#and like yeah this is the most serious muppet film

[drdavidhuxley]

…how is Michael Caine’s performance hilarious? Like, when he attacks Bean Bunny with a wreath, that’s hilarious, but that’s about it. Oh and “How would the bookkeepers like to be UNEMPLOYED?” What part of his performance is supposed to be funny?

If they wanted to make a silly Christmas Carol, they would have. And there’s lots of silly things in the movie! But it’s also plaintive, and melancholy, and a tad creepy. Like yeah, it wouldn’t be a Muppet movie without humor, but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently silly because it’s populated with Muppets. Like…that’s not what this movie called for? Why wouldn’t Michael Caine perform the way he did? Those scary, sad moments wouldn’t hit properly if he acted like he was in a different movie. Like idk, people have a misunderstanding of The Muppets. And tone. And acting.

[4ln-stay8]

Getting caught

>summary: You and Lando are in a secret relationship and get caught making out

>author’s note: The last 2 ones were decent so I made another one… I still don’t know what Im doing

>warning: fluff ig

You were really excited about today. You friends, Max and Lando, invited you to join them on set where a new video will be made. You weren’t going to be in the actual video, but your friends thought it would be fun to have you on set with them.

You, Lando and Max were now navigating chaotically through the corridors of the Quadrant headquarters, the echoes of your laughter reflecting all the years of friendship between you.

Unbeknownst to your other friends, you and Lando shared a secret romance, carefully concealed beneath the veneer of your friendship. The decision of keeping things secret wasn’t really easy, but you were very concerned about Max finding out.

You always feared that one day the friendship all three of you had would come to an end due to your feelings about Lando.

Growing up, Max, who was like a brother to you, always warned both you and Lando that no one was allowed to get feelings for each other.

It was stupid if you think about it know but back then, back when you were kids, it was a serious deal. You somehow always thought that Max was still holding onto that rule you made when you were kids and the fear was getting to you.

You were often overthinking and when you and Lando got the guts to confess your crush on each other, things weren’t going great for you.

Your instant thought was about Max and the rule he made back then and the fear was getting the best of you. The fear of losing Max, the fear of being the reason Lando loses Max and the fear of losing Lando all came rushing to you.

Lando noticed you were stressed out so he promised you that all your fears would never come true. He suggested on keeping things secret and talking things slow and you’ll eventually find a way to tell your friends about it.

Now back to where we left off, the three of you finally made it to the room the set was placed. There, Ria, Aarav, Niran, Ethan and the quadrant filming crew were waiting for you to arrive.

“Oh thank God you’re here… I thought you wouldn’t make it” said Ria relieved that they won’t have to reschedule

“Oh please Ria, we were only 30 minutes late. We had to pick Y/N up and she took a lifetime to get ready” said Max teasing you and ruffling your hair

Lando burst into laughter at Max’s comment making everyone in the room laugh.

“Oh shut it you muppet! I didn’t took that long. We are late because Max is too short and can’t keep up” you said sticking your tongue out to Max causing him to roll his eyes.

The truth was that Max was slightly taller than you but that didn’t stopped you from joining everyone into teasing him about his height.

“We’re going to get ready to film, you can stay on that chair behind the cameras. It won’t take long” said Lando showing you a chair behind the sea of cameras. You just nodded and made your way to the chair.

Everyone was into their place ready to start the video. They were supposed to make two members teams and compete with each other. There were a set of tasks and the first team that finished the task got a point, the winner being the team with most points.

After filming for a while, it was time for lunch break. Everyone was trying to decide what they would get and from where to order some food.

During this chaos Lando find the time to come to you. He approached you and smiled sweetly when he got next to you.

“You hungry? Max is ordering some food for the team, you want something?” he asked you softly

“Yeah, I’ll get whatever you’re getting” you said smiling

“I’ll go tell Max. After that I’ll meet you in the hallway. Be subtle” he said quietly giving you a wink

You made sure that you left the set without being seen and you patiently waited for Lando to come. Once he was out of the room as well he took your hand and started to drag you after him. He finally found an empty meeting room and pulled you inside.

“What are we doing here Lan?” you asked confused

“I missed you so much! You look so beautiful today and I just couldn’t resist kissing you anymore” he softly whispered while looking at your lips leaning in.

His pink soft lips soon met yours, dancing in perfect sync. God how much you love his kisses. Timed stopped as both of you enjoyed each other! The soft kiss soon turned into a make out session. You just couldn’t resist each other.

As the rest of the crew took a breather, enjoying the food that now arrived, Max notice that something was missing, more like someone.

“Did you guys saw Lando and Y/n? Their food is getting cold” asked Max looking around the room for his friends

“I honestly haven’t seen them since we ordered the food” said Ethan shrugging his shoulders.

“Imma go look for them” Max quietly said before getting up and out the door.

After a while Max stumbled upon the clandestine rendezvous, eyes widening in disbelief at the sight of you and Lando entwined in a kiss. His heart raced, realizing that the unspoken tension between you was no secret to him alone.

Unbeknownst to both you and Lando, Max noticed your feelings for each other long before you even did. He was subtly trying to get you guys together without really intervening.

Max in a whirlwind of emotions, confronted the two of you, unleashing a torrent of words that had long been held back.

“You two? Since when?” He said confused not knowing when did this happened and why he didn’t picked on it.

Lando and Y/n pulled away in shocked now that their secret was exposed. They look at each other than back at Max trying to find the words.

“A few months” you whispered looking down trying not to start overthinking it again

“Fucking finally! I didn’t know how much I could keep hinting it out to you” said Max laughing

“Wait what?” said Lando confused at his friends confession

“You aren’t mad?” you asked him, concern written all over your face

“Why would I be mad? I knew you guys were in love with each other for years now… I was just waiting to see how much time it would take this muppet to finally grow a pair and ask you out” said Max laughing

“But the pact?” you asked confused

“You mean the one we made when we were like 8 and we thought that girls/boys were gross? Come on Y/n, you weren’t actually still worried about it, were you?” Max asked now serious

“Of course she was you muppet, you know how she gets when it comes to possibly upsetting one of us. Thats the only reason we hid our relationship for so long” said Lando slightly revolted while pulling you into a tight hug knowing how embarrassed you got.

It wad stupid to actually worry about something like this and you know it, but in all those years of befriending the two brits drivers you never joked about upsetting them.

You loved them a lot and simply the thought of them being mad at you got you all teary. Of course you were worried about that stupid pact, you didn’t know how Max was feeling about it and you weren’t ready to find out. It turns out that you were afraid of nothing all along.

“I’m sorry that I made you believe that you couldn’t tell me about it” said Max softly trying to find your gaze

“Im sorry I was stupid to still hold onto that pact we made” you said shyly

“Well y/n this muppet is still more stupid then you so its fine. Now come on, the food is getting cold” said Max laughing and causing both of you to laugh with him

All three of you went back to the set where all your other friends were waiting for you. You dropped the news to them as well while you, Lando and Max finished your food.

The Quadrant video continued, capturing not just the staged antics for the camera but the genuine bonds that held this group together. As the laughter echoed through the headquarters, you and Lando were no longer burdened by secrecy and walked hand in hand into the next chapter of your intertwined lives.

[the-monkey-ruler]

Who would you cast as who if there was a Muppets JTTW film and which character would be the token human?

Oooo I've had this conversation before! I remember cause there were so many options! Like maybe the token Sanzang human so that he just kidnapped by muppets would be funnier. Or the token Wujing human just cause he is in the background but the most serious the group could fit!

But I have decided that a Wukong played with a human would be the funniest option for several reasons. And Yes I am basing this on humor a lot as I believe the muppets are best when they are hilarious. I would have Wukong as the token human cast because he is the 'main character' so to speak and thus would have the most lines/emotional delivery that would be best by a human actor (like Muppet Treasure Island or with Christmas Carol) Also have a real martial artist play Wukong and fighting fucking muppet-yao would be the best. If I had to choose an actor I can't say I know a lot of martial artists actors (who aren't retired) but I thought Simu Liu did a great job in both action and performance so maybe him or someone with similar talent fighting wise.

Sanzang has to be Kermit. Like there is no other options really. Sure Kermit could also be Wujing but really who else could play that well-meaning if not also slighty-always-frustrated-and-please-stop-starting-shit attitude. Tell me this isn't Sanzang trying to tell off his three yao-disciples in the Ginseng Fruit arc to stop stealing shit.

I really think Kermit would bring that overall good nature that Sanzang deserves in a role while still showing his own flaws of being stubborn and exasperated. The mom-friend of the group barely kept it together and just Kermit taking being kidnapped by demons with a grain of salt. I love Kermit and think he deserves his time on screen.

Bajie has to Miss Piggy. I was thinking maybe Miss Piggy as Guanyin just for extra laughs of the Goddess of Mercy coming down and throat-chopping demons to help Wukong and the gang out but honestly, I feel like Miss Piggy deserves to be a bigger star. A woman that just wants to find love and will often let her selfish nature get in the way. Also I can see her being a great comedic duo always egging the human-Wukong on trying to get him in trouble. She is a diva and honestly would think her playing the gluttonous and lazy Bajie as more of a vain and selfish angle would still bring in big laughs.... also letting her throat chop literally anyone that messes with her.

Wujing would be Gonzo. I'll be honest this was kinda the hardest cause I think thinking Kermit for Wujing for so long but I think that the cannibal turned monk would be best by the most daredevil and gravity-defying member the Great Gonzo. Wujing doesn't get enough spotlight and seeing Gonzo, someone who often looks danger in the eye and welcomes it play such a role would be amazing. Gonzo always plays a great supporting role and I think he would bring a grounded air of nonchalance while still happily joining the wacky of hijinks that I think would portray Wujing nicely.

Honestly I was going to have Bailong just be a muppet horse (you know the ones) but honestly, it could just be funnier if it was Rizzo or something. Cause Rizzo REFUSING to join in any shenanigans out of his own free will cause he rather be sleeping/eating could be a hilarious explanation as to why Bailong isn't in most fights. Also might be easier than having Kermit on a muppet horse all the time, just having them walking. So yeah I think that would be solid.

Honorable mentions:

Fozzie Bear - Black Wind Demon, he didn't mean to steal, he thought that Cassok was free!

Rowlf the Dog - Erlang Shen AND Howling Sky Dog, trust me he makes it work

Scooter - Guanyin or Muzha, he just trying his best

Pepe the King Prawn - Ao Guang

Animal - The Jade Emporer

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (please extras) - the 8 immortals

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew - Laozi

Beaker - Furnace Assistant

Sam Eagle - Pagoda King Li

Statler and Waldorf - Every single Tudi

The Swedish Chef - Yellow Brow Demon (especially enjoys trying to cook Kermit-Sanzang)

And that is my thoughts at least! I hope that you like the ideas but I love heating what others think!

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: My Top Ten Muppets

Listeners of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour recently cast their votes to rank the best Muppets – an impossible decision, really. And yet, once the top ten list was read aloud on the podcast, I found myself completely unsurprised. It’s a list that made sense, a list of safe bets. It’s also an incredibly Muppet Show-heavy list, even though the competition was open to Muppets of all properties, including Sesame Street and my beloved Dark Crystal. The full top 25 list, available here, reveals that a few Sesame Street Muppets ranked in the teens, but still. We all know the top ten is where it’s at, and this top ten was neither creative nor representative. It struck me as a list of popular Muppets, not a list of the best Muppets. Most of my favorites weren’t on that list at all!

So, here’s my take on the ten best Muppets – and because I don’t believe in objective Muppet rankings, I want YOU to reblog this post and tell me your favorites!

10. Swedish Chef              

The Chef came in ninth on NPR’s rankings, and I gotta be honest, I’m on the same page with them on this one. Maybe it’s the fact that when he comes onscreen, there’s no way to predict how the sketch will end. Maybe it’s the bizarreness of human fingers on Muppet arms – and knowing that those arms indicate a frankly superhuman feat of teamwork going on under the table. Maybe it’s just the Popcorn video, which always brightens my mood. Whatever it is, the Swedish Chef is definitely tenth best.

9. Fozzie Bear

I like Fozzie. He’s an underdog, never giving up in his pursuit of fame and audience acclaim. And even though his whole shtick is that he can’t succeed – Statler and Waldorf always get bigger laughs during his bits – he objectively has succeeded, because he’s still around and making us laugh after all these years.

What puts Fozzie in the top ten for me, though, is that I genuinely find his jokes funny. Honestly. I really do. So maybe Fozzie Bear sketches don’t really work for me, but Fozzie Bear himself does.

8. Rosita

I mentioned my disappointment before in the “official” ranking’s lack of Sesame Street characters. Sure, the cast of The Muppet Show has had a notable cultural impact, but it would be a disservice to Muppetkind if we ignored the impact of their friends on Sesame Street.

I could never forget Rosita. She’s not the most popular Muppet; she’s never had a super catchy song or a roll-on-the-floor-laughing one-liner to rival the others’ success. But her “Spanish Word of the Day” segments have a permanent spot in my memory. She’s sweet, she’s sincere, and she’s an excellent friend to her more famous fellow Muppets. (And as a bilingual Muppet, she’s really hecking important – there’s an episode where she deals with some kids making fun of her accent, and it’s equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming!)

7. Rowlf

While other Muppets have one-note personalities – see number 10 on this list above, and number 5 below – there’s also Muppets like Rowlf. He’s not an “Anything Muppet,” by any means – he’s a character in his own right – but Rowlf is a dog who rises to any occasion. He sits at the piano to bring both beautiful classical pieces and hilarious parodies to life, and it’s all music to my ears. He can be the Straight Man to more chaotic Muppets’ antics, but just one clip of “Veterinarian’s Hospital” proves that he’s got enough silliness in him to take center stage.

And all the while, no matter what role he’s playing, he’s still that chill dog I adore – calm and adorable, with that round black nose, those big fluffy paws, and those floppy ears just begging to be scratched.

6. Deethra

As much as I love the original Dark Crystal film, the Netflix prequel series Age of Resistance has one big thing going for it: its characters. The protagonists of this show draw me in and make me care, quickly and continually. And best among them all is Deet. Deethra the Gelfling – small and beautiful, kind and powerful. She cares wholeheartedly about the world around her, and that care begets a wisdom that balances out her naivete in fascinating ways.

Muppets are so often silly, and we love them for it. But Deet embodies the Muppets’ potential to tell a serious story, a potential we would be remiss to ignore.

5. Animal

Oh my god, Animal. If you want to talk about the sheer silliness of Muppets, you need to talk about Animal. There’s just no way around it. He’s loud – in both sound and color scheme. And he’s absolutely bonkers. I know every drummer has an Animal in them, and it’s likely that all humans do. We’re just not all comfortable with letting him out to play.

That’s what’s so great about watching Animal do his thing. He has no inhibitions; he is freedom, he is chaos. And he lets me feel a little freer by association.

4. Hup

I talked a bit about underdogs in the Fozzie Bear section above. There’s an essay to be written about the Muppet as underdog; it’s an essential Muppet quality. Muppets are characters you logically wouldn’t expect to succeed, but they persevere, nonetheless.

Hup is the underdog of Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. He’s the Podling who wants to be a paladin. Dear god he’s adorable, dear god he’s funny, and dear god do you root for him (and his spoon) to save the day! Of all the characters in this show, he feels the most Muppety – and that’s why he’s higher on the list than Deet. He’s still a serious character in a serious story (when he cries… my goodness), but he’s got that classic Muppet spirit to him.

3. Elmo

You know, I just don’t get why Elmo gets such a bad rap. Is it that people think he’s annoying? Sure, he is! Muppets are objectively annoying characters – they all are. Yes, even the one you’re thinking of right now. But I fricking love Elmo. He’s joyful, he’s spirited, and he’s exploring the world around him in that carefree way only a child can – and he brings you along on that adventure! “Elmo’s World” is your world. “Elmo’s Song” is your song. Elmo’s laugh is fricking infectious. And yeah, I’m probably biased by nostalgia (my dad’s Elmo impression cracks me up to this day), but Elmo is a darn good Muppet and he deserves our respect and admiration.

2. SkekSil

On a completely different note… let’s talk about the Chamberlain. There aren’t really that many Muppet villains. There are plenty of Muppet henchmen, providing comic relief for a human actor who isn’t supposed to be seen as that much of a threat anyway. The Skeksis of Dark Crystal are a notable exception, and SkekSil, better known as the Chamberlain, stands out among them. He is evil and he is smart. I hate him, and at the same time, I am fascinated by him. He knows what he wants and how to get it, even though he’s nowhere near as strong as the other Skeksis. He is, in his own way, an underdog. He believes in himself, and he wields that confidence as a weapon, calmly explaining to his enemies why they should do what he wants. You just can’t look away. He’s an amazing character, embodying the dark side of Muppethood.

1. Cookie Monster

When my mom first shared that episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour with me, in which the hosts talked about their favorite Muppets, I first thought, “How could you decide?” And then Stephen Thompson said his favorite was Cookie Monster, and I shouted “YES!!!” out loud. Because he’s right – Cookie’s the best.

Cookie Monster is eternally funny, whether you’re five or fifty-five. Everything that comes out of his mouth is pure gold (“Why me not get royalties?”) He’s got the best songs – not only the classic “C is for Cookie,” but also “Me Want It (But Me Wait),” “Me Am What Me Am,” and the “Healthy Foods” rap. All the stuff I love about other Muppets on this list – the unpredictability, the ability to fit into any role a sketch requires, the lack of inhibitions, the confidence, the chaos, the unexpected moments of wisdom – he’s got it all. He’s irreplaceable, he’s lovable, and he’s the top of my Top Ten Muppets list.

[cooltrainererika]

Belated Halloween post! (Caution! FGO Character Spoilers!)

So here I am when I’m supposed to be submitting my final Hetalia stuff... But instead I show, publicly, that once and for all, I’ve fallen down the Fate rabbit hole and can’t get out. Last year was a Hetalia blowout, this year, I went all out with a Fate idea I’ve wanted to do for a long while. ...Unfortunately it dragged into the next day. Whelp.

So it’s (or was) Halloween at the Chaldea! And the Servants are dressing as... Themselves?

As someone who likes researching whatever she finds an excuse to research, I’ve had this idea since forever and I finally did it. Though there’s some ideas I still wanted to do but couldn’t (Galahad and Proto Arthur almost made it... Almost... And someday, Cù, someday...), I’m still proud of myself!

Sorry if characterization is a bit off, I’m a bit new.

King Arthur/Sonic (Sonic And The Black Knight)

I debated whether it should be Sonic or some other options, but Sonic it was, since it was most simple. ...And Artoria looks a lot less goofy than I expected here, and while that’s a bit disappointing it’s also kind of adorable. Maybe it helps that Lion Saber is a thing, and I used her as a reference, though I still wanted to go for a more comically serious effect and Lion Saber seems to be a child. Also it goes great with her green eyes. I want to do an entire set with Sonic and the Black Knight sometime! Maybe after Percival finally gets a design because he’s still AWOL. Wanted to draw the other clothing option in a different group shot, but I ended up spending way too much time on this so maybe some other time. ...Maybe after the other knights finally join. Though I can still do it without them. And maybe after Proto!Mordred finally gets a design, since yes that’s actually kind of relevant.

Sir Bedevere The Wise (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

No contest. While there’s also the simple fact that Bedivere seems to rarely show up in visual media, like, at all, I’ve gotta say, for an outfit out of a comedy movie, this costume looks so... graceful on Fate!Bedivere, and it’s one of the less goofy ones. Just by a different person being in it the whole feel of the outfit changes. Also he looks like an actual, honest-to-god knight instead of an anime JRPG fantasy knight. I love how he looks in it. It fits him like a glove.

...And yes, that is a coconut bucket. ...Maybe there’s a lot of Almond Joys in there? Because I’m one of those weird people who actually kind of likes Almond Joys. I wonder if candy makes clopping hoof noises as they rattle around.

Mordred (Excalibur (1981 film))

The punchline to the opening comic. Just... This thing is so amazingly, gloriously, deliciously gaudy. And it’s played completely seriously. When I saw it I KNEW I had to use it for this gag, because I can totally see Mordred having Lucina’s fashion sense. Between this and Bat-Nipples, did the 80s have something about nipples? But she looks... Surprisingly not-tacky in it? I guess it’s helped by the fact that at the moment my artstyle is pretty flat. It’s pretty hard to shade with colored pencils getting in the way... Or maybe it’s just the lack of helmet.

Sir Gawain (Prince Valiant)

Almost went with an Animal the Muppet hood due to Animal playing him in Muppet King Arthur, but couldn’t decide on the rest of the outfit and this was easier to draw and I wanted to see Gawain in this tunic. I wasn’t disappointed.

Sir Launcelot (King Arthur’s Disasters)

Lancelot’s hair was hell to draw. Seriously. But yeah I had a lot to sift through with Lancelot, then I found this. Lancelot looks surprisingly good with a fake mustache.

Sir Galahad (Camelot 3000)

Augh I wanted to draw you too Galahad... Oh well, have a Samurai Mashu. She looks surprisingly natural in it. But really, I want to make an entire set with Camelot 3000, the absurd premise produces results that were basically exactly what I was looking for.

Sir Tristan (円卓の騎士物語 燃���ろアー���ー/Moero Arthur)

An old, old Japanese cartoon. The joke was supposed to be this bulky armor on the usually relatively lightly-dressed Tristan, but he ended up in the back. Whelp.

Merlin (Merlin (2008 BBC series))

I’ve been seeing this series everywhere recently, so why not. It fits that Merlin is aged down over there, just like in Fate.

Sir Gareth (Iron Man comics)

Gareth barely shows up in visual media. But I saw this brightly-colored cameo that was apparently in a silver age Iron Man comic, and it was good enough. Though I didn’t draw the weird headpiece thing because I drew her last and I had little time. She unfortunately couldn’t fit on the page with the others.

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 Paramount film))

EEEEEE my waifu! Of course it’s only natural that the gothic horror duo/trio show themselves in a Halloween drawing. While the 1931 Jekyll doesn’t have an iconic outfit, much like most Jekylls, I decided to make his outfit grayscale, much like it looked on film, for uniqueness. It was actually one of my first ideas. This is why I didn’t use the white bow tie look that was seemingly used most often in posters. Though I guess, to him, he still isn’t really wearing a costume so much as just regular outdoor wear and the most unusual thing about it is that he’s wearing it indoors.

Mrs. Edwina Hyde (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde)

Yes, this movie exists. There’s an actual movie where Hyde gets Nyota’d. Seriously. There’s also a card game with a Nyo!Hyde, weirdly... But yeah, Hyde tends to get more interesting costumes than Jekyll, but in the end the most outrageous had the biggest advantage. Plus it’s a simple outfit, and she wields a knife, and it’s an excuse for Hyde to act all Femme Fatale-y, because I write him as basically a hetero Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel, so it was little contest. I drew him intending for him to be crossdressing, but it looks like this could plausibly be a Nyota Hyde lol.

Frankenstein (DC Comics)

Holy cow she rocks this outfit. In my style at least. Comics are a gold mine of unique outfits so I rely on them quite a bit. This outfit was taken from the character’s most recent depiction. From what I know, I have a hunch that DC Frankenstein would get along well with Fran.

Robin Hood (Robin Hood (Disney))

Ohhhh yes. One of the first concepts I came up with. Instead of going full fursit-lite like Artoria, I went with a simpler one, and I only realized after drawing a bit that there’s a bit of fanserice there too lol. His Servant design already reminded me so much of the Disney Robin Hood, and I HAD to see him in fox ears

Jeanne D’Arc/Tart (Puella Magi Tart Magica)

Jeanne has so many incarnations and clones, but I stuck with this simple but beautiful one from the Madoka series. The outfit kind of looks like a white palette swap of Artoria’s, but it’s different enough from Jeanne’s usual outfit unlike those like her SNK or Inazuma Eleven counterpart’s, and it suits Jeanne a lot. She looks great in white/pink, I’ve gotta say.

Joan of Arc (Clone High)

Was not expecting to do Alters, but there’s been some buzz around this show lately, and then I find out about her. After hearing “Goth Joan of Arc clone” I pretty immediately thought of Jalter. This is a Jalter counterpart. Change my mind.

[veryveryverytemporarily]

Christmas Midnight Memories...

‘I can’t believe you’ve done this to me! Who puts a coin in a Christmas pudding? I’m sure there are health and safety rules about it!’

‘Well, who fucking swallows it?’

Aaron was fuming and Robert was visibly agitated, his face sweating as he stood next to the hospital bed with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets.

‘You’re supposed to notice it and pull it out and make a wish for God’s sake. But no,’ Robert rolled his eyes skywards ‘… you have to throw food in your mouth and swallow it without chewing, as if you’ve been starved for the past century!’

‘Yeah, blame it on me why don’t you? It’s not a safe thing to do! And I’m the proof!’

‘It’s a tradition, Aaron. People have been doing this for five hundred years! You put silver in the Christmas pudding and it’s supposed to bring good luck and happiness, not misery and four hours in an emergency department.’

The nurse, wearing flashing Rudolf antlers, came up to them again.

‘This is the last time I’m going to say this. I will have to insist that you leave if you continue to argue, it’s disturbing to the other patients, some of whom are actually ill.’

Aaron was lying on the hospital bed waiting for an X-ray, feeling like a fraud. They’d told him on the phone that it would probably pass through his system, but when Robert had taken the phone forcibly from his hand and shared a stream of extraordinary potential things that could happen to him, from choking to appendicitis, they’d given in and agreed that probably they should come into the emergency department for an X-ray after all.

‘I don’t even like Christmas pudding. I only ate it cos you’d actually gone to the trouble of making it for us,’ he’d muttered.

They were disturbed by a sudden commotion as a Father Christmas, smelling of beer and with rather soggy beard, appeared and wandered down the ward, calling out, ‘Ho Ho Ho!’ as he came.

‘Fuck off Santa, can’t you see now’s not a good time?’ Robert raged, and Aaron closed his eyes.

‘And Merry Christmas to you, mate,’ he murmured.

It was their first Christmas ever together as a couple since they’d officially announced to the world that they were dating nine months ago. Robert, of course, had hoped to make it a romantic time and Aaron sort of understood why he was so mad, since everything had turned out so different from how he’d wanted. If there was one thing that Robert hated it was things going out of control. His control, that is.

Christmas Eve had been drinks at Diane and Doug’s with Andy, Vic, and Adam, but then Bernice had turned up with Lawrence, and they’d ended up winding each other up. Robert reckoned Lawrence was jealous that he was finally in an out relationship with a man (something he couldn’t have for himself).

Today, Christmas day, had been just as bad with the horror of a Dingle family dinner. After pulling crackers with Cain, Robert had been more than ready to leave.

Vic and Adam had booked a three-day Christmas break in the Lake District, leaving after Diane’s gathering so they had the house to themselves. Then Robert had served the literally flaming Christmas pudding, and disaster had struck.

When Aaron came back from the X-ray, Robert had calmed down. He’d got himself a coffee and Aaron a cup of watery tea from the vending machine as a peace offering.

‘Sorry, I think it might have gone a bit cold. Do you want me to get you another one?’ He put the drinks down on the bedside table and then reached over and took Aaron’s hands in both of his own, raising them to his lips.

‘Nah, you’re alright,’ Aaron said and squeezed Robert’s fingers back.

Eventually the doctor appeared holding the X-ray.

‘Well, this is interesting…,’ he started. Suddenly Robert stood up, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him further away.

Aaron watched Robert as he talked to the doctor with a furrowed brow, looking very serious. God, was there something really wrong with him that he didn’t know about? What was Robert saying, what was the doctor saying?

The doctor put the X-ray down on the counter and came to talk to Aaron,

‘So,' he said, ‘it looks like the object is leaving the stomach and entering the small intestine. It should pass through the system over the next 24 to 46 hours at the most. If you don’t find it after that, then you will need to come back for another X-ray.’

‘Find it?’ Aaron asked, looking pretty horrified.

‘Erm, yes, ‘the doctor replied. ‘I recommend prunes and a lot of water to get it through more quickly.’

‘I’ll help you look,’ Robert offered gently.

‘You’ll do no such thing, mate!’ Aaron snapped back at him.

‘Come on, I love you. It’s no big deal. It’s not as if I …’

Aaron stopped him, holding a finger up to his lips.

‘Enough. Just take me home!’ he sighed weakly.

 When they finally got back, Robert suggested a film to chill out.

‘What do you fancy then? The Avengers? The Man from U.N.C.L.E? Or we could just re-watch Torchwood?’ Robert loved Torchwood and of course secretly had a crush on Gareth David Lloyd who he thought looked very slightly like Aaron. Aaron also liked the romance scenes, but it wasn’t really his thing.

‘Why don’t we watch something Christmasy, eh?’

 ‘The Hobbit?’ Robert suggested. Aaron laughed and pulled him down onto the sofa for a kiss.

In the end, they watched a bit of the Muppets Christmas Carol, but when Aaron suggested they went to bed, instead, Robert grinned and allowed himself to be led up the stairs.

Once in the bedroom they undressed quickly and started to kiss.

‘This was more of the Christmas I’d had in mind,’ Robert said in a low voice and, pushing Aaron backwards, he kissed a path slowly down from his chest to his stomach before moving completely down and shuffling between Aaron’s thighs, where he started to lick around his hole in the way that he knew brought Aaron close to the edge.

But instead of the blissed out reaction he was accustomed to, all at once, Aaron pulled him up forcibly, grabbing a fist full of the blond hair that Robert had left to grow long for the winter.

Robert looked at him, still panting lustfully, and pushed his fingers down between Aaron’s arse cheeks instead, but Aaron grabbed his hand and slapped him away too, so that Robert lay back on the bed and started laughing, putting his hands behind his head.

‘Aaron, I’m just trying to make love to you!’ he protested.

‘I know. But it’s ruined now. All I can think about is where that flaming silver coin might be.’

‘Wh… what?’ Robert looked sideways at him.

‘It’s just messed with my head, that’s all.’

‘OK. Then let’s make this simple.’ Robert lowered his eye lids and put his head slightly on one side ‘Let me give you a Christmas blow job.’

Aaron rolled onto his side propped up on an elbow and looked down at Robert’s wet red lips. ‘Or I’ll give you one.’ He smiled.

‘Sixty-nine?’ Robert raised his eyebrows.

‘No, cos you’ll just start fingering me.’

Aaron ran a finger over the soft curve of Robert’s exposed arm pit, pinching some of the short blond hair there with the intention of causing pain.

‘Ouch!’ Robert grabbed his hand and went on, ‘Just trust me, Aaron, won’t you?’

Robert swiveled round on the bed so he was upside down and Aaron grabbed his thighs and slapped his firm white arse.

‘I’ll trust you, Sugden, when you stop talking and start sucking!’ Aaron ventured.

So, Robert grinned and did as he was told.

It was early hours on Boxing Day when Robert was woken by Aaron, clutching at his stomach, bent double and sweating. He was obviously in trouble.

‘Oh my God! What have I done?’ Robert asked, hastily pulling on trousers and a sweater. He very gently steered Aaron to the edge of the bed and dressed him, listening to him whimper with pain. ‘It’s OK Aaron, you’re going to be OK!’ He muttered tenderly.

Robert got caught by the speed cameras on the way to the hospital but he didn’t care.

After another X-ray, the doctor explained that the object had got caught in a small pocket of intestine. There would be no alternative but surgery, but fortunately it would be keyhole so recovery would be fast and it would leave hardly any scarring. Aaron and Robert raised their eyes at each other at the mention of scarring and Robert took Aaron’s hand and squeezed it gently. He knew how sensitive Aaron was about the scars on his body, he didn’t need any more to remind him of those painful memories.

Before Aaron went into surgery, Robert kissed him.

‘This is my fault. I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I love you, Aaron!’ he called after him as he was wheeled away down the corridor and out of sight.

***

Aaron blinked his eyes and registered the flashing lights he could see were coming from the fairy lights on a Christmas tree at the corner of the ward.

He felt Robert’s lips on his forehead.

‘Heh. There you are, then! You look so sexy in a gown! We should ask to take it home as a souvenir, for role play!’ He heard him say.

‘Is that all you ever think about?’ he grumbled in reply. His voice sounded hoarse from the effects of the anesthetic.

‘Mostly. Where you’re concerned.’

Aaron finally looked at Robert as his face came fully into focus. When he saw Robert’s genuine smile, he couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Your Mum’s here, and Paddy,’ Robert said. ‘Please don’t tell them this was my fault, if you ever want to see me alive again.’

Robert left them to it. While he was waiting, the nurse approached him with a small plastic container.

‘I believe this belongs to Mr. Dingle? But you probably want to give it to him yourself.’ He smiled at Robert. ‘We washed it with alcohol, so it’s quite clean now,’ he went on. ‘Do you know what he’s going to say?’

‘Absolutely no idea.’ Robert smiled back at the nurse, running a hand through his hair.

Eventually Chas and Paddy left. Robert resumed his position at Aaron’s bedside table. Aaron could hear him breathing heavily.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, always tuned into Robert’s state of mind.

Robert was nervous, but why?

‘So, here it is.’ Robert pulled a plastic box out of his pocket and rattled it, then offered it forward to Aaron, who scoffed and looked away.

‘Well, aren’t you going to look at it, then?’

‘Why would I? It’s just a coin that caused me a lot of grief, mate.’

‘Well,’ Robert lost his patience. ‘Go on; look at it anyway.’

Aaron looked closely at Robert’s face and took the box, then opened it. As his eyes adjusted, he shook his head in confusion.

‘It’s, it’s not a coin…,’ he mumbled.

Robert nodded in agreement, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his heart raced.

‘It’s…, it’s a ring.’

‘It’s a ring.’ Robert repeated.

‘Why’s it black? Is that cos it was…,’ Aaron gestured to his stomach.

‘No, it’s black silver.’

Aaron looked closer at the circular band; it was encrusted with small diamonds all the way round. It was masculine and plain, but stunningly beautiful.

‘Are they … diamonds?’

‘Yes, because, you know what diamond rings are for?’ Robert answered swallowing.

Aaron looked straight into his eyes.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly, biting his bottom lip.

Robert went down on one knee by the bed, and took Aaron’s hand.

‘From the day we first kissed I knew that you were the one, the only one. Aaron, you are my soulmate, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me? Aaron, will you marry me?’

Aaron eyes were welling with tears that spilled down his cheeks.

‘You know my answer. And you know you can’t buy me. I don’t want your poxy diamond ring!’

Robert sighed.

‘You’re right.’

He took the ring and threw it in the trash in the corner of the cubicle. Fishing in his pocket he pulled out a plastic ring and looked at it.

‘This came out of the cracker I shared with Cain yesterday. This do you?’

Aaron grinned through his tears and took it, wrapping his fist around it.

‘Yes.’ His blue eyes shone as he looked at Robert. ‘My answer, you Muppet, is yes.’

‘Really?’

Robert kissed Aaron so long and so hard that the nurse approached them.

‘I will have to insist that you leave if you continue this, it’s over stimulating to the other patients, some of whom are, actually, quite ill.’

The next day Robert came to take Aaron home. Aaron was dressed and waiting. He showed Robert the contents of the sports bag: There was the hospital gown folded neatly, ready to take home for role play time.

‘Yes! Well done, Aaron!’ Robert winked. Then all at once he noticed something. He picked up Aaron’s left hand and looked at his second finger. It was adorned with a beautiful black silver band encrusted with diamonds.

‘Yeah, well.’ Aaron winked. ‘I figured it would last longer than the other one.’

‘All our lives.’ Robert answered with a smug grin and kissed him softly. He picked up the sports bag and took Aaron’s hand as they left the ward together to go home.

Santa was on his rounds again, looking rather pale and exhausted.

‘Merry Christmas!’ Robert nodded as they passed on their way out.

***

‘I’ll be the doctor and you be the patient.’

‘No, I’ll be the doctor and you’ll be the patient, mate. I was the patient last time, if you remember?’

Adam banged on the wall.

‘You’ll both be bloody patients in a minute, if you don’t shut it. The sooner you get married and out of this house the better!’

Robert and Aaron looked at each other and stretched their eyes, grinning guiltily.

‘Okay, you be the doctor.’ They both whispered together. ‘No, you….’

[tlbodine]

Unintentionally Hilarious Creature Features of the 1980s

As we’ve discussed, the 1980s were a time where capitalism ramped up faster and harder than ever before. Thanks to home video distribution and the growing popularity of the franchise, the demand for horror films was high, and people were happy to fill that demand with often, uh, questionable movies. 

We watched a pair of those last night. 

Rats: Night of Terror (1983)

This movie is spectacularly, wonderfully terrible. 

Directed by  Bruno Mattei, an Italian filmmaker known for a very robust career of high-cheese awful films, Rats delivers an unintentionally hilarious spin on what would, on paper, be a pretty fascinating concept. 

A couple hundred years after atomic devastation renders the world an inhospitable wasteland, a biker gang of punks comes rolling into a city in search of supplies. They find them -- but unfortunately, their safe haven is also infested with a teeming horde of monstrously hungry and intelligent rats! 

This actually sounds extremely good, right? Well, it would be, except: 

The costuming and acting and...honestly the whole vibe of the film resemble over-eager LARP more than a movie. Seriously, if you got a group of self-serious post-apocalyptic LARPers together and filmed their hijinks as they tried to blunder through a story led by an inexperienced DM, you would get this movie. 

The characters have names like Lucifer, Taurus and Chocolate (she’s the token black character, who is also the badass action chick, because that stereotype flourished in this era). 

One of the characters is wearing a thong body suit and a cape. For no particular reason. Just....hang on, you need a visual aid for this movie. 

Mad Max called. It wants its aesthetic back. 

The film is Italian, but we watched it -- as most of the world did in 1983 -- dubbed. The dubbing is not very good. I’m also not entirely certain if the voice actors were actually given a script or if they just sort of watched the movie and ad-libbed, bad lipreading style. I kind of hope it’s the latter. 

The rats, our vile enemies! Are. I mean. First off, I guess in order to make them scarier (oooh red eyes evil!) instead of using actual black rats, they instead used white rats that had been....dyed? rolled in charcoal? unclear. The result is that in every scene, the rats -- which are supposed to be viciously threatening, you understand -- are mostly just sitting there grooming themselves trying to get this nasty shit off. One of the rats has succeeded in giving himself an all-white head and they just leave him that way in the footage. Maybe he’s the leader. 

Since the rats themselves are a bit too preoccupied to be terrifying, the film crew relies instead on...pretty much just flinging them from off-camera. Characters going about their lives will quite suddenly have a rat just chucked at them, or a whole bucket full of them dropped from overhead. 

Nature’s most perfect killing machines. 

There’s some cheesy gore sequences, including a memorable effect of a rat climbing out through the mouth of a corpse, and none of these are very well-done, which I’m sure must surprise you. There’s also a wonderful twist ending, which I won’t spoil for you just in case you want to go enjoy this spectacular cheese-fest for yourself. Honestly, this movie is a treasure and one of the best I’ve seen for the MST3K treatment. Hop into a discord chat and stream this with your buddy and have a wonderful time just straight-up roasting it. Good belly laughs for the soul. 

Our second film of the night was Uninvited (1987)

Written, produced and directed by  Greydon Clark as a direct-to-video horror, Uninvited tells the story of a mutant cat that escapes the laboratory where it’s been experimented on and ends up on a yacht with a criminal and a group of unsuspecting college students. 

....yeah. 

Uninvited isn’t nearly as much fun as Rats because it sadly takes itself a bit more seriously. So not only is it bad, it’s boring, which is unfortunate. It does, however, have just. The best possible effects. 

So this mutant cat doesn’t just attack, oh no! Instead, it opens its mouth, and the real mutant cat just...emerges from inside, to crawl around and attack people viciously. In the right hands, this concept would actually be really horrifying! In reality, uh...

Ma’am, is that a muppet bursting out of the mouth of a plushie? 

Yes. Yes it is. 

What...what even...I mean, why though? Also, wait, that last panel reminds me of something, what could it be....

Perfect. 

Anyway. You have my permission to skip Uninvited. Aside from its thoroughly meme-worthy, deeply entertaining transformation effects, the movie is dull garbage. 

Three weeks in and almost every film of the 1980s we’ve seen (with the sole exception of Body Snatchers) has been unintentionally hilarious (or intentionally hilarious). The comedy potential of the horror genre really does get explored to its greatest capacity in this decade, for better or worse. 

We’ll watch some real scary movies in this decade soon, I promise. 

[zanesgirlfriend]

Podcast Room | Jeff Wittek

Description: Y/n takes Erin's place in the 'eat my pussy' bit and Jeff really wants to.

Requested?: Yes by anonymous : maybe you could do one like the erin bit in the new vlog but with y/n instead of erin.

A/N: ive typed and read the word pussy way too many times now lmao but i loved this ugh thank you for requesting it ily

_____

"Can you come to the car with me for a minute?" David asked her. She was instantly nervous.

"I don't know what you're doing but I don't like it." She said as she stood up off of the couch and followed him outside.

"Don't worry I'm not giving you another car." He joked with her as they climbed into his Tesla.

"I would actually like another car, it's the fact that I'm not getting a car that's making me nervous." She watched as he adjusted the camera to fit both of them in the frame.

"Stop worrying, I just wanna ask you a question." David's smile filled his face and she could tell he was about to say something stupid.

"Okay?" She responded, waiting for him to ask her the question.

"Can I have your pussy?" David sounded serious. Y/n was just confused about what the 22 year old was asking her.

"What do you mean have it? Like, am I supposed to just take it off and give it to you?" She giggled, David laughed as well.

"Like, can I taste your pussy?" David was laughing through his words, and so was y/n.

"You're more like a little brother to me. Sorry, David." She was still trying to figure out what was up. David reached down between her legs and under her seat. She freaked out for a second as she wondered what he was reaching for.

"No, I meant this pussy." David's laugh echoed through the car as he showed her an energy drink with the word 'pussy' on it.

"What, are you twelve or something?" She took the can from him and he did his stupid little muppet dive. "Where did you get this?" She attempted to read the rest of the label, but none of it was in English.

"Natalie ordered it for me." He kept laughing and she just smiled at her idiotic friend. "I wanna try it on Erin now, can you get in the back?" He asked and put the can back under her seat.

"Yeah." She opened the door and exited the car. David brought Erin into the car and asked her the same question. Erin laughed and reminded him that she was engaged and the three of them laughed even harder. They went through the same thing with Carly and the four of them continued to make jokes for a few minutes.

"Everybody's gonna go nuts when they hear David asking to eat our pussies." Y/n joked and everyone laughed.

"The amount of fan-fiction that people will write about this bit is gonna be insane." Carly added.

"Which one of you wants to do this to the boys?" David asked the car.

"I'm not doing it, I can't act for shit." Carly placed a hand on her chest as she eliminated herself.

"Well, y/n is the only single one here, so the boys are more likely to say yes." Erin pointed out.

"Oh, yeah, thats funnier. Y/n, can you do it?" David turned around in his seat and looked at her.

"Uh, yeah, I'll try not to laugh too hard." She was already giggling just thinking about it.

"Okay, we're gonna be filming in here and I'm gonna leave, what are you gonna say?" He looked her in the eye with a childish grin on his face as she said it.

"Do you wanna taste my pussy?" Her acting sounded convincing, and she held it in as long as possible before laughing.

"That's great! Okay, I'm gonna put the drink in the side of this door, and you're gonna sit here." David explained how everything would work and they switched seats. Carly and Erin went inside and sent Josh out to the car.

"Why are you in the driver's seat?" Josh asked as he climbed into the passengers seat. David poked his head between the seats and answered.

"I wanted to be in between you two so I'm in the middle of the frame." David started more conversation as if this was a regular car bit and then he made an excuse to leave. He muttered something about boxes and then it was just y/n and Josh Peck. It was silent for a few minutes, y/n was nervous but excited. Josh just looked at his phone until she had the courage to ask him.

"Hey, Josh, can I ask you something?" She looked at him and watched him lock his phone.

"Yeah, sure." He turned to her, studying her face for a moment.

"Do you wanna taste my pussy?" She did everything she could not to laugh. "I mean, I know you're married and all, but still." The air was thick and awkward between them.

"I also have a kid, but yes." Josh replied, confusing her greatly. They were both instantly judging eachother very quickly.

"Really?" She asked.

"Yeah, its cool." He waited for a moment before adding "You know that camera is recording, right? David's gonna love this for the vlog."

"Shit." Her acting kept getting better. "I didn't think it was recording. Tomorrow is Valentine's and. . ." She reached down into the door as she spoke and grabbed the drink. ". . . I would love for you to taste my pussy." She turned the can to show Josh. He started laughing and David ran out of the house and hopped in the car again.

"That was really uncomfortable." Josh went over his thoughts with David and then they reset the prank and did it again with Casey. He also said yes, but he knew she was kidding and played along. Y/n was most nervous for the next person.

Y/n and Jeff were pretty close. They mildly flirted a lot and spent a lot of time together hanging out. The fans shipped them and they both knew they liked eachother, but they refused to acknowledge it. Jeff got in the car with David and they all made conversation until David used his stupid excuse to leave.

"You look really good today." Jeff said to her. She blushed as looked at him.

"Thank you." She smiled and looked down at her legs, quiet for a moment. "Hey, can I ask you something?" She turned to face him completely.

"Yeah, of course." Jeff furrowed his brow for a split second and wondered what she was about to say.

"Do you wanna eat my pussy?" She asked. She realized she said eat instead of taste and was kind of embarrassed. She really did want him to eat her out. Jeff's face went through a few different expressions before it landed on a soft smile.

"What? When?" His voice sounded amused as he asked for clarity. He made a cute high pitched giggle while she responded.

"I don't know, whenever you want? Valentine's day is tomorrow and we're both single so. . ." She left her response open-ended, only slightly acting now.

"Could I try the lips on your face first?" He asked her, catching her completely off-guard.

"I mean, yeah, but. . ." She reached for the drink in the door, but before she could show it to him he grabbed her face with his hands. He pulled her head towards his and connected their lips. They molded together nicely and her nerves lit up as he lightly bit her bottom lip. They pulled away and she held the drink towards him.

"What is that?" He asked. She turned the label towards him so he could read it.

"My pussy." She started to laugh, but she was still astounded by what had just happened. David, Carly, and Erin had watched from the door, and all of their jaws were still dropped from what they'd seen.

"Oh, shit." Jeff looked at the camera as he realized what had just happened. "I forgot it was on." He pointed at the camera as he looked at her.

"Yeah, it was just a bit for the vlog." She smiled as David walked up to the car.

"I don't think I can use that in the vlog." David chuckled as he sat in the back seat.

"My bad." Jeff was awkwardly silent, making y/n's heart sink a little bit.

They reset the bit and did it one more time with Dom. It went as expected even though y/n was still thinking about Jeff and the feeling of his lips on hers. Once she finally got to go inside she noticed Jeff staring at her very intently. The whole group hung out for a little while longer but nobody mentioned the kiss. Nobody paid attention to Jeff as he walked up to y/n.

"I still do wanna eat your pussy." He whispered into her ear. She instantly felt tingles and butterflies when she heard the word pussy in his accent. Later in the afternoon the two of them slipped away into the podcast room, away from everybody else.

"Where did Y/n and Jeff go?" Carly asked the rest of the group.

"I think they went in the podcast room, I heard something in there when I went to get my charger from my room." David explained. Carly and Erin nodded, but Jason hadn't heard about their kiss yet and was very confused.

"Why did they go in there?" Jason asked.

"Jeff probably went in there to eat her pussy." Erin joked. David did a muppet dive into the couch as he laughed.

[ramblingguy54]

26, 29, 30, 36?

*cracks knuckles*Alright, let’s do this.

26: The late Robin Williams & Hayao Miyazaki are two particular people in my life I’ve idolized for what happiness/imagination they’ve brought into others lives. Robin Williams untimely passing still hurts for me to look back on because this man made it his mission to bring so much joy into other peoples lives through his acting on the big screen, whether it was dramatic or comedic. That’s what I found the most impressive about Robin’s range in acting. He could be an over the top funny individual, but Robin’s acting chops were in a league of their own. Whether he was behind the microphone having the time of his life as Genie on Aladdin or giving a powerful dramatic performance on Good Will Hunting as Will’s therapist, I could feel the unconditional kindness. There was something about Robin’s acting power that would usually manage to reel me in. Even if I never knew him in real life, obviously, this man just radiated with so much kindness that I felt from his entire presence on screen. It’s seriously unfortunate what became of Robin Williams in the end with his unexpected death, but his legacy has inspired me to be kinder to others in real life. As for Hayao Miyazaki, this guy is a huge factor in why I got into loving anime related stuff all the more, as his creations in storytelling and the art itself for the movies were beyond unlike anything I still have yet to seen be topped quite frankly. It’s so easy for me to get emotionally lost in his films like My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Castle In The Sky, and Spirited Away. This man never ceases to amaze me with how usually impactful and in depth his films are. They’re so full life that it’s easy to lose sight of whats happening in the actual story at times. Mayazaki understood how to breathe a ton of humanity into creating such resonating works of fiction. Have a much greater appreciation for them in my adult years. There’s a reason why they inspired companies, like Pixar, to create immersive stories of their own.

29: Favorite films range from Zootopia, Wreck It Ralph, M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, Aladdin (1992), The Secret Of NIMH, The Lion King (1994), The Incredibles, UP, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Inside Out, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2, How To Train Your Dragon Trilogy, Toy Story 1-4, The Great Mouse Detective, Lilo & Stitch, The Emperors New Groove, A Goofy Movie, Good Will Hunting, The Fox And The Hound, The Land Before Time, The Brave Little Toaster, Frozen, Shrek 1 & 2, Coraline, Paranorman, Kubo And The Two Strings, The Muppets (2011), Princess Mononoke, Castle In The Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Summer Wars, Beauty and the Beast (1991), Winnie The Pooh (1977 & 2011 iterations.), The Peanuts Movie, The Princess And The Frog, The Jungle Book (2016), Scooby Doo On Zombie Island, Harry Potters’ 1-7, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, Wonder Woman, Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 1 & 2, The Black Panther, Thor & Thor Ragnorok, The Avengers, Avengers Infinity War & Endgame, Spiderman Into the Spiderverse, Captain America Trilogy, Iron Man Trilogy, Star Wars Episodes 4-8, and The Breakfast Club to stop this list from getting any longer. =P

30: Favorite TV shows range from Cowboy Bebop, Avatar The Last Airbender, Yu Yu Hakusho, Digimon Adventure 01 & Tamers, Teen Titans (2003), Batman The Animated Series, Ed, Edd,& Eddy, Samurai Jack, Courage The Cowardly Dog, The Powerpuff Girls (Screw that garbage reboot.), Chowder, Bojack Horseman, DuckTales (1987), DuckTales (2017), Gravity Falls, Code Geass (This series has shaky writing in a number of areas, but that ending was beautiful.), Amphibia, Steven Universe, Oban Star Racers, Made In Abyss, Stranger Things, Gargoyles, My Hero Academia, Naruto (I’ve got a soft spot for this series despite my MANY problems with its story later on.), Pokemon (Serious nostalgia overload!), Dragonball Z (My very first anime series I got into through the Toonami block. A real shocker I know. LOL!), Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, The Promised Neverland, Death Note, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, Sonic SatAM, Talespin, Darkwing Duck, The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy, Robot Chicken, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Kim Possible, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and Fullmetal Alchemist (2003).

36: My three dream scenarios I’d like to fulfill? 

1: Become A Voice Actor

Been interested in voice acting since I was a young teen, but have been in a conflicted state over these recent passing years in my life on whether or not I’d like to approach that route. There’s a lot of commitment I’d have to put into auditioning my butt off for roles I may or not get. Then comes the consistent practicing to keep my vocal chords in shape, so I don’t get rusty whatsoever. The industry for this kind of job can be hard to get recognized in too by how many other notable well known VA’s there are already. Not to mention, from what I’ve researched up on being a voice actor doesn’t bring in the money naturally, as it’s more of a passion job which that’s terrific and all, but if I want to partake in this profession I’ll have to juggle a job along with that which putting all those factors in my head honestly makes me intimidated. Ahhh well, it’s just something I’ll have to wait and see on if I can make that idea into a reality or not. No need to rush myself, of course.

2: Taking Up The Mantle Of Reviewing Shows & Films For A Living

Fiction, just like for many people, has been a great deal of helping me in my life moments of stress, solitude, depression, and anger. I’d love nothing more than to further express that to anyone out there in reviewing in great detail certain films or shows that I’ve come to love over these years in my life so far. Mostly for animation though, as its been a gateway for finding many gems of quality films or series. It never ceases to surprise me on how creative and powerful animation can be with its inventive ways of getting me to become an emotional mess. While I do enjoy live action series and films they pale in comparison to the beauty animation has brought into my life, since my early childhood of watching shows on Cartoon Network, Toon Disney, and Nickelodeon to a smaller degree. I’d like to think I’m good enough with how I present my reasons on why I feel so strongly connected to these stories showcasing characters trying to find hope in their own hard times. I try my hardest to take moments of my own life and find ways to connect it with whatever story I’m getting into next, so it can be all the more a special experience for myself. It’s important to put whatever character resonates with you most in their shoes for why you feel their emotional journey connecting with your own life on every conceivable level possible. That will make it when you write these kinds of reviews a very empowering read for others to feel either heard in their own feelings or simply giving others a new perspective to consider on this piece of fiction you’re discussing. Seeing some of my own particular analytical posts in the past here on Tumblr garner some attention from people gives me a boost of feeling better about potentially making this choice.

3: Starting A Family Of My Own…?

I can’t begin to tell ya how many times I’ve gone back and forth for getting married in the distant future to become a father has sped through my mind. On one hand, it scares the crap out of me to be taking up that big of a responsibility. However, on the other hand its deeply fascinated me emotionally of creating life through love for your significant other in starting your own family tree. I’d love to be able to raise kids of my own to pass on the lessons I’ve learned in life to make them become better people in the distant future, while showering them with unconditional love and affection. That would fill me up with such an indescribable joyous feeling to hear their own dreams and desires on what they want to accomplish in life. While I’d be a strict parent, I wouldn’t be a hard headed one quick to dismiss their own complaints if they had problems with how I handled things, once they start to get older. The kind of parent I’d want to be is an understanding open minded one who doesn’t judge their son or daughter for when they have an issue with me. Just because I’m a parent in that scenario doesn’t put me on a pedestal of immunity from criticism. Granted, I certainly don’t want to be a doormat for them to try taking advantage of either, but it’s also important to not let your parental role go to your head, too.

Although, I don’t plan on even trying to make this last dream of mine happen anytime soon. This is something that is MUCH later down the road that I wish to have happen. However, I won’t lie and say that I haven’t considered just staying content as a single guy for the rest of my life relying on close friends to bring me joy equivalent to this dream. While I adore the concept of creating life through love and being a father, there’s a shit ton of responsibility that comes with it. The life of a parent is not just putting your all into it. You gotta give more than just 100% when wanting to be a parent. It’s a serious test of your spiritual endurance, which I’m not sure is something I’ll ever have the courage to do, but then again things can change in life on the flip of a dime, so I’ll see how this all plays out for myself. Maybe I’ll stay happily single or I’ll happily be raising kids.

Gee, I wonder why this dream of being a parent resurfaced in my head recently this year? Oh yeah, it was thanks to this character here.

Seriously, Della Duck holds a real special place in my heart for making me feel these kind of feelings yet again. Darn you space mom! LOL.

Thanks for the ask, man.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: The Happytime Murders/Meet the Feebles

Puppets are fucking awesome. There’s really no bones about it, puppets really help make every film they’re in a little better by being the coolest practical effects out there. Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Little Shop of Horrors… Hell, Yoda is in the best Star Wars movie, and guess what he is? A motherfucking puppet. And don’t even get me started on the Muppets, everything they touch turns to gold. Except The Wizard of Oz. And aliens.

What I’m getting at here is it’s really hard to make a shitty movie with puppets, because there’s so much skill and detail in pulling off puppet work that it’s not something you can really half-ass, so even the dumbest movie with puppets tends to be at least moderately entertaining. Which brings us to the first of tonight’s films: The Happytime Murders. Directed by Jim Henson’s son Brian and stuck in development hell for years, this movie was set to bring the world a hard-R rated movie starring puppets, something that had been done before of course, but not by The Jim Henson Company. Unfortunately, critics and audiences were not impressed, and to really illustrate why, I think it’s time to finally discuss a movie I should have brought up long ago, the movie that can most easily be seen as the spiritual precursor to this one: Meet the Feebles.

In 1989, Peter Jackson (yes, THAT Peter Jackson) set out to make a satire of human behavior… but also parody The Muppet Show. To the world, he delivered one of the most depraved, disgusting, and incredible works of puppet-based mayhem humanity could ever hope to see. Hardly a minute goes by without something gross, excessive, or over-the-top happening, and it’s all surrounding a bunch of drugged-up, sex addicted, crazy-ass puppets. So, yeah, The Happytime Murders was about 30 years late to the party, but was it really so bad? And how does Jackson’s film show the issues with Henson’s?

So let me just state up front here: I think The Happytime Murders is a decent film. It’s not mind-blowing, but there’s a lot of great puppet work done here, it builds up a really interesting world, and Bill Baretta’s Phil Phillips and Melissa McCarthy’s character actually play off of each other fairly well. Basically, whenever the movie is treating its subject matter with some degree of seriousness, even if it dips a little into black comedy, it works. The original concept for the film would have had this movie as a serious crime drama that happened to star puppets, and I think if they went with that it would have been amazing, but after so long in development hell it was retooled into being more comedic. Which would be fine; buddy cop comedies are usually enjoyable, right?

But its comedy has a real problem, and it’s the same problem Sausage Party had: too much of the humor in the film boils down to “Haha, look at this puppet say FUCK! Look at these puppets doing DRUGS! Hahaha, this puppet is CUMMING EVERYWHERE, isn’t that ZAAAAAAAAAANY?!” The entire joke for a lot of the movie is just the mere novelty that these puppets, things not often associated with swearing, shitting, cumming, drugs, incest, and so on, are doing all of those things, much as a lot of Sausage Party’s novelty was “Wow, look at these animated characters say FUCK!” The film ends up being too crass and too lowbrow at points, and it kind of muddles things. Like it wants to be serious but it also wants to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of humor, and it just seems tonally inconsistent.

Compare to Meet the Feebles, which practically revels in how depraved it is from the word go. Right off the bat we have a walrus fucking a cat, and the movie refuses to pull any punches from there. We have drug addiction, death, gang wars, puppets eating other puppets, puppets eating shit, puppets having drug-induced Vietnam war flashbacks where they were forced to play Russian Roulette by cringeworthy racist caricature cats, nasty puppet pornos, and all of it culminates in a fox singing a song about sodomy on a family variety show followed by a bloody mass shootout that leaves multiple people dead. The movie does not let up on being as sick and freaky as possible, and there isn’t a single minute that goes by where you won’t be questioning your sanity and Peter Jackson’s sanity.

But that’s the beauty of it; Meet the Feebles is never trying to aspire to be anything more than what it is. It wants to be this trashy, shit-coated look at the human condition, this sort of gory grindhouse trashterpiece. It almost feels like Jackson was deliberately shooting for the cult audience this movie would eventually gain, knowing that even if only a small number of people appreciated the message he was conveying, it would be worth it. And frankly that just makes the film feel far more honest and sincere than The Happytime Murders, and frankly I do not use the phrase “honest and sincere” to describe a film where a paparazzi fly literally eats a pile of shit lightly.

Basically, what this all boils down to is an identity crisis. The Happytime Murders tries to have its cake and eat it too, to be a serious crime drama and a juvenile comedy riding off of the novelty of puppets swearing and fucking. Meet the Feebles, on the other hand, just completely blasts off with the novelty right off the bat and somehow keeps finding ways to go further and further over the top; it knows what it wants to do, and by god it’s gonna do it. Meet the Feebles is proud of itself, and frankly it should be. Not many movies can claim to be so committed and self-sure as a movie that ends with a hippo puppet gunning down her coworkers in a fit of rage.

I definitely think both movies are worth a watch, though Meet the Feebles definitely moreso, especially if you like nasty, grimy, trashy films or just want to see where Jackson got his start, as this was his second film ever and in what I like to call the “Bad Taste Trilogy,” my grouping of his otherwise unconnected first three incredibly gory cult films. The Happytime Murders is definitely worth a watch if you don’t mind more juvenile humor; the earlier comparison to Sausage Party definitely works, because I feel mostly the same about it. It’s got some good, solid moments and a fun character dynamic between the leads, so if you like that sort of thing, love puppets, and don’t mind stupid lowbrow humor now and then, you might get a kick out of it.

Frankly, I think most of the problems The Happytime Murders has could easily be rectified if it got a sequel or even a spinoff set in the same world. There’s a lot of good ideas there, it just needed a little more polish and I think it could have been the greatest R-rated puppet film ever made as opposed to third place behind Peter Jackson fucking around and the South Park guys lampooning America.

[son-of-alderaan]

There’s a desert valley in southern Jordan called Wadi Rum, or sometimes “the Valley of the Moon.” There are stone inscriptions in Wadi Rum that are more than 2,000 years old. Lawrence of Arabia passed through there during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. More recently, J. J. Abrams went there to film parts of the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, because it’s largely uninhabited and starkly beautiful and looks plausibly alien, and one of the things that has always made the Star Wars movies feel so real—as if they had a real life of their own that continues on out beyond the edges of the screen—is the way they’re shot on location, with as few digital effects as possible. George Lucas shot the Tatooine scenes from A New Hope in southern Tunisia. For Skywalker, it’s Wadi Rum.

They don’t do it that way because it’s easy. Abrams and his crew had to build miles of road into the desert. They basically had to set up a small town out there, populated by the cast and extras and crew—the creature-effects department alone had 70 people. The Jordanian military got involved. The Jordanian royal family got involved. There was sand. There were sandstorms, when all you could do was take cover and huddle in your tent and—if you’re John Boyega, who plays the ex-Stormtrooper Finn—listen to reggae.

But in a way that’s the whole point: you’re out there so the world can get up in your grill and make its presence felt on film. “It’s the things that you can’t anticipate—the imperfections,” says Oscar Isaac, who plays the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. “It’s very difficult to design imperfection, and the imperfections that you have in these environments immediately create a sense of authenticity. You just believe it more.” When Isaac arrived in Wadi Rum for his first week of shooting, Abrams had set up a massive greenscreen in the middle of the desert. “And I was like, ‘J. J., can I ask you a question? I notice we’re shooting on greenscreen.’ And he’s like, ‘So why the hell are we in the desert?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘Well, because look: the way that the sand interacts with the light, and the type of shots you would set up—if you were designing the shot on a computer you would never even think to do that.’ There’s something about the way that the light and the environment and everything plays together.” It’s that something, the presence and the details and the analog imperfections of a real nondigital place, that makes Star Wars so powerful.

It was powerful enough to bring 65,000 people to Chicago in April for Star Wars Celebration, a fan convention where you could see a giant Stormtrooper head made out of 36,440 tiny Lego Stormtrooper mini-figures, which is a world record of some kind, though I’m not sure exactly what, and where people were dressed up as Muppets who were themselves dressed up as Star Wars characters. But the main event was the launch of the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, which was held in a 10,000-seat arena and was such a big deal that even though the trailer was going to be released on the Internet literally seconds after it was over, I—an at least theoretically respectable member of the media—was not only tagged, wristbanded, escorted, and metal-detected, but sniffed by a K-9 unit before I could go in.

J.J. Abrams, alongside Stunt Coordinator Eunice Huthart, directs the Knights of Ren; elite fearsome enforcers of Kylo Ren’s dark will.

I sat down with Abrams a couple of hours later. For the occasion, he was wearing a suit so black and sharp, he could have been doing Men in Black cosplay, but his most distinctive feature is his dark curly hair, which is upswept in a way that is only slightly suggestive of devil horns. Abrams talks rapidly, as if he can barely keep up with the things his racing brain is telling him to say. When I told him that not only was Star Wars the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter, but that all 10 of the Top 10 trending topics were Star Wars–related, and that he personally was No. 5, he was visibly stunned.

Then he recovered enough to say: “Well, I aspire to No. 4.” (For the record, No. 4 was the late Supreme Leader Snoke, who frankly did seem beatable. If you’re curious, No. 11 was pro golfer Zach Johnson, who had just accidentally hit his ball with a practice swing at the Masters. Life goes on.)

Disney executives talk about how important it is to “event-ize” Star Wars movies; i.e., to make them feel not just like movies but like seriously momentous occasions. They won’t have much trouble with this one: The Rise of Skywalker isn’t just the last movie in the Star Wars trilogy that began in 2015 with The Force Awakens; it’s the last movie in a literal, actual trilogy of trilogies that started with the very first Star Wars movie back in 1977, which began the saga of the Skywalker family. The Rise of Skywalker will finally, after 42 years, bring that saga to an end.

FIRST LOOK Vanity Fair reveals Keri Russell as the masked scoundrel Zorri Bliss, seen in the Thieves’ Quarter of the snow-dusted world Kijimi.

We all thought the story was over in 1983 with Return of the Jedi, and then we really thought it was over in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. But Star Wars has always been an unruly beast, too big and powerful (and profitable) to be contained in one movie, or even in a trilogy, or even in two trilogies, let alone numberless novels, TV shows, comics, video games, Happy Meals, and so on. Now Abrams has to gather all those threads and bring closure to a story that was started by somebody else, in an America that feels a very long time ago indeed. “That’s the challenge of this movie,” Abrams says. “It wasn’t just to make one film that as a stand-alone experience would be thrilling, and scary, and emotional, and funny, but one that if you were to watch all nine of the films, you’d feel like, Well, of course—that!”

Like a lot of things that we now can’t imagine life without, Star Wars came really close to never happening in the first place. In 1971, Lucas was a serious young auteur just five years out of film school at U.S.C. He had only one full-length movie on his résumé, and that was THX 1138, which is the kind of visionary but grindingly earnest science-fiction epic that only the French could love. (They were pretty much the only ones who did.) Everybody expected Lucas to go on and make serious, gritty 1970s cinema like his peers, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola. At the time Lucas and Coppola were actively planning a radical epic set in Vietnam with the provocative title Apocalypse Now.

FORCE MAJEURE First Order leaders General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant) on the bridge of Kylo Ren’s destroyer.

But Coppola would have to finish that one on his own, because Lucas went a different way. “I had decided there was no modern mythology,” he said in 1997. “I wanted to take old myths and put them into a new format that young people could relate to. Mythology always existed in unusual, unknown environments, so I chose space.” Lucas tried to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon (that would’ve been a dark timeline indeed), but when he couldn’t, he came up with his own original science-fictional epic instead. He called it The Star Wars. Like The Facebook, it would have to shed a direct article on its way to glory.

Even though American Graffiti had made Lucas a bankable director, Star Wars still came together slowly. In the first draft, Luke was an old man, Leia was 14, and Han Solo was “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills.” Fox executives were baffled by Star Wars, and they squeezed Lucas relentlessly for time and money. We forget now how jerry-rigged the first movie was: the cantina aliens weren’t finished, and the monumental Star Destroyer that dominates the opening shot is, in reality, about three feet long. The Death Star interior is basically one set re-arranged several different ways. To make Greedo’s mouth move, the woman in the Greedo suit had to hold a clothespin in her mouth. “What I remember about working on the first film,” says John Williams, the legendary soundtrack composer, “is the fact that I didn’t ever think there would be a second film.” (He also, like everybody else, thought Luke and Leia were going to get together, so he wrote them a love theme.)

But wherever real mythology comes from, Lucas had gone there and brought something back alive. People wanted movies that gave them something to believe in instead of relentlessly autopsying the beliefs that had failed them. We’d had enough of antiheroes. We needed some anti-antiheroes. “I realized after THX that people don’t care about how the country’s being ruined,” Lucas said. “We’ve got to regenerate optimism.” Like American Graffiti, Star Wars is a work of profound nostalgia, a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate anthem of longing for the restoration of a true and just power in the universe—the return of the king. And at the same time it’s a very personal hero’s journey, about a boy who must put right the sins of his father and master the strange power he finds within himself, and in doing so become a man.

Star Wars is also an incredibly enduring vision of what it’s like to live in a world of super-advanced technology. Science fiction often ages badly, turning into kitsch or camp—just look at Flash Gordon—but Star Wars hasn’t. More than any filmmaker before him, Lucas successfully imagined what a science-fictional world would feel like to somebody who was actually inside it—which is to say, it would look as ordinary and workaday as the present. He even shot it like it was real, working close-in and mostly eschewing wide establishing shots, more like a documentary or a newsreel than a space opera. “It feels very grounded,” says Naomi Ackie, who’s making her Star Wars debut in Skywalker playing a character named Jannah, about whom she is allowed to say literally nothing. “There’s the kind of spectacular-ness, and the supernatural move-things-with-your-mind magic stuff, but then there’s also this really grounded, rugged nature where everything is distressed and old and kind of worn out and lived-in. And I think playing with those two ideas means that you get this feeling that it could almost be real. Like, in a galaxy far away, it could almost be the case that you could have this.”

When Lucas made the first Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, he cheekily labeled it Episode V, then went back and re-labeled the first movie as Episode IV, as if the movies were an old-fashioned serial that the rest of us were all just tuning in to. Around that time, he also started talking about Star Wars as a nine-part epic—so in 2012, when Lucas retired and sold Lucasfilm to Disney, it wasn’t exactly heresy that Disney announced more movies. At the time, Kathleen Kennedy had just been named co-chairperson of Lucasfilm, and she tapped Abrams to direct the first Disney-owned post-Lucas Star Wars movie. It was a bit like saying, Make the lightning strike again, please. Exactly here, if you could. Oh, and could you also earn back that $4 billion we just spent to buy Lucasfilm? (Narrator voice: He could.)

At first blush, Abrams’s debut Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, looked like an elaborate homage to the original. Just like in A New Hope, there’s a young Force-sensitive person on a poor desert planet—that’s Rey, played by Daisy Ridley—who finds a droid with a secret message that’s vital to the Rebellion (or wait, sorry, it’s the Resistance now). There’s a villain in a black mask, just like Darth Vader, except that it’s his grandson Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), né Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia. Kylo has a planet-killing weapon, much like the Death Star but way bigger, which becomes the target of a desperate attack by Resistance X-wings. There’s even a bar full of aliens.

Abrams also insisted on keeping to the analog aesthetic of the original trilogy: those aliens had to be latex and yak hair, not bits and bytes, and everything possible was shot on location using film cameras, not digital ones. Even Lucas had abandoned that approach by the time he made the second Star Wars trilogy, but many fans consider those movies to be a cautionary tale. “Famously, the prequels were mostly greenscreen environments,” Abrams says. “And that was George himself doing that, and it ended up looking exactly how he wanted it to look—and I always preferred the look of the original movies, because I just remember when you’re in the snow on Hoth, when you’re in the desert on Tatooine, and when you’re in the forests of Endor—it’s amazing. If you put a vaporator here, there, all of a sudden almost any natural location suddenly becomes a Star Wars location.”

But the more interesting thing about The Force Awakens and its successor, The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, was how they subtly complicated Lucas’s vision. Thirty years have gone by since the ending of Return of the Jedi, during which time the newly reborn Republic became complacent and politically stagnant, allowing the rise of the reactionary neo-imperial First Order, whose origins we will learn more about in Skywalker. “It was almost like if the Argentine Nazis had sort of got together and actually started to bring that back in some real form,” Abrams says. Just like that, the rules of the Star Wars universe changed. It wasn’t all over when the Ewoks sang. Obi-Wan Kenobi and all those Bothans had died in vain. Even Han and Leia split up. It’s all a little less of a fairy tale now.

The feather-haired godling Luke suffered the trauma of having a Padawan go bad on his watch. It’s an echo of what happened to his old mentor, Obi-Wan, with Anakin Skywalker, who became Darth Vader. But where Obi-Wan made peace with it, waiting serenely in the desert of Tatooine for the next Chosen One to arrive, Luke’s guilt curdled into shame. He hid himself away, so that his Chosen One, Rey, had to spend most of The Force Awakens searching for him, and then another whole movie convincing him with the help of Yoda’s Force ghost to keep the Jedi Order going at all. Star Wars arrived as an antidote to the disillusionment of the 1970s—but now, in its middle age, Star Wars is grappling with disillusionment of its own.

DESERT POWER Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Ridley, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and John Boyega (Finn) await the call to action for a chase scene.

By dint of advanced Sith interrogation techniques, I was able to obtain valuable advance information about The Rise of Skywalker. Here it is: common emblem.

Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3P0, is the only actor who has appeared in all nine movies of the Star Wars triple trilogy, so if anybody’s entitled to leak, it’s him. Daniels says he loved the script for The Rise of Skywalker, but he didn’t get it until the last minute, right before shooting started, and for some reason he just couldn’t memorize his part. “My first line would not go in my head!” he says. In person Daniels is like a C-3P0 whose preferences have been reset to charming and voluble. “The line that I couldn’t say was two words: ‘common emblem.’ Common emblem, common emblem—I would say them thousands of times. My wife would say it back. I just couldn’t say them!”

Fortunately C-3P0’s mouth doesn’t move, so he could add the line in postproduction. Anyway, there’s the big scoop: “common emblem.” I don’t know what it means either. (Also I 100 percent guarantee that they will change the line before the movie comes out so that this scoop will end up being fake news.) Daniels also told me that C-3P0 does something in this movie that surprises everybody—but he wouldn’t say what. “He keeps his clothes on. It’s not like he suddenly does this thing, but …”

The only other member of the old guard on the set this time was Billy Dee Williams, who plays the charismatic Lando Calrissian. At 82, Williams has lost none of his roguish charm, but now it comes wrapped in a kind of magisterial dignity. People tend to remember Lando for the deal he cut with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, rather than for his redemptive comeback in Return of the Jedi, and Williams appears to have spent the last 45 years defending him. “He’s a survivor. It’s expediency for him,” Williams says. “You know, he was thrown into a situation which he didn’t look for and he had to try to figure out how to deal with an entity which is more than just a human.” And, he adds, with the weary air of somebody who has spent way too much time justifying the behavior of a fictional character, “nobody died!”

HOT TAKE Members of the crew shade and shine Daniels, the only cast member to appear in all nine of the Skywalker films, while BB-8 looks on.

Chewbacca is still here, too, but it’s not the same man in the suit. The original actor was Peter Mayhew, a seven-foot-three-inch gentle giant who was working as a hospital orderly in London when Lucas cast him in the first movie. Mayhew retired after The Force Awakens, and he died on April 30 at 74. His replacement is Joonas Suotamo, a fresh-faced former professional basketball player from Finland who always wanted to be an actor but was hard to cast because he’s six feet 11 inches tall. “When I first met [Mayhew] he told me I was a wee bit too skinny,” Suotamo says. “But we also had a Wookiee boot camp, which lasted for a week. He told me all kinds of things about the moves that Chewbacca does, how they came to be and his reasoning behind them.” Suotamo has now played Chewbacca in four movies and enjoys it about as much as I’ve ever seen anybody enjoy anything. “It’s very much like silent-era film, with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin,” he says. “He’s a mime character and that’s what he does, and I guess in that minimalism comes the beauty of the character.”

Other things we know about Skywalker: We can safely assume that the Resistance and the First Order are headed toward a final smash, which will be a heavy lift for the good guys because, at the end of The Last Jedi, the Resistance was down, way down, to a double handful of survivors. They’ll face a First Order who suffered a stinging but largely symbolic loss at the Battle of Crait, and who, I feel confident, have learned something from the previous eight movies. The Empire built and lost two Death Stars. The First Order has already lost one super-weapon in The Force Awakens. Presumably it won’t make the same mistake twice, twice.

But the stakes go even higher than that, cosmically high. Sources close to the movie say that Skywalker will at long last bring to a climax the millennia-long conflict between the Jedi Order and its dark shadow, the Sith.

HORSING AROUND Finn and new ally Jannah (Naomi Ackie), atop hardy orbaks, lead the charge against the mechanized forces of the First Order. “It’s extremely surreal to be in it,” says Ackie, “and see how it works from the inside.”

STAR CROSSED Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey battle it out with lightsabers in a stormy confrontation. Their Force-connection—what Driver calls their “maybe-bond”—will turn out to run even deeper than previously revealed.

The hottest area for speculation, however, is the identity of the titular Skywalker, because at this point there aren’t many Skywalkers left to rise. One is General Organa, the former Princess Leia, Luke’s sister—but Carrie Fisher, who plays her, passed away in 2016. That was a deeply painful loss for Abrams personally, but it also presented him with an impossible choice as a filmmaker. He needed Leia to tell the story, but Abrams didn’t feel like a digital Carrie Fisher could do the job, and there was no way Lucasfilm was going to re-cast the role.

But then a strange thing happened. Abrams remembered that there was some footage of Fisher left over from The Force Awakens, scenes that had been changed or cut entirely, and he dug them up. “It’s hard to even talk about it without sounding like I’m being some kind of cosmic spiritual goofball,” Abrams says, “but it felt like we suddenly had found the impossible answer to the impossible question.” He started to write scenes around the old footage, fitting Leia’s dialogue into new contexts. He re-created the lighting to match the way Fisher had been lit. Bit by bit, she found her place in the new movie. “It was a bizarre kind of left side/right side of the brain sort of Venn diagram thing, of figuring out how to create the puzzle based on the pieces we had.” Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, appears in the movies as a Resistance officer named Lieutenant Connix, and at first Abrams deliberately wrote her out of the scenes in case it was too painful—but Lourd said no, she wanted to be in them. “And so, there are moments where they’re talking; there are moments where they’re touching,” Abrams says. “There are moments in this movie where Carrie is there, and I really do feel there is an element of the uncanny, spiritual, you know, classic Carrie, that it would have happened this way, because somehow it worked. And I never thought it would.”

The only other member of the surviving Skywalker bloodline—that we know of!—is Leia’s son and Luke’s former Padawan, the fallen Jedi Kylo Ren. Kylo probably isn’t capable of actual happiness, but things are definitely looking up for him: by the end of The Last Jedi he has taken control of the First Order and killed or at least outlived his actual father and both of his symbolic fathers-in-art, Luke and Supreme Leader Snoke. Sources at Disney also confirm that his long-rumored Knights of Ren will finally arrive in Skywalker. “And then he had been forging this maybe-bond with Rey,” Driver says, “and it kind of ends with the question in the air: is he going to pursue that relationship, or when the door of her ship goes up, does that also close that camaraderie that they were maybe forming?”

SANDBLAST Camera operator Colin Anderson readies a take for a chase sequence spotlighting the heroics of Chewbacca, BB-8, and Rey.

Darkness in the Star Wars movies tends to come from fear: for Anakin Skywalker, Kylo’s grandfather, it was his fear of losing his mother and his wife. After two movies it’s still not so easy to say exactly what Kylo Ren himself fears, even though he’s as operatically emo as Vader was stoic. He’s fixated on the past—he made a shrine to his own grandfather—but at the same time the past torments him. “Let the past die,” he tells Rey in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.”

Presumably whatever’s eating at Kylo started in his childhood: maybe being the kid of literally the two coolest people in the galaxy isn’t as fun as it sounds. Driver—who has obviously thought this through with a lot of rigor—points out that, as cool as they are, Han and Leia are both obsessively committed to lifestyles (smuggling, rebelling) that don’t leave much room for kids. He also points out that, unlike Luke and Rey, Kylo never got to go on a nifty voyage of self-discovery. Instead he grew up under the crushing pressure of massive expectations. “How do you form friendships out of that?” Driver says. “How do you understand the weight of that? And if there’s no one around you guiding you, or articulating things the right way … it can easily go awry.” By the emotional logic that governs the Star Wars universe—and also our own—Kylo Ren is going to have to confront the past, and his fears, whatever they are, or be destroyed by them.

Where Lucas’s trilogies tended to follow the roots and branches of the Skywalker family tree—their personal saga was the saga of the galaxy writ small—the new movies have a slightly wider aperture and take in a new generation of heroes. There’s Rey, of course, who sources say will have progressed in her training since the end of The Last Jedi to the point where it’s almost complete. With that taken care of, all she has to do is reconstitute the entire Jedi Order from scratch, because as far as we know she’s the Last One.

If Kylo Ren can’t be redeemed it will almost certainly fall to Rey to put him down, in spite of their maybe-bond. Their relationship is the closest thing the new trilogy has to a star-crossed love story on the order of Han and Leia: a source close to the movie says that their Force-connection will turn out to run even deeper than we thought. They’re uniquely suited to understand each other, but at the same time they are in every way each other’s inverse, down to Kylo’s perverse rejection of his family, which is the one thing Rey craves most. “I think there’s a part of Rey that’s like, dude, you fucking had it all, you had it all,” Ridley says. “That was always a big question during filming: you had it all and you let it go.”

PUNCH IT! In a historic reunion, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) retakes the helm of the Millennium Falcon, joined by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca, D-O, and BB-8. “He’s a survivor,” Williams says of Lando.

Rey is also, according to totally unsubstantiated Internet theories, a leading candidate to be the Skywalker of the title, pending some kind of head-snapping reveal about her ancestry. (For the record, the other leading unsubstantiated Internet theory has the “Skywalker” of the title referring to an entirely new order of Force users who will rise up and replace the Jedi.)

Rey seems ready for it all, or as ready as anybody could be. “It’s nice having that shot at the beginning of the teaser,” Ridley says, over avocado toast at a fancy Chicago hotel, “because I think it’s quite a good visual representation of where she is now: confident, calm, less fearful.… It’s still sort of overwhelming, but in a different way. It feels more right—less like inevitable and more like there’s a focus to the journey.” Focus is a good word for Rey: on-screen Ridley’s dramatic eyebrows form a wickedly sharp arrow of concentration. I asked Ridley what she’s thinking about when Rey is using her Force powers, and it turns out Rey seems focused because Ridley is actually seriously focused. “I literally visualize it. When I was lifting rocks I was visualizing the rocks moving. And then I was like, Oh, my God, I made it happen! And obviously there’s loads of rocks on strings, so, no, I didn’t. But I visualize that it’s really going on.” (That scene, which comes at the end of The Last Jedi, is another example of classic nondigital Star Wars effects: those were real rocks. “It was actually really amazing,” Ridley says. “It was sort of like a baby mobile.”)

There’s also Finn, the apostate Stormtrooper, played by the irrepressible Boyega, who in person practically vibrates with energy and speaks with a South London accent very different from Finn’s American one. In some ways Finn has gone through a complete character arc already: he confronted his past—by beating down his old boss, Captain Phasma—and found his courage and his moral center. He has had a tendency to panic, if not actively desert, in clutch situations, but at the Battle of Crait he proved that he was past that. “I think he’s just an active member of the Resistance now,” Boyega says. “Episode Eight, he couldn’t decide what team he was fighting for. But since then he’s made a clear decision.” (Cast members tend to refer to the Star Wars movies by their episode numbers: four is the original movie, seven is The Force Awakens, and so on.)

Finn still has to make a clear decision about his romantic situation, though. As Boyega put it at Star Wars Celebration: “Finn is single and willing to mingle!” The movies have been teasing his emotional connections with both Rey and the Resistance mechanic Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, with whom he shared a fleeting battlefield kiss in The Last Jedi. Rose seems like the more positive choice, given that she stops Finn from deserting early in the movie and saves his life at the Battle of Crait, and that the precedents for romantic involvements with Jedi are extremely bad. Tran is the first Asian-American woman to play a major role in a Star Wars movie, and she has been the target of both racist and sexist attacks online. But she has come through them as a fan favorite: when she appeared onstage in Chicago, she got a standing ovation.

Finally there’s Poe, who has mostly struggled with his own cocky impulsiveness, because he’s a loose-cannon-who-just-can’t-play-by-the-rules. Poe will have to step up and become a leader, because the Resistance is seriously short on officer material. In fact, some of that transformation will already have happened where The Rise of Skywalker picks up, which is about a year after the end of The Last Jedi. “There has been a bit of shared history that you haven’t seen,” Isaac says. “Whereas in the other films, Poe is this kind of lone wolf, now he’s really part of a group. They’re going out and going on missions and have a much more familiar dynamic now.” Star Wars has always been about friendship as much as it is about romance, and as of the end of The Last Jedi, Rey, Finn, and Poe are all finally in the same place for the first time since The Force Awakens.

The Rise of Skywalker introduces some new players, too. There’s a tiny one-wheeled droid called D-O and a large banana-slug alien named Klaud. Oh, and Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell, and Richard E. Grant have all joined the cast, though, again, we know practically nothing about who they’re playing. Going from being outside the Star Wars leviathan to being right in its belly can be a dizzying experience for a first-timer. “I actually tried to do this thing while we were filming,” Ackie says, “where I’d go one day, walking through London without seeing a Star Wars reference somewhere. And you can’t do it. You really can’t. So it’s extremely surreal to be in it and see how it works from the inside.

WELL MET Jordanian locals play the Aki-Aki, natives of the planet Pasaana.

If anything, Star Wars is only getting more omnipresent. The franchise under Lucas was a colossus, but he still ran it essentially as a private concern. He could make movies or not, as his muse dictated—he was beholden to no shareholders. But Star Wars under Disney makes the old Star Wars look positively quaint. Between 1977 and 2005, Lucasfilm released six Star Wars movies; when Skywalker premieres in December, Disney will have released five Star Wars movies in five years. “I think there is a larger expectation that Disney has,” Kennedy says. “On the other hand, though, I think that Disney is very respectful of what this is, and right from the beginning we talked about the fragility of this form of storytelling. Because it’s something that means so much to fans that you can’t turn this into some kind of factory approach. You can’t even do what Marvel does, necessarily, where you pick characters and build new franchises around those characters. This needs to evolve differently.”

A useful example of that fragility might be the relatively modest performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. Solo was a perfectly good Star Wars movie that has made almost $400 million worldwide—but it’s also, according to industry estimates, the first one to actually lose money. In response Disney has gently but firmly pumped the brakes: the first movie in the next Star Wars trilogy, which will be helmed by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the duo behind Game of Thrones, won’t arrive till Christmas of 2022, with further installments every other year after that. There’s no official word as to what stories they’ll tell, or when a second trilogy being developed by Rian Johnson will appear.

But even as the movies pause, Star Wars continues to colonize any and all other media. In addition to video games, comics, novels, cartoons, container-loads of merch, etc., there are not one but two live-action TV series in the pipeline for Disney+, Disney’s new streaming service: The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, and an as-yet-untitled show about Cassian Andor from Rogue One. I have personally tried a virtual-reality experience called Vader Immortal,written and produced by Dark Knight screenwriter David Goyer. At the end of May, Disneyland will open Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a massive, 14-acre, $1 billion attraction where you can fly the Millennium Falcon, be captured by the First Order, and drink a blue milk cocktail (it’s actually nondairy) and Coca-Cola products out of exclusive BB-8-shaped bottles at the cantina. It’s the largest single-theme expansion in the park’s history: Take that, Toy Story Land. The Disney World version will open in August.

You realize now that, under Lucas, Star Wars always slightly had the brakes on—we were always kept a little starved for product. With Disney driving, we’ll really find out how big Star Wars can get.

ENCORE Composer John Williams conducting the Star Wars score, drawing on themes and motifs he has woven across four decades. “I didn’t think there would ever be a second film,” he says.

When people talk about the new Star Wars movies, they tend to talk about how faithful they are to the originals. What’s harder to say is how exactly the new films are different—how movies like Skywalker keep their connection to the past while at the same time finding a way to belong to the world of 2019. Because regardless of whether or not Star Wars has changed since 1977, the world around it has, profoundly. “There’s a loss of innocence, a sense of innocence that existed in the 70s that I don’t think to any extent exists today,” Kennedy says. “I think that has to permeate the storytelling and the reaction to the stories and how they’re set up. It has to feel differently because we’re different.”

We know things, as a people and as an audience, that we didn’t know back then. For example: back then it felt sort of O.K. to like Darth Vader, because even though he was evil he was also incredibly cool, and the kind of fascism he represented felt like a bogeyman from the distant past. But now fascism is rising again, which makes the whole First Order subplot look super-prescient, but it also reminds us that fascism is not even slightly cool in real life. “Evil needs to feel and look very real,” Kennedy says, “and what that means today may not be as black-and-white as it might have been in 1977, coming off a kind of World War II sensibility.” In the Star Wars–verse, Dark and Light are supposed to balance each other, but in the real world they just mix together into a hopelessly foggy, morally ambiguous gray.

But the changes are liberating too. Star Wars doesn’t have to stay frozen in time; if anything it’s the opposite, if it doesn’t change it’ll die. It will turn into Flash Gordon. For Abrams, that means he can’t go through this process so haunted by the ghost of George Lucas (who is of course still alive, but you get what I’m saying) that he winds up doing a cinematic Lucas impression. At some point Abrams has to let Abrams be Abrams.

The Rise of Skywalker might be that point. “Working on nine, I found myself approaching it slightly differently,” he says. “Which is to say that, on seven, I felt beholden to Star Wars in a way that was interesting—I was doing what to the best of my ability I felt Star Wars should be.” But this time something changed. Abrams found himself making different choices—for the camera angles, the lighting, the story. “It felt slightly more renegade; it felt slightly more like, you know, Fuck it, I’m going to do the thing that feels right because it does, not because it adheres to something.”

There are a lot of small subtle ways that Abrams’s Star Wars is different from Lucas’s, but if there’s a standout, it’s the way that the new movies look at history. Lucas’s Star Wars movies are bathed in the deep golden-sunset glow of the idyllic Old Republic, that more civilized age—but the new movies aren’t like that. They’re not nostalgic. They don’t long for the past; they’re more about the promise of the future. “This trilogy is about this young generation, this new generation, having to deal with all the debt that has come before,” Abrams says. “And it’s the sins of the father, and it’s the wisdom and the accomplishments of those who did great things, but it’s also those who committed atrocities, and the idea that this group is up against this unspeakable evil and are they prepared? Are they ready? What have they learned from before? It’s less about grandeur. It’s less about restoring an old age. It’s more about preserving a sense of freedom and not being one of the oppressed.”

FROM THE ASHES Mark Hamill, as Luke, with R2-D2. Speculation is rampant about who will “rise” as the Skywalker of the movie’s title—and how that choice will reflect the way the world has changed since Star Wars debuted in 1977.

The new generation doesn’t have that same connection to the old days that Luke and Leia did. It’s not like their parents destroyed the Old Republic. We don’t even know who their parents were! They’re too young to remember the Empire. They’re just here to clean up the mess they got left with, the disastrous consequences of bad decisions made by earlier generations, and try to survive long enough to see the future. Is any of this resonating with 2019? Might there possibly be a generation around here somewhere that’s worried about the consequences of its own decisions for the future? Star Wars has never been and probably never should be a vehicle for political arguments, but to paraphrase Ursula Le Guin, great science fiction is never really about the future. It’s about the present.

You could even—if you’re into that kind of thing—imagine the story of the new Star Wars trilogy as a metaphor for the making of the new Star Wars trilogy. In fact, I was totally prepared—because I am into that kind of thing!—to try to push this overthought metafictional hot take onto Abrams … but I didn’t have to. Abrams got there ahead of me. “The idea of the movie is kind of how I felt going into the movie as a filmmaker,” he says, “which is to say that I’ve inherited all this stuff, great stuff, and good wisdom, and the good and the bad, and it’s all coming to this end, and the question is, do we have what it takes to succeed?”

Kylo Ren has it all wrong: you can’t bring back the past and become your own grandfather, and you can’t kill the past, either. All you can do is make your peace with it and learn from it and move on. Abrams is doing that with Star Wars—and meanwhile the Resistance is going to have to do that, too, if they really are going to bring this saga to an end. Because we’ve been here before, watching a band of scrappy rebels take down a technofascist empire, and it seemed to work fine at the time—but it didn’t last. The same goes for the Jedi and their struggle with the Sith. To end this story, really end it, they’re going to have to figure out the conditions of a more permanent victory over the forces of darkness. Their past was imperfect at best, and the present is a complete disaster—but the future is all before them. This time, finally, they’re going to get it right.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

From Michael Hutchence to a Pirate: Why Luke Arnold's Career Is Sailing Smoothly

Luke Arnold has been working steadily as an actor in Australia for years, with roles on Winners & Losers and Rush, but the gig that really put him in the spotlight this year was his turn as Michael Hutchence in the two-part telemovie INXS: Never Tear Us Apart. Luke was praised for his performance as the iconic rock star, and now he's returning to the small screen as another familiar character: Long John Silver in the Starz action drama Black Sails. 

The show takes place before the events in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, in the 1700s during the Golden Age of Piracy. There's a lot that happens in the pilot, including how Silver gets roped into the pirate industry, the set-up of a plan to find the ultimate treasure, and the battle for captaincy of the ships. There's also a lot of action and a little bit of pirate lovin'.

We caught up with Luke in Sydney yesterday ahead of the show's premiere on Showcase tonight at 9:40 p.m. to discuss the most fun thing about playing a pirate, what he took away from the experience of playing Michael Hutchence, and the craziest Hollywood party he's been to. 

Hint: it was at a famous socialite's house.

POPSUGAR Australia: Where are you based these days?

Luke Arnold: Cape Town, while we shoot Black Sails, and that's about seven months of the year. I have a couple of boxes of things in Cape Town, a couple of boxes of things in Melbourne, LA, same thing. Everywhere there's a guitar and a box of basics.

PS: How did you get the role?

LA: So for years I was going to LA once or twice a year, and it just kind of happened that I got cast in Black Sails. I did one audition with the casting director, then met the showrunner, the creator, did one more audition, and then got signed to the show! But when I was signed to it they still didn't know what character I was going to play. They said, "You're a pirate, you're on the show, but we'll work out who you are later on."

PS: So did you test for a few different pirates?

LA: Yeah. Well I auditioned for just Vane, one of the other roles, and never actually auditioned for Silver. They went, 'It depends who else we cast,' and they found Zach McGowan for Vane and so I became Silver.

PS: What's the most fun thing about playing a pirate?

LA: I think it's that you're allowed to be a pirate in real-life, a little bit. You kind of get an excuse, and almost an expectation, to be a little rowdier, maybe a little drunker, in day-to-day life. So yeah, I think that's that.

PS: Which scenes do you enjoy filming the most?

LA: The writers on the show are really fantastic, and also really going for poetry a lot. They're really writing some amazing stuff, and I think that's what you wait for; occasionally you just get these speeches that are beautiful to say, and you can really sink your teeth into. And at the same time I love a big action scene where I've got nothing to say, and just stuff to do. I don't know which I like more, but it's nice to be on a show where you get both. One day I'll just be running up and down a ship that's blowing up, and the next day you get a five-page monologue.

PS: What are those big actions scenes like? Is this the largest scale thing you've done in terms of production?

LA: Absolutely it is. This is one of the biggest television shows ever made, and while there's a lot of visual effects, we have the real ships and the real towns, and we blow up a lot of stuff. So it's amazing. And what's fun — we've done two seasons of Black Sails — is you still never get used to walking onto a new set. Or when you bring in someone else to check out the set for the first time, it's a nice reminder where you're like, 'Oh that's right, this is amazing.' It's just a huge playground we get to play with on the show.

PS: I noticed the director of the pilot is Neil Marshall, who's known for directing the big battle episodes for Game of Thrones. What was it like working with him?

LA: It was fantastic. And that's his trademark, really, he does big action stuff for TV. So having him for Black Sails was fantastic.

PS: I feel like there's a lot that happens in the first episode. What can you tell me about John Silver's story?

LA: There's a lot going on, and I do think the first half of season one is really setting the stage in a lot of ways. Even though the pirate story has been around for ages, because we're doing a grittier, more real, historically-accurate version, there is a lot of setting the scene, and establishing what this world really is. But for John Silver, well I'm the one who's not a pirate. I'm the one guy, when we begin the show, that isn't invested in this pirate world. Everyone else, it's high stakes, they're really serious and they've got big plans, and for Silver, he just wants to get his handful of gold, and then head off to the next place. I think he realises that it's a pretty dumb career choice, if you can avoid becoming a pirate. It's dangerous; it kind of sucks, really! It's not a fun life. So I think the kind of lightness that John has at the beginning comes from that, that he's not invested in this world and he's breezing through.

But the story for him, really, is knowing that it is about him being sucked into this world, becoming one of the crew, and eventually becoming Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

PS: What kind of prep did you have to do for the role? Were you familiar with the character from Treasure Island?

LA: Yeah. I think he's the kind of character that's permanently in pop culture, in a lot of ways since Treasure Island happened. So I'd read the book before, but I'd also seen Muppet Treasure Island, and some of the other versions. And you feel like that character has been referenced in so many other cartoons and things, so it was very familiar. I then did a lot of character research. Also, we all had to go back and look at all the historical stuff, to try and get out of our heads the stereotypes, the clichés, what pirates have become over years of storytelling, and instead try and go back to who these men and women really were.

PS: I also read that physically it was quite a lot of prep?

LA: Yeah, it was. I had a few weeks of training on my own, then we did like a three-week pirate boot camp in Cape Town. It was really full on. It was a mixture of training in the gym, fight training, sailing ships, taking all the modern rigging off and just doing it by hand. It was just exhausting. In a way it's different on a film because you've got longer to shoot any particular scene, you can put the stunt doubles in, you can work it out. We're shooting a big budget movie every couple of weeks, so we have to just do it, and do it over and over. If we hadn't done all this training, I wouldn't be able to do the job. You wouldn't be able to use any angles on me — like after two times of climbing rope up the side of the ship, I don't even know if I could've done it once before the training. But now, we'll do it 30, 50 times in a day.

PS: Do you still like working out in your spare time?

LA: At the end of season one I was really addicted to it. I actually think the rock star stuff got me out of the habit, because I almost had to stop training, and stop eating to play Michael Hutchence.

PS: So you did Black Sails first?

LA: Yep. I did season one of Black Sails, then did Never Tear Us Apart, then season two of Black Sails. That got me out of the habit, then I had to get back in the habit for season two. I do still enjoy it, but I'm not like a big gym junkie. I would more enjoy kicking up with beers in the mid-afternoon in the sun. But even though the first part of training was tough, I never felt as good as I did when I was at the peak of physical health, and feeling good and eating right. It's just the pain to get to that point — you have to go through that pain to get to the point where you feel really good.

PS: As you do get to shoot in such amazing locations, do you get much time off to relax?

LA: A lot, actually. We only ever shoot a five-day week — sometimes we do six days — but mostly it's a five-day week, and it's an ensemble show, so any day we're not shooting, which is often, we'll generally be rehearsing the next episode, or going off to do costume stuff. It means we do get a lot of half-days, and days off. And Cape Town is a beautiful place for be for time off. The only problem is it's a long way away, so even if you do get a few days off, it's not like you'll go, 'Oh, I'll go visit the family.' We're stuck there. But we definitely get enough downtime, and it's recovery time as well. When we do the big fight scenes, it's like being beaten up for 16 hours, so often we do just need that day. They work us hard when we're working, but the time off in between gives us a chance to recover.

PS: I was going through your Twitter recently and saw Never Tear Us Apart aired in the US recently. What was the reception like to that? Do you even know how people reacted?

LA: It was the same as the Australian one: mostly just on Twitter. I've had a lot of really positive response. You get all the INXS fans coming out of the woodwork, taking the effort to say how much they enjoyed it, my performance and the show. So that's been really great. It's kind of airing over a few weeks there, so it's rolling out and people are still discovering it; obviously it didn't have the same publicity push that we had here. It's nice for the show to get a really good response in the American market.

PS: What's the biggest thing you took away from your experience of playing that role?

LA: It was about how important the people you work with are. They talk about film as a collaborative medium, and it absolutely is. I know that Never Tear Us Apart, there are so many ways it could have not worked. It worked because every single person, from the unit guys who arrived first to set up with the crew area, to everyone involved with props and costume — everyone cared so much. No one was just treating it like a job. And that is why it turned out being as good as it is, because everyone went above and beyond the call of duty to make it great. And I think that was the biggest thing, to see that. And I didn't think I was going to enjoy it; like I really wanted the role, but I thought the pressure of the whole thing was going to make it stressful the whole time. But I had so much fun, and that was just by being around so many passionate people.

PS: Who's on your wish list to work with as a co-star, or director, or producer?

LA: Ooh. There are lots. The actors I'm really loving at the moment: Jeff Bridges and Sam Rockwell are guys I'm looking at as other actors, where you feel you learn so much just from watching them. I'm sure working with them would be really amazing. It's tough to say with directors, because there's so many. The wish list is so big these days. [Martin] Scorsese is always my absolute idol of directors. It's constantly changing, especially in the TV world.

PS: Which TV shows are you obsessed with at the moment?

LA: I'm watching quite a few: Hannibal, House of Cards. Louie is, I think, my all-time favourite show at the moment. And I am a Game of Thrones fan as well. And Breaking Bad, I still think it's the best show that's been on television.

PS: And the Emmys are tomorrow! Are you still into watching things like that?

LA: Yeah! But actually it's funny, less now that we're in TV. It's like, really, you go for the parties, and after-parties, really. Black Sails won two Emmys this year, because we had the Creative Arts Emmys already, so we got the special in visual effects and the sound editing. So we're now an Emmy Award-winning show.

PS: Have you been to any crazy or memorable Hollywood parties?

LA: The first week I was ever in LA, which was about five years ago, like the first weekend I was there, I ended up at Paris Hilton's house at a party. It was like the cliché, LA . . . Like it was my first week and I was meeting people, and they were like, "So, how are you doing in LA, are you settling in?" I was like, "Yeah, I was at Paris Hilton's house on the weekend!" They were like, "Oh, OK, you've settled in fine, then."

PS: Have you seen The Bling Ring?

LA: It's exactly like that. Yeah. When they're walking through, and they've got the club with the poles, it was the same thing. There's like a tequila dispenser in the walls, where you just hold your glass and get shots of tequila. And her face is on everything.

Source: PopSugar Au

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #143

“i’d rather be in battle than slaughtered like cattle.”

Were you happy or sad when you found out your babysitter was coming?  Sad, I had separation anxiety from Mom. Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten?  No. Did you ever read the "Junie B. Jones" books?  LOVED THEM. Were you friends with your neighbors?  I was friends with a boy down the street. Did you ever play the "Reader Rabbit" computer games?  YESSSSS I LOVED THE BIRTHDAY PARTY ONE. What kinds of games did you play with your friends during Recess?  None really, we just played on the swings and such. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid?  Chocolate. Who were you last in an elevator with?  Mom. Do you know anyone that has a black belt in karate?  No. If you have a notepad in your phone, what do you use it for the most?  I have tattoo ideas on it lmao. Who is the last child that you took a photo with?  Aubree. How and where did you get your most recent cut?  On the side of my hand.  I was drying my feet off after a shower, and my toenail cut the fuck out of it. ;-;  Pretty sure the scar's gonna be permanent. Would you ever get a nature tattoo?  Yeah, sure. Do you have any locked texts messages?  A few from Sara. Is anyone saved in your phone under a nickname?  My sisters are just "Ash" and "Nicky." Which company provides your car insurance?  I don't have my own car. Have you ever ordered from an informercial?  Nope. When, where, and why did a needle last pierce your skin?  Tattoo parlor in June to get a tattoo. Why did your last relationship end?  I didn't like him like that, I found. Do you have any tan lines?  No. Have you ever had any friends with benefits?  No. How old were you when you became financially independent from your parents?  Lol I'm not. What’s your favorite flavor of potato chip?  Ummmm probs salt and vinegar. Do you have a lock number or pattern for your phone?  No. What was the hardest language you’ve ever tried to learn?  What the super fuck even is Latin. Do you have any food intolerances or allergies?  No.  Well, without my medicine, bananas give me hellish heartburn. What’s the most number of people you’ve ever lived with?  Five.  Mom, Dad, two immediate sisters, and on different occasions my half-brother lived with us, then Dad's daughter stayed here a while. How many college degrees do you want?  Ideally, a master's because that's what is required to be an out-in-the-field zoologist.  I can do some things with lower ones, though. What do you look forward to most in the next two months?  Photographing my first wedding, my nephew's and mom's birthdays, going to see Sara in a little over two. What song explains how you feel about love?  "When It's Love" by Van Halen will always be way up there. Have you ever been IN a wedding?  Yeah, bridesmaid at Ash's. Have you ever been covered in mud?  Probably as a kid? Are there any books you wanna read?  I'm always gonna wanna read Rhett and Link's book, and I wanna start reading Wings of Fire 'cuz it sounds like something I'd like, thanks Sara. What classes are you taking in school? I'm not back in it yet. What is the last song you attempted to play on an instrument? I don't remember.  I took my guitar out months upon months ago to try and mess wi- OH, it was "Sweet Child O' Mine," and it went down horribly lmao. Could you handle being married to the last person you kissed?  That's the plan, buddy. Do you crack your knuckles?  No. How do you react when people sing “happy birthday” to you in a restaurant?  Get really shy and look down, but can't help but smile. Ever been shot by a paintball gun?  No. Have you ever had a significant other with a mental disorder?  Yes. Are you a moaner, a screamer, or totally silent?  The first. Have you ever tried Nutella?  I love that shit. Are there any activities which are “meant for children” that you still enjoy?  Yeah, movies, shows, games... Is there anything you wish you had started doing when you were younger that would have had an impact on or would have helped you with your life today?  Yeah.  I should've worked on social skills way sooner.  I should've fought back younger. Can you read lips?  Not at all. Are you part of any online communities? If so, which ones, and how did you get involved in them?  Only really KM, and because I've been in the meerkat RP community since '05. When vacuuming, do you have a set pattern or do you go willy-nilly?  Somewhat of a pattern. What’s your favorite kind of bread?  Pumpernickel. Who’s your favorite Muppet?  I don't have one. What’s your favorite monster? (can be Monsters Inc, horror films, stories, or myths, whatever)  Probably the Jersey Devil or Mothman.  Or the Dover Demon.  I like cryptozoological stuff okay. Have you ever considered shaving your head? Have you shaved it?  Noooooo. Have you ever seen a polar bear in person?  Yeah, at zoos. What’s your favorite school yard game? (4-Square, Kick the Can, etc)  I think it was called 4-Square... but I'm not sure. Have you ever boycotted anything?  No. Would you fall apart if that last person you kissed walked out of your life?  Um you have no idea. Are you against smoking weed?  Yeah tbh.  However I know there's lots of evidence coming out proving some of its medical uses, but I'm still kinda.  Unsure about medical marijuana. Who do you feel most comfortable talking to about your feelings?  Sara. Who of the opposite sex has seen you at your worst?  Jason. Who were you dating this time last year?  Girt. Have you ever smoked pot?  I've only ever been in the presence of people smoking it. Are your ears gauged?  No. Have you ever played beer pong?  No. Do you believe that you are a good girlfriend or boyfriend?  I sure hope so. Would you hug your ex again?  A couple I would. Do you like to climb trees?  I wouldn't know. Name your three closest friends.  Sara, Colleen, then probably Alex?  Although she hasn't been talking to me lately. What is the best kind of Girl Scout cookie?  I loved the chocolate and PB ones. Do you like it or hate it when your partner is clingy?  To a degree, I like it.  Shows they really do care. What kind of jelly do you buy?  Grape. Is your dad overweight?  He's underweight. Do you know all the words to “Don’t Trust Me” by 3oh!3?  I don't feel like playing it in my head but maybe 'cuz that song was my shit. What movies have you cried to?  Oh yeesh, I'm a fucking baby.  The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Old Yeller, Logan, The Outsiders, Titanic, The Hunger Games (I think), and how could I almost forget Forrest Gump.  I knoooow there's more tho. Do you love substitute teachers?  No.  We would sit around doing nothing. Does your personality generally fall in line with gender stereotypes?  Not really? What’s your favorite movie soundtrack?  Off the top of my head, maybe Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows. If you could own any 3 fictional objects from any book/movie/show, what would you choose? (does not have to all be from the same book/movie/show)  I legitimately want to commission someone to make a wooden model of Lord Emon's mask from Shadow of the Colossus.  I want so much SotC stuff, but shit expensive man.  Ummm having the Seal of Metatron from SH3 would be an awesome lil collectable.  OH YEAH and why the hell not have a hearthstone from WoW so I can go home in a jiffy whenever I want. :'D How far away do you live from the last place you lived?  Like... 10-15 minutes? Do you know anyone who’s had their kids taken by Child Protective Services?  No. You’re in a food court, what do you feel like eating?  Pizza, probably. Have you ever seen someone sleepwalk?  Yes, my younger sister.  She legit tried to go outside, but I obviously stopped her (I was the only one in the room). Have you ever thought about getting your tongue pierced?  Yes, and I would if I didn't have a damn retainer. If you had to move in with a friend, which one would you pick?  I'd move in with Sara any day. How does alcohol affect you?  Okay so I handle alcohol extremely well so I've never seen serious changes... but I do know if I'm tipsy, I'm more talkative and outgoing.  I don't think my face flushes anymore. When was the last time you had a cold or flu?  Holy shit I couldn't tell you for a cold.  I've never had the flu, thankfully. Have you ever watched Parks and Recreation?  Girt and I watched a few episodes.  It wasn't bad, but the fact still stands that I can't really get into TV. What is your favorite kind of pasta?  Typical spaghetti and meatballs. What color is your shampoo?  Pink. Is there a special someone in your life right now?  Yes. If so, tell me your favorite thing about their personality and their looks:  She's strong as fuck and her smile's to die for. Ever made a guy cry?  Yeah. Has a guy ever made you cry?  For over a year straight lmao. What’s the worst goodbye you’ve ever had to say?  To Jason. What make up product do you never use? It'd be easier to tell you only what I do use.  I only ever wear eyeliner and then sometimes eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, and very rarely foundation. What is one place you have been to and hated?  Uhhhh idk. Have you ever seen a jellyfish?  In aquariums, yes.  So majestic. Did anyone ever draw on your face when you were sleeping? No. Have you ever done that to someone else?  No. Were you ever chased by an animal?  Only pets playfully. Have you ever started talking to someone that you thought was someone else?  Omfg I did this a good number of months back at the tat parlor and the embarrassment will stay with me forever. Name one person of the same sex as you that you wouldn’t mind dating? Okay so I'm not gonna be a smartass and say "my girlfriend," I'll actually answer this as if we weren't together.  I'd date Suzy Hanson in a heartbeat, come at me Arin.  Fuckin sweetheart. Do you know any vegans?  No. What’s your best friend’s pet’s name(s)?  Sara: Martha, Crowley, Little Dot, Buster, Mabel, Doris.  Idk the toads' and fishes' names yet.  Colleen: Miracle and Maxwell. When was the last time you were disappointed?  Two or so days ago, real bad.  Mom put aside buying the concert tickets regardless of how many times I reminded her, and now we can't go. Have you ever been on a blind date? No, not my thing. If you have a job, who’s your closest friend at work?  No job. Do you see yourself married in the next five years?  Probably at least engaged.  Maybe married.

[tokupedia]

How to invest in Tokusatsu Part 2: The List

Toei Co. LTD

Ticker #: TYO 9605

Dividend (Late 2017): 0.45 USD per share

Dividend Yield (Late 2017): 0.05%

Price: $105-106 USD (Late 2017)

Licenses: Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Metal Heroes, various heroes created by Shotaro Ishinomori, Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure.

Toei is massive in terms of what cards it has on the table. Name a popular anime in the past 10-20 years and there is roughly a 7 out of 10 chance it came from this studio’s animation department.  Even Gen X American childhood favorites like Muppet Babies came from this studio’s animation department. Aside from that, they are the film and TV production company of Super Sentai, the original source material for Saban’s Power Rangers series, as well as Super Sentai’s older sister series Kamen Rider. Both are beloved staples of Japanese pop culture that make Toei some serious bank. If not for people like Shotaro Ishinomori, this company would not be known as the crown jewel of Japanese superhero media.

The downside is Toei isn’t cheap for some, 105 bucks is a lot to ask for. But it is justified as it is one of the most successful international animation studios outside of Disney and has made cult live action hits like Battle Royale.

The company as a whole has: Real estate, animation and live action film and television production, movie theaters, home video distribution (V-Cinemas and Hyper Battle Videos being an example), internet streaming content distribution, film studios for developing movies for clients, a high tech film R&D department, a Feudal Japan theme park (which many period piece shows or scenes use for filming). They also hold art exhibitions, stage shows and have a global marketing firm so people like Mr. Saban can get Toei licensed properties for international television.

Toho Co. LTD.

Ticker #: TYO 9602

Dividend (Late 2017): 0.11 USD per share

Dividend Yield (Late 2017): 0.73%

Price: 33 USD (Late 2017)

Product: Godzilla, Mothra and various popular Kaiju characters. The now defunct Chouseishin series.

The House of Godzilla is a proud company that dates back to the early 20th century and one of the most respected Japanese film studios in Hollywood thanks to being one of the studios that supported the projects of film legend Akira Kurosawa.

As far as what it does, Toho has its own chain of movie theaters, an animation studio division that makes popular hits like My Hero Academia, a TV production company, Real estate, a movie studio, a theatrical play production studio and film production and special effects studios. They also hold the film distribution rights to many popular anime such as the globally beloved Pokemon series which gives them a slight edge on the competition. In recent years, Toho is adapting to the times in a good way by reviving Godzilla on the big screen and expanding into the market of online streaming/sales distribution. This has resulted in great financial growth in the past 2 years that could go on if Godzilla’s box office takes for both the Japanese and US film series continue and further expansion into the internet through digital distribution and partnerships with licensing to companies like Netflix. Proof that the King of Monsters can still pack a mighty roar!

Bandai Namco Group

Ticker #: TYO 7832 

Dividend (Late 2017): 0.11 USD per share

Dividend Yield (Late 2017): 0.62%

Price (Late 2017): 34-35 USD per share Lowest price in 2017 was 27 USD

Owns: Digimon and various video game franchises, has partial ownership of Ishimori Productions though absorbing a large money sharehold of that company in 2007 (Ishimori Pro is still family operated though through Akira Onodera). 

Toy Licenses: Seemingly Almost EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. Star Trek, Marvel, DC, Ultraman, WWE, Dragon Ball Z, Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Metal Heroes, Sailor Moon, Gundam etc.

Easily the largest behemoth in Japan’s toy industry and now owner of the company that made Pac-Man among other things, Bandai is only spared from being compared to a maniacal corporate super villain in terms of power by having its global competitors live in harmony with it. 

It produces in toy manufacturing of various types including model kits, DX toys, card games, premium collectibles, stuffed animals, Sofubi, electronic toys and video games. It also owns a few theme parks, manufactures arcade game cabinets, makes movies, TV and music, owns a trucking company, has a bakery to sell seasonal food stuffs online to customers, gashapon vending machines, clothing...They also own the famed animation studio Sunrise and have their own media distribution network. Yeah, Bandai is scary big! 

However, that large amount of corporate product diversity and business means potentially that Bandai is stable and safe in most situations. If one falters, another could spring Bandai’s finances back on its feet. Bandai has recently expanded its global operations by opening a Premium website in the USA to sell adult collectible toys directly to customers online. So there is definitely growth potential!

Tohokushinsha Film Corporation

Ticker #: TYO 2329

Dividend (Late 2017): 0.14 USD per share

Dividend Yield (Late 2017): 2.52%

Price (Late 2017): 6.79 USD

Product: The Garo Series

Tohokushinsha Film Corporation or TFC for short is the distributor of the Garo Series. While Garo creator Keita Amemiya has his own studio, Crowd Inc., to produce the show, it is a private company with no stock investments. So the best way to invest in Garo is to support TFC. While Garo is the thing they are most proud of, TFC’s core business is being a film dubbing house for Hollywood movies, taking the dialogue and translating it so the moviegoers in Japan can understand what the heck people like Harrison Ford are saying in their own language. Its other core business is film archiving and storage.

Owning TFC includes these sectors: TV/film production, special effects studios, Marketing firms, TV commercial ad companies, Cable TV (red flag!), Supermarkets, a furniture store chain, a beauty salon chain, a brewery, anime production, moichandising sales and home video sales. They also have a licensing firm in Los Angeles, CA called Cente Service (which presumably is how Kraken Releasing got the rights to those shiny Blu-Rays of Garo Season 1!). 

TFC is cheap compared to the others. But cheaper stocks below $10 always have higher risk in some capacity depending on company performance, so be careful!

Shochiku LTD.

Ticker #:TYO 9601

Dividend: 0.26 USD per share  (Does not make payments quarterly)

Dividend Yield: 0.35%

Price: 150 USD

What you are Toku investing in: Ultraman films

Shochiku is the toughest of the film studios in Japan, as it has been around since 1895!  Don’t believe me? This one Kabuki theater company turned film studio has survived the following: the end of the Meiji Era, World War II, US occupation, several earthquakes, changing technology, and stared down a near bankruptcy without even flinching. You know you have something special when a 122 year old company is still profitable and still growing. While they now focus on movies and media, Shochiku did not abandon their heritage as the Kabuki theater company that built it is still in operation, now expanded to doing other stage plays. Their core film business is Samurai movies, dramas and action/crime dramas

Shochiku owns movie theaters, a music record company, a film studio, an anime production unit, several stage theater companies including a costume department, real estate, restaurants, home video distribution, TV broadcasting etc. They also hold the rights to film distribution of the Ultraman movies.

Stock is a bit pricier, but it has had decent growth the past 3 years. 

Takara Tomy Co.

Ticker #: TYO 7867

Dividend: 0.12 USD per share

Dividend Yield: 0.72%

Price: 16 USD per share

Owns: The Tomica Hero series, Transformers (co-partnership with Hasbro), Tomica toy cars

Takara Tomy is a famed toy brand thanks to the popularity of its products like Transformers and Beyblade. Recently, the company threw their hats back into the TV tokusatsu ring by making the magical girl series Idol x Warriors Miracle Tunes to compete with Bandai/Toei’s Pretty Cure Series.

While beloved, the grim shadow of Japan’s declining birth rate is making investors wary of Takara Tomy as their target demographic is younger kids. This leaves them in a very vulnerable position if Japan’s birth rate screeches to a complete halt, as no new babies means no future toddlers or preschoolers to ask parents to buy their products like PlaRail. Another blow to them recently is the loss of their long running Pokemon toy license to a rival company which will start selling their own toys in 2018. 

Some meanspirited money men are even speculating Hasbro will just buy out Takara’s ownership of Transformers and ditch the remains if they sink. However, not all is gloom and doom as things seem to be doing better this year. Time will tell if this toy company, one half of which is one of the oldest toy manufacturers in Japan, will endure. In the meantime, give it some love so maybe we can get the Tomica Hero series back! (holding a large amount of stocks gives you voting power over who leads the company after all!)

Takara Tomy’s main business is of course toy manufacturing. It also deals in the making of baby products, children’s books, video games, gashapon toys, candies and various other youth marketed goods and apparel. 

Sony

NYSE Ticker: SNE

Price: $44.81 per share (11/4/17)

Dividend: 9 cents USD

Yield: 0.40%

Owns: Funimation, therefore indirectly owns the distribution rights to the Garo anime.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Sony? Well, yeah. Given a very recent event, this counts. See just a week ago, Sony officially bought Funimation. And Funimation had a deal with MAPPA to buy the streaming rights to the Garo animes. Plus, Funimation was in the middle of simulcasting Infini-T Force when it happened! In addition, the company is a major partner with Bandai and Ishimori Pro in making Kamen Rider video games for its Playstation family of game consoles like the hotly anticipated Climax Fighters game.

The company is often overlooked for bigger tech stocks like Apple, but they are so much more than a video game company. In addition to consumer electronics, the Sony corporation has a movie studio (which is debated in merit due to the quality of some of their productions) a TV studio in LA that produces shows and beloved TV game show staples Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, an animation studio and that is just the visual media part. 

They have semiconductor manufacturing plants, record labels and music distribution, Networking, medical firms, insurance, banking, telecommunications, advertising....In short, Sony is one of the most diverse businesses in the entire world and a worthy addition to a portfolio.

And now one NOT to invest in...

Fields Corp.

Ticker #:TYO 2767

Dividend: ???

Yield: 2.62%

Owns: Part of Tsuburaya Productions, the company that makes Ultraman. Also has a stake in HEROS, the manga magazine that distributes the Infini-T force, ULTRAMAN and Kamen Rider Kuuga manga.

As of this year...this stock is not worth your time. Fields is in trouble right now as the reports of its financials indicate a hard time. The company has lost a big chunk of its yearly income. It is in the negative in terms of debt in some areas and it is reporting major losses. Its primary business is Pachinko machines.

Figures, a company that invests on gambling would go down this year!

So there you have it, places you can support tokusatsu in the world of finance!

I know this was probably boring, but I promise the next post will be fun! 

Note: This data is from November of 2017 and may not reflect future financial data. 

[klstheword]

In the pecking order of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol is second only to the baby Jesus. Even if you’ve never read it, or had it read to you, you know about that flinty-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemption during one long dark night of the soul.

Bill Murray, Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Alastair Sim have all played Scrooge in one of the endless film remakes and reboots there have been over the years. Now comes the story behind the story, The Man Who Invented Christmas: a heavily fictionalised biopic with Dan Stevens playing Charles Dickens, bashing out A Christmas Carol in six weeks after contracting a nasty dose of writer’s block in 1843. Thanks to the success of Oliver Twist, Dickens is literary-rock-star famous. But at 31, after a handful of flops, he has a gnawing anxiety that his powers are on the wane. And with four kids, another baby on the way and debts piling up, he needs to make some serious cash, fast.

The film is a Quality Street treat for the holidays, with a gooey sweet centre – daft but immensely likable, and performed with pantomime gusto by a top-notch cast. Dickens yomps about London, meeting people who inspire the creation of Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the gang. These characters then literally come to life in his study as he writes, and they’re an unruly bunch, ruthlessly mocking his failure to finish his comeback. (Christopher Plummer is terrific as Scrooge.)

And with his flamboyant star turn as Dickens, there’s Stevens, a man who finally looks to be laying to rest his own ghost of Christmas past. Cast your mind back to 2012, when the shock death in the Downton Abbey Christmas special of his beloved character Matthew Crawley had the faithful crying into their sherry glasses.

Unlike many actors, Stevens is not at all uptight when chatting about the character who made him famous. Nevertheless, in the past five years, he has done everything possible to distance himself from Crawley, the interloping heir to the Downton pile. He has cross-dressed in the cult favourite Vimeo show High Maintenance, murdered with psychopathic charm in The Guest, freaked out on the Marvel TV spin-off Legion and locked up Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast. He even looks different these days. Gone is the floppy blond hair, and the once boyish face is chiselled into sharp angles. Stevens credits the weight loss to moving to New York where he finds it easier to look after himself, working out at the gym and cutting out dairy.

Different, too, has been the reception granted Stevens’s post-Downton work. A pleasantly surprised tone crept into reviews, a perceptible sound of critics retracting knives and grudgingly acknowledging that, oh hang on, he’s actually a bit good, isn’t he? Stevens throws his head back laughing when asked how he feels about this change in critical fortunes. “It’s interesting. You do one show that goes everywhere, and people associate you with that. Do I think Downtown is my best work? Probably not. But if people enjoy it, or if that’s what they think of when they think of me, so be it. It served me well.” If he is offended by the question, he is too polite to say. Dan Stevens is scrupulously polite, so careful with his words that he often leaves you wondering what he really thinks.

Stevens studied English at Cambridge and was a Booker prize judge in 2012, reading 146 novels in seven months (the Downton costume team stitched secret pockets into his jackets for his Kindle). But he shrugs when I ask about historical accuracy, or the lack of it, in his latest film. (The Man Who Invented Christmas has been criticised by experts for, among other things, the inaccurate size of its newspaper headlines.) “Frankly, whether it’s historically accurate I’m not that concerned about. I was interested in that moment of the creative process, watching a great man struggle – to me, that’s dramatically and comedically interesting. Certainly I was keen not to play Dickens as a bearded old sage.”

He tells me that one of his co-stars, Miriam Margolyes, has a theory that Dickens was bipolar. Does Stevens buy that? “It’s a very interesting interpretation. I think there’s something to be said for it…” he tails off.

Needless to say, the film does not dwell on Dickens’s iffy relationships with women. (A year before publishing A Christmas Carol, he had this to say about his wife in a letter to a friend: “Catherine is as near being a donkey as one of her sex can be.”) “I think he was a good father and a terrible husband,” Stevens says diplomatically. “But yeah, I think it being a Christmas film, we wanted it to be fairly full of laughter. I don’t wish to take anything away from the man, and therefore you have to address the dark side of his nature and his work. There were moments when he was bleak and depressive. But I think there were moments when he was great fun to be around, very silly and playful.” I must say that, having watched the film, I’m still none the wiser about which yuletide customs Dickens has bragging rights on. Pudding, definitely. Turkey? Mistletoe?

Stevens loves Christmas, unironically, in a full-on, festive jumpers and stockings-hanging-on-the-fireplace kind of way. “I always have. Our house is pretty lively at Christmas,” he says. He is married to the singer Susie Hariet and they have three children. Family festivities at their gaff kick off on Christmas Eve, watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. Who does the cooking? “My mum and I usually team up. We’re quite a formidable duo in the kitchen.”

Stevens is well-spoken but not as posh as he seems. Now 35, he was adopted at seven days old, and raised in Wiltshire, Essex and Brecon in Wales. He spent his early teenage years rebelling against anything and everything, but still got the grades to win a scholarship to a prestigious boys’ boarding school in Kent at 13. He wasn’t happy, feeling isolated and as if he didn’t fit in with the other kids. What was going on? “I dunno. I guess I didn’t always toe the line,” he answers a tad testily, and with a definite air of finality.

I mention that going to a top university from a comprehensive, I always felt envious of the privately educated kids who never questioned whether they were talented enough to be in the room. “The entitlement thing is a problem,” Stevens says. “It’s interesting, living in America and seeing a different system. It’s definitely got as many flaws, but there is a sense that your own achievement and drive and curiosity can achieve great things, in a way that I think is stifled in Britain.”

By the time he landed Downton, Stevens had already toured the US opposite Rebecca Hall in a production of As You Like It, and appeared on stage in the West End with Judi Dench. Did he feel any disgruntlement at the time – being a Serious Actor suddenly lumped in with a Sunday night soap opera? He shakes his head: “I never felt that people weren’t taking me seriously. I did appreciate that some people were watching Downton with a kind of ironic appreciation – perhaps the Guardian readership particularly…” he shoots me a grin, adding: “and my friends, too. But no. There was no resentment. I still see a lot of the guys. It changed all of our lives. It had a seismic effect on all our careers.”

It goes without saying that appearing in a show watched by 12 million people opened doors that appearing in off-Broadway Shakespeare never could. But as soon as he left the show he bolted for New York. What was that all about? Did the comparisons to the young Hugh Grant scare him out of the country? “No! I was just very excited about the work I was afforded over there. People there were prepared to see me do something dark and weirder. Or something action-y and mental. Or something big and silly, like Night at the Museum. It couldn’t have turned out better.”

As for Dickens, he got his instant classic. A Christmas Carol sold out its first run of 6,000 copies before Christmas Eve. The tale melted hearts of even the most dyed-in-the-wool cynics – one American businessman gave his staff an extra day’s holiday. Not that Dickens made the killing he’d hoped for. After getting carried away with gilt lettering and fancy paper, he never trousered the £1,000 he had banked on. God bless us, every one.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is out in the US; released in the UK on 1 December

[frasier-crane-style]

Thor spot

It’s not good. It’s bad. It’s “Shake Weight joke in the first five minutes bad.” It’s “Surtur gets taken out in the opening action sequence” bad. There’s no heart, no humanity. It makes the Guardians of the Galaxy look like fucking Shaft. Those movies were still about something. Ragnarok is just a massive piss-take. If GotG was sarcastic, Ragnarok is snide. 

It’s one half epic trilogy conclusion and one half total farce, which gets you Tonal Inconsistency: The Movie. Half of the film (the one the director cares about) takes place on Planet Goldblum and is all wacky fun and crazy antics. (Note: this plotline gets the most handwavey of handwaved conclusions.) The other half is on Asgard and features deaths by the hundred, including name characters being brutally murdered on screen. Like, they’re mortally wounded, then they take a finishing blow. In their first five seconds of screentime! Without a word! That’s how two-thirds of the Warriors Three goes out!

Thor doesn’t even seem to care. It’s like, hey, remember your best friend Volstagg? The guy with a wife and several kids? He was stabbed to death and Thor has more of a reaction to having his hair cut. I’m not kidding.

Like, Iron Man 3 is controversial, but at least they were trying to subvert the expectations of a trilogy capper. Ragnarok is trying to be a straight-up trilogy capper, and a silly parody at the same time, and it ends up feeling like a Muppet version of a Thor movie that could’ve been really cool. Or like a two-hour Saturday Night Live special devoted to making fun of a real movie. Or maybe someone found a way to film two hours of a fuckyeahthor Tumblr…

GotG makes jokes about having a cliche ‘team coming together scene’ that’s still an effective ‘team coming together scene’. Ragnarok would cut out all the moments where the team talks about how they’re probably going to die and Quill talks about how they’ve all lost people (because the director thinks it’s gay), and just make it a bunch of comedians riffing on each other, and then still end the scene on a big musical note as if we’re supposed to take this half-assed improv comedy seriously.

Although even the serious half of the movie isn’t that good. Hela, instead of Loki’s daughter—wouldn’t Loki as King of Asgard, now having to deal with a rebellious offspring, be a fun twist?—is now Thor’s long-lost sister. Yes, the movie is less accurate to Norse mythology than the Thor comics. As it turns out—deep breath—

Long before the backstory we were given about Odin and Odin’s dad in the previous movies, Odin was actually an imperialistic conqueror and he took over the Nine Realms (…remember this) and killed everyone! And Hela was either the Thor to his Odin or the Skurge to his Hela—the movie can’t really decide. Then, inexplicably, Odin decided to just not be a conqueror anymore and turn good. Also inexplicably, Hela disagreed with that and became evil and he had to banish her or imprison her or something.

(This seems like a good place for the Goddess of Death thing or Hel or Niflheim or the spirits of the dead to come up, but it really doesn’t. She might’ve been staying in a loft in Soho doing actuary work, we don’t know. The whole idea of Death’s Domain or her wanting to take the souls of the living, they don’t do anything with that, she just wants to conquer the universe. I guess the Hela, Goddess of Death thing is just a nickname and not something important to who she is as a person. Oh, but she makes a horde of CGI monsters. That’s an important aspect of grappling with your mortality, as personified by Hela. Sometimes there are CGI monsters that you can kill without getting an R-rating).

Of course, stating that a character with a long-established characterization was actually a totally different way that doesn’t fall in line with their personality at all, until suddenly they decided to act in-character with no prompting—good writing. It all basically makes no sense and goes down with so little embellishment that you almost feel like they’re setting up a twist, but then it turns out, no, they just really didn’t care about creating compelling characters or giving them personalities.

And I’m not sure why everyone is so aghast at Odin being a tyrant thousands upon thousands of years ago. Tessa Thompson plays a slave trader in this and Loki killed thousands so recently that people are probably still in therapy for it, but they’re both forgiven with barely a word.

I guess TT has a grudge against Hela, but then that never really comes up or has anything to do with stuff. You think she’d get some big moment of getting her revenge by striking some pivotal blow, but I guess instead she just slashed a bunch of zombies like everyone else.

You know how some comic book movies feel like they haven’t read the comics? This feels like they haven’t even watched the other movies.

Like, I think Tahiti Wahoo is under the impression that Odin rules the Nine Realms? He doesn’t. Earth is one of the Nine Realms. Hel is one of the Nine Realms. Jotunheim, etc. He and Asgard basically act as an inter-realm peacekeeping force. If the US Army shows up in Rwanda to help with a flood, does that mean the President rules Rwanda?

They also have Hela say “Odin ruled the Nine Realms. But why stop at Nine?” Because… that’s all there is. Asgard is one universe, Midgard is another universe (with Earth and Mars and Pluto and everything else in it), and there are nine universes in total. That encompasses, basically, Hell, Heaven, the mortal realm, everything. This is kinda, like, Norse Mythology 101.

To say nothing of the fact that Hela is Odin’s kid, she’s pissy and wants the throne and actually manages to take it, she’s kinda justified and sympathetic but also a real horror… she’s essentially a lady Loki. I don’t get why we waste a bunch of time with Thor discovering Loki is on the throne and removing him from the throne (in the most half-assed, anticlimatic manner imaginable), only for another pissed-off descendant to take the throne and kick Thor out. Why not just have Loki knock Thor over to Planet Goldblum himself?

Also, apparently Hela is powered by Asgard, so if you destroy Asgard, she’s powerless or dead or whatever. Is that how Odin and Thor’s power works? It seems like Thor still has his power when Asgard is destroyed. Like it’s just a part of him. So, uhm… I guess… I guess Hela’s power doesn’t work like that. Even though she has the exact same origin as him and they’re going for this whole parallel thing… but I guess no, their powers work completely differently. For no reason.

And I thought we were still doing “the Asgardians are just stupidly advanced aliens.” If so, how can Hela be Goddess of Death? She raises the dead! What science is that? If it’s some sort of nanotechnology, fuck, why bother with bodies? Just have it make a statue move around or something.

Like, all this stuff about Asgard having a secret history and Odin being a bastard and Hela being Thor’s sister—it all sounds like it should be interesting or thematic or something, but Thor and Hela and Loki just meet for thirty seconds, then the boys go off to Planet Sidequest and never see her again until the climax, so it’s just like… hey… Thor… your dad wasn’t such hot shit after all… and Thor’s just like… I guess not… but then I did already know that from the last two movies... and I also still call on his spirit for advice and support like he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi or something... and all in all they don’t really do anything with that or make anything of it. They’re just putting that out there.

In fact, Thor is pretty much just Tony Stark in this. He makes a bunch of dumb fratboy jokes and he embarrasses himself like an idiot and he has a bunch of daddy issues because it turns out his father is an ass… Now he only does the whole “you shall not triumph over the power of Asgard” stuff when it’s about to be immediately undercut… which the movies have already joked about. And Mjolnir takes a while to show up, which the movies have also already joked about.

Like, the stinger in Doctor Strange actually has Strange and Thor interacting like equals, it breathes, it’s well-paced, it feels like part of some cool adventure--then the version in this movie is edited into basically a Youtube Poop, with Thor bumbling around and being an idiot because that’s good for a cheap laugh and it’s easier than writing jokes. Look, he knocked something over!

For some reason, they specifically mention that Jane Foster was dumped by Thor. I know Natalie Portman doesn’t want to do these movies, and I guess they can’t recast the character, or cut some Gwyneth Paltrow deal to have her show up for one scene, or just refer to her without having her show up like in Ultron. It’s not like Thor has a romance in this one that would preclude him being with Jane. I guess they just wanted to say fuck you to Natalie Portman. And get a cutting-edge “she didn’t dump me, I dumped her!” joke in there. Comedic genius Tadpole Whammy, everyone.

Replacing Jane as female lead is, uhm… I don’t think they ever give her a name? Valkyrie? Although that’s her job title, not a name, so... Yeah, she’s a slave trader. That’s kind of weird. That one of the heroes in the movie is an unrepentant slave trader. She specifically takes free people prisoner and then sells them for money. Into slavery. And not to work on a farm or something either. To be killed in gladiatorial combat. So she’s like a slave trader who deals exclusively with snuff filmmakers and serial killers. Or maybe she also sells sex slaves, but it’s off-screen. I don’t know, that’s going a little far. She’s probably one of those nice slave traders. The ones who only barely torture their slaves into submission with agonizing pain. Which she does. On screen.

I mean, is slave trader the only job this woman can get? It seems like Planet Goldblum has this huge city with millions of people in it. Are they all slave traders? It seems like some of them would be weathermen or babysitters or stunt choreographers. Maybe she could get a job doing one of those things. Instead of being a slave trader. Which is what she does. For thousands of years. I mean, Hela predated Thor and Loki and Odin fighting the jötnar, and Tessa Thompson went to Planet Goldblum immediately after fighting Hela, so… that seems like a long time that she’s spent capturing people and forcing them into slavery for money. She’s probably ruined as many lives as Loki, if you tally them all up over the millennia.  Oh, but I guess she’s bisexual. That’s the important thing. Not her selling people like groceries.

Aside from, you know, the character’s involvement in atrocities, the entire thing is just a wash. Obviously, a 5’2 black Valkyrie is violently miscast—something along the lines of John Leguizamo playing a sumo wrestler or Michael Cera playing the most badass rapper on the East Side—but even if we didn’t give a fig about the cultural heritage of real life people, the movie’s conception of her wouldn’t work. She’s supposed to be some roguish, bedraggled, gin-soaked cynic that’s haunted by her past, but as played by clear-skinned, bouncy-haired Tessa Thompson, the character comes off like a pissy sorority girl who’s had too many mojitos.

Speaking of, I swear, there’s some weird racial polemic thing going on. Odin dies, the Warriors Three die (but the Asian one gets to put up a bit of a fight), Heimdall ends up getting a rather undue blowjob as a character (as he’s the only one who isn’t killed off or made a joke), Asgard turns out to be some sort of evil colonialism thing… I guess the director really wished he could be ruining Black Panther instead of Thor. And I really have a hard time imagining a movie that would make a white slave trader a hero, so are they saying that the bad thing about the American slave trade was that it was white people doing it to black people, and that if a black person enslaved a white person, it wouldn’t be so bad? That’s gotta be the nadir of identity politics.

I’m not sure why Hulk’s in the movie. He doesn’t contribute anything to the plot besides fighting one of Hela’s subbosses in a short, unsatisfying bout. His character doesn’t really change or grow, except that Bruce doesn’t want to become the Hulk for a while, but then he becomes the Hulk for the greater good because it’s an emergency. So, you know—that’s never been done before. And I guess all that control he got over the Hulk in the last few movies is gone, because now he’ll turn into the Hulk over loud noises?

Loki, he kinda screws Thor over, but also kinda redeems himself. I don’t see why the MCU needs a movieverse Magneto. I mean, he just did this in the last movie. And in this one, they take time to make fun of that for being gay shit (I mean, I’m pretty sure the director thinks this is all gay shit and no one but him is clever enough to make fun of how Thor talks funny, but). You’d think maybe they’d at least come up with a definitive end for his character. I mean, if we’re streamlining the comics and getting rid of questionable aspects, why not the part where people keep putting up with Loki and forgiving him, even after he’s responsible for mass murder?

Just… there’s no mood, there’s no tension, there’s no sense of scale or excitement or wonder. The villains have no menace. The action has no thrills. The heroes have no coolness or power. The jokes don’t undercut the atmosphere because there’s never any atmosphere established. An average episode of The Simpsons has more momentum, more romance, more adventure. Like, I’m honestly shocked Cate Blanchett agreed to this. An Oscar-winning actress, playing Marvel’s first female villain, and she’s a total nothing of a character who the movie is endlessly disinterested in in favor of Jeff Goldblum playing a meme.

Every single character is either a joke or hastily bridge-dropped in hopes of establishing some stakes, then the movie has the audacity to ask you to be emotionally involved in these characters who it treats as fucking clowns nine times out of ten. It’s like some kind of anti-storytelling. They might as well superimpose Teaspoon Westeros making a jerk-off motion every time the characters have a supposedly heartfelt moment.

I mean… I wouldn’t even be totally against a Thor movie that’s a complete lark. If there’s one thing the Batman movies have taught us, it’s that not every villain can be the focus of an epic, personal plot. Otherwise you get shit like the Riddler wanting to suck the Earth’s brainwaves or the Penguin wanting to blow up Gotham. Bond fans are downright sick of epic, personal Bond movies that change everything for 007. They just want a nice, normal mission where Bond flirts with Moneypenny, gets gadgets from Q, is ordered off somewhere by M, fights a villain, saves the world, gets the girl.

So a Thor movie that was just him and Hulk on Planet Goldblum, trying to start a revolution, that’d be fine by me. They’re going to make a million of these things anyway and they can’t all be Superman 2, so why not? As long as, in being a silly lark, it didn’t burn through stuff that could actually make for a real movie in the hands of someone who gave a shit. Surtur? Skurge? Hela? All three of the Warriors Three dying? Asgard being destroyed? Thor being blinded? Loki being redeemed? Those are big-ticket items and they deserve to be the focus of a real story, not just ‘Get Ready For Infinity War’ items ticked off in-between lengthy rounds of improv comedy. I swear, their version of Skurge redeeming himself is just that he acts like a bit of a jerk for five minutes, is kinda uncomfortable with Hela killing everyone, and then he sacrifices himself as a complete afterthought. It’s like a version of Lord of the Rings where Boromir dies in the background while Frodo and Sam are doing a bunch of gay panic jokes.

He’s not even a villain! I guess he redeems himself for the time he lifted up an axe. Yes, now that he’s made the ultimate sacrifice, that sin can be forgiven.

Just as a counterexample, I don’t think Christopher Nolan is a dyed-in-the-wool Batman fan, but he respects the material and engages with it and wants to give the audience something for their money. He’s not just saying “wow, this is a bunch of money, I can make Inception and call Leo’s character Bruce Wayne and people will like it because in one scene he wears a cape.”