#Super committed to realism by having several characters in the same story with the same name. There's like 4 background

[serpentface]

Two questions regarding the Wardi religion:

In addition to the bull and the lioness, what are the seven faces of god/sacrificial animals?

Given that white animals seem to be sacred, does that influence how albino humans/other sophents are treated by society?

The seven faces of God are as follows:

-the lunar, horned, or 'wild ox' face of God, which presides over the moons, and the fertility of the land, animals, and people. In pre-imperial times, this was functionally the most central face of God (replaced by the lion face/odomache). The most ideal sacrifice is a wild ox (especially white or albino) that has never been bred. -the ‘ox’ face of God, presides over agriculture and labor, as well as the domestic sphere. The most ideal sacrifice is a healthy plow oxen or khait who has never been yoked or bred (if the sacrifice is towards Ox-Face as the domestic sphere, this should be a heifer). -the lion face of God, presides over sovereignty, statehood, military might, and is most associated with the health and continuing existence of the imperial entity. The most ideal sacrifice is a maned lioness (functionally white, though this is a trait of the captive population). -the ocean or skimmer face of God, presides over the seas, winds, as well as fortune and mercantilism. The ideal sacrifice is the skimmer gull or an albatross, especially one taken from one of the sacred rocks in the 'mouth' of the Viper sea. -the serpent face of God, presides over the cosmos and divine Mysteries, associated with funerary rites and death. Also has a wildly disparate association with royalty (which is derived from entirely separate traditions and has not yet fully been reconciled into the faith). The ideal sacrifice is a two headed or melanistic snake, especially a venomous one (both would be MOST ideal, but this is rare beyond any practicality) -The solar face of God, presides over the sun, stars, and fire, also heavily associated with khait and mounted warriors. (this is a VERY direct import from the chief solar god in the Burri pantheon (who rides and/or is a khait with the sun between its horns), hence the seemingly random khait association). The ideal sacrifice is a healthy riding khait (especially with a white spotted coat), or alternatively a golden eagle. -The river face of God, presides over fresh water, seasonal flooding, and the rains. The ideal sacrifice is the migratory reed duck (which arrives at the onset of the wet season) or a freshwater hesperornis (ideally taken from one of the sacred waters). An-Nechoi are also occasionally given.

Though the core religion is monotheistic, each face of God is functionally a syncretic fusion of older ethnic Wardi beliefs, the Burri pantheon, and other regionally native traditions, which have not all been fully reconciled (the process of fusion is more or less still ongoing). Each face in of itself has dozens or more epithets with distinct features. For example, the river face has a specific epithet for each major riverway, each venerated as a distinct aspect of the Godhead. Functionally, common practice of the Wardi faith is pretty indistinguishable from polytheism, and most of the religious authority does not care as long as required orthopraxy is maintained (the central dogma of the religion does not care How you believe, but that the correct practices are enacted).

Also for reference, these are the specific animals taken on the pilgrimage in the story (transporting seven rare animals cross country can be fraught, so each had at least a few backups):

A pure white aurochs calf, found naturally born in a wild herd.

A massive, unbred and unyoked bull draft khait (dies en route, replaced by a less physically impressive backup with the same qualities)

A lioness with a full mane, from the white captive stock

A skimmer gull taken from a nest on the sacred rock in the waters of Od-Koto.

A baby two headed cobra (which dies en-route and is replaced with its backup, a melanistic viper)

A beautiful speckled riding khait mare whose horns form a near perfect circle (which is stolen en-route and replaced with its sister)

A rare wild hesperornis (haven't come up with an in-universe name yet) taken from the reeds of the Brilla river delta.

Anyway the sacrifices listed above are considered the absolute IDEALS when working with a specific face, but a great variety of animals will be sacrificed to various ends. There’s some very specific cultural/religious components to which animals are most valued, but in practice the value of a sacrifice is pretty close to 1:1 with the animal’s monetary value, at an intersection of utility and rarity.

So a young, healthy bull plow oxen who has never been bred or yoked is a more valued sacrifice than an old, experienced plow ox who has already sired offspring. You are giving up an extremely valuable animal and all its unused potential in a very practical sense, which makes the sacrifice more potent and valued. The 'virginal' status of the animal is key when the rite is SPECIFICALLY related to fertility, in the sense that the animal itself is sacrificing its unused fertility, allowing for the sacrifice-rebirth cycle to perpetuate. (Animals which Have been bred may be preferred in certain cases and rituals).

An animal with a rare coloration is usually going to be more valuable than one with more common genetics. This is the core root of why albino animals are of high value. It's less that white animals themselves are valued, just that rare genetics such as albinism = valuable sacrifice.

There are some specific exceptions where the color itself is significant (rather than just an extension of its rarity). God is specifically supposed to have taken the form of a white aurochs (itself emerged from the foam of the sea) during creation, so white oxen and wild oxen SPECIFICALLY have especially high value. Melanism or black scales are valued to the serpent face of God, which is associated with the cosmos and void behind the stars. (this stems from much, MUCH older beliefs in a cosmic serpent god in the region).

Animal sacrifice is a very significant part of the religious framework and involved in most rituals and prayers intended to affect significant change and transformation. (This is due in part to a deeply ingrained belief in the world being perpetually sustained in a cycle of sacrifice and rebirth, and in God Itself being the physical mechanism of rebirth and requiring sacrifice to be sustained). While blood itself is seen as potent, the nature of sacrifice isn't just 'spill blood and make thing happen', it's got a self contained value system and is very calculated and intentional in nature. You aren’t going to just grab a random rat and bleed it and pray, there needs to be a perceived ‘loss’. Sacrifice via killing is also not the only form, the most common day to day sacrifice is in (very minor) bloodletting and offerings of food and drink- the key is allowing a personal loss to sustain a greater cycle.

That being said, there is a HUGE trade system built up around the breeding and selling of animals solely for sacrifice. The industry revolves mostly around birds (doves are the cheapest, but also poultry, waterfowl, some birds of prey, a few select songbirds and ornamental birds), goats, sheep, and horses (the small, premodern kind). Cattle and camelids are a higher tier, and khait are among the highest of common sacrifices due to their great value.

Other animals that have no direct utility but are sacred are also bred or captured for sacrifice (hesperornis, lacetor, gulls and albatrosses, several kinds of snake, a bunch of wild ungulates, nechoi, etc). Some '''‘exotic’''' animals are imported specifically for this purpose, mostly as a means of displaying the wealth and reach of the state, with their sacrificial value rooted in the difficulty of acquisition. Animals taken from sacred sites are also prime candidates (ie cattle bred and grazed on the foothills of the Sons of Creation are VERY valuable).

---

So all that being said the importance of albino animals has come off a little overstated on my part, and doesn't have any particular impact on how albinism in people is regarded. It’s valued mainly for its rarity in the context of animal sacrifice, which would not have direct translations to how it’s perceived in people.

Albinism in people doesn’t have a super well defined significance in broader Imperial Wardi culture, but perspectives mostly skew negative and towards seeing it as a sign of ill fortune (physical differences in people tend to be seen as a result of being cursed in the womb). Imperial Wardin is culturally diverse (united mostly by a identity based in shared religion), so exact nuances would vary and this statement should not be taken as a universal.

Imperial Wardi population is mostly human (with its citizen population being MAYBE 5% elowey, 2% qilik, and a decimal point of caelin). Overall sentiment towards other sophonts by the human majority is not outright hostile, but is human-centric and tinged with xenophobia (as most qilik and elowey in the region are immigrants, with the only elowey ethnic group historically inhabiting the region (the Jazait) being regarded as 'heathens'). Albino elowey or qilik might be similarly seen as products of a curse, or may be given a 'wow how beautiful' treatment (in a heavily patronizing capacity) and seen as a curiosity, or otherwise just subject to varying perspectives on albinism in the region.

The one other thing I have established in this vein is that the semi-mythological hero Janise (sworn brother of other semi-mythological founder hero Erub) is said to have been albino. While he is positively regarded, he is supposed to have died young of a snakebite (assumed to be the product of a curse from his enemies) and this would not improve perceptions of albinism being related to ill fortune.

[maidenvault]

For the unpopular opinions: Batman/DC in general

1) You can want a Batman movie that isn’t dark for once all you want, but you’re the one who has to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and deal with that, lol. You’re gonna have to justify to yourself why, when he dresses up like a nocturnal animal and lives in a city called Gotham. Dude was inspired by the Shadow, a dark and mysterious pulp character. Arkham Asylum is named after the fictional New England city of Arkham that is the setting in several H.P. Lovecraft stories. Elements of horror, gothic fiction, and noir have always been part of the DNA of Batman’s world. It makes him very distinct from characters like Superman or the Flash and that’s a good thing. Obviously it’s fine for Batman to have more light-hearted and kid-friendly portrayals, but you’re always gonna be standing on weak-ass ground arguing that it makes sense as anything more than a nostalgic tribute to the silver age comics or the Adam West show.

Every once in a while you’ll see a gif or comic panels going around showing Bruce hugging a child or otherwise being compassionate with someone being like “See?? This is the real Batman, the one who cares about people!” Bitch, all superheroes care about people. They all have compassion. But even in the DCAU, which is made for kids, this guy barely ever laughs and doesn’t like celebrating Christmas and has a tendency to alienate people close to him because he’s so single-mindedly committed to catching criminals he can lose sight of being a human being. Sometimes it feels like what some fans want is a sunny Super Friends type of characterization where the Justice League are all almost indistinguishable from each other in personality and the tone of everything is the same.

(That said, people conflate “dark” with “realistic,” and I really don’t find The Batman to be as gritty and grounded as people are making it out to be. The Riddler is the one element that feels very grounded in reality. But this movie is not going for realism like Nolan’s films did. It has a heavily stylized and atmospheric world, the Penguin is a hilarious and ridiculous person, and there’s a scene where Catwoman frickin pours a big glass of milk and drinks it in front of Batman like she’s daring him to say anything about it and he’s like “Sooo….cats, huh?” It’s no Burton level of comic-booky but come on hahaha.)

2) What ships and characters I’m really into can vary a lot across different DC canons, and I honestly feel like people can get kind of annoying and myopic in their ways of approaching adaptations when they fixate on the same elements of the universe in everything despite so many Batman adaptations, for instance, being really different as interpretations. Fans that are going around calling Dano’s Riddler “Nygma” when his name canonically is Nashton are telling on themselves that they basically don’t care about the specifics of this portrayal. It just feels like a superficial sort of interest to have in the thing, sort of like the dread tendencies of migratory slash fandom. This is also why lots of fans are getting so ridiculously ahead of the material and already clamoring for a full-fledged batfamily in Reevesverse, even though such a thing would take a long game of careful set-up particularly in this version if it can work at all….*groan.* I mean, before Riddlebat started picking up steam in the 2022 fandom most of the fics I think were Penguin/Riddler, I guess because that’s a popular ship in the Gotham TV fandom and you guys can’t be normal.

But maybe I’m just weird like this. I’ve never been nearly as into batcat before as I'm into 2022 batcat. I’ve historically been mainly a superbat shipper and that’s a fun lens through which to look at anything they interact in, but I recognize that they have zero fucking chemistry in Synderverse and I just can’t do it, lol. These things don’t have continuity across different ‘verses for me.

3) That Swamp Thing series people were so sad to see cancelled was literally so bad. Started out with a pretty great pilot, then got bad.

4) Ezra Miller’s Flash is really annoying and should go away.

5) CW Iris/Barry are adorable and sweet and have great chemistry. This shouldn’t be an unpopular opinion. Poor Candice Patton, fuck that fandom.

[parsleybabe]

So about the NOT ME finale...

without any spoilers, it wasn’t bad. It was a sweet ending. Emotionally, all relevant characters found some sort of satisfying scene to end their respective lose threads in the storyline.

All in all, the story itself doesn’t feel finished though.

(spoilers under the cut)

There was A LOT left open and it felt a liiiiiittle bit unsatisfying to me, although, for a very realistic series, open-endedness IS a realistic ending, let’s be honest.

But, like... we don’t know what’s going to happen with the whole Tawi situation, He seems to be convinced that the protests will die down again. Ultimately, they’re just protests. The thing is, if there is no actual proof that he committed any crimes, he’s probably right.

There are a lot of lose ends too, which kind of makes me want some more episodes to have all of it dealt with, or at least some form of epilogue or something:

1) The drug deals don’t ever get revealed. What happens to the abandoned truck with the drugs? Who finds it and what is done with it? As far as we know, Tawi STILL doesn’t face any repercussions for making illegal money on the back of his employees.

2) Todd is in a coma, which only delays having to deal with him. What will he do with Black, White and the rest of the gang once he wakes up? He knows they’re there, he knows how to get to them, he has the money to do whatever he pleases basically. Also, he most likely won’t stop going down the Tawi route either. So, in terms of “bad guys” and what they can do, nothing has really changed since the beginning of the series.

(Not to mention, putting somebody in a coma by beating them up... I mean, it happens, yes, accidentally. But it’s not something you can precisely do on purpose. If you beat somebody up so severely, he could just as well die, or have irreparable damages done to his brain as well as the rest of the body. Black waking up without any damages was lucky. Todd being alive but in a coma JUST LIKE Black is super unlikely. And it’s even less likely that he will wake from it unscathed. I get the aspect of Karma and Todd being put into exactly the same spot that he himself put Black in, but it’s just not very believable for a series that otherwise scores very high on realism)

3) White’s face is still on that security camera’s footage at Tawi’s factory. And Tawi is aware of Sean being in the picture as well. So, none of them are safe from Tawi, really.

4) As soon as Yok was brought to the hospital and treated there, they must have given some sort of personal information to the hospital staff, like some address, names etc. - so Yok, and through his connections also the entire gang, isn’t safe from the police.

5) Dan says he quit his job. But how could he actually just quit without repercussions? He literally turned against and physically hurt a policeman in order to save the gang. In legal terms, he committed a crime and the police know who he is. Realistically, this won’t be let go. So Dan isn’t safe either.

So, I’m not sure about it...

I wish there had been some sort of positive outlook on the whole issue of injustice. Like, for example,... I would have liked some news crew discover the drug van, figuring out that it came from Tawi and making that information public. I would have liked Tawi having to face legal repercussions of his actions. I would have liked the corruption in the police force being uncovered and revealed to the public in an undeniable way, so they also would have to face repercussions. So there would be real incentive for the system to change. But none of that happened.

And, yeah, I get that, again, in many ways this is realism. Or, it could be that a storyline like this couldn’t be broadcast like that in Thailand with the current situation of police corruption and inequality between rich and poor.

But yeah. It feels unfinished to me, which is a shame.

BUT, it IS a great series, a lot lot lot lot LOT better than any other Thai series that I have watched in these past couple years. So i’m glad we got it. And the acting was superb.

[cherubcow]

“Invincible”, Season 1 (2021) Review

Somehow both very cool and very fucking stupid :D

About Created and written primarily by Robert Kirkman (principle writer for The Walking Dead comic and TV show), this Young Adult cartoon basically synthesizes a number of comic book characters (e.g., Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hellboy, Wonder Woman, Gambit) and tries to balance their heroism with cynical twists and dark realities. It's an exercise like Brightburn (2019) in that it mirrors existing comic writing all too closely in order to make violent twists. The cool stuff arrives pretty much immediately. You can tell right away that the physics have some level of realism, and it quickly gets serious because of this. The easy comparison would be to The Boys (also by Amazon, also about violent heroes, and also very well-produced). So, if you like The Boys (2019–), you'll probably like Invincible only a little less.

(( Some spoilers but nothing too specific ))

Wrong Focus But, the stupid stuff comes from the same error that the Kick-Ass movie (2010) made: it focuses on the wrong person(s). In Kick-Ass, the error was focusing on.. well.. "Kick-Ass", an irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. Invincible makes the same mistake, focusing on.. well.. "Invincible", a (so far) irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. So, despite its virtues, this show cannot escape that it made the decision to go for the Young Adult viewing demographic. It reminds me of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) in that way too: some very cool adult concepts ruined by the dramatic devices of unrepentant teenage stupidity and irrelevance. I didn't even like that stuff when I was a teenager, though Jordan Catalano gets a pass.

Main Cast and Characters The supporting characters were also very stupid. The most annoying was definitely Amber Bennett (voiced by the otherwise cool Zazie Beetz from Deadpool 2 (2018) and Joker (2019)), 

who is supposed to be attractive somehow to Mark Grayson ("Invincible", voiced by Steven Yeun, who played Glenn on The Walking Dead) 

despite the fact that she constantly judges him, fails to understand him, often fails to give him any kind of benefit of the doubt, and continues to scowl at him and be hurtful towards him even when she has information that should change her outlook towards him. And because she is part of the love triangle shared between herself, Invincible/Mark, and "Atom Eve"/Samantha (voiced by the awesome Gillian Jacobs from Community (2009–2014)), 

audiences simply have to bear with it that Amber's annoying character will be present and wasting time until Mark can realize that Amber is in fact toxic and that Eve actually understands him and can improve him in more positive directions. That love triangle should have been a 20-minute distraction, but I'm guessing that it will eat up a season or two more, especially if the writers become cowardly and fail to change things for fear of messing up a perceived "winning" formula. In my ideal story line, they would skip ahead 10 years, drop the teen drama, the love triangle, and the stupid jokes and have Invincible and Eve paired in defense of Earth, with the main tension being from their worry that the other would be horribly gored in front of them during lethal fights against cosmic enemies ;)

Aside, I am aware of Amber’s motivation for being a bad person, I just think her justification is not based in understanding, empathy, and a regard for the gravity of Invincible’s situation. In a strict political sense, Invincible should not commit a lie of omission by keeping her in the dark about his identity — even if for the “noble lie” reason of protecting her — but in a real sense, he is a fucking teenager who just developed his super powers. For her to pretend that he should reveal his entire identity to her — a potentially transformative and even dangerous decision — after a few months of teenage romance paints an absurd portrait of her mind. It does, however, align her with Omni-Man, because where Omni-Man forces Invincible to become an adult in the fighting sense (pushing with full force early on), Amber forces Invincible to become an emotional adult by getting him to understand that toxic people such as herself need to be given boundaries — and he needs to learn to clearly delineate and communicate his real desires. By knowing that he does not want Amber, people who regiment his free time, or people who do not suit him, for instance, he can realize why Eve was an obvious decision: Eve understands, can make time when they have time, and will let him find his decisions. Part of a coming-of-age story tends to be realizing what one actually wants, and Invincible’s hesitation in telling Amber his identity shows that he does not truly want her. This separates Invincible from, say, Spider-Man, who avoided telling Mary Jane his identity not because he did not want her but because he wanted at all costs to protect her.

The next most annoying character has to be Debbie Grayson (voiced by TV-cancer Sandra Oh and who luckily was not animated to look like the real Sandra Oh and who should have been voiced instead by Bobby Lee due to Lee's successful MadTV parody of Sandra Oh). 

Debbie basically fills the role of Skyler in Breaking Bad, except that Debbie's character tends to be slightly more understanding before her inevitable and toxic Skyler-resentment and undermining behavior. Despite having an 8-episode arc of change, Debbie's character flips too quickly and lacks the empathy and Omni-Man motive-justifying that would make her interesting (the comic's development may vary). For instance, if she refused to believe that Omni-Man meant his own words, that would make her empathetic and perhaps virtuous even if misled, but instead she dropped their "20 years" of understanding after viewing Omni-Man in action, which makes her appear shallow, easily manipulated, and unsympathetic. That was a definite "Young Adult" genre move because it shows immaturity by the writers to break apart a bond of 20 years so quickly. Mediocre teens might accept such a fissure because their lives have not yet seen or may not comprehend that level of time, but adults know that even long-standing and problematic relationships (which, beyond the lie, Omni-Man's and Debbie's was not shown to be) take a lot of time to break — even with lies exposed.

Omni-Man The biggest show strength for me was of course Omni-Man, who in a success of casting was voiced by J.K. Simmons in a kind of reprisal of Simmons' role as Fletcher from Whiplash (2014). 

The Fletcher/Omni-Man parallel shows through their being incredibly harsh but extremely disciplined and principled, forcing people to become beyond even their own ideal selves (this via Omni-Man's tough-love teaching of Invincible — comically, Omni-Man was actually psychologically easier on Invincible than Fletcher was on Whiplash's Andrew character). Despite the show's attempts to villainize Omni-Man, he, like Fletcher and also like Breaking Bad's Walter White, becomes progressively more awesome, eventually representing a Spartan will, an unconquerable drive, and a realistic and martial understanding of a hero's role.

To the show's credit, while it wrote Omni-Man to be outright genocidal and from a culture of eugenicists (again, Spartan), they could not help but admire him and his "violence" and "naked force" (for a Starship Troopers reference), giving him a path to redemption. That redemption comes in part because — despite the show's attempt to be often realistic and violent — its decision to be directed at young adults via dumb jokes, petty relationship drama, the characters’ reckless lack of anonymity and security in their neighborhood (loudly taking off and landing right at the doorstep), and light indy music also made the portrayed violence far less literal. With a less literal violence, the real statement becomes not that Omni-Man really did kill so many people (though he certainly did kill those people within the show's plot) but that he was symbolically capable of terrible violence but could be reformed for good. That's the shortcoming with putting violence under demographic limitations. If it's a PG-13 Godzilla knocking down cities, the deaths in the many fallen skyscrapers don't matter so much (the audience will even forgive Godzilla for mass death if it happens mostly in removed spectacle), whereas if it's Cormac McCarthy envisioning a very realistic fiction, every death rides the edge of true trauma.

By showing light between the real and the symbolic, it is much easier to identify and agree with Omni-Man. For instance, when Robot (voiced by Zachary Quinto of Heroes and the newer Star Trek movies) 

shows too much empathy for the revealed weakness of "Monster Girl" (voiced by Grey Griffin), the audience may have thought, "Pathetic," even before Omni-Man himself said it. And this because Omni-Man knows that true and powerful enemies (including himself) will not hesitate to use ultra-violence against these avenues of weakness. "Invincible" can make his Spider-Man quips while in lethal battles, but he does so while riding the edge of death — something that Omni-Man has to teach Invincible by riding him to the brink of his own.

Other Cast/Characters and Amazon's Hidden Budget It was impressive how many big-name actors were thrown into this — a true hemorrhage of producer funding. Amazon has so far hidden the budget numbers, perhaps because they don't want people to know that the show (like many of its shows) represents a kind of loss-leader to jump-start its entertainment brand.

Aside from those already mentioned, the show borrows a number of actors from The Walking Dead (WD), including.. • Chad L. Coleman ("Martian Man"; "Tyreese" on WD),

• Khary Payton ("Black Samson"; "Ezekiel" on WD),

• Ross Marquand (several characters; "Aaron" on WD)

• Lauren Cohan ("War Woman"; "Maggie" on WD)

• Michael Cudlitz ("Red Rush"; "Abraham" on WD)

• Lennie James ("Darkwing"; "Morgan" on WD)

• Sonequa Martin-Green ("Green Ghost"; "Sasha" on WD) 

There were also connections to Rick and Morty and Community, not just with Gillian Jacobs but also with... • Justin Roiland ("Doug Cheston"), who voices both Rick and Morty in Rick and Morty,

• Jason Mantzoukas ("Rex"),

• Walton Goggins ("Cecil"),

• Chris Diamantopoulos (several characters),

• Clancy Brown ("Damien Darkblood"),

• Kevin Michael Richardson ("Mauler Twins"), and

• Ryan Ridley (writing)

That's a lot of overlap. They even had Michael Dorn from Star Trek: TNG (1987–1994) (there he played Worf) and Reginald VelJohnson from Family Matters (1989–1998) and Die Hard (1988), and even Mark Hamill. Pretty much everyone in the voice cast was significant and known. Maybe Amazon got a discount for COVID since the actors could all do voice-work from home? ;)

Overall Bad that it was for the Young Adult target demo but good for the infrequent adult themes and ultra-violence. Very high production value and a good watch for those who like dark superhero stories. I have heard that the comic gets progressively darker, which fits for Robert Kirkman, so it will likely be worth keeping up with this show.

[gone-series-orchid]

I know you've said before that you think Caine and Drake are pretty one-dimensional (and I agree completely). I was wondering if there were any other villains that you wish had been explored more instead of giving those two more page time in later books. Or if there were any characters that you thought could have had villainous potential that were unexplored??

wow, interesting question! i think my main problem with caine and drake is that they’re just kind of blandly evil, one-dimensional like you said. i think, ideally, villains should feel like real people.

funnily enough, i think zil probably comes closest to embodying that in this series. he’s mean-spirited from the beginning, but it’s only under lance’s influence (from what i remember) that he becomes a real threat due to his gaining confidence. i think it would have been nice to see more of him in the series—he’s insecure in his role as leader of the human crew, which makes him fallible. he’s also kind of unnerved by lance’s neo-nazism. he’s arguably the most intelligent out of the crew aside from lance. he’s not sympathetic, per se, but he is compelling.

i would’ve liked to see him interact more directly with the protagonists—especially astrid, because i think she should get a chance to one-up him in some way after he was thinking creepy thoughts about her in hunger. also, i think astrid, being the smartie she is, would probably be most likely to try to persuade him to turn over a new leaf—she’s a normal, and a white, aryan-looking (gag) normal at that, which would probably satisfy lance, and she still has distinct power in the fayz. though zil could probably poke a hole in her argument by pointing out that she only really has that power because she’s sam’s girlfriend, which is true. anyway, they could have words about it.

i think zil is compelling because he has the potential to be redeemed. it’s a slight potential, because he’s already done some pretty evil things, but he’s not totally evil—he has to justify the violence he commits in order to accept it, which is more than caine or drake does. we never forget that, at the end of the day, he’s still an insecure, blustering twelve-year-old. he’s an anti-moof bigot, but he could change. i think lance, more than zil, represents total irredeemable evil. he represents what zil could descend into being. he’s the devil on his shoulder (astrid could potentially be the angel if she maybe switched tactics from lawful punishment to direct emotional manipulation).

i’m a sucker for human villains and natural disasters being the principal antagonists, which i think is why the first four books work so well? i think fear and light suffer from the gaiaphage taking control of the narrative, villain-wise, when i think it worked best when used sparingly. gaia is pure evil, nothing more. she’s fun to read about in her own way because she’s so villainously campy, but that’s kind of it. she’s not really interesting, imo.

i think the reason why i harp so much on the insufficient “humanity” of antagonists like caine and drake is because that’s the principal strength of books (lord of the flies, battle royale) in the “kids trapped in place and forced to survive” genre: what do the actions of the characters say about human nature? about society? about morality? in lord of the flies, the message conveyed is ultimately a bleak one: the kids all descend into savagery in one way or another, with the purest one of them all, simon (the jesus figure) being driven insane, and the intellectual (piggy) being murdered. the story is all about “the darkness in the human heart,” to paraphrase the last line of the book.

in battle royale, on the contrary, the message is ultimately one of hope. despite the characters living in a dystopian fascist society that sacrifices one class of students to a killing game, the main character shuya clings to the idea that he and his classmates can figure out an alternate way to survive the titular battle royale aside from murdering each other. his compassionate view of humanity is validated by the pov vignettes given to all his classmates. all of them are given distinct personalities; some are kind, like shuya and his allies noriko and shogo, and some are drake-esque sadists, while the majority fall somewhere in between (my personal favorite characters are the girls that team up with one another in order to protect themselves from possible sexual violence from the boys. they hole up in a lighthouse!). but all are tragic in the sense that they’re children thrust into an unfair and cruel situation. even then, though, the nobility of certain characters shines through.

for instance, there are two girls at the beginning of the game who are best friends and don’t want to kill anyone. they (foolishly or bravely) use a megaphone to call out to the other kids in hiding, asking if they can all band together. shuya and several other characters are tempted, but sadly the girls are both fatally shot soon after their announcement. they die in each other’s arms after affirming their friendship, tears in their eyes. shuya and several other kids are devastated by the girls’ deaths. while some more callous characters deride them as being stupid and naïve, the reader is ultimately meant to mourn their deaths and the lost potential of a class-wide alliance. they know that their enemy isn’t their classmates, but rather the fascist government that makes them kill each other in the first place.

anyway—tangent aside—i think those two aforementioned novels are really solid examples of the genre gone is in. gone has more of superhero vibe to it, given the focus on powers and mutations and paper-thin evil villains, but i almost think the way that’s executed almost detracts against the aforementioned “kids surviving, etc.” genre? like, that’s all about the messiness of morality and human nature and whatnot, and while superhero comics can weave that into their narratives (watchmen, the brat pack) those are usually deconstructions of the genre than straightforward examples of it. the superhero genre is usually morally black-and-white and really action-focused. this is why i think we get the strange tonal mixture of kids reacting realistically to the trauma of starving versus reacting fairly unrealistically when faced with brutal superpowered violence, such as when brianna decapitates drake like it’s nbd. or anything brianna does, really.

there’s a shift from the realistic to the unrealistic that’s fun, but tonally dissonant from each other. so there’s this sort of disconnect, at least for me. i sympathize greatly for astrid when she’s slapped by drake and forced to call little pete a slur, for instance, but how many times does drake or caine murder a kid in cold blood? at some point it gets...idk, old? as the violence gets more cartoony the less it interests me aside from morbid fascination, and there’s just so much of it. it gets desensitizing after a while. i think that’s why, even though i think it’s handled fairly believably in gone, i had a lot more trouble with the monster trilogy’s blend of absurdism (the animorphs-style mutations like dekka turning into a cat woman with medusa hair and another character turning into a praying mantis with super speed, etc.) vs. grimdark realism (ICE forcibly deports a character’s father, terrorist violence is a common theme, the san francisco bridge is destroyed, a baby boy is mutated into a giant fuzzy caterpillar and then gets blown up by the military—like this is budding dystopia-level dark and the narrative doesn’t seem to realize it). it just feels too heavy and too light at the same time. the contrast of tones does a disservice to both of them. idk what i’m saying let’s get back to your actual question lol

as for characters with villainous potential...hmmm. tbh i think astrid has villainous potential? i mean, i like the idea of her moral righteousness escalating in a way that makes her more morally gray. she’d have to probably latch onto more powerful kids in order to have any leverage over sam and the gang, given her powerlessness. maybe she could manipulate orc into being her bodyguard while she plots to usurp sam or something asgjsjk. i think she could be a powerful threat if she wanted to be! it’s fun to ponder. i heard of an au where she joins the human crew that i thought was sort of interesting!

what do you think, @goneseriesanalysis? any villains you wish had been dived into more, and/or characters with villainous potential you think would have been cool to explore?

[davidmann95]

Hey David? Why is ours such a cruel and merciless God?

mirrorfalls said: (If you don't know what I'm talking about, your inbox should be filling up with more specific deets riiiiight about now.)

cheerfullynihilistic said: THE SNYDER CUT

Anonymous said: You don’t seem to think Superman’s public rep will take another beating from the Snyder Cut coming out. Honestly I thought you’d be way more upset than you seemed on Twitter.

Anonymous said: So uhh, against all thoughts and logic the Snyder cut is being released? Maybe as a mini series? Thoughts?

Anonymous said: SNYDER CUT!

Bullies. Jocks. Guys angrily asking if we know who their father is. Assorted dudebro nerd-oppressors of America:

You have failed us. You have failed us so hard. What else do we even keep you around for if not to head this shit off at the pass? Shame on you.

Okay, so seriously: I’m actually gonna put most bitching and moaning under a cut, because I know firsthand there are as many as several non-slavering maniacs out there who dug Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and who are simply and entirely reasonably excited that they’re getting this movie after all. I don’t feel like throwing a wall of text at them shitting all over this, so I’ll lead off with I think some fairly even-handed commentary on the real-world circumstances here, rambling speculation regarding the production, and some cautious optimism about the actual movie/s. THEN I’ll get to what I imagine most of you are here to see.

So totally in a vacuum: this is a cool, good thing. I’m the notorious theatrical Justice League-liker, but at best it was a compromised product due to the original creator - who like it or not clearly had an incredibly ambitious personal vision for these characters and their world - suffering a horrific tragedy forcing him off the project, and leaving his final stamp on blockbuster culture and a world he’d devoted years of his life to a flop with his name on it when he couldn’t even truly call it his own anymore. At worst, said tragedy was taken advantage of by suits to ditch him in the home stretch so as to try and shove out something ostensibly more marketable. But now because of a...very loyal fanbase, the man’s getting the opportunity and resources to rise like a phoenix and see at least some of his vision through in a huge way. That’s pretty remarkable.

Not in a vacuum this is fucking horrifying. I’ve already seen folks poo-poohing the reflexive fears that this will ‘set a precedent’, and they were right enough that I deleted my initial tweet on the subject because I didn’t think I could express my own opinion with any nuance in the space of 280 characters. Yeah, nerd whining definitely shaped Rise of Skywalker (another movie I enjoyed in spite of the circumstances of its creation). Hell, Sonic the Hedgehog crunched its CGI team prior to unceremoniously firing them to redesign his model thanks to outcry. That’s already a market force, and just to be clear upfront, if we can’t agree the predominant mode of operation for #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a toxic nerd harassment campaign when they spammed posts memorializing deceased actors and chased Diane Nelson off Twitter, we’re not gonna be able to have this conversation. And director’s cuts are you may have noticed also already a thing. But this isn’t changing direction on a project that’s already going to exist no matter what, this is turning back 3 years later on a commercial flop and dumping tens of millions of dollars into it, explicitly in response to that harassment campaign. It’s not *actually* going back and, say, remaking The Last Jedi, but by god to the naked eye it’s gonna be as good as for plenty of fanboys, and probably to some shortsighted execs as well. This is a new thing, and in this context it is a very, very bad one. Hopefully one that won’t amount to anything.

As for the movie itself: what the hell is this thing going to end up being? I assume with this sort of cashola being pumped into it we’re not getting any slapdash greenscreen or storyboarded sequences, but four hours? Is it really just going to be an expanded and revised version of what we saw in theaters, or is this including content that would have been in the originally planned Justice Leagues 2 and 3? My understanding is that those were already compressed into a single Justice League 2 before plans collapsed altogether, were they maybe filming side-by-side and this’ll be the whole shebang? If not is Snyder going to hedge his bets and end this on a clean note, or keep it ending on a cliffhanger in hopes HBO will throw another $250 million his way to keep going? Does DC want to keep going? Would they give into fan pressure on releasing after all what was widely publicized as the first film of a duology or trilogy with dangling threads if they weren’t going to be at least watching the numbers to see the feasibility of returning to this in a bigger way? Not that I think WB execs would piss into Snyder’s mouth if he were dying of thirst at this point if he simply asked to be able to do Justice League 2, but if he floated that if they instead just give him a liiiiiiiitle more money he can finally deliver unto them their very own Avengers - one that they can work on even during quarantine since it’s mostly just VFX work left - and hey if it works out he’s got a sequel or two cued up and ready to go? Maybe they look at their scattered plans and say the hell with it and end up giving this a theatrical release and sequel with Snyder holding the reigns again if this ends up a killer app; stranger things have happened, if not many, and somehow this is already happening in the first place after all. Alternatively, if this succeeds, could they go “thanks and good on ya, totally do another, but it’s gonna be an HBO exclusive so you’re only getting a hundred million, figure it out”? Would Ben Affleck return? How much reshooting will he be willing to commit to even for this? And most importantly, since this is potentially going to be serialized as six ‘episodes’, will We Got This Covered count this as another ‘win’ since their bullshit rumor mill algorithm spit out “Justice League HBO TV show” recently?

As for the project itself: I ain’t subscribing to HBOMax for this bad boy, but once it becomes more widely available I can’t claim I won’t probably watch it. It’s basically a new movie about the Justice League, and if there’s anything I WOULD wanna see Zack Snyder do in the DCU, it’s the movie finally moving past pseudo-realism (aside from some of those dopey costumes) and leaning all the way into godlike superbeings bludgeoning each other through continents. I absolutely wanna see his aesthetic take on the Green Lantern Corps, and New Genesis, and time travel, and all the other weird promises of where his movies were going to go climaxing in a ridiculous super-war across all spacetime. It’s the same reason J.G. Jones was an exciting choice for Final Crisis before he had to leave, seeing a guy known for his work in an ultra-real grungy superhero style starting there and building up to seeing his version of absolutely wild cosmic spectacle. And no, to respond to one of the initial asks, I’m not worried about the impact on Superman. Everyone seems to have accepted this is its own distinct thing whether they like it or not, I think him getting to complete his ‘arc’ will quiet down many of the folks who like to yell at every other version as retro nonsense since now they’ll be able to be smug about having had the best take rather than pining for a lost finale, and I’m not interested in further Superman movies at the moment anyway with Superman & Lois in the pipe (which I was originally paranoid would be endangered by this when rumors first started floating, but if it’s been brewing since November then if they wanted to strike that down to ‘make room’ according to their Byzantine ever-shifting rules, they would have by now). Far as I’m concerned, as long as the other DC movies get to keep doing what they’re doing during and past this - even Pattinson in his corner, however that works - then totally let Snyder work out all his Wagnerian superhero bullshit for another flick or two. If nothing else, maybe we’ll learn what the hell that diagram up there is supposed to mean. And a plea I want to clarify upfront is wholeheartedly sincere: we’re already down the rabbit hole, so let Snyder to literally whatever he wants with his non-theatrically released Justice League. Zero input or veto power from outside parties. If he wants Flash to hang dong or Superman to say fuck or Batman to learn he’s Steppenwolf’s secret dad or Cyborg to learn he needs to eat babies to fuel his machine parts, let him go for it. Whole point is this is now his thing for people who want his thing.

Okay, beneath the cut the filter comes off, so go ahead if that’s your jam.

Hahahahahahaha this is gonna be such a fuckin’ shitshow you guys, Jesus Christ.

They’re giving the dude who did BvS and wants to make an Ayn Rand adaptation someday $30 million to take another crack at this monstrosity! 30 goddamn million smackaroos for four fucking hours of by many accounts roughly the same basic movie, except now presumably with what little coherency, fun, and clean character work the theatrical cut managed to pull off excised in return for weighty staring, ponderous pseudo-philosophical musings, hackneyed symbolism, aimless mythology teasing, and Steppenwolf I understand being decapitated by Wonder Woman at the end rather than taken back to Apokolips. I didn’t even spoiler mark that shit because don’t you dare pretend you care about the fate of Steppenwolf. I won’t have it.

I used to wonder if I was indeed missing the forest for the trees with these movies, that I was so inflexible in my personal image of these characters - even though I appreciate plenty of alternate takes on them and even some stories that bend or break what I consider their ‘rules’, just not these - that I was incapable of grasping or appreciating these films on their own merits as works of art using those archetypes in wildly different ways; even I could see there were good moments and interesting ideas on display despite seemingly failing to come together. No matter how much I personally deconstructed how and why it wasn’t working, I couldn’t do it to my own satisfaction to the point of stamping out that niggling little worry with how many folks whose opinions I respect love ‘em. Until I finally remembered that the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited is totally the same basic story as BvS, centrally driven by an even worse take on Superman, and that’s still one of the best superhero stories of all time. These just stink by any merits, and while I think Justice League absolutely has the potential to be the most *entertaining* of the bunch, it’s not going to magically become *good* in the eleventh hour. Not to lift up Joss Whedon of all people as some kind of savior, I’m on the record that my love for Justice League as-is is some kind of inexplicable alchemical accident, but I promise that there is not going to be one single addition to this movie that’s going to make up for the removal of “Just save one person”.

Also I’m already not looking forward to dudes tweeting “whoa, he’s splitting it up into a serialized narrative, reflective of the sequential nature of the characters’ primitive native pictorial medium! Or mayhap in ode to the pulp film adventure serials which inspired those in turn! Even the Justice League children’s cartoon for dumb babies, which was itself...made up of episodes! That’s three references in the structure of the thing alone! The man’s operating on an entirely different level!” “God, isn’t it amazing how much better he understands the source material than you”, they shall say, about a man who I understand just very confidently referred to Doomsday in his livestream as having destroyed Krypton in the comics. Again, don’t you say they won’t, just the other day I saw folks tweeting they just realized that since Jor-El wears armor over his bodysuit that technically means Superman’s whole costume is underwear which means Snyder’s totally honoring that without putting him in ugly dumb red panties so checkmate, dorks.

(Okay, in fairness, I know Snyder was saying that’s his take on what happened to the moon in the past of the movies and maybe I only misheard that he thought that also happened in the comics, and it’s trivial information anyway. Still sucks though, that seeming out-of-nowhere Jax-Ur shoutout was like the one thing I liked about that otherwise interminable Krypton sequence. And why is there a second Doomsday? You did Death of Superman already!)

And further SPOILER thoughts below on the reported plots of 2 and 3:

It’s also an amazing, perfect sort of narrative synchronicity that the hypocrisy of Man of Steel in presenting Superman as a savior would (will?) be matched by the movies also rejecting that promise long-term. In there, Jor-El’s musings on the capacity of every living thing being capable of good, the closest the film has to a singular moral statement, are proven wrong when Zod has to be put down like a mad dog, and rather than the one who’ll bring us into the sun, Kal-El’s presence draws ruin from beyond the stars to our world. And again in BvS with Doomsday. And again in Justice League 1-3, where in spite of claims by Snydercutters that it’s okay for Superman to be a really lousy take on Superman because it’s totally supposed to take several movies after putting on the costume and calling himself Superman, including his own death and resurrection, for him to really, like, become Superman, man, he remains a liability to the end. His death lures in Steppenwolf, the Kryponian matrix in his genes is Darkseid’s goal, he becomes the villain of the first act of Justice League 3 - possibly of his own free will depending on which version you’ve heard about - and at the final showdown, it’s Batman who sacrifices himself to stop Darkseid and save the world and inspire the rise of superheroism, because Batman, you see, rules, whereas Superman, stay with me here, drools. A letdown given BvS was just about the one major story of the last 30 years to unambiguously conclude Superman is better than Batman, but not a shocker. None of what I understand goes down in these - iconography from the likes of Fourth World, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death and Return of Superman, Rock of Ages, Final Crisis, and Injustice reused but stripped of all context and thematic weight that gives it meaning (even Injustice is built on the premise of having a ‘good’ Superman to contrast the dictator); Lois being the ‘key’ because of her connections to two men, one she married and one she bears; time travel that even by the very generous suspension of disbelief applied to it in a genre like this operates by two obviously completely different sets of rules in its only two uses, and is then used to write the entire second movie of the trilogy out of continuity in the first act of the third, making one and a half of these movies pointless - is shocking. It’s just more empty notions and unfulfilled promises offered up to a fanbase staking everything on the idea that all the tampering, all the wild swings, all the meandering, it’s all building UP to something, not possibly just a dude who doesn’t understand these characters but wanting to look very clever with them before building up to one more rad punch-up. So yes, make these movies. Let what can be gleaned from them as worthwhile be revealed, leave the rest of it up for examination to be judged as it deserves and let it, finally. Finally. Be done.

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: The Umbrella Academy: Episode 1-6

I tried to start this saying I was only going to review episode 2 which has a prominent torture scene. Several hours later I am… significantly closer to the end of the series. So I thought I may as well include what I’ve watched.

The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix original series based on an independent comic book. With great acting, excellent music and a cast of deeply flawed characters it was (I understand) quite a hit.

I’m enjoying it a lot more then I thought I would. It’s violent but it’s also ridiculous in a way few stories but superhero comics tend to commit to. There’s a 60 year old man stuck in the body of a thirteen year old after travelling to an apocalyptic future and being in a thirty year relationship with a mannequin. And I just- I love comics.

This series feels very much like a superhero comic book on screen. With all the good and the bad that goes with that concept.

But I’m not here to tell you what I think of the superhero genre and it’s relationship with violence. I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the series itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

Umbrella Academy is the story about a group of very damaged people with super powers. Adopted as babies (born in extraordinary circumstances) by a millionaire ‘adventurer’ six of the Hargreeve children were raised to be superheroes. The seventh, apparently without powers, was isolated in a world of talking chimps, robots and extraordinary abilities.

The story starts with Reginald Hargreeve’s death and the five surviving children (including one who’d been living on the moon, apparently for years) meet for the funeral. In the course of this ‘Five’, teleports back from the future.

While the story overall focuses on the way an emotionally abusive and neglectful upbringing effects all of the major characters I’m going to be focusing on the clear instances of torture in and solitary confinement in some of the episodes.

Both Luther and Five are subjected to extreme solitary confinement. Luther is isolated on the moon for four years, Five is isolated as the last person alive for several decades.

Five stops up in a donut shop late at night and sits next to a tow truck driver. They have a brief conversation and the driver leaves. An armed gang then attacks Five. He kills them and two more people (Cha-Cha and Hzael) are sent after him, apparently by the same organisation.

Believing they’re looking for a man in his 50s they go after the tow driver. They torture him and while they eventually believe that he isn’t Five, they continue to torture him to get information on Five. The driver tells them everything that happened the night before.

Later Cha-Cha and Hazel mount a raid on the Hargreeves estate looking for Five. They don’t find him but they manage to capture his brother Klaus.

Klaus is an addict (what he takes is not explicitly defined) and talks to dead people. The two are linked throughout the story with the heavy implication that Klaus avoids sobriety in order to escape his powers.

Klaus is tied to a chair for about a day and a half. He’s beaten, strangled and ‘waterboarded’. (Cha-Cha calls it waterboarding but didn’t actually carry it out properly. I’ve assumed that was for the safety of the actors).

Klaus escapes and shows no mobility problems after being cut off the chair. He then spends several months in 1968 (as you do). On his return his mental health problems seem to be no worse then they were before he was tortured.

I’m giving it 0/10

The Good

The actual forms of torture shown in The Umbrella Academy are reasonably realistic. They’re not always accurate to the time period or place, but when time travel is involved I’m willing to let that slide. The electrical torture shown, with a battery and bulldog clips, could be taken directly from Alleg’s accounts of his experience at the hands of French troops in Algeria. The stress positions and strangulation are shown realistically. And while the waterboarding isn’t shown realistically I think it was done this way to protect the actor and allow him to breathe.

The Bad

I’ve covered solitary confinement before. The estimated safe period for most people is about a week. While both Luther and Five has a strong sense of purpose during their confinement (and this seems to be a protective factor) that wouldn’t help a lot when they’re confined for such an unrealistically long period. At four years Luther should be a complete mental and physical wreck. At several decades including puberty, Five shouldn’t be able to interact normally with people and should be more obviously mentally ill then Klaus. Both of them are shown without symptoms and this downplays the damage of torture that’s routinely depicted as harmless.

Umbrella Academy shows torture ‘working’ with victims giving up accurate information if only you know how to hurt them. This isn’t true. Torture can’t result in accurate information. This kind of misinformation encourages torture in real life.

Klaus’ response to torture is to thank his torturers for inflicted pain with the strong implication that he’s enjoying being tortured. It’s implied that he’s turned on by pain so ‘can’t’ be traumatised or hurt by torture. This is ridiculous and insulting to both the BDSM community and torture survivors. BDSM practitioners don’t stop feeling pain and they aren’t immune to trauma. There is a world of difference between a consensual and non-consensual encounter. Personally I think this kind of portrayal is akin to suggesting that victims can’t be raped because they’ve previous enjoyed sex. It’s unacceptable.

Klaus is held in a stress position for at least a day. This is a survivable time frame but on release he should have significant mobility issues and should have needed help escaping. Instead he’s perfectly capable of making his way out with a heavy time-travel device. He can walk and move his arms freely. This completely ignores that the way he was held is torturous.

Neither Cha-Cha nor Hazel show any of the mental health problems typical of torturers. They’re portrayed as competent and able to investigate effectively, even though they torture. Torturers are not good investigators and torture consistently undermines effective investigation. Realistically a character can be one or the other, not both.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are also depicted as good fighters and generally skilled. In reality torture produces a deskilling effect in torturers, they get worse at what they do.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are shown as obedient to their superiors, only targetting people who have information or are ordered as targets. This isn’t how torturers operate. They disobey orders, ignore superiors and target a wide array of people who usually have nothing to do with anything the torturers are supposed to investigate.

No one in the series so far has shown any long standing mental health problems as a result of torture or isolation.

No one has shown any memory problems as a result of torture or isolation.

The end result is that the series suggests torture doesn’t have any long term effects at all.

Overall

I think this series really highlights something I’ve been saying a lot on the blog: It’s very easy to find realistic depictions of how torture is carried out and it’s very hard to find realistic depictions of the effect it has on people.

These episodes, and I suspect (from what I’ve seen) the series more generally handles torture terribly. It’s unrealistic and it’s parroting a lot of tropes that either excuse torture or belittle survivors.

That didn’t get in the way of me enjoying the series outside of these scenes. There are a lot of great characters and character moments.

But none of that excuses this senseless repetition of torture apologia.  

For a series that works so hard to highlight the effect of childhood emotional abuse it downplays the effects of physical abuse at every turn.  

It uses torture as a short cut in the plot. It portrays torturers as smart and restrained badasses.

It basically does virtually everything I advise writers not to do.

And this comes about simply by repeating the same old genre tropes without bothering to look up the subjects involved.

There are other ways to have your bad guys find out the information they need to know. There are other ways to establish them as terrible people.

There are realistic ways to show people resisting torture, which don’t diminish the pain they suffered.

I think what I want to stress most of all is that this apologia is unnecessary. It doesn’t add anything to the story. The fun stuff, the super heroics, the ridiculous time travel escapades and carefully choreographed fight scenes can all happen without apologia as the background noise.

For once- I’m not really mad. I’m disappointed. That these tropes creep into genre after genre, put down roots and keep coming back up. The mainstay of this story wouldn’t be any different if they took out torture or even used it in a more realistic way.

Five’s isolation in an apocalyptic wasteland doesn’t last. He’s picked up by an agency of time travellers and offered a job. This could have happened more quickly, especially since the time he spends alone and the time he spends with the agency are both poorly defined.

Luther’s trip to the moon functions to build a wall between him and his siblings. And again, that could have happened in a much shorter time frame.

Cha-Cha and Hazel could have just interviewed the tow truck driver for their information. They’re shown conducting successful interviews later.

Klaus’ resistance could have been framed as natural and there are several points in his dialogue already that could have supported that. The story could have used the fact that Klaus genuinely does not know where Five is.

In the end The Umbrella Academy’s use of torture is a waste of narrative space. None of these torture scenes are essential to the plot and every single one of them is handled badly.

It’s an example of a narrative that wasn’t prepared to commit to showing the consequences of torture.

We can all do better.

Edit: I forgot the full title. Oops.

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[bloggerblagger]

88) Tarantino’s Latest: A dissenting voice. (Quelle surprise.)

A few years ago, I went to see a film called ‘Punch Drunk Love’. It was billed as a comedy. If memory serves me right I didn’t laugh once. But the young couple sitting behind me did. Constantly. And if there is one thing even more annoying than ....(at this point  insert  whatever winds  you up to the point of wanting to commit multiple homicide with a flame thrower ) it is other people - young people in particular - who laugh at things which you find singularly unfunny. You, of course, may be  more tolerant of da yoof (anyone under 5O in my book) than I am - indeed, I would say that is a racing certainty - but I am sure you get the general idea.

Usually - out of fear of being stabbed-  I let such things pass, but on this occasion  I was pissed off enough to risk a lie-down on a mortuary slab, so I turned around and demanded an answer.

“What were you laughing at?”

Actually I can’t remember their answer - just their little millennial snowflake faces crumpling in the face of my interrogation - and anyway  what difference would it have made whatever they had said? No explanation of why something is funny is going to make it any funnier to the person who didn’t find it funny in the first place. 

No, my question was really just a manifestation of my grumpy irritation at having sat through a film which I had only gone to see because someone called Paul Thomas Anderson had directed it and he was supposedly hot shit. (I hadn’t by then seen ‘Magnolia’ or ‘Boogie Nights’, the movies upon which his reputation for hot shitness was largely built . And I haven’t seen them since because I have seen ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘The Master’, both of which I thought were overrated and overwrought attempts to do what ‘Citizen Kane’ had done a 100 times better 70 odd years earlier. And I didn’t like ‘Inherent Vice’ much better. 

I was, I will concede, quite impressed with ‘Phantom Thread’, but one out of four is not much of  a strike rate, so PTA’s oeuvre, is, to my mind, a lot less than it is cracked up to be and his name on a film’s credits is an invitation to me to walk on by.

I am admittedly, not one who is wont to swim with the tide of received wisdom on any subject , not least because I am an habitually contrary sod. But still,  I don’t just say Paul Thomas Anderson  is no Frances Ford Coppola for the sake of it. I mean it because I genuinely believe it.

And he is not the only one of the supposed  modern greats who doesn’t do it for me. I loved  ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Fargo’ but nothing I have seen since by the Coen Brothers -  with the possible exception of ‘True Grit’ - has  done that much of me. I did not like  ‘A Serious Man’ at all, couldn’t see the point of ‘Inside Llewelyn Davis’ and I thought ‘No Country for Old Men’  was a bit of a wrist job. No strike that: a complete wrist job. And yes, I know ‘The Big Lebowski’ is everyone’s favourite film. But, quelle horreur, despite several attempts, I’ve never managed to get all the way through it.

The common objection I have to Anderson and the Coens’ stuff - and to a slightly lesser extent, that of David O. Russell (not to be confused with David J. Russell, the former professional golfer, who became David J. Russell to avoid being confused with plain David Russell, another former professional golfer, no idea what David O’s excuse is) is the way they draw attention so conspicuously to the style of direction and away from the story.

I do not want to know about the film director’s trademark cinematic fireworks anymore than I want to be distracted by a novelist’s glorious prose. What I want is to be so engrossed in the story that I suspend disbelief from first to last and hopefully, at the end, feel rewarded and uplifted and, if I am very lucky, enlightened by the experience. I want a well developed coherent plot with the right ingredients deftly folded into the mixture at the right time, and rounded characters, neither entirely bad  nor utterly flawless, but nuanced as people really are. If I am super lucky, I hope to see some universal truth revealed to me that really makes me think about the way I see the world.

A film that, in recent times, ticked every box, was ‘Manchester By The Sea’, a sublime piece of film-making, deeply affecting and gut wrenchingly poignant. I offer this as exhibit A, m’lud, in support of my case that I am not some old fart whose taste is irrevocably stuck in the past and is thus incapable of seeing anything good in the new, but as someone who refuses to praise the emperor on the fineness of his new clothes just because practically everybody else is determined to claim to love the post modern irony of seeing a king with his dick  out.

And, by the way, my idea of  a good film isn’t just limited to a realistic contemporary drama. It can be historical - the version of ‘Journey’s End’ made a couple of years ago - or comedy, ‘Midnight in Paris’ - something highly stylistic, ‘Laurence Anyways’ - a heist movie, ‘American Animals’ - a musical, (okay the very best of those, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Singing in the Rain’, for instance,  aren’t that recent  but...) Lala Land’ worked for me - even a movie about trolls, ‘Border’ - magical realism. ‘The Shape of Water’ .All of those are  reasonably recent - and this is the vital common denominator - all  worked within their own terms. You are asked to willingly suspend disbelief - the critical first step if one is to engage with any book or film - and however absurd a proposition that may fundamentally be, as in the case of a musical, if it is done well enough you happily go along with it.

Which at last brings me to the original point of this piece, Quentin Tarantino’s latest, ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’, which we are, for some reason, told at the beginning, is his 9th film.

Wow is all I can say. And for all  the wrong reasons. Never mind, PTA, and DOJ and the CB - they all pale into self effacing insignificance compared to this fellow, the unrivalled leader of the  hey-it’s -me-ME!-I did-it pack, who has certainly never done anything on the QT.

Okay, I did like ‘Pulp Fiction’. A lot. It was wild. It was different. It was sassy. It was outrageously, cartoonishly violent. But since then, what have we  had but more of the same? Except that,by definition, all the rest differ in one crucial aspect. They are, paradoxically, NOT different. They are not original. The stories vary but the mode de telling is pretty much identical.

So it is with  ‘Once Upon A Time All The  So Called Professional Film Critics In The World Prostrated Themselves At The Feet of Quentin Tarantino Yet Again’. More of the predictably wacky same. But this time my critique comes with knobs on.

Never mind the bladder bursting excessive length, the unexplained jumping about between different bits of story, the customary unremitting gore, the comedy that isn’t quite comedy (mainly because it’s never quite funny) the drama that’s never quite dramatic because it’s simultaneously being undercut by the comedy that isn’t quite comedy, never mind any of that. I take that as a given in pretty much any Tarantino film. What particularly concerns me about no.9, is why?

Actually there are quite a few whys but let’s start with the big one: why has he taken the still shocking story of the Charles Manson murder of Sharon Tate and then riffed on it so that we are given a totally fictitious alternative version of events? What was the point of that? What was he trying to say? What, in doing this, did he mean to reveal to us, the audience? Surely, anyone would have realised that you can not do something so very odd without such questions being asked? (Unless of course you are an ‘auteur’ who  has managed to create such an unchallenged worldwide  rep for being a genius that no-one dares ask.)

Anyway, I haven’t got a fucking clue. I just didn’t - and don’t - geddit.  And to anyone who says, ‘Who gives a shit about that kind of nitpicky pedantic bollocks if the audience is having fun?’, I say ‘Of course, it fucking matters! Otherwise it’s like a mathematical answer without the workings. There has to be a comprehensible rationale or it’s just bollocks’. (Or is it? a tiny voice in my head insists on saying. What about Chinese medicine? If it works, who cares why it works? But notwithstanding that last bloody irritating intervention, to which I concede I don’t have a completely fireproof answer, I continue to insist that, for me, there must be a reason for any idea to be valid.)

So here’s my next why? Why do the ‘critics’ love him so much? My guess is either

a) it is because most of them are twats who have seen a million films but still know fuck all about the subject and just  go in whichever direction the rest of the lemmings are headed,  

or

b) because he stuffs his films - particularly this one - with so many nods and winks tipped to other films and to Hollywood folk lore  that  only a person who had seen a million movies  and immersed themselves in Hollyworld would recognise them and, realising and relishing the fact that  they are part of a tiny select group and flattered that they have been so selected, they choose to believe that a poor film is a good one. (In other words it is my contention that Tarantino aims his films at critics and when was flattery not the best way to get somewhere with anybody?)

Of one thing I am reasonably certain: the audience members who crammed  the cinema to capacity were way too young  (my companion and I were the oldest people there by a couple of aeons) to have spotted more than one or two - if any -  of the film buff references. (Perhaps I am doing them a disservice, but I’d bet a pony to a piece of popcorn that, moreover, nine tenths of them knew almost nothing - if anything at all - about  the Manson murders before the  publicity about this film drew  them into the cinema.)

None of this stopped them laughing uproariously throughout, and annoying the fuck out of me for so doing.  Yep, it was Punch Drunk Love all over again.

Except this time I got the flame thrower out and fried the bastards to death. It was so fucking SATISFYING!

(Actuary, sorry, no I didn’t. But there was a reason for  me to invoke this  image in this context - connected with the film - which you will understand should you have 2hrs 39mins of your precious time on this earth  to waste. And that  makes it different from most of the things that Quentin does which seem to me to have no raison d’etre at all, apart from the fact that he thinks it’s a good idea at the time.

And that’s not good enough for ME!!!!)

[marvelloussynergy]

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

A boy abducted from Earth and raised in space. A gun-totting raccoon. A talking tree. These characters seem ludicrous on paper; yet, Marvel Studios had enough faith in this ragtag group to feature them in their own movie. Who cares if nobody had ever heard of them? With this film, Marvel were going to make the Guardians of the Galaxy known to all. In 2009, having joined Marvel Studios’ writers program, Nicole Perlman wrote a screenplay for the Guardians of the Galaxy. Perlman became noticed for her script Challenger, a biopic focusing on Richard Feynman written during her time in college. She would go on to write other biopics, though none would be filmed. The writer, as with others in the program, got to pick from a list of properties to write a screenplay on. Despite the better-known properties that were included, Perlman picked the Guardians due to the sci-fi tone the team presented. Perlman had always wanted to write a sci-fi film and was frustrated at the attitude that females weren’t capable of writing the sci-fi genre. Working for Marvel, this was her chance to change that. She decided to focus on the most recent incarnation of the group created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning in 2008, with Marvel also tossing up between featuring the original team. The Guardians operating during Abnett and Lanning’s run are the second team to use the name. Unrelated to the original lineup, the team, consisting of Star-Lord, Adam Warlock, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Phyla-Vell, Mantis, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot, came together in the aftermath of the Phalanx Invasion of the Kree. Perlman worked on the draft for two years before being asked to write another towards the end of 2011. At the 2012 San Diego Comic Con Kevin Feige finally revealed that Marvel were releasing a Guardians of the Galaxy film in 2014. James Gunn was hired to direct the film, beating out Peyton Reed and collaborators Ryan Flack and Anna Boden. Gunn made his directing debut with the comedy horror Slither (2006) and followed this with the web series James Gunn’s PG Porn (2008-09) created with his brothers before returning to the big screen with Super (2010). The director re-wrote the Guardians of the Galaxy script, adding in his own ideas—such as the inclusion of the Walkman—and changing the story. Though Marvel liked the first draft Gunn turned in, Joss Whedon felt it needed to be more reflective of Gunn’s unique style, something the director was only too willing to oblige. Pre-production began in January 2012, with filming starting off in London, beginning around mid-2013. Joel Edgerton, Jack Huston, Zachary Levi, Lee Pace, Eddie Redmayne, and Jim Sturgess all reportedly tested for the lead role of Peter Quill, with Chris Pratt eventually being cast. Pratt was chubby before he nabbed the part—having gained weight for Delivery Man (2013)—something that didn’t convince Gunn the actor could play the part. The persistence of casting director Sarah Finn, however, saw Pratt get an audition, which finally convinced Gunn that he could play Peter. Having signed on, Pratt started losing weight and getting into shape for the role. A deal was made so as to allow the Parks and Recreation (2009-15) actor to fulfil his commitments on the television show as well as do the film. Though missing out on the lead role, Lee Pace would sign on to play the film’s antagonist, Ronan the Accuser. March 2013 saw WWE wrestler Dave Bautista signing on as Drax the Destroyer, beating out Jason Momoa, Isaiah Mustafa, and Patrick Wade. And for green-skinned assassin Gamora, Gunn turned to Zoe Saldana, her involvement being confirmed in April 2013. Saldana is no stranger to sci-fi films set in space having previously played Nyota Uhura in Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) as well as Neytiri in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). With the film featuring extra-terrestrial characters, many actors had to endure long hours in the makeup chair. It originally took a team of five makeup artists over four hours to get Bautista to look like Drax, which was reduced to roughly three-and-a-half hours over the production period. His skin was made a grey-green hue—the character’s skin is bright green in the comics—to avoid comparisons with the Hulk. Experiments were done to ensure Saldana was the right shade of green, and Karen Gillan shaved her head to portray Nebula, in addition to wearing contact lenses and having facial prosthetics applied. Krystian Godlewski provided Groot’s movements on set, with Gunn’s brother Sean filling in for Rocket, who also delivered the raccoon’s lines on set. This gave the other actors something to work with, despite the characters being realised through CGI in post-production. Moving Picture Company were tasked with bringing Groot to life. Emphasis was placed in having the character retain his human qualities, enabling audiences to connect with him. His eyes were a particular focus, ensuring they could emote. Several types of wood were used in texturing the character,and moss added to parts of his body. The gun-totting Rocket would be created by Framestore. Concept art and real raccoons were used as reference, the design leaning towards realism and away from the exaggerated look the character has in the comics. Vin Diesel was officially confirmed by Marvel on 21 December 2013 to voice Groot. The Fast and the Furious (2001) actor also provided motion capture data. On 30 August of the same year it was announced that Bradley Cooper would voice Rocket. Cooper was filmed delivering his lines and his performance, in conjunction with Sean Gunn’s movements, was used when animating the digital Rocket. On 12 October 2013 James Gunn revealed via Twitter that filming had wrapped. Despite being seen as a risky move by some, Marvel’s band of misfit heroes would go on to become one of the highest grossing films of 2014, ranking third both domestically and globally. The superb selection of 60s and 70s tracks, performances, set design, visual effects, and witty dialogue all served to highlight a wonderful space-set tale in the vein of Star Wars (1977); who would have thought a tree with limited dialogue could elicit such emotional responses from viewers? It’s a pity that Ronan is underdeveloped and overshadowed by the Guardians themselves, but this unconventional galactic adventure remains fun despite of this. (An extract from Amazing Fantasies: A Guide to the Modern Marvel Movies.)

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