Comic Con 2022 TV Trailers (Some of Them) Ranked

So I can't go to Comic Con this year. I can still see all the trailers like everyone else. And I can rank them because it's the God given right of every Internet denizen to do such things if not our sacred responsibility. Here we go.

4. Interview with the Vampire Season 1

This one doesn't look very promising. Looks like they moved up the time period so that Louis is made into a vampire in 1910. Which makes the fact that he's black a whole lot less interesting, which was likely the point. The writers aren't likely so bold. I didn't catch any glimpse of Claudia, I don't think. With only about 110 years between Louis being turned and the interview taking place, there's a lot less time for Claudia's story to get traction. Will the Theatre des Vampires stuff take place during the 1970s? I guess it would have to for Claudia's age disparity to mean anything. So far, this looks like a weak imitation of the Neil Jordan movie as much as the Lord of the Rings series looks like a weak imitation of the Peter Jackson movies.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Like everyone else, I suspect his series will be terrible. The only thing that gives me pause is that Gennifer Hitchison, one of my favourite writers from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is working on the series. Though obviously the material is very different so I don't know if her skills will translate. The trailers and teasers have so far offered nothing specific except it's about the birth of Sauron and Galadriel is apparently the protagonist and now she's a warrior woman. The visuals borrow shamelessly from the Peter Jackson movies, particularly the look of the Balrog. The Balrog as described by Tolkien doesn't really resemble the glorious black smoke devil from Jackson's movie. So this would seem to suggest the Amazon Prime series is set in the same universe as the Peter Jackson movies.

It kind of doesn't matter what the ratings are since the money's already spent on the series, and supposedly there's a guaranteed season two. I guess it's not like Amazon Prime memberships are going to decrease if the series isn't a wild success. I suppose investors might be angry but mostly it looks like a situation where there's very little need for demonstrated profit for expenditure. If only Jeff Bezos were throwing money at David Lynch. I mean, it's like he's a Renaissance art patron at this point. If only he had that kind of taste.

2. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

I never read the comics but the trailer gives me the same impression I had of them--a slightly more serious version of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The special effects still look bad. In light of the recent news of special effects artists being mistreated by Disney, I guess that's not a surprise. I guess She-Hulk doesn't look worse than Gumby and Gumby was funny so maybe she will be too. I am excited to see Daredevil again.

1. The Sandman

This one looks the most promising. I'm a fan of the comics and mostly this looks like a faithful adaptation. Minor tweaks in the casting mostly seem good, especially the inclusion of Jenna Coleman and Gwendoline Christie. The woman playing Death doesn't seem to have the laid back sparkle of the comic version but maybe she'll surprise me in the full series. David Thewlis is pitch perfect casting.

The Great Eye is Frustrated

Well, it took about a week, but I was finally able to squeeze The Two Towers out of HBOMax. There have been thunderstorms around here lately and I think it interferes with my internet, which is wifi from a box. Yet, all my other streaming services worked well enough. Even The Criterion Channel worked fine if I set the quality to 520. But when I got halfway through The Two Towers: Extended Edition, the part where the wargs attack, the player stuttered and finally froze up completely. Over the next few days, I tried to pick it back up but could only get two or three minutes at a time. Last night it finally let me watch the rest but, sadly, the spell was kind of broken. The emotional impact of a film is of course modified by whether or not you watch it piecemeal. Not always in a bad way--I like to prolong the experience of some movies by splitting them into episodes. Oddly enough, as long as they are and kind of episodic, the Lord of the Rings movies are not among those I like to split up. Peter Jackson's filmmaking style is so much about flow from one scene to the next that breaking them up feels wrong.

So I enjoyed the first half of the film much more, being able to get swept up in Jackson's pacing and arrangement of scenes. The casting continued to be spot on. Brad Dourif as Wormtongue is a great example of an actor elevating the material. He doesn't hold back on the delivery, even making little hissing sounds. Yet he suggests depth and complexity not present in the dialogue that helps make him captivating. The screenplay gets some credit, giving some dialogue of Gandalf's from the book to Wormtongue so he can have a moment of genuine insight into Eowyn (Miranda Otto). The dialogue is still beautiful but now it also helps establish his threat and his humanity.

Andy Serkis makes Gollum age very well. The cgi has started to look dated though these movies never did have the most seamless computer effects. But it's the authenticity of emotion that matters and Serkis does it. I only wish Elijah Wood and Sean Astin's performances had aged as well as everyone else's. But most of the time they're good enough.

Even a lot of changes Jackson's team made that I don't like I can still understand. Like the scene where Sam cooks the rabbits. There's no way the film could do something like the version of that scene in the book, which is about the wonder of Sam creating something like the feel of Bag End right there on the edge of Mordor, just with his cooking and ordering Gollum about like a servant. There are other changes I've come to sorely lament.

It's easy to see why they did what they did with the Ents. To give Merry (Domanic Monahan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) something to do, to add dramatic tension to the end of the movie. These things are nice in the short term but the logical integrity of the book's version makes it something you can contemplate on its own terms years later. When I watch the movie now, I just think, "How did Treebeard, a shepherd of the forest, not know Saruman (Christopher Lee) was cutting down Fangorn? How did none of the other Ents know?"

The Arwen (Liv Tyler) scenes have a beautiful tone and I love the fact that they gave Hugo Weaving the text about Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) from the end. Arwen's inner conflict over her devotion to Aragorn doesn't feel explored well enough for it to be introduced at all, though.

I do like the Ents unleashing the river on Isengard as an action sequence more than the Helm's Deep battle which feels oddly stagebound. It has too much artificial lighting. The night battle sequences on Game of Thrones definitely did it better, though, since everyone complained about it, it may not set a new standard, sadly enough.

Generally, The Two Towers is not as good as The Fellowship of the Ring, though maybe I'd feel differently if it'd streamed properly. Even if I could afford to keep HBOMax, I'm not sure if I would. Maybe after a few years when they've ironed out their technical problems and I've become a trillionaire.

Gradual Exits

Listening to a Lord of the Rings audiobook is a really good thing to while spending a long week moving out of an apartment. I've been doing a lot of driving lately and for the most part it's been while listening to how Frodo makes up his mind to give up his home and go on a dangerous journey. Those whose exposure to Lord of the Rings is entirely through the movies might not realise just how much time transpires between Bilbo's sudden departure and Frodo actually leaving the Shire. Peter Jackson did a lot of condensing for the sake of cinematic tension but I love the more gradual process in the book.

Frodo has to sell his house, Bag End, to a branch of the Baggins family he and Bilbo have never gotten along with. Many of Bilbo and Frodo's belongings end up at Merry's home where the four hobbits enjoy one of several final meals before heading out. Conventional wisdom might say this is a terrible way to begin an adventure novel but for me it has two virtues; it emphasises the sense of danger in what comes later, by contrast, and it celebrates the joy of staying in one place with a bunch of stuff even as it a portrait of that state of being passing away. Or maybe because of it. It's very mono no aware. Even after the cheering meal at Farmer Maggot's, the cheering meal and bath at Merry's, the cheering meal at Tom Bombadil's, and the cheering meal at the Prancing Pony (with various minor terrors in between), there's this lovely moment of foreboding and regret as Frodo stands on Weathertop with Aragorn;

They stood for a while silent on the hill-top, near its southward edge. In that lonely place Frodo for the first time fully realized his homelessness and danger. He wished bitterly that his fortune had left him in the quiet and beloved Shire. He stared down at the hateful Road, leading back westward - to his home.

. . .

Twitter Sonnet #1295

Absorbing lanes constrict to river realms.
A valley drew the kingdom lines in rock.
A web of roads creates the stymied elms.
An inky page completes the paper lock.
Effective clamps restore the batt'ry spoon.
Electric forks afford the crispy bite.
A blender weds the oven very soon.
The younger saucers watch throughout the night.
In iris clouds remembered lamps recede.
A gentle ticking minds a crossing eye.
Beneath the canvas, muddy shoes proceed.
A thousand grains converge to make the pie.
Contrasting suns combined to make a lamp.
Compelling stars submerged in ether damp.

Of Men and Hobbits

When I first saw Peter Jackson's adaptation of Fellowship of the Ring, I remember thinking how great it was he didn't skimp on the displays of affection between friends as they were depicted in Tolkien's books. Listening to the audio commentary tracks when the DVDs came out, I heard Ian McKellen describe how he'd advised Sean Astin to hold Elijah Wood's hand in the scene where Frodo first awakens in Rivendell, because, McKellen said, the fans of the books would be looking for it.

At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Sam came in. He ran to Frodo and took his left hand, awkwardly and shyly. He stroked it gently and then he blushed and turned hastily away.

'Hullo, Sam!' said Frodo.

'It's warm!' said Sam. 'Meaning your hand, Mr. Frodo. It has felt so cold through the long nights. But glory and trumpets!" he cried, turning round again with shining eyes and dancing on the floor. 'It's fine to see you up and yourself again, sir! Gandalf asked me to come and see if you were ready to come down, and I thought he was joking.'

In fact, the scene in its original form seems even less amenable to homophobic viewers. For years after the films came out, interpretations of the ardent but platonic relationships have provoked infamous consternation. Early on, especially, there were plenty of jokes based on the idea that Frodo and Sam were lovers, and on the other side I heard people scoff at those who would view the friendship through a homophobic lens or who championed the idea of a Frodo/Sam love affair in a positive sense. Surprisingly, I very rarely saw anyone talk about the fact that these displays of affection weren't widely seen as strange or implicit of homosexual feelings when the books were first published. Now that the movie's eighteen years old and a lot of the people who were children when it was released are a few years into adulthood I wonder if the films have had any lasting effect in this regard as to how young people form friendships.

This comes to mind because I've been listening to some YouTube essayists lately on the topic of masculinity, mainly Jordan Peterson (who I discovered about two weeks ago) and his critic and possible admirer ContraPoints. Yesterday, ContraPoints released a video on masculinity that seemed to draw a lot on Jordan Peterson but with some somewhat murky sarcasm. I find ContraPoints videos interesting particularly because she tends to challenge her own presumptions though, like many commentators on the left, her arguments are too often carried on the wings of sarcasm rather than sound argument, thereby leaving several gaps of logic in the arguments. But part of the premise of her video is that, as the social revolutions motivating the left are breaking down traditional masculinity as being outdated and dangerous, they're not leaving men with any alternative model to aspire to.

It's ironic that she criticises people to the left of her for this sloppiness without herself taking time to define what traditional masculinity is, which is a problem because she seems confident that it does need to be discarded. But I wonder, if even heteronormative masculinity accepted Sam stroking Frodo's hand in the 1940s but it was too much for even not especially homophobic men in 2001, what is this thing we're talking about? What's really traditional?

For the past five or six years, I've been reading a lot of 17th and 18th century literature. I'd heard at college that the 18th century is widely neglected in academia--there were no classes on 18th century literature when I went to university from 2015 to 2017. YouTube essayists and articles I read in both left or right publications tend mainly to discuss the 18th century in terms of it being the time of the Enlightenment. The left seem particularly intent on arguing how purely rational philosophies from the period allowed for the perpetration of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and other social injustices. But reading authors of the era that seem to be largely neglected by critics and universities I've been seeing a very different picture. My favourite 18th century novel so far is the 1748 picaresque Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett. In fact, I consider it one of the most underrated novels of all time. I won't go into all the reasons now but for the purpose of this entry I'd like to share one of many pertinent passages:

. . . I threw myself upon the bed in an agony of despair, resolved to perish rather than apply to my companion, or any other body, for relief; but Strap, who knew my temper, and whose heart bled within him for my distress, after some pause came to the bedside, and, putting a leathern purse into my hand, burst into tears, crying, “I know what you think, but I scorn your thought. There's all I have in the world, take it, and I'll perhaps get more for you before that be done. If not, I'll beg for you, steal for you, go through the wide world with you, and stay with you; for though I be a poor cobbler's son, I am no scout.” I was so much touched with the generous passion of this poor creature, that I could not refrain from weeping also, and we mingled our tears together for some time. Upon examining the purse, I found in it two half-guineas and half-a-crown, which I would have returned to him, saying, he knew better than I how to manage it, but he, absolutely refused my proposal and told me it was more reasonable and decent that he should depend upon me, who was a gentleman, than that I should be controlled by him.

This isn't Frodo and Sam--this is a moment shared between Roderick, who considers himself a gentleman, and Strap, his servant. I'd heard the relationship between the Hobbits had been based on a certain type of master/servant relationship portrayed in classic fiction but I didn't really see it until I started reading 18th century literature. Arguably, this type begins in the 17th century with Don Quixote or even in stage drama though servants in Shakespeare tend to be more clever and cunning than those in 18th century fiction, probably because Shakespeare knew many people of that class were among his audience. Servant characters tended to be portrayed as more simple-hearted in 18th century novels but also virtuous and noble--above all, there's a genuine and often profuse affection between servant and master, whether it's Friday and Robinson in Robinson Crusoe or Partridge and Tom in Tom Jones.

One way you could look at it is to say that depictions of relationships like this reinforced an oppressive social order. On the other hand, you could also say it was a context for men to express affection for each other and it was a system through which society functioned.

A few days ago, I read an article on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that remarked on how Cliff's devotion to Rick didn't seem realistic. But I'm compelled to ask, is it really so strange?

Personally, I've always felt some ambivalence to traditional conceptions of gender. I have found it kind of annoying when anyone has ascribed some aspect of my behaviour, positive or negative, as being typical of my gender. I do believe there are a few differences between how people of different genders often, but not always, behave but that most of the presumptions about the groups, like any presumptions that encompass whole groups of people, tend to be subjective.

Twitter Sonnet #1270

Recordings start behind converted screens.
Battalions mass beyond the foil gate.
Approaching boots ascend a hill of beans.
With foggy breath the watchers sit and wait.
A froggy shape in vapour formed above.
From ponds arose the drops to make the cloud.
Some pairs of hazy figures fell in love.
A sep'rate ghost emerged amidst the crowd.
Astride a bug, the future's knight embarked.
Along the roads a troop of cans observed.
With laser pens lieutenants craft remark.
A borrowed car a newer crown will serve.
Concealed beneath the captain's coat's a watch.
Continued time commends a second scotch.