and David Gordon Green to HBO after four seasons of Eastbound and Down. “I read the first three scripts and I was just blown away by it,” Goggins says. “I was just grateful for the invitation to come play with them.”
Soon, he was playing Chris Mannix for Tarantino during the day and at night getting into the character of Lee Russell, a conniving and sociopathic vice principal vying for the top job at a South Carolina high school. “You know, you're tired when you fall asleep but it's a high-class problem, isn't it?” Goggins says of the experience.
The show, which ran for two seasons, premiered in July 2016 to rave reviews and has since earned Goggins photo spreads in high-profile magazines as well as also roles in History Channel’s Six, this year’s big-budget films Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Tomb Raiderand Ant-Man and the Wasp, and the lead in the CBS pilot for a new TV adaptation of L.A. Confidential.
In a conversation with ET, Goggins reflects on playing Lee Russell, the most diabolical character of his career, and how much of his career is instinct versus luck.
Walton Goggins and Danny McBride in a scene from 'Vice Principals.'
HBO
ET: You auditioned for Eastbound and Down and didn’t get the role. But then the opportunity to audition for Vice Principals came back around and you got that. What was it about Eastbound that wasn't a right fit, but Vice Principals worked out?
Walton Goggins: Well, that's really interesting. I think they were looking for something different for Eastbound and Down, and when I walked in, I knew that. At least, I felt in my heart that if I got into a room with Danny, there would be chemistry. Real chemistry. That's what you hope with people that you look up to and it was, there was a lot of chemistry in this reading. I think by my very nature, my take on things is pretty dark. I'm not a comedian by trade. I'm just a storyteller, and most of the actors in the room when I showed up were all people from SNL and comedians. So I didn't think I had a shot in hell of ever getting that whatsoever. It's not really ever about that for me, it's just about the opportunity to come play with someone you respect and admire. I think because of that reading, they were kind of going back and forth on whether or not they wanted to go darker with this particular role on Eastbound and Down. Then they made the right decision and they went with Jason Sudeikis. But in their mind, when it came to Lee Russell and when it came to Vice Principals,they wanted to go a different direction. They wanted to mine these characters for who they are, their tragedies as well as their comedic experiences.
You have had such a great track record with The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy and now Vice Principals. When it comes to being involved in these projects and knowing they’re going to be so great, how much of it is instinct and how much of it is luck?
Oh, God, The Shield was luck. For sure. [Creator] Shawn Ryan had been around a little bit, but it was really his first time manning the wheel, so no one knew. But it was on the page. The same with Justified. It's Elmore Leonard [who authored the short story on which the series is based], so we had that going with us, and the great Tim Olyphant. With all of these things, it is luck. I suppose the instinct or the gut feeling is the other part of that. I read Boyd Crowder and I just saw him immediately. I saw Shane McDonnell instantly. I saw Venus Van Dam immediately and I saw Lee Russell immediately. So I think it's a combination of luck and just knowing when I can really add something to this or that I can help this storyteller share their story.
So in most cases, if you can see the character then you know you're for it, versus walking away when you don’t?
Yeah, at this point in my career. If you’d asked me that 10 or 12 years ago, it would have been a different answer: “Well, I don't see it but I'm gonna try and figure it out.” And that's a struggle. It isn't the lack of trying. That's not it at all. I try to challenge myself anyway. But when it comes to choosing something I think is for me, I know pretty quickly, even if it's something that scares the shit out of me. I feel like I understand I have something to offer my director or my writer -- something worthy of their time. That is a big consideration for me at this point in my career.
Lee Russell is such a specific and unique character. Obviously you must have seen yourself in him and known this was something you could play. What went into creating him?
You know, I have to go back to a part of your statement. I felt like I could play him, but I didn't really know what that was going to be. I just knew it would be there if you put in the work, and I was so unbelievably intimidated by the prospect of playing with Danny in that kind of way because he's so good at improvising and he's so good at his own material. I desperately didn't want to let him down; when you're playing with a giant in that way, you want to put the ball back over the net consistently. So for me, it really kind of goes into reading the script. I read them over and over an over and over and over again -- all of which is like 200, 250 times and, you know, around the sixtieth time you're not really kind of reading it for the words anymore. It's just an opportunity to access your imagination. That coupled with the great work done by our wardrobe designer Sarah Trost on Vice Principals, who just help me find the look. Immediately, as soon as we put on the bow, it all made sense. What I didn't know was how emotionally difficult Lee Russell was going to be in this comedy, and I think Danny will say the same thing about Neal Gamby. These are bucking broncos, man. They are heightened but grounded; they're both deeply flawed human beings.
Lee is pretty dark and twisted in some ways. Do you ever get lost in the psyche of a character like this? Do you go down that road, or are you able to kind of remove yourself from that?
I do. I go down that road as long as I come back out for my 7-year-old, who’ll say, “Dad, you're talking to yourself. Stop talking to yourself right now and get over here and play Magna-Tiles with me.” But I enjoy that process. I enjoy going down those holes, and that's hopefully why people do this for a living. It's not for a free T-shirt or dinner reservations at a particular restaurant. I've never really had those things anyway. For me, it’s really just that I enjoy the process of discovering who these guys are and kind of living in their heads. I don't take it home the way that I used to because I just don't have the time. But I do quite enjoy occupying their headspace when I'm at work.
When you signed on to Vice Principals, was there anything you wanted to achieve career-wise?
I don't look at things in a Machiavellian way, even as benign as what you're suggesting. I don't look at things as a stepping stone to something else or how this may open up an opportunity for me. I've always been happy with the opportunities that I've been given, and I've tried to make the most of them. This wasn't a gateway to do romantic comedies for me. It was an opportunity to work with people I deeply respect and admire. On the other side of this great journey, I'm really proud to say that Danny McBride is not only my friend, he's a very good friend, and so is David and so is Jody. We're like family. It's really the most rewarding thing to come out of this entire experience.
What about in terms of acting itself? Was there anything you got to do while playing Lee that you hadn't been able to do before?
I mean, I've done some pretty terrible things in my career, you know, the nefarious people that I've been given the opportunity to play. But I've never played someone that was so physically powerless and yet intellectually powerful. What I mean is his conniving nature versus his brute strength. His insecurities were so deep. They were so unbelievably ingrained into him. I think Danny is so good at playing that -- he has developed this genre of very deeply insecure men. I've never been given an opportunity to play that on that level, and it was really interesting to walk around with that, because when this show turns in an episode -- at the beginning of the season, the middle of the season or at the end of the season or the end of the entire experience -- he falls hard. When Lee Russell’s wife leaves him, he's looking to God for answers and incapable of seeing the reason as to why he arrived at this place that he's in -- that's fucking difficult. But it's so rewarding simultaneously.
When Vice Principals first premiered, it followed shortly after The Hateful Eight and it kind of felt like suddenly you were part of the zeitgeist in a way that you hadn’t been before. How does it feel at this point in the career to have people in the industry or fans to know you as Walton instead of “that guy from that show”?
I suppose it means a lot of different things, doesn't it? I suppose, for survival, for being a parent who needs to take care of his child, it means I'll get another job. But I suppose, moreover, I'm a journeyman. It's not just action or storytelling or making movies that I'm curious about. I've been a journeyman since I was a young man, and to arrive at a place I never anticipated and experience the kind of gratitude that I have for these opportunities, it feels really good, man.
This year alone, you're in several major blockbusters, from Tomb Raider to Ant-Man. Is that a result of that zeitgeist moment and the attention surrounding Hateful Eight and Vice Principals?
I think so. I think that it was a combination of Justified, Sons of Anarchy, The Hateful Eight and Vice Principals. I've been given opportunities in a number of different arenas, you know, including the one that we just grabbed, L.A. Confidential. I am grateful for all of them. I'm just trying to keep myself on my toes and flow seamlessly between doing these two mediums. After doing these big-budget movies this year, I desperately wanted to do a low-budget independent movie and just to get back to that. So I did in this move, Them That Follow, that will hopefully come out this year about a snake-handling community in southern Appalachia, and that was extraordinary. There's no great plan that I have except what is unfolding right in front of me. You get great joy out of it if you approach it that way.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE STANDOUT PERFORMANCES OF THE SEASON:
Emmys 2018: How ‘GLOW’ Became a Life-Changing Experience for Alison Brie (Exclusive)
Emmys 2018: ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Star Dan Levy on Creating TV’s Best Kept Secret (Exclusive)
Emmys 2018: For Justin Hartley, Patience Is Paying Off on ‘This Is Us’ (Exclusive)
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