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Catering to the torches and pitchforks encourages more torches and pitchforks

And weakening the rule of law out of fear doesn’t make anyone any safer

Timothy Snyder has a good piece here on the dangers involved in the “commentariat” pushing SCOTUS to a “pitchfork” ruling on Colorado ‘s pushing Trump off the ballot.  By saying Colorado Supreme Court should be overruled because its ruling is “divisive” or will “inflame” the January 6th folk who were carrying around virtual torches and pitchforks, the politicos and pundits on both sides of the aisle would fundamentally weaken the rule of law … and simply encourage the folk waving pitchforks to wave them more, knowing they will get their way.

snyder.substack.com/p/the-pitc

The Pro-Active Pardon

Haley and DeSantis belittle the rule of law by preemptively declaring they would pardon Trump were they elected President

Is it must me, or is there something deeply unserious about both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis pledging they would, of course, pardon Trump of any federal convictions. Regardless of any further evidence. Regardless of what judges and/or juries decide.

Sure, DeSantis insists it’s just akin of Ford pardoning Nixon to help “re-unite a divided country.” Except, pardoning Trump wouldn’t reunite anything. For Trump opponents it would be seen as complete and utter politics. For Trump, and his mob, it would be taken as an exoneration. And Trump would be stirring up the next insurrection, unabashed and emboldened.

Ford could barely get away with pardoning Nixon — and, in fact, it sank his chances of a second term — because he was respected and liked going into the job, and wasn’t seen as being part of Nixon’s corrupt coterie. He was deeply criticized for poor judgment in pardoning Nixon, but it wasn’t seen as as partisan corruption. That would hardly apply to either Haley or DeSantis doing the same thing for Trump — especially, in the circumstances they describe, he would already be convicted, something Nixon never was.

Do I really think that Haley and DeSantis think Trump shouldn’t be punished for what he did, or that they are seeking some sort of cleansing national unity? Of course not. At the most obvious, they are hoping  to garner presidential votes by appealing to the Trumpist mob. More likely, they simply want to tee themselves up as being part of the MAGA movement that, however the election in November turns out, will propel them to future power.

washingtonpost.com/politics/20

Movie Review: “Barbie” (2023)

Who’d think that a movie about a kid’s toy would be one of the most human films of the year?

4.0 Acting
5.0 Production
4.0 Story
 4.0 OVERALL with a ♥

Barbie movie poster

First off, let me say that the production aspects of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie are … incredible. It is a beautiful movie and an incredible homage to its subject matter and its selected era aesthetic.

The movie itself is far more complex, with dozens of delightful, if not bravura, performances (Margot Robbie is, no matter what Helen Mirren says, perfection), coupled to an intricate narrative and examination of concepts around feminism, patriarchy, interpersonal relationships, societal norms, existentialism, capitalism, self-actualization, and a stubborn defiance of expectations to turn an message movie about dolls into a cartoon of easy heroes and villains.

I’m always a bit leery about saying something is brilliant, or even profound, but I will say that Barbie is simultaneously entertaining, nostalgic, hilarious, moving, inspirational, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to re-watching it a number of times in the future.

(And if it doesn’t have a broad spread of Oscar nominations, I’ll be quite put out.)

Barbie movie poster

Do you want to know more?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kim Jong Un

“People aren’t paying attention to me? How rude! Better make some new threats!

Sounds like Kim is feeling a bit neglected. Like his favorite former US President, he hates it when people aren’t paying him attention.

To be fair, he doesn’t sound much different from … Ron DeSantis?

Lindsey folds. Again.

Lindsey Graham deserves to either be remembered forever, or forgotten forever.

As Lindsey Graham takes the last, squishy bits of spine he had left, carefully places it in Ziplok bag, and leaves it in the back of Trump ‘s fridge, somewhere between 2003 KFC leftovers and a container of Putin’s favorite borscht.

thehill.com/homenews/senate/43

TV Review: Doctor Who Holiday Special 2023

A nice, neat, fun, high-budget intro to the new Doctor

Finally watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special, Holiday Special, or Special No. 4 (depending on which advert you see for it).

I think the Fifteenth Doctor is going to be a lot of fun, full of compassion and whimsy. Not gotten a solid coherent read off of Ruby yet, but we’ll see.

The plot it self was moderately intricate, left some bits dangling for RTD to come back to, and, if a bit fantasy-heavy … well, Doctor Who has always been fantasy with most the numbers filed off.

Good stuff.

Ruby Sunday and the Fifteenth Doctor
Ruby Sunday and the Fifteenth Doctor

Trump just likes being mean to people

Trump’s rule: If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, say it even louder.

I find it difficult to believe that Trump has particular feelings, one way or the other, over care and treatment of transgender kids, except that it makes a convenient cudgel for him to rile up the troops.

“DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left. No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this ‘stiff.’ What was he thinking.”

I mean, DeWine is about as reliably Right as you can find. But after taking the time to look at what the Ohio lege’s gender-affirming health care ban would do, he took a principled stand and said, “No, this is going to hurt people.”

Which just teed him up for Trump’s criticism because, hey, hurting people is what Donald is all about.

thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/438

Administrivia: Toot Toot!

Putting some new life into the old blog.

I am trying a new experiment, as my normal posting here (for things other than movie reviews) has been a bit, um, lacking.

Since I have been more active posting over on Mastodon, I will start pulling my posts from there over here. As some of the metadata (like post title) stuff is missing, and wanting a chance to clean up some of the formatting bits, I’ll be importing in draft mode, and then manually publishing it.

That creates a bit of a lag but with diligence and discipline (ha!) I’m sure I’ll stay caught up.

My goal here is not necessarily to garner a huge audience (the days of blog-centric Internet are long past), but to re-establish this site as my “extended memory,” my journal, keeping track of stuff I’ve done, thought, written, etc.

If it works out, I’ll eventually post about how I did it, technically.

(And, yes, I could use the blog as the source and use various tools to post to Mastodon — or, heck, ActivityHub to making things here visible over there … and maybe I’ll eventually go that course. But using a Masto client to write things remains a lot easier, which is the key to sustainable blogging, even of a micro sort.)

We shall see.

Nikki Haley tries to dance around Slavery and the Civil War

Because the only acceptable answer in the GOP is that the Civil War was about Big Government!

It makes little difference what Nikki Haley actually believes. She simply cannot be trusted. She has shown herself adept at saying things that sound relatively sane one sentence, and then making appeals to the MAGA Right with the next.

She is either a fanatic herself, or (my belief) disingenuously willing to glibly court the fanatics.

And she is still arguably the least-worst of the folk at-all-possibly-getting-the-GOP-nomination-for-President .

politico.com/news/2023/12/27/h

UPDATE:

Aaaand … Nikki Haley backtracks, admits that, yeah, slavery was the cause of the Civil War … which will doubtless draw more criticism from both sides.

She then deflects and says the person who asked the original question was a “Democratic plant” … which is altogether possible, but doesn’t address her inability to give the answer she knows is true in the first place.

So Haley is willing to tell the truth about the Civil War when forced to, but not when she isn’t. Got it.

forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023

Boebert bails on her Congressional District

If you can win in your own district … move to another!

So, scared (and rightfully so) that she will lose next year if she stays in her own CO-3 district, given how much folk have grown to dislike her shenanigans there, Lauren Boebert is carpet-bagging over to CO-4, where old school reactionary Ken Buck is retiring from.

That makes the Dem running again in CO-3 less likely to win that solid-red district… but I doubt the CO-4 GOP are going to be any more tolerant of Boebert’s bad behavior.

9news.com/article/news/politic

Florida’s school book bans go beyond sex, gender, and race

Florida’s race to get rid of Evil Sex Books has swept up a number of Jewish authors

But, hey, let’s talk about how “liberals” are anti-Semitic.

“Florida district pulls many Jewish and Holocaust books from classroom libraries”

A global bestseller by a Jewish Holocaust victim; a novel by a beloved and politically conservative Jewish American writer; a memoir of growing up mixed-race and Jewish; and a contemporary novel about a high-achieving Jewish family are among the nearly 700 books a Florida school district removed from classroom libraries this year in fear of violating state laws on sexual content in schools.

The purge of books from Orange County Public Schools, in Orlando, over the course of the past semester is the latest consequence of a conservative movement across the country — and strongest in Florida — to rid public and school libraries of materials deemed offensive. While the vast majority of such challenged and removed books involve race, gender and sexuality, several Jewish books have previously been caught in the dragnet.

The Orange County case is unusual for the sheer volume of books removed — 699 including some duplicates, according to documents the district provided — and for the unusually large number of books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity included among them.

timesofisrael.com/florida-dist

“Presidential Immunity for me but not for thee”

Trump says that if he doesn’t get full immunity, he’ll prosecute Biden without it. “Merry Christmas”

Short Trump: “Presidents get total immunity. But only me. Biden I will totally prosecute for shit.”

What an asshole.

“Trump rails against special counsel Jack Smith in Christmas Eve posts”

The former president said Biden would be prosecuted without presidential immunity for the way he handled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his handling of the U.S. southern border.

Trump said in another post that Smith is one of Biden’s “misfits and thugs” who are going after him “at levels of persecution never seen before in our country.”

“It’s called election interference. Merry Christmas!” Trump said.

thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefin

Movie Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (2023)

A surprisingly low-key but satisfying wrap-up to Indy’s career

Hey, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is now streaming. Let’s watch it!

TL;DR: Not a great movie, plot-wise (but, then, Indy movies never are). But from a satisfying character study, it rocked.

Yes, there are SPOILERS below. You have been warned.

4 Acting
4 Production
3 Story
 4 OVERALL with a

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny posterOkay, first off, that’s a horrible title, as it turns out. I’ve been trying to figure out a better one, and haven’t but … still, not good.

So there was all sorts of controversy over the CG de-aging of Harrison Ford for the first chunk of the film. I thought it worked just fine, as a matter of fact. There was plenty of (presumably doubled) action to carry through the visual illusion. Really, the only thing that doesn’t work in the WW2 sequences is Harrison Ford’s voice.

That said, mad props to Harrison Ford following that up with a full torso nudity at age 80ish. He looks old and horrible and absolutely, therefore, sells where the character is at.

Which is, a Man out of Time, old and in decline, working for a (it feels) less prestigious college, and literally plummeting into retirement. The audience recollections of his past adventures are assertively upstaged by the first Moon Landing. His adoring students of bygone films are now bubble gum-popping, jaded, and disinterested in stupid old “history.” His grand romances are reduced to a tiny apartment and divorce papers.

But it’s played very straight, no melodrama. It just is, grounded, mundane, in keeping with where Indy is in his twilight, a life of memories, bounded by noisy neighbors and the concrete jungle of New York.

God bless John Williams. The soundtrack is, with a few leitmotifs, unique unto itself … but so very, very Indy.

The story and direction (and Harrison Ford) convincingly give us age, even frailty, punctuated by a great right hook. Perfect.

I was really kind of hoping that CIA Lady would be a “figure of authority who ultimately sees that the bad guys are actually bad guys and she should be on the side of the protagonists” character. Alas, no.

The car/car/tuk-tuk/tuk-tuk chase through Tangiers is delightful, arguably the best action sequence in the film. Indy’s skill, competence, age, and incompetence are beautifully balanced.

I love that Indy represents received knowledge in competition with Helena’s street smarts, with her having a leg up in modern ruthlessness and him having a leg-up in experience.

The one least-believable part of the script is the idea that the ship carrying the Antikythera was manned by “one hundred centurions,” which is like saying “one hundred master sergeants,” which is kind of nonsensical.

A decent round of applause for addressing the “Mutt” problem — not just addressing it, but actually making it a key part of the backstory as to where Indy is at the opening of the film. It plays a part of the setting (the Vietnam War era) and the backstory (and not-so-backstory) of Indy and Marion.

So, yeah, Indy is not the worst sort of grave robber (accusations notwithstanding), but only because he donates what he robs to museums (phone call from Lord Elgin, Dr. Jones). That said, any archaeologist in the audience would be crapping their pants over (a) Indy’s treatment of the university artifact collection and (b) the recovery, opening, reading, and treatment of the Grafikos.

I loved how the references to Helena’s relationship with / obsession over his obsessions with / asserted disappointment from her dad had very, *very* clear parallels with Indy and his own father. Rubbed in when she noted his role as her godfather.

Okay, nice to see the Big Brute Killer Bad Guy hoist by his own over-sized petard.

Good Lord. It’s the “If you could kill Hitler …” time travel question, pivoted with “… and create a better Reich from it” as a plot element. Fantastic.

The final fate of the Bad Guys is fitting, but relatively low-key. That said, their fate is not actually tied to the fate of Our Hero, which is both weird and actually kind of fitting.

I was really wondering if they would pull the actual time travel trigger. And … they did, marvelously. And then I was really wondering if they would have Indy stay in the past. And … they resolved it quite on-point.

I love that, at the beginning, we are told that “Mutt died in Vietnam, Marion was inconsolable, Indy didn’t handle that well, their marriage fell apart.” And, when Marion returns at the end … maybe it wasn’t quite the way he described it. “Are you back?” I am not at all surprised that Indiana Jones is not a reliable narrator.

And, after a movie with lots of John Williams cues that are quite Indyesque music, with brief moments of leitmotifs … we get the full, bad-ass Indiana Jones March over the closing credits.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny characters

Character-wise, it’s a pretty large cast. Most are competent figures in passing, tropes to play a scene or five and be disposed of. The bad guy henchfolk fall into that category. So does the kid, Teddy. Toby Jones’ Basil Shaw is fun, but more of a plot device. Antonio Banderas’ Renaldo feels like a character who was contractually required to be prominently displayed in the posters, but who mostly ended up (appropriately) on the cutting room floor. John Rhys-Davies returns delightfully as Sallah, adding to the character’s richness but definitely in a supporting role.

Those aside, there are really three main characters. Harrison Ford is, of course, Indiana Jones, and plays him with weary enthusiasm and splendor. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a delight as Helena Shaw, Indy’s almost-Irene Adler / god daughter, uber-competent and very much not a romantic interest for the protagonist (thank heavens).  Mad Mikkelsen’s  Dr. Voller  plays a worthy anti-Indy, the Nazi physicist / scientist who’s out to re-write history; he never gets much motivation other than “Nazi scientist!” but plays the role gamely.

In sum … a movie that flows in a competent narrative from scene to scene, with fine (if not spectacular) FX and action scenes … but a truly marvelous character sketch for Indy, and a profoundly fitting wrap-up for his career.

I was satisfied.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - Chinese poster

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The Once and Future DoctorDonna

A look back at Season 4 of NuWho, and the best Companion ever.

Doctor Who Ten and Donna
David Tennant as the Doctor (Ten), and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.

I will confess, I am a total Donna Noble fan (and have been for some time). So prepping for the 60th Anniversary Doctor Who  specials by rewatching the Donna Noble season was a task I readily welcomed.

After endless ages in Doctor Who S1-2 of the Holy Beloved Rose Tyler, and the weirdly abortive S3 “oh, she’s falling for the Doctor, too” tenure of Martha Jones, having a Companion for S4 that was (a) out for a good, interesting time, (b) not falling on love with the Doctor, (c) sassy and independent, (d) definitely not falling in love with the Doctor, (e) nagged by an inferiority complex, and (f) oh so very much not falling in love with the Doctor, was like a breath of fresh air.

Doctor Who Ten Donna mateThe chemistry between David Tennant and Catherine Tate was lovely. The dynamic of a Companion who wasn’t cowed or dominated or (as noted) smitten with the Doctor was delightful. There was humor, there was terror, there was so much of an EveryPerson about Donna, that every moment in her early tenure was a delight.

Her first encounter, in the S3 “Runaway Bride” gave us a person-on-the-street encounter with the weirdness of the Doctor.  “Partners in Crime” shows both how that encounter has changed her and how the Doctor (a lesson that holds true for every regeneration, but particularly for Ten) absolutely needs a Companion. That’s reinforced in “Fires of Pompeii,” showing how the Doctor’s hit-and-miss adherence to the rules, like a good little Time Lord, can lead to moments of amoral inhumanity, and in “Planet of the Ood” gives the Doctor a boost in the moral outrage over that race’s slavery.

Donna gets pushed a little to the side with a standard alien invasion in “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky,” and, for obviously reasons, continues to play support in “The Doctor’s Daughter.”  But she’s back on stage for the Agatha Christie “The Unicorn and the Wasp.”

Doctor Who Silence in the Library
The Doctor and Donna (and, welcome, River Song!) in the Library

After what is, at that point, a pretty normal Doctor Who season (a few invasions, some weird planets and historical pieces), S4 becomes nightmarishly dark. I would say that “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” are the scariest bits of the season, if not for the Twilight Zone-perfect “Midnight,” but Donna remains a presence — her phantom family drama in the Library two-parter makes up for River Song’s introduction pushing her a bit to the side, and her grounding of the Doctor after a very, very unpleasant encounter in the worst parts of human nature are critical parts of what make those episodes work.

All of which leads to an even darker tale in the first of the three-ep season wrap, “Turn Left,” where we see what the world — and, by extension, the lives of Donna and her family — becomes if she never takes the step that brings her to meet the Doctor. It’s an hour of progressive dystopia with shades of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, as the various disasters and plots that the Doctor averted over the course of S3-4 actually come to pass when Donna’s not there to pull the Doctor back in “The Runaway Bride.” After the horror of the Library saga and the psychodrama of “Midnight,” “Turn Left” just becomes horribly depressing (with a frisson of horror from the bug on Donna’s back).

Throughout it all, though, Donna remains — if not positive, then resolute. Capable of outrage. Determined to make things better. Self-deprecating, but willing to step up for a fight. She is utterly human and utterly a force of nature.

Doctor Who Stolen Earth fan service
It’s Old Home Week (or Two) on Doctor Who … but, yeah, I loved it.

That brings us to “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” as Donna lets herself be recruited to save the world. The pair of episodes carries a massive, sometimes almost overwhelming amount of fan service, drawing in every NuWho Companion and hangers-on, including key cast members of Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, into a massive, multi-layered conspiracy by and battle against the (of course) Daleks.

Through this, it would be easy for Donna to fade a bit into the background, but she’s a key, if controversial, part of the plot. By the end of things, she’s proven herself, the “Temp from Chiswick,” to be the most important human in the universe … and is, for Reasons, demoted into amnesiac former Companion, unaware of what she’d seen, done, accomplished.

Doctor Who Donna Journeys End
Donna Noble, burning too brightly

It feels outrageously, massively unfair to the character, of course (esp. as Martha heads off to new possible adventures, and Rose ends up with her mom and the Man of Her Dreams, sort of). It’s still gut-wrenching to watch (even as it includes the meme-worthy “David Tennant in the Rain” scene), but, aware how much of it must have been driven by Catherine Tate’s contract (she had a successful career both pre- and post-Who) and the winding down the Russell Davies era, it’s actually a far better ending than “Oh, I’m tired of / traumatized by / unrequited about traveling with the Doctor, so I quit” (which is pretty much what sort of happened with Martha, and with a number of Companions over the decades). It hurts like hell, but it’s also a tribute to the character at the same time.

And where did things go from there?  Lacking Donna, the Tenth Doctor goes into what turns into a self-destructive spiral ending with him (and the showrunner) regenerating into Matt Smith’s Eleven and Steven Moffat — accompanied by increasingly Mary Sue-ish Amy Pond and Clara Oswald.

Which, of course, brings us a few Doctors along (Peter Capaldi’s gruff rock star Twelve, and, under Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker’s lovely Thirteen) to the 60th Anniversary specials, with David Tennant somehow becoming the regeneration into Fourteen and (we are told) Catherine Tate back as Donna. How will that work? Well, yeah, I’m a day or two late in watching, but I’m very eager to find out.

Doctor Who Donna Noble Catherine Tate
Catherine Tate as Donna Noble

Movie Trailers before “The Marvels”

Because sometimes the trailers are the best part of the theater experience

There were fewer trailers than usual at our Regal theater prior to our Friday night premiere showing of The Marvels.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: I am sure that someone thought that there was some huge audience for a Hunger Games prequel (as if “yes, this is how things got so horribly miserable, plus, character hints for the people who end up so even more miserable in the original movies!” was a winning pitch), especially given the last film was eight years ago.

It all looks appropriately post-apocalyptic, and the trailer hints at it all being terribly depressing, despite some fundamental sense that somehow, sometime in the future, virtue will prevail, kindasorta.

Seriously not my cuppa.

Migration:  Something animated about birds (mostly? ducks) migrating or maybe taking a vacation, and ending up being stuck in New York City, where hilarity ensues.  Looks amusing. Not planning to see in the theaters.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom This trailer was interesting for the first ten seconds, until Jason Momoa stopped being onshore and started living in a CGI world under the waves. At which point it all turns into what seems like a synopsis of the entire film. I suspect I will eventually watch it, but it will not be in a movie theater.

On the bright side, this should, finally, finally, spell the end of endless articles about the far-too-delayed end of the DCEU.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: So I was there back when the original Apes movies were made, and they were all around the juxtaposition of humans and intelligent apes who oppressed / were oppressed by them. As far as I can tell from this trailer, it’s basically about CG apes and the rise of their civilization, and while the CG apes look to be nicely done, I have zero to no interest in what they are doing.

WishFor all this seems to have some nifty-looking animation, the story seems like such a pastiche of other Disney films that it’s hard to get at all excited for it. There’s a young girl! Who is magically special! And there is a power figure that doesn’t like it! And danger! And cuteness! And a meta-aware talking animal!

I mean, okay, sure, it’s better than a live-action remake of Sleeping Beauty (coming to theater probably around 2027, by my guess), but there’s nothing there that feels fresh or new or intriguing.

So, net-net … nothing I feel any great urge to see, though a couple I might get around to streaming someday.

Honestly, going back over the list … I’d probably rewatch The Marvels first.

  

Movie Review: “The Marvels” (2023)

The latest MCU film is a disappointing, sloppy jumble. But it’s also a lot of fun in enough places to make it worthwhile.

Seen in the theater this evening in 2-D. Not much SPOILERy, beyond what you can see in the TV ads.

3.5 Acting
3.0 Production
2.5 Story
 3.0 OVERALL with a

The Marvels - PosterThis movie was always going to be fighting an up-hill battle. Between constant media reports about “super-hero fatigue” from movie-goers, MCU and/or comics fans who have their very strong opinions about who should be allowed in the super-hero club, and people who disdain Marvel (and Disney) on some sort of principle, any MCU film that is less than perfection is going to take a very loud drubbing.

And, yes, this film is definitely less than perfection.

(To be fair, there are a lot of critics, and sites, that have good things to say about the movie. That there is still a very vocal contingent touting this as yet another sign that the MCU is inexorably spiraling into the toilet speaks to me more about the folk saying that than the movie itself.)

You will probably hear, somewhere, the line that “The Marvels is less than the sum of its parts,” and there’s something to be said for that. This is a movie that went through a major restructuring (from a Captain Marvel sequel to this three-fer) and never quite got put back together correctly.  It feels like it needed about three more runs through the writers room, honing and focusing a scattergun storyline and smoothing the oddly frantic jerkiness of its pace, while giving decent attention and story and opportunity for its three protagonists.

Its also the shortest MCU film yet, which seems odd for a movie focused on a trio of heroes, and that dichotomy shows in missed (or edited-out) moments that could have made a big difference in the feel of the piece.

At the same time, and I’m going to bold this:  The Marvels is a lot of fun, and there were enough positive moments to outweigh the negative ones for both me and my wife (who is far less a Marvel enthusiast than I am). It is at its best when being relatively light-hearted, even a bit silly (net-net, I think the controversial “musical” scene works), but falls flat when giving us overly-melodramatic emotional conflicts or trying to build stakes for the overall villainous plot.

The original film trailer actually captures some of the better tonal moments.

Interestingly, the final trailer plays up the “serious” super-hero side of things:

The Acting (and the Story)

The Marvels - Ms Marvel
Kamala is living the dream.

Let’s start with those protagonists. Best of the list has to be Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, doing a bang-up follow-on to her Ms Marvel TV mini-series and leaning whole-heartedly into fan-girling her idol, Captain Marvel. Actress and character both brighten up everything when on-screen, and the substantial inclusion of her family makes it all the more delightful.

Her story seems to be about trying to prove herself, getting validation as a super-hero from her idol, and maybe enduring some sobering-up moments to show it’s not all skittle and beer behind the spandex. Those aspects never quote connected the dots for me — I could see the outlines there, hints and indications, but in the rush to wrap up the film, it never quite gelled.

The Marvels - Captain Marvel
Carol, please don’t bring your cat to work.

I liked Brie Larson in the original Captain Marvel, a lot more than some folk seem to. She could be a bit strident, but there was justification for it all down the line, and there was no doubt she was a strong character. Here she’s facing a very real tale of dealing with the consequences of her actions, both with her Earth family (Monica in particular) and with her previously-unseen actions toward the Kree.

That tale of consequences should be super-powerful, something that rarely gets highlighted in super-hero fare, and maybe in a solo film it would have been. Instead, it means too often that Carol Danvers came off to my  mind as weak and emotional and apologetic far too frequently. Her eventual efforts to Do The Right Thing and Fix the Problems She Created come too late and feel too brief, like checking a box to solve the problem. Maybe, hopefully, there was more left on the virtual cutting room floor.

Marvels - Monica Rambeau
Not Captain Marvel, Spectrum, or Photon. Just Monica.

Which then brings us to Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. After an initial setup (as a child) in Captain Marvel, and an unexpected heroic power bump in WandaVision, this movie takes that teed-up, defined character and …

… does nothing of substance with her except for a very fun mid-credits scene. Monica comes off too often here as whiny, untrained, entitled, uncertain, and for the most part unpleasant, except when she’s called upon to be the movie’s Voice of Expository SCIENCE, and when she finally gets around to becoming a hero. The character, and actress both deserve better.

The Marvels - Dar-Benn
Dar-Benn is … not good. Not just morally, but as an antagonist.

Every hero needs a villain, and with three heroes we should have a villain that is three times as good, right. Unfortunately, Zawe Ashton, for all her impressive resume, is directed here as a third-rater Kree leader/villain, Dar-Benn.

Given her background and the situation on Hala, there are a lot of interesting ways you could have done that character. An admirably do-or-die patriot for her people that you could almost appreciate as a noble enemy. Or maybe a victim of madness in the face of her race’s impending death, someone you can feel sorry for and hope that she will be helped.

Instead, she comes off as just a “mean girl,” animated more by petty resentment toward Captain Marvel than a deep-seated philosophical stand or a fiery-hot desperation. Her scheme is crazy to begin with, and turning it into revenge tour on Carol just makes it feel more not-in-a-good-way silly. As such, Dar-Benn ends up weakening every scene she opens her mouth in, and keeps a lot of the “serious” aspects of the film from gathering any weight.

The rest of the supporting cast is workable — some random SABER agents, a handsome prince, a Skrull emperor, and, of course, Samuel L Jackson drawing a tidy paycheck for a very pedestrian Nick Fury rendition.

But, again, as legit as all those disappointing elements are, we still had fun. Keep remembering that.

This and That

The backdrop for all this has problems as well. There are some decent VFX, in my opinion — but also some not-very-good ones as well. The hex-grid hyperspace effect from the Guardians movies is still here, but both more simplified and more oddly tactile than before. Okay, fine.

On the other hand, some of the fixed sets (on the initial planet, on the Kree ship) are pretty disappointing, and feel like visual sacrifices were made to make them convenient locations for big battles.

That said, the fight choreographing with three protagonists — especially against the villain, especially when they are body-location-swapping — is very neatly done. Indeed, the whole quantum entanglement / body-location-swapping thing works far better than it should, to both humorous and action effect (see the Original Trailer, above, for examples).

Music-wise, aside from the Captain Marvel primary theme, and the “musical” scene, the soundtrack varies from mediocre to hackneyed. Laura Karpman has an amazing resume and I liked her work on “What If …?” but here the music is conspicuously, distractingly conventional.

Random other thoughts which I will try to keep not-too-spoily:

* So what exactly is Earth’s tech level these day? Apparently we have full-fledged space stations, with energy-cable space elevators, and instantaneous cross-galactic comm units, and recognized and active hyperspace gates. With no discernable difference to the people of Earth.

* On the other hand, the galaxy (or galactic neighborhood) sure seems awfully small. We have a limited number of hyperspace gates, and no indication that anyone but the Kree, the Skrulls (previously), and Earth are out there using them (or worrying about the problems occurring with them). I realize we weren’t going to see a Guardians cameo, but it makes the playground feel a bit cramped and unambitious.

* As always, very much appreciate that Ms Marvel’s costume aligns in style with her comic book version, and that it is “modest” in a non-frumpy way.

* Monica’s costume was unimaginative at best — though I did enjoy the under-arm sashes that the water people offered her, as a call-back to her original goofy comic book uniform.

* My problem with the “musical” scene was not its existence, but that the music was very Earth-conventional in chords and other musical structures. It didn’t feel intriguingly alien, it felt pedestrian Bollywood.

* Whatever happened to the water planet? Sorry, no time to consider that planetary ecological disaster, too bad, so sad.

* Nice to see Valkyrie’s too-brief cameo, but not only it feel way too much like almost-literal deus ex machina to solve a plot issue, but it was a solution to a plot issue that might have made a very big difference in a recent MCU TV show. Crikey.

* I loved the flerkin stuff. All the flerkin stuff. Kamala and the flerkin. Nick and the flerkin. Flerkins in space. So much fun. (Okay, all maybe except the question of why Carol flies through space, into danger, with Goose on her shoulder; it seemed more plot-driven than logical.)

* My wife suggested that SABER’s Employee Assistance Program was going to get a lot of heavy demand for the next few years.

* WTF happened to the other bangle at the end? No, seriously. Horrifying continuity gaffe or a last-minute edit of a cut scene that didn’t get explained (or CGed) in the final edition.

* Man, I sure hope we don’t have a new invasive species problem here on Earth.

Bottom Line

This movie feels like it suffered from too-choppy writing, even with the highly publicized reshoots, exacerbated by a far shorter run time than it deserved.

As a result, character development and coherent plotting, not to mention the opportunity to take a breath from constant planet-hopping, were all in short supply.

It still has plenty of good moments, though, and I don’t mind the somewhat light-hearted, even whimsical nature of much of the film. Not taking itself too seriously was honestly not a bad thing; the movie’s weaknesses came up when it tried to be more serious and started dropping things all over the place.

I can see watching this movie again, though not at theater prices. Maybe on Blu-Ray when it comes out.

Would you like to know more?

The Marvels

The (Social) Media Is the Message

If you are what you eat, you are also what you use to communicate

Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message,” noting that the nature of the medium used to communicate is itself an essential part of what is being communicated.

I didn’t think about it in those terms a year ago when I pretty much cold turkey switched from Twitter over to Mastodon. But it was, and remains, true. The social media tool I use is a reflection of my priorities, the way I want to communicate, and, ultimately, me and my message.

(Note: I created my Mastodon presence on 2 November 2022; I gave up Twitter for good on 13 December, according to — hey! — my blog entry about the same.)

Why I left

I don’t recall what particular shenanigan Elon Musk pulled to make me make the switch. I’d been watching with alternating waves of mild humor and appalled horror at the whole “Is he buying Twitter or isn’t he?” fiasco of the preceding year. Having actually closed the deal, he started acting like the Joker at an art exhibit.

Not just destructive to Twitter as a company, mind you — crazy layoffs, damaging cuts in support, weird work demands — but destructive to Twitter as a social medium.

Let’s not get too sentimental. Twitter had long had a lot of problems. An open forum of its type could hardly avoid it. But, for all the less-than-good bits of it, there was a lot of great discussion, news, statusing, and commentary going on, and the management seemed to realize that they needed to act responsibly (or at least make motions like they were) for both moral and good business reasons.

Musk did away with all of that. His attitude toward social media seemed to be a Hobbesian war of “all against all,” with the most brutal (and view-garnering) voices “winning.” That the bullies and nihilists usually find it easier to out-shout people who really don’t want to shout in the first place wasn’t, for him, a bug: it was a feature.

So maybe it was making it easier on anti-semites, or some new offense against LGBTQ folk on the platform, or even getting rid of blocks on content and users spewing COVID fantasies and Election Denial.

Whatever it was, I had enough. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be. So, in remarkably short order, I wasn’t.

I do still occasionally peer over there, most often by inadvertently clicking on a link to an image pointing there. When possible I try to avoid it.

Because the medium is the message. And, for me, actively participating on Twitter is adding head count and click count and tacit support for Musk and his cronies and the Joker Gang wandering around the place and pissing in the corners.

I find it disheartening that so many Twitter members — news organizations, local and national government agencies, individual contributors I respect — are still on “X” (which rebrand exemplifies so much of what is wrong with Elon Musk and his private soap box). Not only is its technical reliability an increasing concern, but Musk’s abusive behavior against anyone who he takes a disliking to means its business reliability is dodgy as well.

Twitter X sign
X marks the spot-of-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things

“But, Dave,” you might say, “Twitter still has a huge following! We have thousands and millions of followers who would never, ever dream of moving over onto another platform! We’d lose a lot of money, a lot of influence, a lot of visibility.”

True. Those are all priorities. I suspect that any number of people who have, in history, chosen not to flee a country that was becoming increasingly unstable, hostile to them and theirs, oppressive, etc., used the same excuses. “I have a business here! I have a home! I have friends — fewer, maybe, than before, but I have a place in the community. I am sure it will all blow over soon …”

Those stories sometimes don’t end well.

But enough about Twitter

I’ve been on a lot of social media over the years. I started a blog a couple of decades ago — too late for the birth of my kid, but just in time for  9/11. It saw a lot of use in the following years … but I also early adopted some lighter-weight content gathering. Google Reader in the day. Some early Twitter stuff. Then (insert angelic choir sound here) Google Reader, then, after that, back to Twitter, as life and attention span and stuff made shorter-form stuff a lot easier to do.

And then all the Twitter stuff above, and …

… off to Mastodon.

Mastodon icon
All the cool kids are doing it.

On the surface, the two platforms are similar — short-form individual messages, threads, etc.

But as so many have commented, the environment on Mastodon is a lot more … quiet. Not in terms of content sharing — I get more messages in than I can keep up with — but in terms of it all being less shouty, less click-baiting, less outrage-to-drive-eyeballs. There’s tough, incisive posting about things, as well as a lot of silliness. There are people dedicated to a given topic, and others who (like me) wander about, making noises about politics, comic books, or silly jokes.

I’m not quite sure it yet feels like home, but it is feeling increasingly comfortable.

Mastodon welcome
While it seems sappy, Mastodon has a lot of welcoming folk on it.

One thing I want to work on is sharing my contact from there to here. One reason I like having a blog is that it’s mine — dependent only on my paying quarterly hosting bills, not on the business plan of anyone else. That said, one of the things I like about Mastodon is its decentralization, so that if one instance is mismanaged or lets the deplorables run roughshod, it’s easy to isolate the damage and/or move to another host if needed.

Anyway, cross-posting on an automatic basis from There to Here — to act as a repository and a place I can more easily pull past info from — is high on my list of things to do (which is still very long).

Mastodon isn’t perfect. That decentralization makes for a few sharp corners when trying to find people or share stuff. It’s actually improved there over the last year, but it’s a slightly steeper hill to climb than simply hopping onto Twitter or Facebook, etc.

I think Mastodon, as a “kindler, gentler” environment, sometimes gets contentious over whether people are being properly kinder and gentler. This pops up in debates about the platform and what should be the soft rules and the hard rules. Content Warnings (a clever tool) can be a touch-point, though I’m generally unaware of the extent of their use (as I simply have the window open to everything automatically, and don’t generally post stuff I think will be triggering to people).

Mastodon’s native inability (at the moment) to QTs is hotly debated whenever the proposal comes up — some groups find the feature too prone to abuse, others find it essential for how their sub-communities operate. I tend to favor them, but I’m able to work around that usually.

But so it goes. Any human community is going to have some sensitive points of friction, and the ones I tend to see on Masto are orders of magnitude less problematic than, say, Twitter debates about Were the Jews were behind COVID or if it was actually the trans people (so maybe we should do something to deal with both groups, just to be safe) … 

Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies as social media application. Okay, yes, I’m still talking about Twitter here.

At least that’s how I feel about it at the moment. The Masto I see and interact with is very open and accepting, especially to anyone who approaches conversation in a way that doesn’t easily translate into “Here’s my rationale for wanting you gotten rid of.”

The bottom line

This is probably far more info than I needed to share, esp. for something so trivial as my 1st Mastodon Anniversary. But there’s a reason I’m there (and why I’m not at my old there), and it’s probably worth writing down before everything changes again.

Net-net, I not only feel comfortable on Mastodon, I feel the general values and nature of the community there is something I’m willing to be associated with. If the medium is the message, the message Mastodon is currently sending is part of mine.

If you need help or advice getting yourself onto Mastodon, give me a holler.

If you’re looking for me over there, here’s where I am: https://mstdn.social/@three_star_dave

DCEU Rewatch: “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” (2023)

This very unchallenging movie could use a lot more fury.

Part of my DCEU Rewatch. First Watch? YES.

2.5 Acting
3.0 Production
3.0 Story
 3.0 OVERALL

There might be spoilers … (but it’s hard to care too much).

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

I went into Shazam 2 knowing only that, with a huge stable of classic Captain Marvel villains, the creative team had chosen to come up with something new of their own — a big waste of possibilities, even if Captain Marvel’s classic villains tend to be stuck with a Golden Age sensibility to them.

(Don’t worry: there’s a lamp-shading post-credit scene for that.)

The bottom line is, after a sort of rocky start, and toying with questions of self-worth, of identity, of belonging, of independence, the movie finally settles for rollicking sibling action with some independent side quests (especially for Freddy) along the way. It’s cute, and it’s actually more engaging than when brushing on some of the deeper, more serious themes, but at the same time, it’s really, really generic. Half the kids (in either form) are random tropes, and aside from Billy having imposter syndrome and Freddy falling for a girl, there’s not much there actually there.

The antagonists are generic godly types resentful of the wizards who stole their powers and the one wizard in particular who passed them on to Billy (and through him to his family). There’s some slight interest here in that the three godly sisters, the Daughters of Atlas, don’t agree on policy, which leads to some not-insignificant conflict between them. But even with talents like Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren involved,  it still feels (to use the word again, and intentionally) generic.

(How this movie’s depiction of the fall of the gods jibes with the the analogous backstory from Wonder Woman is not worth thinking too much about. Ironically, SPOILERS, Diana herself makes an appearance, leaning into the god thing herself a bit more than usual, but also classing up the joint tremendously.)

Shazam - Fury of the Gods

Shazam 2 isn’t a bad film. It’s just sort of fluffy, middle of the road, undistinguished. If there is actual “super-hero fatigue” in movie audiences (and I think there is, to the extent that super-hero movies are now like anything else: audiences demand something special and interesting, not just a satisfaction to a hunger for anything about super-heroes; they want steak, not hot dogs, or at least a thick, juicy burger), Shazam 2 is definitely a self-victim of it, generally entertaining but safe and unchallenging. It’s the summer family comedy that you’re sure you’ve seen the commercials for, but don’t know anyone who went to see it (or who thought the viewing noteworthy enough to mention at work).

What it also is, is proof that in no way would a Shazam/Black Adam film ever, ever work. Ever. They are tonally way too different.

Or, on consideration, maybe I’m wrong: the seriousness and confrontation with violence that Black Adam would bring to Shazam might shake the sub-franchise out of its family dramedy doldrums, while giving Teth-Adam something to do other than brood and murder.

Not that we’ll ever know one way or the other, since it seems unlikely this iteration of Shazam will ever make it into the New, Improved DCU. And, with Billy Batson turning 18 “in only five weeks” (something he makes a somewhat uncomfortable point of mentioning to Wonder Woman), maybe this a good opportunity to bring this particular tale to a close, even if it weren’t being shut down by WB in the first place.

Shazam - Fury of the Gods

Do you want to know more?

DCEU Rewatch: “Black Adam” (2021)

Not as bad as I expected, not as great as Dwayne Johnson wants you to believe.

Part of my DCEU Rewatch. First Watch? YES.

3.0 Acting
3.5 Production
3.5 Story
 3.5 OVERALL

There will be spoilers …

Black Adam
Very cool poster, and very ironic given how the movie ends up.

After its critical and box office drubbing, I was not holding out much hope for Black Adam. To my surprise, it’s actually a decently crafted super-hero flick, with some unique elements that make it not just another slog. It’s not the paragon of the genre, no matter how much Dwayne Johnson wants you to think so — there are some plot and characterization elements that are more than a bit goofy. But that said, there are far worse DCEU films (I know — I’ve watched several of them this past week).

The theme of being a hero vs. being an avenger (small A), or force of anger, or even just a protector, is centrally, though shallowly, addressed. Johnson, in the title role, sometimes comes across like David Bautista’s Drax — literal and violent in a way that’s meant to be endearing (and turns disturbing if you give it any thought) — but when he relaxes he — and the movie — are eventually able to more or less walk the fine line between serious issues and situational humor.

Some notes from the viewing:

¶ Ultimately, the question for the movie is going to be how well Dwayne Johnson does Black Adam. If this movie had never been made, fans would have debated the matter for decades.

Well, the movie was made, and the answer is: pretty darned well. Physically, of course, he’s perfect — big, bald, and brooding. Emotionally, the brooding part works, too, as well as the glower. He has some emotional scenes he carries off decently. This is not a King Lear star turn, but he filled what it was just fine.

(OTOH, we can debate whether his wrestling-style publicity-driving behavior — aggressive hyperbole about his future role in the DCEU — might have been one of the factors that turned audiences away from the movie, or, more importantly, turned the WB execs away.)

¶ Along those lines, the anti-hero thing is getting a bit tired, but Black Adam does provide us with a novel instance of it: a brutalized man, from a brutal culture, with the power to be brutal to the folk he thinks need brutalizing. I sort of got some flashes of Conan the Barbarian there, early on.

¶ While appropriate, it’s also kind of cool to see a movie like this set in a foreign country — and focused on its people — rather than another supers film centered on the US. That another country could have a history, could have patriots, could serve as something more than an exotic plot layover or a homeland for terrorists — is probably the most imaginative thing about the film.

That said, the treatment doesn’t get more than skin deep. While I’m a little glad that we didn’t get the usual gang of juntaists or dictators, saying that Kahndaq has been taken over by Intergang for the past several years isn’t telling us much (even for someone who recognizes the reference, as 95% of the fans won’t). Other than  strip-mining for the hitherto unheard-of “Eternium” for their hi-tech weapons and transport, the question of what Intergang is doing there — how and why they are controlling the country,  or who is even running the show — is handwaved aside, leaving those bad guys as merely often-faceless mooks for Black Adam to kill.

That speaks to a bigger flaw here: the idea that a nation could fundamentally exist, especially as a perpetually-conquered geographical realm, for five thousand years without serious cultural disruption or confusion of identity. To take a parallel example, Iraq doesn’t deem itself Assyria, or Babylon; it barely holds itself together as a nation, vs. regional ethnicities. The history and socio-politics of Kahndaq is (or should be) no different.  We’re not just speaking out against colonialism, here; a lot of that “foreign” domination would be by regional neighbors.

Ditto with people tracing their heritage back 5,000 years. No matter what Ancestry.com tries to sell you, or how much your family talks about an object being “in the family for generations,” 5,000 years is really beyond the pale. Anyone who stepped forward claiming to be the last descendent of Nabonidus would be locked away.

That’s a problem brought over from the comics, though, not new with this movie. And, yes, it may seem weird to cavil at such a point in the face of a guy who can fly and punch people through stone walls. But romanticizing such things is culturally degrading  in its own way, a subtle  but real orientalism. Moon Knight had its own problems here, but still did a better job of focusing on the present world and its problems, not making everything dependent on the past.

¶ It’s brought up on a couple of early occasions that Black Adam is vulnerable to Eternium — what Intergang has been using (and even labeling!) in their new weapons. Weirdly enough, this basically gets dropped as a plot element (so to speak), even when Adam gets caught in the explosion of their fancy jet bikes.

¶ There are some odd (or at least noteworthy) narrative choices in the film. One is that the titular character is absent for a big chunk of the Fourth Act,  after he surrenders to the JS and gets locked away under the Arctic Ocean.  Such a powerful presence leaves a big gap — and that’s a bold move.

On the other hand, we have the narrative structure that Kahndaq is being controlled by Intergang (one in a list of five thousand years of conquerors, as discussed above), but we only ever see low-level mooks and mid-level fellow-traveler Ishmael; Intergang almost a McGuffin antagonist, there to provide victims to Black Adam and big explosions as their strip mining operations blow up real good. I read that there was originally an intent to include Bruno Mannheim as the head of Intergang; that might have been a distraction, but it might have lent a bit of focus to this aspect of things.

Note that it’s not that the Intergang thing is unbelievable in and of itself (glowy jet scooters aside). Read a bit about how the Wagner Group (yes, that Wagner Group) has been involved (or involved itself) in a number of African civil wars, mostly to literally take over extraction industries there for a tidy profit. The thing is that Intergang here has absolutely no personality. They operate checkpoints in “the city,” and strip mines in the desert, and that’s about it.

¶ On the other hand, there are two very neatly done twists. First, that the solitary named bad guy (Ishmael) actually wants to be killed by Adam (thus why he turns off the Eternium force field at the penultimate conflict) so that he can … get turned into Sabbac (which he figures out will happen in some unexplained fashion). It turns what looks like an early, almost-big-enough victory, into just a stepping stone for the final act. I know that I didn’t glance at the clock, but instead wondered, “Is this really how it ends, with the bad guys foiled, and Adam being sent into black ops exile?”  They fooled me, and that’s a good thing.

Second, we have the unexpected twist in Teth-Adam’s backstory — and what he does about it. It’s quite nicely executed, and actually lends some character to the character. Having followed Black Adam as a character since DC pulled him out of just being a Captain Marvel/Shazam antagonist, I wasn’t surprised by it (variations have show up before), but the abrupt but believable shift in the history does good things to make Black Adam — if not more sympathetic, at least a bit more understandable as a person.

¶ I am amused to read that, for a movie that features (indeed, calls out) such a high body count, it originally garnered an “R” rating for it, and so had to be toned down — largely, I suspect, by simply not “showing” the deaths, just showing Black Adam tossing people high into the air, dropping them from great heights, or smokelessly electrocuting them.

I don’t know — turning (even marginally justified) mass murder into something of a bloodless joke is a bit disturbing. I mean, it was also disturbing in The Suicide Squad (2021), and even in the various Guardians of the Galaxy films, but there it worked. In those films, the question is, can someone who kills people (for fun, for sport, for money) also be a good person in some way, caring, self-sacrificing, even arguably heroic? Here, Black Adam is trying to establish who he is, for himself and his associates and his nation, and he seems happy to not be any of those positive things, as long as he can work out his anger.

I don’t know — it bears more consideration. Perhaps it’s simply that  The Suicide Squad wasn’t afraid to lean into it — it accepted its “R” for “strong violence and gore” (among other things), rather than hiding the results of that strong violence by simply having Black Adam throw bad guys over the horizon.

¶ I will confess I watched this movie much more to see the Justice Society than to see Black Adam. And, remarkably enough, I was not disappointed.

Justice Society
The Justice Society — Dr Fate, Hawkman, Cyclone, Atom Smasher

Well, disappointed a little. That their mission is to protect “global stability” is … in its own way, as amoral and anti-heroic as Black Adam, vows against killing aside. They represent a world order that seems accept Intergang controlling a country (or, since there’s been no independent Kahndaq for five thousand years, a region within some other country) and stripping it for resources — accepting enough that when someone pops up and potentially will be disrupting their operations, the US Government calls in some big guns to publicly knock that someone down.

The Justice Society are not the good guys here.  That they get called out for that a bit by Adrianna was a good thing to see.

That illusion of moral high ground is further damaged by their being in bed with Amanda Waller (and dumping a prisoner off to a Task Force X black site). To date, we’ve only seen Waller running her “Suicide Squad.” Presumably, the JS doesn’t have bombs in their heads, which makes me wonder what the backstory is for these ostensible heroes. We never get much hint of it

In such a (literally) gritty environment, the cool Nth Metal (!) Hawk Jet (and its very silly launch sequence) feel quite out of place.

That said, I loved the characters. I could do without the Atom Smasher / Cyclone flirtation, but Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate and Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman were wonderful, and quite in character. I am actually surprised we got to see as much of them, in and out of battle, as we did — though they all lacked much in the way of context (if only to provide contrast to Black Adam), and they all needed briefings on (a) de-escalating conflict, (b) how to minimize civilian casualties, and (c) the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

I mean, you only say “Kneel or Die” when you want to escalate conflict,  right?

Black Adam v Hawkman
Yes, Hawkman is usually this big of a jerk. Which is why he is never put in charge of teams.

Damn. I really do want to know more about this group, because it seems under- and poorly staffed. Hawkman is the world’s worst choice of leader, given his clear anger management issues, Doctor Fate is too often checked out, and the only other two members (one of them brand new) are too young to be acting independently. Is the Justice Society just a public operation of whatever group Waller runs or is part of? An actual government-sponsored team to be sent in when covert wet-work is not preferred, but an overt statement of US policy is? That would be a very cool twist (and an inevitable conflict with the JL) that we will never, ever get to see.

¶ Adrianna sure seems to turn on (or at least get suspicious of) Black Adam pretty quickly, upon conversation with the JS. It felt like there was a scene or two missing there.

¶ I’m sure there was no winking message there when Black Adam, in beating up Hawkman in Amon’s room, pointedly demolished every DC comic book poster he had. (Eyeroll.)

On the other hand, it’s fascinating to learn that the very real heroes in the DC Universe have comic books (and comic book posters) of themselves.

¶ The Black Adam / Sabbac BBEG battle at the end is almost anticlimactic, given what’s come before. Still, it actually does a much better job — maybe because it is grounded in a realistic-looking setting — of feeling real, even with all the energy being thrown about and illusions being cast. Having watched a lot of BBEG battles, this one was one of the best.

That said, it there’s no real sense going into it who is better, or if the two SHAZAM figures are dead even. That lowers the tension a bit, especially with multiple heroes involved.

Nice twist on the vision that was fulfilled/averted/accommodated.

I guess it was nice that the civilians had something to do during that battle other than scream madly and flee down the streets — but the zombie battle felt a little bit silly.

¶ In keeping with the comics (well, some threads of them with this character over the past decade or two), Black Adam becomes, not a hero, not a ruler, but a protector of Kahndaq. Which is totally cool, totally needed, and I’d love to see that kind of model show up elsewhere in whatever the DC Universe looks like in the future.

¶ The mid-credits sequence … yeesh. I know the DCEU’s Amanda Waller doesn’t always use the best judgment, but she has three Justice Society people working for/alongside her that could tell her that approaching Black Adam with threats is SO counter-indicated.

Of course, she (through some unexplained means or another) demonstrates the power she claims to be able to wield. Also, of course, though we don’t see it, I can very easily see Adam punch Superman in the snoot a half-second after the credits continue rolling, because, again, Black Adam as a character is all about showing who’s dick is bigger if he thinks someone is challenging that point.

It’s all a moot point, of course. Black Adam was a cinematic dead end. Its mediocre financial performance — not really deserved, but Johnson’s ego-boosting hijinx around this, as well as fatigue over the known collapse of the DCEU — means we will not see a sequel to this, or see Black Adam show up elsewhere, and, most likely not any of the Justice Society members, either.

Which is a shame. As I said, I kind of liked this film. I can see coming back to watch it again in the future, too … even if it’s just a footnote in cinematic history.

Black Adam poster

Do you want to know more?

DCEU Rewatch: “The Suicide Squad” (2021)

This movie literally fixes all the problems of its 2016 predecessor. Bravo.

Part of my DCEU Rewatch. First Watch? YES.

3.5 Acting
4.0 Production
4.0 Story
 4.0 OVERALL with a ♥

The Suicide Squad (2020)

This, this, is a Suicide Squad movie. This is what was advertised and promised for the first one (such a piece of dreck).

Light-hearted except when being murderous. Light-hearted even when murderous. Bloody humor, and humorous blood. Enough smattering of character trauma and systemic corruption and even apocalyptic threats to make the mass murderers actually seem like heroes to root for.

The selection of characters, from the conventional to the quirky, was lovingly done. The nature of the Squad (high, random mortality rate) is respected. You’ve got bad guys, kinda bad guys, and bad guys who manage to be sympathetic. It literally hits all the notes that make up the best Suicide Squad tales, nearly all of which was missing in the 2016 film as released.

Heck, we even get a decent Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Who is actually the same actor from the 2016 film. Which in turn shows you how much a difference writing and direction make.

The Suicide Squad (2020)

All the actors though, from the famous (Margot Robbie, John Cena, Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Peter Capaldi) to the relatively obscure do their job splendidly. There’s nothing too deep here demanded; it’s not “King Lear.” But to the extent that they are there, they do rock-solid jobs.

The story as full narrative is pretty straightforward, the magic being in the thousand little details, character asides, and overall zaniness.

The production values are remarkably high: great stunts, flawless CG (big and small), an excellent sound track, and gorgeous, expansive sets.

Throw in an delightful BBEG villain (delightfully rendered), and it makes just a freaking fun movie.

If I have to be critical about one thing, it’s that Davis’ Amanda Waller gets just a bit too shrill and out of control. Playing the control team for laughs doesn’t work quite as much for me as for some, but it was, at least, done well.

And I’ll give them those flaws in return for getting that fabulous Harley break-out, flowers and all.

In short? This film, in a small way, redeems the DCEU, it makes up for the 2017 Suicide Squad (or allows it to be well and truly forgotten), but best of all, it bodes well for James Gunn’s shepherding of the rebooted DCU in the years to come.

The Suicide Squad (2020)
I love this take on old action-adventure paperback covers.

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