Super Tired

The ecstasy of creation burns away into the convoluted balancing act of maturity in 2018's The Incredibles 2. I'm not describing the plot, I'm talking about the writer/director, Brad Bird, whose clear vision in the first film made it a smoothly enjoyable ride, but whose comfort and fractured interests gave us a polished but slightly tiresome sequel.

The Incredibles 2 came out a year before The Boys premiered on Amazon Prime, beating them to he punch when it comes to bank robberies being portrayed as victimless crimes the heroes cause more trouble by trying to stop. I'm sure insurance companies just love that trope. Mind you, The Boys comic is much older, though I understand it's quite different from the Amazon series.

Yesterday I talked about how a hybrid of The Incredibles and The Boys could be really effective. I guess Incredibles 2 is kind of that but, aside from the fact that I don't think allowing rampant bank robberies, counting on insurance companies always to foot the bill, is a workable solution to crime (wonder what happens to insurance premiums after a couple years of this?), the movie's problem is that it shies away from any strident statement along the lines of the first film's "If everyone's special, then no-one is special."

The film picks up immediately after the first film, on the same day, even. So the victory at the end of first film, in which superheroes are poised to become government operatives again, is immediately reversed when the family fails to stop a villain from demolishing part of the city. Once again, superheroes are just illegal and the Incredible family is forced to contemplate a civilian life. In steps Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener as a brother and sister billionaire team who want to launch a PR campaign to rehabilitate superheroes and they want Mrs. Incredible to spearhead it.

Mrs. Incredible ends up having to fight a villain called the Screenslaver. The dynamics of the plot are about as muddled as the film's message. At one point, Mrs. Incredible catches a man she thinks is the Screenslaver but he's clearly shown to have been a hypnotised red herring. A few scenes later, though, Mrs. Incredible acts like she didn't notice. Was it a hint just meant for the audience to catch? Am I a genius for having spotted it? Or were the filmmakers just that out of touch with how subtle they thought they were being? I'm inclined to think the latter.

One thing's for sure, the animation and action sequences are far superior to the first film. Mrs. Incredible chasing a runaway bullet train on a motorcycle is pretty, well, incredible. The baby, Jack-Jack, is also really cute.

The Incredibles 2 is available on Disney+.

Only Some Movies are Special

I finally saw 2004's The Incredibles last night. It was a breath of fresh air though I can also see how it's informed discourse on superheroes since its release.

I watched it on Japanese Disney+, which digitally replaces most of the text with Japanese, so I know the movie's title in Japan is Mr.インクレディブル, "Mr. Incredible". Which seems odd because it's clearly an ensemble piece. The first part of the film follows the point of view of Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) but from the halfway point it's mostly the point of view of Mrs. Incredible (Holly Hunter).

Now I understand why so many people lust after Mrs. Incredible (and why there seems to be a mountain of porn based on her). Who'd have thought giving Reed Richards' powers to a woman would be so sexy? But of course it is. She twists and stretches, she envelops, she accommodates her body to various rigid forms, not without strain and visible chagrin.

The film's philosophy has become primarily conservative, though, or right wing. Disney has steadily rowed their boat away from it ever since. The Incredibles face a world unable to deal with the fact that some people are just better at some things than others. Disney has used Marvel movies increasingly to put distance between themselves and that idea. Though the true opposite would probably be Amazon's The Boys, which I watched the first two seasons of, and part of the third, waiting to see if they would even address the question of whether or not superheroes actually help people. Maybe they finally get around to it in the third season but it really ought to have been right at the beginning.

The Incredibles shows a world in which bureaucratic entanglements entirely prevent superheroes from using their powers. I wish writer/director Brad Bird had found some more plausible scenarios than a man who'd tried to commit suicide suing Mr. Incredible for saving him, or Mr. Incredible and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) saving people from a burning building only to accidentally end up in a jewellery store wearing ski masks.

I imagine the ultimate product would combine The Boys with The Incredibles. You'd have a scene like the one where Homelander botches an intervention in the middle east, killing a civilian, and then one in which Mr. Incredible plucks a passerby out of the shadow of a falling building. Let's have a show where people debate the real benefits versus risks, like a David E. Kelley superhero series. But maybe audiences are too polarised for that (I wonder if that's why Kelley's Wonder Woman series never got off the ground).

The Incredibles is available on Disney+.

First the Mansion, Then the World

How much am I a sucker for haunted house movies? Apparently enough of one I watched 2023's Haunted Mansion. Yeah, that's what we're eating over at Disney+ nowadays. It didn't go right down the gullet, to be fair. I watched the first few minutes and immediately perceived grossly incompetent filmmaking. But I've always prided myself on being able to finish watching any movie and, damnit, I wasn't going to be beaten by a movie based on my favourite Disneyland ride. So I strapped in and choked it down.

LaKeith Stanfield stars as grieving widower and astrophysicist paranormal investigator Ben. The first scene is an intensely banal meetcute, he and his future wife. Flash forward, and he's a depressed hard drinking tour guide for historic buildings in New Orleans, something you'd think would come into play but never does.

Meanwhile, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) is a widow who has moved into the titular mansion with her young son and has found it's obviously, cartoonishly haunted. Can Ben and Gabbie meet and make a new family? Can they overcome their grief and help the innocent ghosts who are all quite friendly except for one wicked guy played by Jared Leto? Are you still awake? I gotta tell you, it was a constant struggle for me.

It's not the cast's fault. Ahsoka notwithstanding, Rosario Dawson is always reliable for some human warmth and Stanfield isn't bad, though he's clearly doing a Neil DeGrasse Tyson impression. The film also has Owen Wilson and Danny DeVito.

When Wilson's character is introduced, director Justin Simien goes in for a closeup on Wilson's hand as he removes his glasses, awkwardly breaking up the film's constant medium shots of actors in dialogue. What am I looking at, I thought. What is this? Why am I watching this?

The real failure is a lack of understanding of what makes the ride effective. The movie faithfully reproduces characters and scenes, like the stretching room and the ballroom. But it misses the underlying thread of menace and tragedy. On the ride, these are all damned souls. In the movie, they're just innocent victims. We needed bad people who died in gruesome ways. It would've been sensible to have guilty pasts for the main characters too, and, no, Ben lamenting that he couldn't tell his wife he loved her one last time doesn't count.

Did it scratch my haunted house itch at all? I liked how the interior of the house was an impossibly vast labyrinth. I like the aesthetic of the ride reproduced. Alas, it's spoiled by generic blue and orange colour tinting. No, I can't in good conscience recommend this movie. Go to Disneyland and the real Haunted Mansion. Assuming it hasn't been changed to ghosts chasing people carrying bowls of fruit.

Haunted Mansion is available on Disney+.

If Everyone's a Marvel then No-one's a Marvel

I don't plan on seeing The Marvels in the theatre but I will watch it on Disney+. I'm an MCU completist at this point and, as much as I hated Captain Marvel and feel absolutely nothing for Monica Rambeau, I did kind of like the first couple episodes of Ms. Marvel.

I was surprised to see Stephen King post this on X yesterday:

How can a guy so good at writing perverse characters not in the least understand people gloating over a movie's failure? I don't personally feel a desire to gloat over it but I will admit to feeling some relief. It's like an election where people vote with their dollars; maybe Disney will finally get the message audiences can't be taken for granted. You can't manipulate people into liking something just because you release it between, and connect it to, two very popular movies as they did with Captain Marvel.

Critical rhetoric about the tendency to prioritise message over entertaining storytelling has migrated from a small segment of internet personalities into an increasingly wider pool. I'd say that's only part of the problem. I think there's a basically cheap look to the productions and the characters often lack dimension. These are products of the same problem that has plagued Disney since the death of Walt Disney--there are too many cooks in the kitchen and too many of them, as a frustrated Bob Dolman remarked when trying to write the Willow series, don't know what they're doing. So we get things like Quantumania in which Evangeline Lily is cgied into saving the day despite it making no sense on any level. Or the latter portion of the Ms. Marvel series which steered the show away from a somewhat engaging teen superhero story into one where the star herself seemed to become bored by the rushed, brow-beating storytelling congealing around her.

It's frustrating seeing what used to be a a series of, on the whole, effective films turn into a creaky, overburdened sled on which dozens of greedy clowns have tried to cram themselves as it goes downhill. Yeah, it feels kind of good watching it finally crash into a tree.

A Rewarding Punisher

Just when I'd about given up on Punisher, it got good again. The season two episode "One Bad Day" finally turned it around after three episodes that felt like cheap USA Network productions.

"One Bad Day" ditches the increasingly annoying teen sidekick and starts off focusing on Madani's lingering trauma from her experiences with Billy Russo.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio makes a welcome return as the CIA director, Marion James, and we get a flashback to her convincing Madani to go on the record that Billy used sex to manipulate her (Madani). The lingering sense of betrayal makes Madani a nice echo of Frank and his inability to stop mourning his wife and children. There's a nice confrontation between Madani and Frank in this episode that chews on the value of Frank's vigilantism.

And we see Billy has started a messed up sexual relationship with his psychotherapist. We finally learn that he has fractured memories of his life before Frank mutilated him, which somewhat explains the disconnect between how he's written this season and last season. It's an explanation that really ought to've come sooner. Parts of this second season of Punisher feel suspiciously like a modern Disney+ series.

I wonder if the Punisher's still coming back on the new season of Daredevil now that it's getting a revamp. Supposedly the series, which had been halfway through filming when Kevin Feige decided to junk nearly the whole thing and hire a new writing staff, had to do with cops imitating the Punisher. On the one hand, I like the boldness of incorporating such a touchy real world issue, but on the other, I have no faith in a Disney+ series handling it intelligently at this point. But then, if someone like Henry Gilroy were headwriter, I could see it being interesting.

The Punisher is available on Disney+.

The Loki Party Keeps Going

Loki season two, episode two: what a pleasant evening of television. Sure, it has its flaws but I was completely absorbed in the story. After a long day's work, I made dinner and sat in front of the computer and was transported to the world of the TVA and Loki and Mobius. There are many ways movies or TV shows can be great, and this is certainly one of them.

I really feel like the makers of the show this season looked at season one, saw what was working and what wasn't, and correctly adjusted the recipe for season two. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson and their chemistry were the best parts of season one and now we're getting a whole lot of the two playing off each other. It was lame Loki couldn't be villainous or mischievous in season one, and here we got him being mischievous and kind of villainous.

He's actually using his powers, which were never firmly established in the films. I don't know how well delineated they are in the comics. But as a Norse god, he's got to have something. And here he's got that something and swagger, too.

Hiddleston is a delight to watch, especially when he was tormenting the captive Brad. Those expressive eyebrows of his are dynamite. And Owen Wilson continues to be the perfect foil or complement.

The best way I can tell the show's working is that its flaws absolutely don't matter to me. Sylvie instantly pulling info from Brad's brain when Loki had to go through interrogating him? The show doesn't need to handwave it, I'll do it for the show. I'm sure there's an explanation, mumble mumble, Dark Side. Whatever. I'm even liking Sylvie this season and how she just wants to hide from her destiny, working at McDonalds in the '80s. It kind of says something about nostalgia, doesn't it?

Loki is available on Disney+.

On Loki Time

Hooray, a Disney+ show that doesn't suck. Not so far anyway. The first episode of Loki season 2 is not only better than the recent Marvel and Star Wars content, it's better than Loki season 1.

Hitting the ground running, the premiere episode starts with the previous finale's multiversal peril cliffhanger and immediately starts piling on time travel and bureaucratic shenanigans.

Owen Wilson proves once again he's a perfect calm foil for this kind of plot and his chemistry with Tom Hiddleston continues to be very charming.

This episode adds Ke Huy Quan to the cast as a maintenance guy at the Time Variance Authority and he rounds out the entertaining trio with an unflappable demeanour of casual urgency.

As in the last season, I dislike how Loki isn't especially Loki-ish. You could really swap him out for any generic guy in this episode, there's nothing about what he's doing that makes him the god of mischief. But from what I've heard about the writing in the rest of this season, there was a deliberate effort to make him more of an anti-hero this time. Hopefully they managed to pull it off.

Loki is available on Disney+.

When Fire Washes Up

In these extraordinary times, studios throw millions of dollars at aggressively stupid screenplays. One specimen is 2023's Elemental from the once creatively vibrant Pixar Animation Studios.

The high concept premise is, in a world of sentient, anthropomorphised elements, a fire elemental and a water elemental have a romantic comedy. It's a, shall we say, steamy premise and the best part of the movie is when the two experiment with touching. No amount of neurotic sanitation could deprive that moment entirely of sensuality.

However, to get there we have to suffer through an idiot plot in which Ember (Leah Lewis), the fire elemental, is compelled to pretend to know nothing about the water leak that almost destroys her father's shop. Wade (Mamoudou Athie) is the water elemental and city inspector who cries all the time, something that's supposed to be funny or cute but instead comes off as the most excruciating Lucille Ball impression you could imagine.

There's an allegory for immigrant families, evidently based on director Peter Sohn's real life experiences, but, as is usually the case with allegory, it has to tie the premise in knots to stay on track. Why did the fire elementals have to immigrate? Because their house was destroyed in a flood. A shot of frowning elders in their homeland, I guess, is supposed to somehow explain why the family couldn't simply find a new house in the homeland they still love. Then we have the potentially very unwise decision to paint these particular immigrants as people who can explode and destroy parts of the city at any moment, an idea that might not have occurred to Sohn had he been the son of Middle Eastern immigrants instead of Korean immigrants.

The animation is good, of course. I'm sure executives felt within their rights pocketing millions on the strength of what the animators sweated over.

Elemental is available on Disney+ in most countries.

I Just Have a Few Notes

I got home late from Osaka last night and didn't feel like watching a movie. In the morning I watched the second episode of Robert Blake's YouTube series. Recorded within the last couple years, the episodes are just him at home going through boxes of old photos. So far he's talked almost exclusively about his roles as a child. Apparently he didn't think too much of Lost Highway at that point in his life, something seemingly confirmed by David Lynch in this interview:

Although, this interview from the time of the film's release shows him being more positive about it--and also somewhat derisive of his body of work previous to it:

I guess people change. Which is a pretty good summary of Lost Highway, actually.

I didn't realise Lost Highway, in 1997, was Blake's last movie. I wonder why. His arrest didn't happen until 2002.

Speaking of performers with strong personalities, lately I've been reading about how Jenna Ortega rewrote a lot of her own dialogue on Wednesday.

“There was times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense, where I just started changing lines … I would have to sit down with the writers, and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things."

Ortega went on to give specific examples, quoting stereotypical “teenage” dialogue that clashed with Wednesday’s dark, brooding persona.

“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega said. “Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about like, this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she said, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No, there’s no way.’”

Ortega even mentioned choreographing her own dance, the most iconic scene from the show, after discovering that Wednesday was originally meant to inspire a flash-mob, stating: “why would [Wednesday] be okay with that?”

Ortega implied that she had completely reshaped her character to give Wednesday more of an arc, saying, “I grew very, very protective of her, but you can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you.”

I don't agree that arcs are essential to creating good characters or stories but, for the most part, it sounds like she was definitely a better writer than the show's credited scribes. The fact that Tim Burton has just cast her in Beetlejuice 2 suggests it wasn't Burton she was clashing with, either, and that Burton had a relatively small creative role for a director on Wednesday. If they do another season, I hope they get better writers. Maybe they should just have Jenna Ortega do the writing.

Speaking of publicised rewrites, I've been amused by this ongoing story about Dave Filoni's supposed involvement in the filming of the Vader hallway scene at the end of Rogue One. Freddie Prinze Jr., star of Filoni's Rebels, recently claimed the Rogue One scene was 100% conceived and executed by Filoni even though Filoni himself claimed in an earlier interview that he'd never filmed any live action before his work on The Mandalorian. Then, finally, Gary Whitta, one of the original writers on Rogue One, said the scene was filmed by the film's original director, Gareth Edwards. It wasn't even part of the reshoots by the second unit director.

Which sounds a lot more plausible to me. I remember when Filoni imitated the sequence in the final episode of Rebels where it made absolutely no sense.

I bet at some point Filoni, or one of Filoni's people, told Freddie Prinze that story about Filoni making the scene for Rogue One, just like Filoni has successfully convinced people he created Ahsoka Tano. The guy's career is taking credit for things at this point. Meanwhile, what has he done since George Lucas sold Star Wars that wasn't running off fumes from Lucas and Jon Favreau? I suspect the upcoming Ahsoka Tano series will be the make or break point. When that show ends up sucking, everyone's going to stop buying into his PR except his most virulent stans. And that'll be yet another headache Disney can't afford.

I'm reminded again how Bob Dolman complained about Disney execs tampering in the writers room on the Willow series. And the stories going around about how the ending to the latest Ant-Man movie was changed to its current lame incarnation. And I'm reminded of the Disney Dark Ages of the 1970s and early 1980s, when a lack of a strong creative vision and too many unimaginative cooks in the kitchen nearly sunk the studio. And here we go again.

Back by Popular Demandalorian

The Mandalorian returned last night for the start of a third season. It brought some great action sequences, intriguing new characters, cute moments, and weak writing.

We catch up with Din's (Pedro Pascal) cult baptising a new member when a giant reptile attacks. He seems to be invulnerable to handcannons so it's lucky Din shows up in his refitted Naboo starfighter to blast the thing. And what thanks does he get?

None at all. Not even a mention. It felt strange, like the big, impressive action sequence was added in post. At the very least, someone could've said, "Your deed will not earn you a place back among us." There is not even the tiniest part of me that wants Din to get back in with these people. I'm going to be frustrated if this season doesn't have an arc in which Din learns he doesn't need them.

This has been a consistent problem with Favreau's writing on both Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett. He can't seem to establish believable motives for philosophically driven people. You might not agree with the Jedi philosophy about not forming personal attachments, but you can see the logic in it as it's explained. With the Mandalorians, the only explanation really is, "Because they're aliens!" The same goes for the people who abandoned Bo Katan (Katee Sackoff) because she doesn't have the Darksabre. It's really odd, especially since many of them knew perfectly well why she doesn't have it. The beliefs and practices of other cultures can seem strange and illogical, but they do have underlying reasons, and if you write a fictional cultural without such reasons, it feels insubstantial.

It was nice seeing Carl Weathers again. I don't agree with the circumstances of Gina Carano's firing but I was never particularly invested in her character so I don't miss her. And frankly, it makes the galaxy feel bigger when it's not the same characters constantly turning up over and over.

Grogu with the mechanic rodents was cute and Carl Weathers' constantly trying to interpret them was funny. I also liked the pirates, especially the captain who looks like Swamp Thing.

And kudos to Favreau for actually having one of them say, "Avast!"

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

Hidden in the Bowels of the Box Office . . .

Major studios and companies make expensive, stupid blunders all the time, and yet I can still find myself astonished when confronted with such an error. 2022's Strange World is a good example. It comes at a time when most major studios seem to be making big, disastrous mistakes, and Disney in particular has been squandering its good reputation with a string of stupid Disney+ content, with Andor standing alone as a diamond in the rough. But Strange World is baffling also because it hearkens back to Disney Animation Studios' early 2000s flirtation with science fiction, a series of films that performed badly at the box office, a steep drop from the '90s renaissance, conveniently serving to demarcate the eras. In fact, Strange World is so similar to Atlantis: The Lost Empire it's nearly a remake. I guess it's a sign of how poorly Atlantis is remembered that Strange World was made at all.

Like Atlantis, Strange World is a Journey to the Centre of the Earth pastiche that ends with a heavy-handed environmentalist message. It also borrows a vintage pulp aesthetic, as Atlantis did. But while Atlantis had attractive characters and great designs by Mike Mignola, Strange World belongs to a trend in modern American media that deliberately avoids making characters physically appealing.

None of the character designs are really good but the biggest crime is Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White). As Disney Animation's first openly gay character, you'd think they'd have gone out of their way to make this character appealing. Instead, he looks like Ned Beatty, isn't funny, and his problems aren't interesting. We learn at the beginning of the film that he has a crush on a guy in his school but this guy never becomes a proper character in the film. Mostly the central conflict is between Ethan and his father, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), and between Searcher and his father, Jaeger, played by Dennis Quaid, who seems to be doing a Kurt Russell impression.

I'd bet you anything the role was written for Kurt Russell but Russell couldn't or wouldn't do it. There are signs the story was meant to be making reference to John Ford's The Searchers, hinted at in the names of the characters Ethan and Searcher as well as in an inclusion at the end of the famous, often imitated, "Searchers Shot".

The Searchers starred John Wayne. Kurt Russell has memorably parodied or paid homage to Wayne in movies numerous times. So the casting would have made sense. But I don't know what Strange World thinks it's saying about The Searchers. Jaeger goes missing at the beginning of the film in a tragic accident but it's not like Ethan and Searcher go "searching" for him. They assume he's dead and it's only when the Pando, this film's metaphorical fossil fuel, starts to get a strange disease that an expedition is launched to find the cause and, perhaps, a better source of Pando. The name recalls Pandora, appropriate since this film also seems to crib a bit from James Cameron's Avatar. Not as egregiously as Raya and the Last Dragon cribbed from Avatar: The Last Airbender, though. Both movies, incidentally, were written by Qui Nguyen. Disney's choice to hire Nguyen again after Raya was unsuccessful might not be so mysterious when you consider Strange World was likely in production before Raya hit theatres. If Disney continues to hire Nguyen after this, we can take it as a symptom of madness.

I didn't hate Raya, as you might recall, and some of the pulp adventure moments I liked in that film had not dissimilar moments here. I also really liked the creature designs in Strange World which mainly consisted of kinds of gelatinous, mollusc dinosaurs.

But, even though the underlying conflicts in Raya made no sense, at least the main character was pretty. Strange World's characters just come up empty on all counts. The anxiety over becoming one's father versus a father's desire for his son to follow in his footsteps is a nice enough prompt. But in execution, Strange World has too much nonsense. Ethan's unwavering pacifism doesn't make sense, even when the movie has nonsensical things occur to support it. Searcher's issues with his father are never adequately developed. The environmental message is largely responsible for the last act of the film dissolving into a series of forced plot points so the moments when tension is supposed to be at the highest it's at its lowest. The movie is altogether a slog to get through and requires active effort on the viewer's part to find its meagre positive qualities.

Strange World is on Disney+.

...

This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
Bolt
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled
Winnie the Pooh
Wreck-It Ralph
Frozen
Big Hero 6
Zootopia
Moana
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Frozen II
Raya and the Last Dragon Encanto

The Continued Misfortunes of Alien Saps

Everyone's favourite telekinetic alien siblings returned in 1978's Return from Witch Mountain. The kids are still innocent, wide eyed victims who can't act, and they're joined by an LA street gang of other kids who can't act. But, in the villain department, this film has the captivating duo of Bette Davis and Christopher Lee. They're delightful together and this is a genuinely good movie whenever they're onscreen.

We catch up with Tony (Ike Eisenmann) and Tia (Kim Richards) as they arrive in LA in a flying saucer. Their uncle Bene (Denver Pyle) tells them to avoid using their powers and then leaves them for some reason. Almost immediately, they get separated and lost and Tony is captured by a sinister man with a mind control device.

This is Dr. Gannon (Christopher Lee), whose lofty dreams of world domination are frustrated a little by the humbler avarice of his accomplice, Letha (Bette Davis). When Gannon turns Tony into his slave, all Letha wants is to make lots and lots of money.

The only scene in the movie that made me laugh is when Letha takes zombified Tony to a museum where a big stack of '49ers gold bars is being exhibited. After causing a distraction, she tells Tony to deliver the gold bars to her nephew outside. Tony follows her instructions and the nephew is nearly killed by the heavy flying bars and their car is crushed.

This isn't some kind of intentional foiling of the plan on Tony's part. It's actually a bit creepy how totally he's dominated by Gannon's device throughout the film. Even when Gannon is telling him to kill his sister, Tony doesn't flinch when trying to drop an elevator on her.

Really, it's Christopher Lee that makes this movie. He plays it to the hilt, regardless of the quality of the material and he's mesmerising.

Return from Witch Mountain is available on Disney+.

Born to Throw Like a Computer

Remember when it was a big deal that the wrong kinds of Asians were cast in Raya and the Last Dragon? Now Prey is really popular and when it's pointed out Amber Midthunder is less than 50% Native American--and 0% Comanche--everyone just shrugs. Even her name is apparently of Norwegian origin, modified from "Midthun". It just goes to show, even in this day and age, if something is really popular, this bullshit doesn't matter.

Not that there aren't people getting neurotic about it, which I find fascinating. Amber Midthunder's Wikipedia entry is the site of an ongoing editing battle, as you can see from the revision history. When I reviewed the film a few days ago, there was a sentence saying she was East Asian on her mother's side. It was removed because none of the three sources cited mentioned this at all. And yet, Angelique Midthunder clearly is Thai. She's a casting director and her picture and biography, listing her place of birth as Bangkok, are on imdb. As I write this blog entry, Amber Midthunder's Wikipedia page only commits to "Amber is of Indigenous American descent and is an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Sioux Tribe." It's clearly a source of drama but it's hilarious because, if you watch Prey, it's clear there's not much thought given to authenticity and realism. Many reviews say otherwise, but come on. Her character, Naru, falls off a tree, twists around in mid fall, and throws a spear through a lion.

You know what would have happened in reality if someone even ten times as strong as Amber Midthunder had thrown a spear like that while falling? The momentum and the arc of the throw would have put the force on the wrong side of the spear and, at best, it would have scratched the lion, if the cat weren't a cgi cartoon to begin with.

And I'm not just picking on Amber Midthunder here. Dakota Beavers manages the same kind of physically impossible cgi stunt later when he's fighting the Predator.

I quote Sex Machine in From Dusk Till Dawn:

Another thing, you try and ram a broken chair leg in a human, you better be one strong son-of-a-bitch. The human body is one rough-tough machine.

What we see more and more in cgi action scenes is what I like to call the "Gambit Effect". Gambit being the mutant from X-Men who can charge any object with kinetic energy, so he can throw playing cards and they're fast as bullets. Ever since Peter Jackson decided King Theoden could shoot a spear from his hand on horseback like a ballista in The Two Towers (2002), all kinds of people have had this power. It's really going to be a letdown when Gambit himself appears in live action.

Why is Prey so popular if Amber Midthunder is racially impure? Maybe race isn't everything. Maybe actors and actresses can play people who aren't like themselves.

Meanwhile, over on Netflix, the star of the previous Predator movie, Boyd Holbrook, is giving the standout performance as the Corinthian.

I finished watching season one a few days ago and it was pretty good, aside from a few extremely awkward moments, particularly the alley scene with Rose and Gilbert. It was never a scene I liked in the comic but it was made ten times worse because someone decided there needed to be a very hastily edited moment where Rose is hinted at being capable of fighting off two armed attackers. I guess maybe I'm in the minority in needing action scenes that have a real sense of physical plausibility. But it's not like there's anyone saying Shia LeBouf swinging through the trees in Crystal Skull is as good as Indiana Jones climbing under the truck in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But, yeah, Sandman was good. Holbrook is perfect as the Corinthian as is Stephen Frye as Gilbert. Frye has gone from playing Oscar Wilde to essentially playing GK Chesterton now. I nominate him for William Empson next.

Twitter Sonnet #1610

A friendly chill attacked the wolfish town.
Prepared for Yule, the elves were flattened drunk.
It seemed the mountain wore a rocky frown.
From birth, the basket braggart claimed to dunk.
Potato slices drown in miracles.
The clash of shades contracts about the soul.
Confession chills like cooking chemicals.
The breaking sign dissolves a deeper hole.
Confusing zombies filled the basement pail.
We looked for cups to hold a sea of fish.
The water dream recurs to sate the whale.
A big opinion cowed the humble wish.
The heavy movie house was filled with foam.
The spirits offer gifts in silk and chrome.

Love and Blunder

So Thor: Love and Thunder is a bit weak. It's been thoroughly covered at this point and the box office drop in its second weekend tells an accurate story. It's disappointing because Thor: Ragnarok was so good and because Love and Thunder has some good qualities. One of those good qualities is not how much its humour resembles Monty Python.

I love Monty Python but the Python movies and Flying Circus are not works of fiction that encourage you to care about the protagonists and their achievements, they're not stories in which we're truly concerned about the welfare of the characters. Life of Brian ends on a joke about everyone suffering slow, painful death. That's not the right tone for a Thor film. At least not an MCU Thor film.

In a Monty Python movie, it wouldn't matter that the plot doesn't make any sense. It wouldn't matter that Thor and his friends have to disguise themselves to enter a convention of the gods even though Thor is a god himself. It wouldn't matter that Jane seems like a completely different character to how she was established in the first film. It wouldn't matter that the characters continue cracking jokes and focusing on their personal lives after all the children in Asgard have been abducted by an army of shadow demons. In a movie where we're supposed to care about the stakes, though, these things are deadly.

So in retrospect it seems even more miraculous that Taika Waititi hit just the right balance in Ragnarok. It's been reported that actors improvised a lot on Love and Thunder and that's how it got such a jokey tone. Improvisation is one of the things that made the first Iron Man work so well but maybe Jon Favreau is just better at harnessing that storm than Waititi is. Possibly Waititi just doesn't have the accrued instincts to sense what's right for more dramatic material. It's a shame because Christian Bale, as the villain, Gor the God Killer, is actually pretty effective. His makeup and performance make him a pretty impressive villain.

And there are some real thought provoking ideas introduced. In an odd moment of serendipity, I'd been talking with my friend, Rizu, with whom I saw Love and Thunder, about Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov and how he refused to believe in a benevolent god because innocent children are exposed to cruelty and suffering. And Love and Thunder begins with the death of Gor's child followed by Gor finding his deity lounging in an oasis, gorging himself on fruit. The theme of imperiled children comes back when Gor kidnaps all the children in Asgard.

I'm starting to wonder if Disney has some kind of mission plan about showing children being warriors since this movie features something like that following on the heels of Leia getting a blaster holster at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It seems an unfortunate choice given the epidemic of school shootings in the U.S. What is Disney thinking? Does someone at Disney think kids need to be encouraged to fight their attackers? It just seems like poor taste. Now, if you had something like Jim Hawkins fighting Israel Hands in Treasure Island, it would make sense. Here's a kid backed into a corner, forced to kill. It's exciting but also terrible and frightening. The kids in Love and Thunder and Obi-Wan Kenobi never seem especially frightened. So it's not really an exploration of a traumatic and violent situation, it's just like they're stroking kids' egos.

Natalie Portman is also a big problem in the film. This isn't quite the worst example of a female character taking over from an established male character. The fact that she assumes the name of "Thor" in the movie is never explained nor does it make any sense. But the role requires Portman to step well outside her limited skillset as an actress. She certainly gives it her best shot and I commend her for putting on some muscle. But the actress who formerly distinguished herself with her beauty and a sort of ethereal aloofness just can't act with . . . I guess I'd call it personality. She just doesn't seem to know what it's like to have a personality.

There were some funny jokes. The stuff with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the beginning was good. I liked the use of Guns N Roses music. But Love and Thunder is one of the weakest MCU films to date.

Disney+ MCU and Star Wars Shows Ranked

Since it won't be until late August that we get any more MCU or Star Wars shows, I thought this would be a good time to do a ranking of all the Disney+ shows so far (except What If, I still haven't mustered the energy to watch that). I'll avoid heavy spoilers.

Before doing the ranking, I would have thought the MCU shows would rank higher but, for the most part, I realised I still actually prefer the Star Wars shows. The MCU has long been criticised for not being visually interesting while impressive visuals are an essential part of Star Wars. So Star Wars shows with weak visuals tend to rank low on my list. But for both the MCU and Star Wars series, I generally found the shows that worked best tended to focus on character relationships, with an emphasis on focus. When actors and scripts are allowed to build chemistry organically over time, these shows do what television has classically been able to do better than most movies--give you a feeling that you live with these people. The shows that fail often do so because of a lack of this focus, coming across as scattershot and schizophrenic. The problem, in a word, is Disney. Or, in another word, morality. Superhero stories are traditionally stories of very simplistic morality, and so, as Alan Moore has somewhat recently said, they are inherently childish. Although Star Wars is commonly regarded as a story of good versus evil, it really isn't. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, the character at the heart of all the George Lucas films, occupies the role of both hero and villain and the films are interesting partly because they explore just what these roles mean. The Disney Star Wars shows have worked better the more they've drifted away from simplistic morality while the MCU shows have faltered the more they've steered closer to simplistic morality. Since this morality is likely composed of corporate memos, it's likely the kind of shallow morality more concerned with how one is supposed to feel than with how one actually does. The Star Wars shows have benefited from Jon Favreau's creative control, even though Faveau himself is not perfect. He does, however, show a good ability to recognise his own mistakes and improve.

12. Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Although the chemistry between the two leads on this series showed some promise early on, and Wyatt Russell's U.S. Agent was outstanding for his moral murkiness, this is easily the worst of the Disney+ shows. Its lack of focus could partially be blamed on rewrites forced by the pandemic (though, in retrospect, having a plot relevant to current events seems like it would have been more of an asset). But the confusing tangle of motives for the characters, particularly the villains, is likely due to more than that and, worst of all, the show was a really bad introduction to the Falcon's new role going forward.

11. Ms. Marvel

This is another one that started well--it started even better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier--but then got completely lost in ridiculous and sterile plot territory. A truly charming lead character is drowned in waters of meaninglessness by the end.

10. The Bad Batch

It's never as interested as Clone Wars was under George Lucas' creative control but certain episodes established and nicely built on the character of Omega. However, many episodes ran into the same problems as Star Wars: Rebels in which formerly lethal threats feel insubstantial, played for broad comedy with characters who don't seem particularly worried.

9. Loki

Once again, this show's biggest asset was chemistry between its characters, in this case between Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson. But the show lost focus when it shifted attention to Loki and his female variant. Plot problems that were already apparent early on began to overwhelm the show once Hiddleston and Wilson weren't playing off each other. By the end of the series, Loki's behaviour was wildly out of character for no apparent reason. The scheming Shakespearan character everyone loved from the Thor films was gone with no justification.

8. Obi-Wan Kenobi

The first of the live action Disney+ shows without Jon Favreau's involvement and it shows. The writers don't seem to be particularly interested in Star Wars or the characters and there are many moments of familiar characters doing and saying things that too drastically contradict their previously established personalities (why the hell would Obi-Wan Kenobi give anyone a blaster holster?). A weak sense of stakes established by characters shrugging off fatal lightsabre wounds is only one of the more vivid examples of weak writing. But it did have some strong performances and some late script contributions from Andrew Stanton elevated the final two episodes.

7. WandaVision

I have to admire the boldness of this show's premise and the performances from most of the leads were terrific. Some of the stuff related to the series' villain is great though Monica Rambeau failed to establish herself as interesting enough to be the lead for an MCU film. The show also had the infamous "Boner" fake out, for which it loses a lot of points. But there was some genuine insight into how it explored Wanda's psychology in the end.

6. Moon Knight

Here's an example of great character chemistry that's even more admirable when you consider it's one actor in both roles. The penultimate episode exploring their relationship was truly great. Ethan Hawke gives a nicely nuanced performance as the villain and Konshu is one of the best cgi creations in recent years. Sadly, the female lead is weakly established and the plot is jerked artificially in too many directions by corporate mandates.

5. Hawkeye

Of all the MCU shows, this is the one that most felt like it managed to do what it set out to do. It didn't aim as high as the others maybe, but that's perfectly all right, especially when you've got that great chemistry between Hawkeye and Kate Bishop. The only real complaint I have about this show is in how it took a previously interesting and complex villain and turned him into a simplistic thug. But I'm far from alone in complaining about that so hopefully Disney will listen this time. Otherwise, this is a sweet, cosy little Christmas series.

4. The Mandalorian, season one

There are a lot of problems with how this show conceptualises the Star Wars universe but by the end it does manage to establish truly good characters with interesting relationships. Favreau's interesting casting decisions--particularly Werner Herzog, Bill Burr, and Carl Weathers--pay off big time. Taika Waititi's direction of the series finale elevated it considerably and cinematography by Greg Fraser in a few episodes gave this show the kind of beauty essential to giving Star Wars the sense of awe it ought to have.

3. The Mandalorian, season two

And here's what I'm talking about when I say Favreau is good at learning from his mistakes. He completely abandons the silly "bounty hunter guild" from the first season and a lot of the simplistic morality. This was a season focused on giving us action and adventure in a distant galaxy and at times it was even breathtaking. Robert Rodriguez's episode reintroducing Boba Fett reminded us why Rodriguez is one of the great action directors to come out of 1990s indie cinema.

2. Star Wars Visions

Although this series is a mixed bag, it's altogether a triumph. Unfettered for the most part by Disney's creative mandates, this series truly explored new territory in Star Wars, visually and thematically. "The Elder" is the only piece of Star Wars fiction under Disney that truly reflects an understanding of what the Jedi are supposed to be while "Lop and Ocho" has the kind of pairing of family relationship and pulp adventure that was integral to the original films. This is Star Wars. Although, ironically, it's essential to watch Visions with the Japanese language track. A lot of people discovered for the first time by watching Star Wars: Visions just how bad English dubs of anime tend to be, even with celebrity voice actors.

1. The Book of Boba Fett

This show had heart and made a truly interesting character out of Boba Fett. His integration into a Tusken Raider tribe and the changes it wrought in his personality truly fulfilled the promise of Spaghetti Western via Star Wars that Favreau had teased from the beginning of The Mandalorian. The relationship between Fennec and Boba was nice and subtle, too. I only wish there'd been more time to develop a relationship between Boba and Jennifer Biels. And once again, Robert Rodriguez brought the right kind of attitude for the material. I only hope he returns for season two after internet users orchestrated such a vigorous campaign against him for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of his work.