Marvel Animation: Past, Present and Future

This is in large part a companion piece to the prior blog, but also serves to correct a pretty serious oversight on my part regarding a major factor I’d somehow managed to entirely forget, and provide some balance. I’ve realised, you see, the things I was craving in the prior blog may already be underway, and I even mentioned the start of it. First though, to the recent past.

The animated series that have been put out during the reign of the MCU have been pretty consistent, in being bright, noisy, repetitive and simplistic, as clear evidence as you could want of how safe Marvel are, or were, playing things. One particularly noticeable pattern is that they largely can’t maintain beyond one, maybe two seasons, Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, having a really good first season, a middling second one, and nothing else since.

The problem is that, despite the involvement of serious talent, such as Man of Action, Brian Michael Bendis, and even Paul “Batman” Dini, the formula is king. There must be lots of action, quippy, pop-culture heavy humour, and many, many guest spots from big MCU names. The clearest demonstration of the issues would be Ultimate Spider-Man. The first season was good and solid, if limited a little by its fairly simplistic characters, not a great deal more than archetypes in many cases, and the Ultimate versions of the classic villains basically just being bigger and more muscular, with a notable exception in Doc Ock.

These issues became more pronounced in season two, largely thanks to a one-note take on the Green Goblin that never engaged. The overarching plot, of Spidey gathering a second team while trying to prevent a villain recruiting them, didn’t last, which would become a hallmark of the series, undermined by the need to have Spidey tag along with a big name of the week, such as Cap, or Hulk, or Iron Man, or Wolverine. None other than Squirrel Girl exemplifies the troubles: not only is her depiction here irritating, a hollow joke with a lispy voice, at first she’s dismissed as a candidate for the team, then suddenly is among those joining SHIELD Academy. It’s all a muddle, and for me the weakest of the four seasons.

Season three came with a subtitle, Web Warriors, and a rework of the same core idea, Spidey building a team, just this time of fellow spider-heroes, but again the main plot dwindled out; at least Miles Morales adds some spark to things. Season four also has an expanded title, VS the Sinister Six, and gets off to a really good start, not least by bringing the best villain of the show, Ock, back to the forefront. Inevitably, though, it doesn’t last, the Six being seen off in a mid-season two-parter, and Ock all-but vanishing afterwards. Also absent for the last two seasons, bar occasional cameos, are the original team, and in season four White Tiger disappears completely until the two-part finale, despite having gotten a tweaked look in season three. What we get are even more spiders, eight at one point, and a string of multi-parters and one -offs. That extended title honestly feels redundant at that point.

It’s pretty clear that executives, suits, were firmly in charge, resulting in narrow narrative and tonal scope, an abundance of talent sorely underused, and a fixation on good old Peter Parker, and variations thereupon. In the prior blog, I talked purely about Marvel suits, but there are other suits involved, even higher up ones, because, of course, Marvel is owned by someone, the biggest media corporation on the planet, in fact: Disney. Disney are as infamous for corporate malpractice, from suing a nursery school for painting Mickey on a classroom wall, to repeatedly forcing changes in US copyright law to ensure they retain control of said mouse, as they are famous for creative excellence, and have for a long time been highly conservative, even a little repressive, in their attitudes.

Their malign influence would unquestionably have been a factor, a big one, in the problems with Marvel animation, and that’s reinforced by a series that’s only a little Marvel, and a lot Disney, Big Hero 6, following the familiar pattern of great first series, weaker second, and defaulting to stand-alones at the end, in this case in the shorter third season. The thing is, and here’s the turning point, Disney has undergone a dramatic change in the last couple of years, pivoting all the way from not allowing Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch to explicitly state the relationship between two male supporting characters until the very last episode, and then only fleetingly, to producing such openly, thoroughly queer shows as The Owl House and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

It’s a remarkable shift, and a really welcome one, though I can only speculate as to the reasons for it. I imagine the departures of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull would have been a part, the effects of that being felt sooner in TV animation than feature, films taking a long time to make. Other changes in the executive halls of Disney could have contributed, or there could simply have been an epiphany on the part of someone, or many someones, in those halls, and its tempting to see She-Ra and the Princesses of Power being a catalyst for that, given the timing and a level of success for the latter that’s seen Amazon announce a live-action She-Ra series.

At the very least, Disney now seem to understand there’s serious money and success to be found in diversity, and the first expression of that I know of in Marvel TV animation was the most recent Spidey series, simply titled Spider-Man. Yes, it yet again stars Peter Parker, but it has a real ensemble feel, a proper cast of interesting characters who all have parts to play, and better story-telling, and thus manages two full strong seasons, before reverting to a short string of two-parters in the third. The clearest example thus far, though, is something I mentioned in the prior blog, but gave shamefully short shrift to: Marvel Rising.

True, it has issues. Ms Marvel isn’t the most engaging character, and compromising Squirrel Girl in the movie in order to bolster Ms Marvel was a poor choice, and arguably supportive of my contention that the latter is slightly underwhelming. A Muslim hero is a fantastic idea, and I vigorously applaud Marvel for it, but she needs more substance, to find her spark, at least in animated form. However, it does some very important things very, very right. There’s only one male in the main cast, and he’s black. America Chavez isn’t sanitised as she would have been before, retaining her two mothers and her queer identity. The biggest breakout among the characters, other than SG (movie aside, her best animated incarnation by a country mile, not least thanks to the spot-on voice work by Milana Vayntrub, who was originally intended to play her in live action in New Warriors) is Spider-Gwen, a sparky and vibrant delight; if Marvel wants to make another spider-series, she has to be the prime candidate to star, especially since the other option, Miles Morales, is finding great, and greatly deserved, success in the movies.

Marvel Rising stands in stark, wonderful contrast to the bulk of Marvel TV animation. The very title suggests this was intended to be the start of something, a springboard, and hopefully, now the immense disruption of the pandemic is finally easing, it can still be. On this evidence, whatever Marvel animation have planned, it’s unlikely to be just more of the same lightly remixed, but genuinely new and original.

Yes, nothing is certain, but the odds are pretty good that those great things are just over the horizon.

Why Squirrel Girl Won’t Be in the MCU is Also Why She Really Should Be

Cards on the table: I am a huge Squirrel Girl fan. I love her. She is comfortably my favourite superhero, largely because she wilfully and gleefully subverts so many of the standards and tropes of the genre. She’s a great big, grinning, bushy-tailed riposte to the Dark&Gritty ™ storytelling that came to dominate cape books in the nineties. That, of course, is key to why she’ll never appear in the MCU, and in order to fully explore that, we need to go right back to the beginning.

Squirrel Girl was introduced in Marvel Super-Heroes #8: Winter Special, cover-date winter 1991, the creation of Will Murray, with help from comics legend Steve “Spider-Man” Ditko. She came about because Murray was intent on doing something as different as possible from the Big, Dramatic, Self-Serious stuff that had monopolised comic storytelling in the wake of Moore and Miller (this being as clear an example as you could ask for of executives in creative businesses learning entirely the wrong lessons from success). She was purposely made silly and upbeat, for maximum contrast, but Murray and Ditko were far too good storytellers to leave it at just that.

Right here, at the very start, Doreen Green, visual design aside, is a likeable, engaging, enjoyable character, and she manages to take down top-tier Marvel baddie Doctor Doom when the airborne WMD that is Iron Man can’t, using wit, imagination and a whole heck of a lot of squirrels. She isn’t just silly, she’s subversive, upending the usual Marvel order of things in a manner that, the more I think about it, feels like a very deliberate swipe at Marvel’s higher-ups, Ditko and Murray saying in pretty unsubtle fashion, “There are other ways you can do things, you know.”

Her next major appearance was in the Great Lakes Avengers miniseries written by Dan Slott, in 2005, expanding that subversive aspect into a pointed, even vicious satire of Dark&Gritty ™ comics, and comic book deaths in particular. She’s given a Deadpool-esque medium awareness – she knows she’s in a comic book – that means she can directly address the issues at hand, highlight them more clearly than anyone else, not least in reacting to what happens to her beloved companion. Where Murray and Ditko jabbed, Slott and company batter; it’s brutal, and Marvel suits must have at least listened to some degree for it even to be published. The GLA/GLX/GLI (they never could settle on a name) appeared a few times afterwards, in specials and guest slots, always in the same satiric vein, to the point of Squirrel Girl tackling the zenith of Marvel’s grim melodrama, Penance (the self-punishing bleakfest super-upbeat hero Speedball became after the event that triggered the Civil War, as overblown and frankly ludicrous a piece of Dark&Gritty ™ storytelling as you’ll ever encounter) head-on.

Squirrel Girl existed and was used to make a point, that Dark&Gritty ™ wasn’t the only way to go, that funny and whimsical and upbeat and even openly silly stuff had a place, had real value. After a supporting role in the New Avengers series (the announcement of which at Comic-con 2010 was, according to series writer Brian Michael Bendis, greeted with a reaction comparable to that when comics colossus Stan “The Man” Lee entered the room) she was finally given the chance to prove it, in her very own comic series, and prove it she most definitely did.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl debuted in January 2015, written by Ryan North, and Illustrated by Erica Henderson. I’ve so far read up to volume 7 of the trade paperbacks, and can state that, in my opinion, it’s a triumph. It’s funny, clever, heartfelt, imaginative, whimsical, exciting, open and progressive enough to give anyone who thinks SJW an insult a hernia, deliciously self-aware and yes, vibrantly subversive, playing with tropes and perspectives and the formats of the medium in endlessly inventive ways. Arguably the biggest subversion of all is that Doreen Green is the Queen of Finding Another Way. She’s fully capable of using the standard superhero hit-until-they-stop-moving method, a fighter skilled enough to go toe-to-toe with Wolverine and win, but much prefers to use her head, her heart, her imagination. You give Squirrel Girl a classic Either-Or Moral Dilemma, and she’ll find a way to do both. She absolutely refuses to play by the comic book rules, in a manner that seems a clear counterpoint to the nutbar, blood-soaked cynicism of Deadpool, and soars as a result.

USG was undeniably popular, running for a total of 58 issues, to my understanding an impressively long run for a non-Avenger, and only resetting once, notable in an era of endless Universe-Shaking Crossover Super Mega Ultra EVENTS!!!!, and spinning off a graphic novel and two Young Adult novels, all of which also did well. I seriously believe she has the potential to be a truly Big Thing, to breakout like the Guardians of the Galaxy did, but even after all her success, Marvel still won’t give her the Big Chance. She’s now in the latest incarnation of the New Avengers comic series, and was a main player in the Secret Warriors animated film and specials and shorts, showing Marvel know people like her, but they won’t put her in the MCU, won’t even give her an animated series on Disney+, which seems an absolute no-brainer to do, and I fear they never will. The closest she’s gotten is the New Warriors comedy series, but that got cancelled after the original network changed their minds, and no-one else wanted it; tellingly, it seems Disney+ wasn’t even considered as an option.

The main reason that would undoubtedly be given is “she’s too silly”, and you can understand, to a degree, where they’d be coming from. The same people, many critics among them, who sneered and snickered at and dismissed Rocket and Groot in the run-up to GotG would have a field day with Squirrel Girl…but I believe they’d be proven just as wrong, if not more so. The real reason, to my mind, is that word I’ve used multiple times in this blog, the thing she’s been since she first bested Doctor Doom: she’s subversive, and not just that, she subverts the very structure the MCU is built on.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is hugely formulaic, as was inevitable when comic book suits met cinema suits, trotting out factory-processed minor variations on the same core template, to the point of using the same end battle structure at least twice. The MCU doesn’t take risks other than calculated ones, GotG being a prime example; it owes a serious debt to Star Wars, has a standard-issue cocky, womanising, likeable douche for a lead, albeit one who does lightly parody the stereotype, as well as an equally standard-issue Hollywood strong-but-not-too-strong woman and bruising musclehead in the group; the only real risks were Rocket and Groot, but they were much smaller ones, given precedent, than was often made out.

It took a decade and around twenty films for Marvel to finally put a female character in the lead of one, then a black character. They’re insisting Phase 4 will include LGBT+ rep, but I’ve yet to find a single person that believes this’ll be anything more than easily-edited token gestures, and there’s certainly no way we’ll ever get an LGBT+ lead. I can’t think of a Marvel animated series that doesn’t have a white male lead, and the first live-action Disney+ series to not have one is still a way off. A core tenet of the MCU formula is that might is right, that all problems can be solved with force; if you hit them hard enough, with a big enough fist/gun/explosive, they will go away, usually permanently. The only character who might be able to play with the formula at all is Deadpool in his upcoming third movie, his first as part of the MCU, but there it’s an aggressive, anarchic, negative approach that fits nicely with what executives think a cynical, hardened modern audience wants, and beneath all that it’ll still be playing things safe, will still have the same base ingredients.

Squirrel Girl is pretty much the antithesis to all of that, and moreover, a film of her would, if it cleaved to her character at all, undermine most of the presumptions of the MCU. She’d do what she always does, and prove there are other ways, and a ‘dangerous precedent’ like that is the last thing Marvel Studios want. They want to keep mining the same seam, keep doing what they know works, with only small shrugs towards variation or growth, risk-averse and short-sighted to the end. If you think we’ve seen the last of Iron Man, or Captain America, or Thor, or Hulk, think again; they’ll be back, mildly tweaked, because they work, because they’re safe.

Marvel and Kevin Feige have been making a lot of noise about progressing and evolving the MCU, but there’s little to so far show for it. It’s tentative, at best. If they truly believed in changing things up, in trying different things, then a Squirrel Girl movie would be the ultimate proof, an irrefutable statement that the MCU is bold, is brave, is willing to truly experiment, is open to anyone and everyone. If put in the hands of people who believe in Doreen as much as North, Henderson, Renzi, Charm and everyone else behind USG believed in her, as much as I believe in her, then it could well be the birth of a brand new Marvel superstar, and the beginning of a whole new world of superheroics.

It could be the start of something great.

The importance of: Tone

This is the first of a planned trilogy of blogs exploring three elements of storytelling I consider especially important. Each blog will feature examples of the focus element used badly, examples of it used well, will examine how a problematic movie scene can be improved using it, and how it factors into the creation of an original scene. The first element is tone.

Defining It

Tone is the mood and the atmosphere, how the overall story, and its component scenes, feel, and is important for giving your story texture and personality, and giving your audience a clear idea of what they’re in for. Characters and settings are the strongest influences on it, though such subtle things as weather conditions can also help create it. I’ve referenced it repeatedly in prior blogs, mostly film reviews, and it’s from those many of these examples will be drawn.

Doing it Wrong

The first example of it done wrong is Man of Steel. It honestly seems like neither the director, Zack Snyder, or the writer, David S Goyer – who I’m tempted to write a blog on, so let me know if you’re interested in that – really understand tone, as the film botches it at pretty much every turn. It’s trying to mimic the mood of The Dark Knight, but through flat characters, stupidly overblown action and one mishandled scene after another never even gets close. In my Rebound Effect blog I described MoS as tone-deaf, and probably the best illustration of that is Clark saving a busload of his fellow schoolchildren, then Pa Kent questioning whether he should have done it, as it could have given away that Clark has powers. The core idea is good, and a familiar one for Superman, but the execution is terrible; the rescuees being children, classmates of Clark’s, turns what should have been an emotional scene exploring an interesting moral dilemma into an awkward mess that just makes Pa Kent seem callous. It’s trying to be serious, but just ends up silly.

Super 8 is a film caught between two conflicting tones. One the one hand there’s the nostalgic, 80s-adventure-film feel, on the other a modern, hard-edged, horror-action mood, and the film’s inability to reconcile the two leads to a serious and persistent discordancy. As with MoS, a big reason is poor characterisation, not least of the alien, as noted in my Overrated Movies blog. Another one is that director JJ Abrams can capture the look of something, but really struggles with the feel of it, as illustrated by his Star Trek and Star Wars films. In Super 8‘s case, he overplays the horror-action, and misjudges the lighter, boys-own-adventure stuff, as best demonstrated by the projectile vomiting and an entirely gratuitous f-bomb. More restraint was definitely needed.

Speaking of restraint, a complete lack of it ruins Legends of Tomorrow‘s attempt at a broad tonal range. The moments of deep darkness and graphic violence and gore are so diametrically opposed to the generally goofy tone of the show they jar horribly. It’s just too extreme a shift, with little to no middle ground, and I doubt even the strongest, deepest characters could make it work, let alone the somewhat two-dimensional ones here. The only show I can think of that even comes close to pulling it off is Beastars, and the one time it falters is when it gets graphic.

Doing it Right

Examples of tone done right are the films of James Cameron. There’s the odd misstep – he’s seemingly incapable of getting sex or romantic scenes right – but when it comes to tonal shifts, you’d struggle to find better than how he transitions from quiet tension to explosive action in the two Terminator films. In the first, there’s the nightclub sequence; when the T800 and Kyle Reese arrive at the nightclub housing Sarah Connor, the film drops into slow-motion, serving both to set out with great clarity the geography of the scene, but also give viewers a chance to prepare for what’s to come; you know things are about to kick off. The same trick is used just as effectively in the second film when John Connor bursts into a corridor to find the T800 advancing from one direction, and the T1000 from the other. That lingering beat of a pause, an opportunity to adjust, makes all the difference.

In terms of tonal balance, there’s The Abyss, the director’s cut of which does a quite fantastic job of balancing tense, paranoid thriller with exploration and discovery that’s by turns mysterious, whimsical and wondrous. The key is in two characters: on the one hand, there’s SEAL team leader Coffey, a Michael Biehn masterclass in slow-burn, barely tamped-down psychosis, and on the other, Dr Lindsey Brigman, a driven, intelligent, highly inquisitive, open-minded, and at times even childlike individual beautifully realised by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. They personify the two tones, anchor them, and provide the basis for much of the film’s conflict, ably supported by the rest of the cast, and Cameron’s restraint and focused, fluid, naturalistic direction. Does it go too far at the climax? Possibly, but it certainly delivers the cathartic release needed after all that’s gone on.

For a good example of broad tonal range, it pretty much has to be She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. As detailed in my Reviewing Netflix Animated Series blog, this show manages to run a real gamut, from funny, to heartfelt, to kinetic, to scary, to intense, to moving, to joyful. The phenomenal characters are a huge part of it, but so is that word I’ve used a few times, now: restraint. The darker aspects work because they’re underplayed, understated, expressed through the characters rather than graphically depicted, and thus stay in perfect balance with everything else. Equally, it never becomes saccharine or too goofy, its lightness of touch and deft transitions an object lesson to other shows. This series knows its limits.

Scene Change

Star Trek Into Darkness is a film with no shortage of issues, tonal blips among them. My focus here is a moment featuring James T Kirk (Chris Pine) and Carol Marcus (Alice Eve). It starts as a walk and talk in a corridor, then they enter a shuttlecraft, and there Marcus instructs Kirk to turn around, and starts undressing as the camera pans from her. Kirk doesn’t keep looking away for long at all, though, and that prompts a lingering shot of Marcus in just her underwear, before, after being prompted twice more, Kirk turns finally turns his back again, and the scene ends. It is unquestionably gratuitous, and in tonal terms the problem is that we go from focused urgency to juvenile voyeurism with zero justification.

The challenge here is to keep the scene as is, with the undressing, but ensure it isn’t gratuitous, and the tonal aspect of that is as simple as altering Kirk’s behaviour. If he quits being a schoolboy leaning through the door of the girls’ changing room, and instead stays not just a Starfleet officer but a Captain, and respects her request, that immediately improves things. Stay on him as the conversation continues, keeping the focused urgency, and only pan back to Marcus when she’s fully changed. Or, have Marcus tell Kirk she needs to change, and why, and suggest he turn around if that makes him uncomfortable; it doesnt, so he doesn’t, and remains respectful and focused on their continuing conversation throughout; in this version the changing of clothes can be on camera, but not the focus, just one matter-of-fact part of the scene. Keeping the tone more consistent is key.

Scene Setting

Since all the examples used are from movies and TV, it only makes sense the original scene should be created as one, too. It’ll start in a small bar on the waterfront of a coastal town, where two people – we’ll call them Kate and Alex – are sharing drinks. They thought it would be a good, neutral place to meet and start to explore the connection they both feel, but that’s not how it turned out. It’s active and noisy, exacerbating their underlying anxiety, neither able to settle, and conversation only sporadic.

Obviously, the bustling setting helps greatly with the tone, but it’s important not to overplay it, not to make it too noisy and active. Peaks and dips in the surrounding conversations, louder moments and quieter ones, make the most sense, and the same for people passing by their table. Their postures will change in response, tense in the noisier moments, more relaxed in the quieter ones, their burgeoning connection subtly showing. Lighting should be somewhat stark, and mobile to match all the activity, with sporadic flashes of colour whenever a nearby slot machine is played. Camerawork will also be a factor, but again it’s important not to overdo it; handheld shots with a trace of restlessness to them, shifting only slightly, would work best, and they should focus almost entirely on Kate and Alex’s table in mid and close shots.

This part of the scene will be short, as once her drink is done Kate will decide she needs to step outside for a while. She tells Alex she intends to head to a private little spot she knows to skinny dip, an activity that always helps her relax, and invites them to come along; Alex tells Kate they’ll think about it while they finish their drink. Dropping the background sound to near-nothing not only puts focus on this exchange, but helps underscore a particularly strong moment of connection. A wider shot of most of the bar can capture both Kate leaving, and Alex watching her thoughtfully.

Outside, we follow Kate along the waterfront at the beginnings of dusk, out of the town, and down a coastal path in a series of shots, some handheld, some tracking, some fixed. The further she gets from the bar the quieter the soundtrack becomes, the more settled and natural the lighting, and the calmer the camerawork, in a slow, smooth transition, until once she reaches a fairly extensive swathe of lightly grassy dunes all that can be heard are the soft ambient sounds of the water, the wind and the odd bit of wildlife. Quiet music, a piano piece perhaps, can be used here, but isn’t required. The shift in the surroundings, from the bustle of town to the peaceful dunes, will certainly help, too. Her posture and body-language will also change, the tension steadily ebbing from her frame and expression.

Tucked away in the dunes is a sheltered little semi-circle of sand lapped by gentle wavelets, and it’s here Kate stops walking. She looks around for a moment, then calmly takes off her clothes and sets them aside, before standing facing the water with her arms at her sides and her eyes closed; she draws some slow, steady breaths, and the last of the tension visibly drains from her. The tone at this point needs to be peaceful and relaxed, reflecting the inner calm the act of skinny dipping provides for Kate, so ravishing her form with the camera ala Michael Bay or a soft porn film is definitely out. Being coy or censorious about it also won’t work; shots of just her head and shoulders, or legs from the knee down, or back above the hips, are too limiting, and could lend a contextually inappropriate touch of the illicit to what she’s doing; using the scenery to cover her chest, rear and groin would do the same, and at worst could actually objectify or sexualise by drawing attention to what you’re not allowed to see.

To maintain the peaceful tone, film her as if she were dressed, and keep things simple. A couple of static shots, one from the rear, framing her between the flanks of the dunes, one from the side with her on the left and the water on the right, would work for the moment she’s standing; a tempting addition is a front mid-shot from the waist-up with her again on the left, and a tiny hint of the town far in the distance on the right, above and beyond the dunes, her head turning and/or tilting towards it for a second, then shaking lightly before she opens her eyes and starts walking toward the water.

Follow or track her handheld into the water, and once she’s swimming, she can be filmed in many ways – from above, from below, camera pivoting to follow as she passes by at various distances, following, pacing, preceding, distant, mid, close – as long as it’s all naturalistic, like the films of Celine Sciamma or the swimming scenes from The Blue Lagoon (a candidate for a second Underrated Movies blog). it can last a little while, too, but not too long, and should end when she surfaces, looks back at where she came from, and sees Alex standing there watching her.

A touch of tension could be achieved by stilling the camera completely, and holding a near-silent shot from fairly close behind Kate’s head, with her to the left and Alex to the right. Then a close-up of Kate’s face as her expression turns decisive, then back to the shot behind her as she starts swimming for shore. Next shot is pacing her as she walks out of the water, widening as she halts in the shallows to bring in Alex, then holding, or possibly pushing in very slowly, as she offers a hand to them, again in near-silence. Then Alex smiles, quickly disrobes, walks forward to take Kate’s hand, and the camera comes to life, turning and moving toward the pair as they enter the water.

A few shots of them swimming together, filmed with a bit more energy and movement than before, and the return of the piano, with a touch more spirit than before, though still quite understated, would work well. The faintest hint of romance in shared looks, and touches, but no more; this is a big step in their relationship, but still only a step; there’s a long way to go, yet. Final shot of the duo lying together on the flank of a dune to dry, resting close, an arm loosely around each other, smiling and perfectly at ease as they both watch the last colours of the sunset and the stars starting to sweep the sky. Fade out.

Assessing the DC TV Shows

My thoughts on the DC superhero shows I’ve watched. As always, this is purely one person’s opinion, and in addition, for a number of reasons, the pandemic prime among them, I have yet to watch the latest seasons of the shows discussed here.

Arrow

Oh, boy. Rarely has a show displayed so much promise, only to squander it so completely. Season 1 was solid, a good foundation. Season 2 built on that extremely well, with the aid of a great villain in Manu Bennett’s Deathstroke/Slade, and it really felt like things were going somewhere, that Oliver was progressing nicely from Arrow, ruthless vigilante, to Green Arrow, stalwart hero.

Unfortunately, season 3 fumbled; badly. To be fair, from what I understand, a big reason for this was out of their control: they were unable to use their first choice villain, Harley Quinn, thanks to Suicide Squad. The replacement, Ra’s al Ghul, was a poor choice poorly executed. He’s a largely one-note, predicatable antagonist whenever and wherever he appears, always retreading the same path, and this was exacerbated by dull dialogue and an actor seemingly devoid of charisma and presence. He, and the entirely uncompelling, rote relationship between Oliver and Felicity, weighed the season down.

Season 4 seemed well aware of this, and was keen to show off its cracker of a villain, Damien Darhk, as played by Neal McDonough at his scene-stealing, screen-commanding best. Sadly, they came on too strong with him, both in terms of early presence, and his sheer power; inevitably, he faded away at the midpoint of the series, leaving it to sag, and a magical villain of such strength was a bad fit for the grounded Arrow. Another big error was the recurring coda of Oliver visiting a grave, and the question of who was in it; it was a cheap tactic, rendered even more so when it was finally occupied by the second Black Canary to die in the show, another female character death, and one who’d been noticeably sidelined in season 4 so her departure would cause the fewest issues. It left a bad taste in the mouth, but nowhere near as bad as the last two episodes of the season. In them, Darhk’s plan was revealed to be a tired rip-off of Stromberg’s from The Spy Who Loved Me, contrivance saw Felicity the indirect cause of tens of thousands of deaths by nuclear annihilation, and the clumsy thread of giving Oliver mystic powers of his own with which to combat the now ultra-powerful-thanks-to-enslaving-all-the-spirits-of-those-nuked-to-hell Darhk culminates in an entirely unbelievable street battle. It’s awful, a bungled, tone-deaf mess that leaves you wondering what the showrunners were thinking, or if they were even thinking at all.

Season 5 just seems to give up. It has no main villain, but a series of identikit murderous vigilantes alternating small massacres with Oliver, no impetus, no life, no nothing. It’s a dreary, leaden, cynical, disturbingly brutal slog, made even more so by the flashbacks. The latter had always felt a little gimmicky, and became increasingly tiresome in seasons 3 and 4, but here they’re almost intolerable, just one repetitive burst of grim violence after another. It sort-of addresses the town-nuking, in the form of a new character, but it’s not nearly enough, especially given how little it seems to affect Felicity. As an aside, it’s also notable how that’s not acknowledged at all in any of the other shows, especially in the closely connected Flash. It’s almost as if the nuking was a cheap shock tactic they had no intention of following through on in any truly meaningful way. This season also indulges in the wearying cliche of a token gay couple breaking up, because queer people can never be happy. I stuck it through to the entirely unsatisfying finale, then vowed never to watch another episode outside the crossover events. At the end of season two, this show felt like it was seriously going places; turns out, it was face-first into the murk, to fumble aimlessly around. A depressing failure.

The Flash

This show started brilliantly. Great cast, great energy, some actual imagination, invention and humour – such rare commodities, these days – and a sterling villain in the Reverse Flash. Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite been able to maintain that level, mostly through a succession of underwhelming villains, from Zoom (who wants to Take Over The World, but somehow entirely misses or disregards Darhk’s simultaneous attempt to wipe it out) to the Thinker, but also through the odd misjudgement, like Team Flash unhesitatingly taking lives in season 2, but that never going anywhere, in fact being entirely forgotten, serving only to undermine future reiterations of his reluctance to kill. There also are times you think Central City is trying to compete with Star City to be named Most Likely Place for a Security Guard or a Police Officer to Die Horribly to Make a Supervillain Look Appropriately Nasty; put the two shows together and the body count of people in uniform has to be well into triple figures. It’s a good show, often really good, and sometimes fantastic, but you can’t help yearning for more consistent writing and a properly meaty villain. Also, for such a famously upbeat and cocky hero, it’s amazing, and a little saddening, how few opportunities the perfectly-cast Grant Gustin gets to actually show that. Give it kudos for making its main relationship one of the few half-decent ones in the DC shows, though, and Tom Cavanagh will never not be worth watching.

Legends of Tomorrow

A frustrating show, in that while it has a great cast and endless inventive energy and can be absolutely brilliant at times, it has one big issue that compromises it pretty badly – tonal jarring. This is a nutty, almost cartoony show, broad and bright and unashamedly silly, yet also feels a need to keep throwing in moments of darkness and usually graphic violence that clash really badly with the overall tone. The episode in which flesh-eating unicorns run amok at Woodstock is a prime example – a supremely daft idea rendered jarring and near-unpalatable by how needlessly gory it is. True, my general aversion to explicit violence undoubtedly plays in, here, but it still feels like an object lesson in how the ever-increasing indifference to violence in US TV can result in heavy tonal conflict. It also plays really fast and loose with its own rules, distractingly so, to the point of contradiction. It does deserve kudos for its strong queer energy, even if that is slightly undercut by the standard US TV need to sexualise everything. Ultimately, a good, often really good, show that has a bad habit of shooting itself bloodily in the foot.

Supergirl

This show gets off to a solid, if not terribly promising start. Season 1 is decent, serviceable, but no more. Seasons 2 and 3, thankfully, improve noticeably, if with the odd misstep, like Supergirl using a Green Martain superweapon to go full Rambo on a group of White Martians, a hugely out-of-character moment that’s tellingly entirely ignored afterwards, but, like Flash’s lethal lapses, does undercut future moments a little. True, not every character engages – looking at you, Mon-El – but it definitely feels like it’s finding its feet. In season 4, it soars.

Season 4 is comfortably, for me, the best season I’ve seen of any of the DC shows, compelling, exciting, powerful, progressive – a trans superhero, played by a trans actor, who is entirely and unflaggingly wonderful – and brave. Giving an entire episode over to detailing a major antagonist’s shift from family man to dangerous, murderous zealot, showing how disturbingly slippery a slope that can be, is courageous and brilliant story-telling. Then they unleash the best Lex Luthor since Lois and Clark‘s John Shea, in the thoroughly relishable Jon Cryer. They even manage to recapture some of the spinning-out-of-control compulsion of the seminal Babylon 5 episode Severed Dreams, with the aid of John Sheridan himself, Bruce Boxleitner (ironically in the role of the corrupt, compromised President). It’s phenomenal stuff, and it really feels like its building to something Big, something Special, but instead…instead the finale drops all the themes so brilliantly explored in favour of Supergirl trading blows with an evil clone then Lex in Generic Power Armour #45569891, and a ‘shock’ cliffhanger twist that feels the worst kind of cheap.

It honestly feels like they copped out at the last minute, and that’s painful. A season that damn good deserved a far better finale than what we actually got. If season 5 picks up on those themes again, and actually makes something worthwhile of them, then that goes a long way to balancing things out, but if it doesn’t, it would be a serious failure. Also, after poleaxing the one truly good relationship in all the DC shows – Alex and Maggie – for no apparent reason other than to again reuse the queers cannot be happy trope, it better not screw up Alex’s new relationship.

Overall

The defining feature of these shows has to be inconsistency, in tone, in character, in plotting. One finally overcame it in spectacular fashion, only to stumble at the last hurdle, one is regularly undermined by it, one is held back from its full potential by it, and one was entirely destroyed by it. Part of that has to be network pressures, but part also has to be showrunners who never seem to have a full grasp on what they want to do, and sometimes no grasp at all. From what I’ve heard Batwoman doesn’t buck that trend, and I don’t expect Superman and Lois (can’t help noting the reversal of Lois and Clark) to, either. There’s plenty to like and even love with these shows, but it’s all overshadowed by what might have been.

Considering Chibnall

In 2017 Chris Chibnall took over from Steven Moffat as head writer and showrunner of Doctor Who, and I figured, after two series and two New Year Specials, it was time to assess him. As always, these are merely the opinions of one person. I must also thank the denizens of the Who sub-forum on the TrekBBS message board for their invaluable knowledge and perspectives.

I’ll start with Torchwood. Chibnall was the lead writer, and under his auspices the first two seasons were highly inconsistent in tone and quality, the show seeming to have little idea of what it wanted to be, or where it wanted to go. A lot of potential for intelligent, properly adult – as opposed to the violent, dark, rather tone-deaf stuff so common lately – sci-fi was squandered. Only Children of Earth realised that promise, and that miniseries was headed up by Russell T Davies. Not encouraging, to say the least.

In contrast, there’s Broadchurch. I’ve not seen the show myself, but I’m well aware of its strong reputation. The second and third series seem to have garnered somewhat mixed reactions, but the first is pretty uniformly praised, and overall it’s seen as a quality crime drama. More encouraging.

To the best of my knowledge, Chibnall’s relationship with Doctor Who itself began with the episodes he wrote while Moffat was in charge. Generally, they’re fun and entertaining, if not especially memorable. I personally most enjoyed his Silurian two-parter, though that’s at least partly due to how much I love the latter race’s design – a triumph of make-up – and having no prior knowledge of them. If I had seen earlier Silurian stories, I’d have cottoned on to a defining trait of Chibnall’s Who writing a lot sooner.

In a word, it’s derivative. His Silurian story wasn’t much more than a reworking of the two main Silurian stories from the classic series, albeit a good one. So much of his output has been rehashing or reusing old ideas that it’s genuinely difficult to pinpoint anything original he’s come up with. Even his grandiose reimagining of Who mythos isn’t original, repurposing the Cartmel Masterplan and potentially the Season 6B theory.

Compounding this is the fact that he’s primarily a plot-driven writer, and all-too-frequently a perfunctory one. Strong evidence for this is the number of antagonists who simply disappeared the instant they ceased being useful to the plot. Even when one did reappear, Robertson in the recent special, he was basically just a rent-a-douche plugged in to save the effort of creating a new character, and again conveniently vanished with no repercussions come the end.

This unfortunate combination of traits and habits has also meant that not a single new villain or monster introduced in the Chibnall era has really registered. It’s also meant that only one of the three most recent companions, Graham, has had any proper substance, and that’s mostly due to Bradley Walsh. It’s also meant topical and thematic episodes have mostly been too on-the-nose, too heavy-handed and obvious to work properly, the most egregious example being the painful Orphan 55. Worst of all, it’s also meant that Jodie Whitaker’s historic first female Doctor isn’t nearly what she could have been.

This is a compassionate Doctor whose compassion comes and goes at the whims of the plot, caring about a Dalek’s hijacked victim up until they’re rescued, then pretty much forgetting about them. This is a Doctor with an unsettling lack of agency, to the point she’s told the truth of her history by a Master she’s a helpless captive of, instead of actively uncovering it herself. This is a Doctor who keeps promising to save people, then signally fails to.

To be fair, we are only partway through a reportedly five season long arc, but if the Doctor’s repeated failure is part of it, flat repetition of the same beat, with no variation or evolution, is not the way to go about it. Flat is actually a good word to describe Chibnall’s Who in general, for though it’s had its moments, it’s generally hollow, and underwhelming, too familiar, and too lacking in spirit and energy and a sense of fun, to truly engage. It could even be described as a little downbeat and dispiriting, not characteristics that should ever be associated with Doctor Who.

In summation, Chris Chibnall is a writer who has serious difficulty coming up with new ideas, relies largely on rehashes of old ones as a result, seemingly struggles when expectations are placed on him, and is either unwilling or unable to do the hard graft that makes a story fully come to life. Considering that, the departure of Tosin Cole and Bradley Walsh, the arrival of the less-than-inspiring John Bishop in a tease that lazily revisits the War Doctor reveal, the series-reducing impact of Covid, and the possible loss of Whitaker herself, it’s hard to be optimistic about Who‘s future.

But then, if anyone can overcome the odds and prove the naysayers wrong, it’s the Doctor.

Thoughts on Glee

I recently discovered Glee on Netflix, and having heard such good things about it, and thinking it looked like something I’d enjoy, I started watching. What I found was a peculiar beast of a show that is capable of some really good things, but also has a distinct talent for undermining itself in rather contradictory and frustrating ways. This latter is what led me to stop watching after a certain early season four episode that left a really unpleasant taste in my mouth. These, therefore are my thoughts on the main issues with Glee, but as always this is purely one person’s opinion. Also note there will be spoilers.

To start with, I have to acknowledge what the show does well. The musical set pieces are superb, and often breathtaking in the quality of the singing, dancing and visual production. The dialogue is consistently strong and witty. Beyond the occasional outbreak of overdone shakycam the direction is fluid and focused. Last but not least, there have been several powerful, emotionally affecting, moments, such as the reveal of Sue’s sister, the passing of Sue’s sister, and Dave’s attempted suicide and the fallout from that.

Unfortunately, for all the good work and good intentions, there are three big interrelated issues that repeatedly compromise things, creating an inconsistent and sometimes even aggravating viewing experience. The first of these is the characters. To be blunt, most of the main cast don’t really engage, for while they do evolve beyond the teen drama stereotypes they start as, they don’t evolve enough, remaining largely two-dimensional. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the nominal leads, the featured singers, Rachael and Finn, are actually a little annoying.

The show has a really bad habit of faking out, for want of a better phrase, character growth; Season 2 is especially prone to this. How many times does it seem like Rachael is finally starting to look past herself, only to revert to type right afterwards? How many times does Sue appear to be starting to get past her insecurities and jealousies, only to jump sharply back to square one? The snap back after her sister’s funeral is particularly poor. Yes, it takes time to move past your issues, to let go of your bad habits and defence mechanisms, but surely there has to be some sense of progression, not the yo-yoing we actually got. There are contradictions, too, like Artie insisting sex carries weight for him in one episode, then treating it very lightly in another.

The only major characters I liked and was to any degree engaged by were Kurt and Blaine, and that’s largely because of their relationship, more on which later. There are actually more interesting secondary characters – like Kurt’s father, Dave in season 3, Sebastian and Coach Beiste – than primary ones. I can’t help thinking that’s largely down to them not being saddled with the baggage the main ones have to deal with, the baggage that for me is the biggest problem with the show.

The relationships. Sweet mercy, the relationships. I’ll not mince my words: with one exception they’re shallow, uninvolving, repetitive and hamper the characters more than they help. Again, season two is bad for this, with so many changes of pairings, so many break-ups and make-ups, and so little depth beyond sex and warm, often sung, words no relationship ever carries any weight. True, this kind of templated, one-note approach is depressingly common in US TV – Arrow being one of the worst examples – but it’s even more irritating in a show like Glee.

The only relationship that works is that between Kurt and Blaine, and that’s largely thanks to season three, which seems aware of the prior season’s missteps and actively works to correct and counteract them. Every potential bump in their road is deftly navigated and as a result strengthens their bond. The other three main pairings settle, too, which helps the characters actually move on a little. True, they’re still shallow relationships, but at least they’re no longer a drag on things, and the show enjoys a great run of form as a result.

Then season four starts, and it’s like a giant reset button’s been hit. The new characters are minor variations on the ones they’re replacing, there’s one of the most cliché of all attractions, between a bad boy and a good girl, and, worst of all, all four of the main relationships, all now long-distance, come apart in one painful episode, The Break-Up. Why? Just why? Contrived, infuriating, and for me, deal-breaking.

All of this, all the character and relationship mishandling, contributes to the last big issue: the tone. Refreshingly in an era of dark, violent, even cynical TV, Glee is relentlessly upbeat and earnest. Unfortunately, the poor characterisations and relationships mean this often rings hollow, at times feeling a bit like an after-school special, at others a little hypocritical. A prime example would be the episode in which the boys of the club are called out for treating the girls poorly, and while by the end they seem to have learned, in subsequent episodes little has appreciably changed.

It’s almost as if the show doesn’t actually believe in the things it’s espousing, and this is felt most keenly when it comes to diversity. Glee simply isn’t as diverse as it appears to think it is, because of how flatly it depicts the characters and their relationships. Its on one level – who are you sexually attracted to, boys, girls or both – and no more, as opposed to real life’s infinite variety. The closest the show’s gotten to diversity of identity is Wade/Unique, and they’re confusing and potentially problematic, depending on whether they’re meant to be trans or not.

Compare it to Babylon 5, where every character has a markedly different approach to intimate relationships, from G’Kar’s casual assignations to Lennier’s selfless love for Delenn (which can be interpreted as asexual, very possibly the most underrepresented orientation of them all). Also compare to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a land of no labels where gender is open and fluid to the point of including a non-binary character and doesn’t define people much at all. You have to commit, and Glee doesn’t.

Of course, to be fair, you have to factor in that between network interference and the intense schedules US TV is a poor place to be telling stories that don’t cleave to standard tropes and styles. You also have to acknowledge that even the ostensibly freer platforms of the streaming services will tend to follow trends and stick to what’s known to work, as they’re still profit focused businesses, creativity as a means of making money, not really creativity for its own sake.

That said, Glee still feels like a missed opportunity, a chance fumbled, and that’s frustrating and sad in equal measure. Impossible not to wonder what might have been had it been able or willing to properly follow through on its ideas. It’s good, but it could have been great.

Rating Netflix Animated Series

At this point, I’ve watched a decent number of Netflix’s animated series, and figured I might as well note my thoughts down, in no particular order.  As always, this is purely one person’s opinions.

Voltron: Legendary Defender – The first of three Dreamworks efforts on this list, and, for the most part, a really good one.  Strong characters, dynamic action, capable world-building and a vibrant sense of humour all sweep you along for the vast majority of it, the season finales in particular gripping in their stakes and dynamics.  The final season, however, is a curious anticlimax, of markedly lesser substance than what came before it, lacking the same energy.  Also, the less said about Shiro in terms of LGBT+ representation the better; a bungled token gesture. 8/10

Carmen Sandiego – Much like Voltron, I can’t reference the original, but on its own merits this is a good, good series.  Slick and clever and fun, with a striking and engaging visual style, all propelled by rich characters that neatly eschew tropes and stereotypes, most prominently the titular thief-with-a-heart-and-far-more-besides.  The overarching plot is fascinating, and I look forward to seeing where it goes next. 8/10

Glitch Techs – I have to admit, this one caught me a little off-guard.  Being a co-production with Nickolodeon, I was expecting something kinetic and silly, with little real substance.  I was wrong.  It is kinetic and silly, but with smarts, and appealing characters that have actual depth to them.  Yes, there’s the inevitable Nick grossout humour, but thankfully mostly confined to one ep, and actually fairly restrained by their standards.  The ethnic diversity on display is certainly welcome, too. 7/10

BNA: Brand New Animal – The more I think about this one, the more it underwhelms me.  It’s a briskly enjoyable piece of action anime, for sure, but nothing more.  The characters are two-dimensional, the beats familiar, and the plot predictable – I cottoned on to two of the Big Reveals very easily, long before they happened, and the third carried no impact because it wasn’t earned, and again felt too familiar.  Of course, it could improve in future seasons, but I’m not hugely hopeful. 6/10

Hilda – A gentle, whimsical, imaginative delight with an abundance of heart and humour, and great, diverse characters.  The only real disappointment with it is that there’s still only been one season.  This is a rich, charming world ripe for more exploration. 9/10

The Dragon Prince – An interesting one, this.  For its first two seasons it’s decent, if fairly generic and slightly stilted fantasy.  It’s walking a well-worn path, even down to its characters, complete with a token bit of background LGBT+ representation.  In season 3, however, things change.  It starts to grow, to gain depth and distinction and momentum, and by the genuinely superb finale, it almost feels like a different show.  It’s gone from a pleasant distraction to a truly engrossing piece of storytelling I look forward to seeing more of. 7/10

Beastars – The anime that took the furry fandom by storm, and I can really see why.  Top-notch in pretty much every department, but especially the deep, compelling characters.  Manages dark, sometimes very dark, themes with skill and, for the most part, refreshing restraint, and even in the one arguable sequence it edges into gratuitous violence it’s still driven by enough substance a gore-shy person like me can get past it.  That it has a real breadth of tone, often dipping into the whimsical, playful and fun, also helps.  Anime par excellence. 9/10

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts – I’ll be honest; this one’s actually kinda frustrating.  The second Dreamworks series, it has a fun core concept, but it’s undermined by its plot-driven storytelling.  The main characters are two-dimensional and seem to grow little at all, the denizens of the world are barely more than one-note gags – exercise fanatic raccoons, suit-wearing frogs, lumberjack cats – and the villains are the weakest of all.  The main one to start with is a giggling, Joker-lite maniac with hardly a flicker of depth, and the new one season two introduced is somehow even shallower. Emotional beats don’t land because they just aren’t earned, and there’s an unnervingly dark element in the character Wolf, a young girl brought up by wolves when even younger purely so she could be hunted, killed and eaten (as an aside, that it looks to be subverting the aggravating all-wolves-are-evil trope then not just embraces it but doubles-down on it is particularly irritating).  All this isn’t to say it’s bad – it’s still fun to watch, for the most part, and the entrepreneurial rats are delightful – but it’s just saddening, and a little maddening, the initial promise has yet to be realised.  Kudos for having an openly queer character who does actually seem to be lucky in love, though. 6/10

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power – If you think I’ve been a little harsh on a couple of the above, here’s the reason why.  This, the third and last Dreamworks show on the list, is simply phenomenal, an enthralling, heady rush driven by characters that rival those of Babylon 5 in their richness (and in one betailed case, may even exceed it) and that seriously raises the bar for serialised animation.  Imaginative, clever, moving, funny and exciting, with spectacular tonal range and a deftness in handling darker themes – abuse, trauma, jealousy, bitterness, self-hatred, emotional breakdown, and that’s just one character – that takes the breath away.  This is, for me, not just the best animated series on Netflix, not just the best animated series I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a lot of great animated series, including Avatar, Korra and Teen Titans – but one of the best series, full stop, I’ve ever seen.  That it also shatters boundaries of LGBT+ representation in joyous fashion is almost too much.  Simply fabulous, and damn near faultless. 10/10

Honourable Mentions – Dragons: Race to the Edge; Puss in Boots; Skylanders Academy.  All very entertaining, and help fill out a generally strong animated library on Netflix.

Dishonourable Mention – Trollhunters; despite the involvement of Guillermo del Toro, and Kelsey Grammer in typically impeccable form, the tired old formula of white boy hero, fat kid comedy sidekick, and capable-but-agency-free female sidekick/love interest (even in pink armour, for crying out loud) really needs to be put out to pasture.

Note – none of the more ‘adult’ series, like Loud Mouth and Bojack Horseman, are included here, as they simply don’t appeal to me.

She-Ra Speculation

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a fantastic series, a rich, vibrant, endlessly clever piece of animated storytelling powered by a battery of complex and compelling characters.  Naturally, this means I can’t help but speculate, especially after the ending of season four, and decided I might as well pour it all out here, maybe even consolidate things a bit.  Naturally, there will be plentiful spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the show yet – and you really, really ought to – stop reading now.  Also, just to stress, this is purely speculation, and could be completely wrong, but isn’t letting the imagination rip all part of the fun? 🙂

To say the finale of season 4 was dramatic feels like quite the understatement – the return of Etheria to known space, the arrival of Horde Prime, the activation of the doomsday device at the core of the planet aborted only by the shattering of the sword and the loss of She-Ra, a broken Catra and a guilty Glimmer abducted by Horde Prime, Hordak facing mental wiping, and more besides.  Among all of that my mind has latched onto one detail in particular: She-Ra existed before the sword, before the First Ones.

The sword was, in essence, the physical embodiment of what the First Ones shaped She-Ra into, how they bent her to their needs, which prompts a couple of questions.  First, what was She-Ra like before the First Ones weaponised her, and is it possible we haven’t actually yet seen the true She-Ra, just the form the First Ones gave her?  The rainbow power seen when all the Princesses united at the end of season one, but never since, hints we haven’t.  Second, how was she, for want of a better word, summoned?  How was the transformation triggered?

Of course, it’s possible the sword was already extant, merely adapted, or there was a different sword, but there are elements to the series, threads and details, that make me wonder if the key isn’t something, or someone, else entirely.

Catra.

Why?  Well, to start with, the feline girl is truly formidable, capable of going toe-to-toe with living goddess She-Ra, which I believe no-one else has been able to do, and even overcoming a raging Hordak toting a devastatingly-powerful arm cannon.  Yes, enhanced speed, strength and agility are likely traits of her race, and yes the Horde training would have helped, in spite of her open lack of commitment, but I can’t helping thinking there’s deeper things at play here.

This idea is strengthened when you notice that we so far know nothing of Catra’s origins.  We know she grew up with Adora under the ‘care’ of Shadow-Weaver, but that’s it.  There’s been no trace of her culture or other members of her race, either, beyond a brief glimpse of another feline in one of Light Hope’s projections.  It also makes you wonder if she, like Adora, came from a world other than Etheria; maybe even the same one.

(As an aside, I do wonder about Catra’s headpiece.  She didn’t have it as a young child, yet it certainly seems to mean a lot to her, given she keeps it by her bed, and picked it up again after tearing it off and hurling it down.  A gift from Adora, and thus visual evidence she can’t let go of them, as much as she wants to?)

Speaking of Shadow-Weaver, her treatment of the two, praising and lauding Adora, belittling and dismissing Catra, to such an extent it has to count as persistent emotional and psychological abuse of both, is telling, too.  Why treat them in such diametrically opposed fashions?  You’d think she was determined to keep them apart, to drive an insurmountable wedge between them.  Notably, she failed.  Then, Adora left the Horde.

All of Catra’s subsequent behaviour, up to and including trying to destroy reality, can be traced back to Shadow-Weaver’s abuse.  Adora leaving, breaking their promise, a betrayal and an abandonment to someone for whom she was the only bright spot, a rock to cling to in the storm, was a catalyst that unleashed a childhood’s worth of rage and jealousy and bitterness.  Catra and Adora have been driven so far apart it seems near-impossible for them to reunite, and I believe that was always Shadow-Weaver’s plan.

She knows more than she’s letting on; much more.  She certainly knows Catra’s origins, and she clearly knew the truth about She-Ra.  She’s playing a long game, a very long game, that will ultimately only benefit her – we’ve seen what she’s willing to do to obtain power and control – and keeping Adora and Catra apart seems key to that.  I even find it interesting that, in season three, the sight of Shadow-Weaver and Adora together is what pushed Catra completely over the edge.  Given Shadow-Weaver knows exactly how to manipulate the feline girl – look at her escape from the cell and imminent banishment to Beast Island – it’s tempting to think she had an ulterior motive for joining that particular mission.

She’s doing her best to shape events to her advantage, and she’s not alone.  The same was true of the corrupted Light Hope, guiding She-Ra not towards realising her full potential, but activating the doomsday device.  An important element to that was severing all emotional attachments Adora had, especially that to Catra; that a pivotal moment in the fracturing of their friendship took place in Light-Hope’s sanctum is not a coincidence.  Two interests, apparently at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet both putting a lot of effort into and emphasis on keeping Adora and Catra apart.  Why?

(Random tangent speculation: is Shadow-Weaver a First One, or descended from them?)

True, having no attachments, no bonds, no-one to care personally about, makes it potentially easier to activate the doomsday device, but the emphasis on Adora’s link to Catra makes me think it’s either deeper than either of them truly realise (possibly the feline does, but refuses to accept it, or even acknowledge it) and thus the biggest threat to the plan(s), or there’s more at play.  Maybe even both.

(Final tangent speculation: it’s a curious detail that the Princesses and friends are all human or very human-like, with the mild exception of the goat-people, and the less human races are prominent in the Horde and the Wasteland; also that this reflects the divide between the two main characters.  If this were any other show I’d dismiss it as pandering to a cheap trope, but this is She-Ra…)

It’s also interesting that neither Catra or Adora has managed to truly flourish alone, to the extent their journeys somewhat parallel each other.  All that considered, if it’s so important to keep Adora and Catra apart, to the point you’d risk the end of everything, what happens should they come back together?  What happens when, shorn of all baggage and able to start healing, to overcome the self-destructive behaviours embedded by their abuse, they can finally, truly unite?

What happens when two halves of a whole are finally back as one?

Thoughts on The War of the Worlds (2019)

[Caution: spoilers]

I’ll be honest right from the outset – I’ve never read the original novel.  It’s one of my keenest reading regrets, and one I do hope to correct soon.  However, through the fantastic Jeff Wayne musical version and the solid Spielberg version – more faithful than many realise, Cruise & modern setting aside – I’m pretty familiar with the tone, the themes, the main story beats.

When I heard the BBC were making a big-budget version set in the novel’s time, I was pretty excited, as it’s been a quiet desire of mine for quite a while. I therefore went into it with fairly high hopes.

For most of the first episode those hopes were by and large fulfilled: beautifully filmed, well acted with solid dialogue, nice atmosphere and build of tension, some lovely little moments – chief astronomer touches the sphere, his hand print remains, and so does his reflection, even as he steps away – and good music.  Yes, the changes made – sphere instead of cylinder, that rises and spins instead of slowly unscrewing, and emits some kind of invisible heat pulses rather than the rays – were bemusing, but I was willing to roll with it.  Then the fighting machine rose from the ground, albeit unseen, with zero explanation, and I started to waver just a little.

The biggest issue, though, were abstract moments of redness, dust, weeds and crystals, that eventually resolved into flash-forwards, to the time after the invasion, after the Martians had died, which did little more than confuse.  They just didn’t seem to serve a purpose.  But, the fighting machine was decent enough, with an interesting insectoid touch to the movement, and they seemed to be laying in solid character work, so I was still willing to keep watching.

On reflection, there was more of concern in the first episode, not least the strange disconnect between the tripods and the destruction they caused, mainly that you never saw how they caused it.  It just happened, while they loomed and lurked, occasionally beaming searchlights.  It was also the start of a strange thread that I’ll detail more later.

The second episode was where things really started to falter.  The flash-forwards became a lot more pronounced, and still didn’t make sense.  They drained most of the tension, confused the storyline, and weighed down the pacing, having such a negative effect you wonder why they were thought a good idea in the first place.  All the while, things are drifting ever further from Wells; there are echoes of famous characters – the soldier, the priest – and moments – a beach sequence mildly reminiscent of the Thunderchild set piece – but nothing more.

The London attack is confined to a building crumbling, a tripod looming, black smoke billowing, running along passages, and a pretty unsubtle imperialist minister being consumed and seemingly turned by the fog, if only for both to never reappear.  This is where the narrative really starts to fray, threads going nowhere, the core drive fading away.  In fact, it becomes clear there never really was a core drive.

Episode three, as a result, is almost entirely leaden, gloomy, paceless and directionless.  It’s basically boiled all its initial promise down to the same listless bleakness as the ABC Murders adaptation from last year.  The scenes of creeping around the house, where Martians are lurking are admittedly pretty effective…until you actually see a Martian.

It probably seemed a neat touch to have them be tripods, like their fighting machines, but they’re so simplistically designed – bags of flesh with three long, tapering, pointed limbs – they just don’t work.  How do they build and operate their machines?  They also seem able to do whatever the script needs them to, regardless of whether it actually makes sense.  Stand on just two legs without toppling over?  Fine.  Lurk in the corner of wall and ceiling, somehow unnoticed by the four remaining humans, dropping down at exactly the right moment to kill a young girl who’d turned back to collect a teddy bear?  Go right ahead.

Beyond the obvious issues with that moment – where did the Martian come from, how was it up there, how long had it been there, how had no-one noticed? – it’s also the worst example of that thread I mentioned earlier.  It’s two-fold: one, random deaths of random people, often ones not normally killed in such things, like a family dog, an elderly lady, and the child described above, and a recurrent motif of people leaving others behind, either after being strenuously begged to, or while being begged not to.  There are also a couple of instances of attempts to help people – an unseen, crying baby, the aforementioned minister, the old lady – that either fail, or are aborted.  It’s inconsistent, seems to have no point or purpose, and ultimately comes across as almost nihilistic, especially when you consider that the teddy that caused the girl’s death was given to her as a source of comfort.  It certainly robs George’s final sacrifice of what weight the muddled plot hadn’t already removed.

I don’t agree with those insisting the BBC is pushing a ‘PC’ or ‘woke’ agenda.  I believe it’s a stale relic trying to appear ‘down with the kids’, in touch with modern sensibilities, and failing miserably.  In this instance, that means a greatly expanded female character that ultimately serves no purpose, and a cleverly threaded allegory reduced to painful bluntness – there’s even a speech expounding it, at one point.  It’s hamfisted and heavy-handed.

Ultimately, I struggle to understand what they were trying to achieve here.  In fact, I honestly wonder if even they knew what they wanted to achieve.  As a result, what could have been a thrilling, faithful adaptation ends up a muddled, rudderless, dispiriting, frustrating waste of a golden opportunity.  It could, and should, have been so much better.

Into the Darkness

These days, Dark and Gritty has become pretty much a default setting for most television, especially out of the US, regardless of genre – sci-fi, fantasy, procedural, superhero, medical, and more besides, most strive for a vision of ‘realism’ that is fixedly downbeat, grim, violent, and, ironically enough, not actually that realistic at all.  It’s a rare new adaptation of a classic property that isn’t, in some way and to some degree, ‘darker’ and ‘grittier’.  It’s bordering on an obsession at this point, and I have to wonder if it’s actually worth it…

To wit: the new BBC/Amazon adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders.  Curious it should have her name in the title considering how much it deviates from the book (strong echoes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was actually much more Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula) in plot and tone.  The new approach to Poirot might have been interesting, and John Malkovitch is far too good an actor to not be worthwhile, but it layers on the Dark and Gritty so thickly it practically suffocates the characters and story.  I assume it was trying to capture some of the flavour of quiet, meditative Scandinavian dramas with its controlled, mininal camerawork and painterly aesthetic, but here it’s actually counter-productive, weighing things down so much there’s barely any momentum.

It has the same issue that hamstrings Endeavour, namely that the dark, shadowy, desaturated cinematography and low-key, mostly atmospheric music and slow, stolid directing leave things so heavy and gloomy it’s devoid of real depth or texture.  The murders have to be graphic to even stand out amidst such unvarying gloom, and even then it’s only just.  The lack of visual and tonal contrast in both shows – slightly worse in Endeavour thanks to them lowering the register of the actors voices in post-production, so even mellifluous Patrick Malahide sounds like he’s gargling gravel – is doing them a grave disservice.  How’s the darkness supposed to be effective when there’s no light to show it against?

Even the latest incarnation of Doctor Who suffers a bit from this kind of tonal flattening, as does the new Watership Down, one of many reasons it’s much less potent than the 1978 film (haunting and visceral and definitely not ‘suitable for all’, despite what the BBFC might have you believe) or the original book.  In fact, the 1978 film is a great example of the value of contrast, since its moments of brutality wouldn’t be half so powerful if they didn’t so sharply go against the tonal grain; you could even make an argument it’s too effective.

All of this is not to say there isn’t a place for programmes of this nature, just that when these settings, if you will, are being applied to things just because they can be, just because that’s what counts as ‘modern’ or ‘realistic’ or ‘adapting for current audiences’, then maybe they’ve become too much of a crutch.  Certainly, ‘realism’ must stop being used as an excuse, as real life isn’t so relentlessly one-dimensional, so unvarying in mood, so consistently drained of colour and light and definition.  At worst, going Dark and Gritty is lazy, cheap and hurts far more than it helps, and flags up a serious lack of imagination, something we’re sorely in need of right now.