This article - like the previous - contains spoilers. I know I should warn you every time I do one, but Elvis is dead and so is the Queen... Oh and most of this was written before I got ill, so it's nearly a month old.
The epic conclusion to series one of House of the Dragon leaked a few days early, much to HBO's anger and our otherwise dull Saturday night's delight. It was... bleak, grim and uplifting and had a conclusion, if not in some ways expected, that was still one of those, 'Oh shit, I bet you wish you hadn't been such a twat' moments that you know will have far reaching consequences for the next three series.
It was proper Dragon v Dragon stuff, except it was like Mike Tyson meeting Eddie the Eagle Edwards in a MMA boxing match with no skis rather than any fair contest. In fact, after a belligerent start, the smaller dragon was taken out with just one bite, rider and all. So if anything was needed to tweak Rhaenyrs' nipple it was having her second son become dragon lunch and the final scene of the black queen's shock and awe was all you needed to set you up for a year long wait until the next 10 episodes drop.
It's been much better than I thought it would be and has reinvigorated the GOT franchise without too much sex and convoluted plots. Let's hope it doesn't get bogged down in usual GRRM bullshit. Even Matt Smith has been slightly restrained and less Doctor Whoish...
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If there was ever a TV show that I probably obsess over more than anything else, despite not really being a fan of is Doctor Who. I think I allow myself to get caught up in its fan side and the industry that has grown up around it. I find myself drawn to speculation as much as any Whovian and even more compelled to write about it. The thing is I've been trying to think of a comparison in the TV world; a program I feel so important to watch yet don't really care much about it. I don't think I have one.
I got hooked on the Doctor back in the early 1970s with the arrival of Jon Pertwee as No.3 and for four years I lapped it up. Sarah Jane Smith, Jo Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, Sgt Benton, Bessie... it was cracking stuff even if the sets wobbled and the special FX weren't. I was 13 when Tom Baker took over and by the time I was 14 I'd stopped watching the series, I couldn't get on with this 4th Doctor and for seven years the show passed me by. I got a jolt back into it with the arrival of Peter Davidson and stuck with it until Colin Baker started fighting Liquorice All-sorts Men and I never watched a single episode of Sylvester McCoy's tenure - Doctor Who was dead to me.
The announcement of the feature film was greeted with a lot of interest; the world of special effects had moved on considerably in the seven years since the last BBC episode and this big budget thriller, set in New York looked great, unfortunately it just wasn't that good, but it became canon and the movement to bring the Doctor back really got underway. Fast forward nearly a decade and we had a Doctor Who for the 21st century brought to us by Russell T Davies and what had always essentially been a kids program that adults watched, became a for-all-the-family program with much darker elements than ever before and dealing with issues that had never been touched upon in such an environment.
Chris Ecclestone was good, broody and enigmatic and either should never have been cast or should have been coerced into at least doing more than one series. David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodi Whitaker (with a brief interlude by John Hurt, just to confuse things more) all followed; there were some great episodes and there were some real stinkers; Davies moved on, Moffatt arrived and annoyed lots of people and then Chibnall replaced him and did what I like to think of as a Truss on the show; he fucked it up big time...
Jodi Whitaker was a great choice as a Doctor, but I think any woman would have been and having a token woman demeans it greatly. Chris Chibnall was a woefully inadequate show runner and by trying to 'fix' the Doctor he royally fucked her up. Absolute stinky stories, poor quality supporting cast and scripts that would seem poor for CBBC; Whitaker's Doctor persona was fucking awful and became unbelievably annoying every time she opened her mouth. It wasn't ever her delivery, it was the words she had to speak... Ugh...
Which brings us to Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor and Jodi's final farewell. So much about this was good that it made you wonder where Chibnall had been hiding his stories, but even this better-than-usual story was contrived nonsense; it was the cone game yet again. If it wasn't the sonic screwdriver to the rescue it was the cone game; how the fuck isn't the Doctor dead? Why hasn't one of their really nasty villains, like the Master just picked up a gun and shot the Doctor - twice - one through each heart, then incinerated the body in a sun? How come every weapon-wielding alien in the universe is a worse shot than a Star Wars Stormtrooper? How did the Cybermen or the Daleks conquer the universe? Basically the Doctor's biggest weapon is his/her name. 'I am the Doctor' has more effect than facing down someone with an army.
Essentially this was a big plan by The Master, who somehow survived the destruction of Gallifrey (again) has managed to team up the Daleks and the Cybermen to help him finally destroy the Doctor - an obsession that is fantastically realised, but I've struggled for years to understand why. The Master is an utter enigma and if Steven Moffatt did anything right it was Missy; why the new incarnation (if he is indeed the most recent) has reverted to psychopathic type seems like poor character development to me. Anyhow, he swaps bodies with the Doctor, except she's now dead and he's her, looking like him. She's at a cliff edge meeting selected versions of her former self who are telling her some cod bullshit about choices and not being ready and it was at this point the wife prodded me awake. Boring boring boring... Is it just me that believes the BBC has a fantastic template for a brilliant ongoing TV series but just fucks it with a big stick so much it's become impossible to make it linear and comprehensible?
The show is full of nostalgia to the point it almost brings a lump to your throat even if you don't give a flying fuck and then the big reveal - the new Doctor... Except... Except the BBC announcer prior to the start of the show said something like 'It's time for a new doctor or maybe an old one' - not exactly those words, but most definitely an oblique spoiler. The new Doctor is an old Doctor, the David Tennant Doctor, looking a wee bit older but most definitely him. Oh no, what's happened? Where's the new gay black man Doctor we were promised? Why have I written so much about something that shouldn't bother me so much? I have a number of friends who are huge Doctor Who fans, fuck knows what they feel like about this dog's dinner of a TV series.
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Scraping the bottom of the barrel time...
Part of me wanted to go into this and probably the next column without finding something MCU to talk about, but it's a drug, an addiction and I have three trailers to dissect...
There were three trailers for Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever before it was released a ferw weeks ago and you can pretty much work out the following things: T'Challa is dead, there's a bunch of vibranium-wielding aquahumans who have suddenly appeared, led by a Hispanic looking bloke with small wings on his feet (Namor) and he wants Wakanda's vibranium and a new female Black Panther is going to turn up. The first and last parts seem fine, it's the Atlantis, Sub-Mariner, secret war elements that bother me.
I appreciate that Namor, the Sub-Mariner has been in the [extended] Marvel Universe since the early 1940s and including him in the MCU is a no-brainer, but... on the balance it just adds more baggage to a story that's expanding faster than Brendan Fraser's waistline. You know the trailer is going to deceive and deflect from what is really happening, you know that Namor and his Atlanteans will probably team up with Wakanda against a common enemy, but ... Look, I know some people who liked the Aquaman film, but it felt a little like a post-modern The Man From Atlantis writ large with a budget and as Drop the Dead Donkey asked back in the 1990s, 'just how much crime is there underwater'? As The Boys likes to point out, The Deep is the most fucked up member of The Seven because of his weird aquatic fetishes and general stupidity. Underwater is often a joke.
He also appears to have been retconned. Namor always had a faintly Oriental look about him, possibly a little bit of Japanese, but in Thor's body. Now he's Hispanic, the actor is Mexican, the look is more Conan than green briefs and I feel bad commenting about Marvel/Disney's diversity policy in a negative way, but...
Anyhow, we get a sneak peak of Ironheart and a lot of Angela Bassett emoting about loss all the while a remixed version of Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry plays over the top. I still struggle a little with the first film, being one of the few people who doesn't really rate it as more than average MCU and the feeling you get from this film is it's going more for the Infinity War styled Wakanda action rather than anything else...
Do you know, writing that above sentence I saw the end of the MCU franchise... Every superhero film is essentially the same formula when it exhausts everything else - it's a big fight that you know, ultimately, the heroes will win. The thing that connects them and makes them less like copies is the difference in the characters and I'm seeing less character development and more set pieces as we become more familiar with the players.
I hope I'm proved wrong, but I think Wakanda Forever might be a real stinker (it got 3 stars in the Guardian).
On the 25th October, the first trailer for Ant-Man & The Wasp in Quantumania arrived. It came out of the blue and wasn't really what I expected. Could it be that after two relatively benign films, Ant-Man is about to properly enter the real MCU (in a film with his name on it)? Scott Lang has faced Endgame, so his experience of dealing with crazy should be easier to control, but what we get with Quantumania is straight forward; there's (yet) another universe existing underneath our own one and it's far more dangerous. Natch.
The trailer sends our heroes, the Wasp's parents and Scott's daughter into the Quantum Realm, which appears to be another MCU attempt at recreating a Star Wars-type world full of wondrous creatures and the initial excitement I felt at Marvel doing something 'proper' with Ant-Man was lost. It's a cosmic space film set within a micro-cosmos and Kang the Conqueror is either behind it or is manipulating events to allow him to escape (that last bit is pure speculation, if Kang is offering Scott something he needs you can bet there's a 'but' waiting in the wings.
It looks fantastic but it also looks 95% green screen and needs to be more than just a Guardians of the Galaxy meets Micronauts mash-up. A lot might change between now and February when it's released, but if this is a 'serious' Ant-Man film it needs to deliver.
And finally The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which allegedly streams from November 25 and after seeing the trailer for it will someone please pass the bleach...
I want to give you a complete breakdown of the trailer including the fact that Kevin Bacon is in it, playing Kevin Bacon, or that Groot (might) be almost grown up again or that it appears to be set in the same universe as She-Hulk, but I'm not going to because I can no longer see the keyboard to write because my eyes and ears are full of bleach...
All trailers available on YouTube at the Marvel Entertainment page.
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Vesper is a feature film made by Belgians, Lithuanians and a few Brits. There are some deeply disturbing things that happen in it despite it largely being targeted for a YA audience. Eddie Marson is creepy, the sets are strange, the entire thing was grim, dirty and not overly enjoyable. It reminded me of a cross between Monsters and Annihilation but its problem was it was neither weird enough or compelling enough for a story ten minutes short of two hours.
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During my unexpected illness, we've been watching a lot of films, some of them memorable for all the wrong reasons...
I spent much of my time on the sofa watching the Legendary monster films - Godzilla (the Gareth Edwards 2013 version), Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla - King of the Monsters and Godzilla versus Kong and I enjoyed all of them to a certain degree. Edwards' giant lizard reboot was hampered by the acting and lack of Godzilla, but much of it had the Monsters maker's trademark feel, especially during the scenes in the overgrown Japanese township near the beginning. Skull Island was spoiled largely by an overblown and slightly stupid performance by Samuel L Jackson and the last two were ruined by the current fascination with Millie Bobby Brown, who really can't act and brings films (and TV series) she's in down to her level of crap acting.
It has been 45 years since I last watched The Exorcist II: The Heretic, the John Boorman follow-up to one of the greatest films of all time. It is a truly dreadful piece of shite with no less than three Oscar winners in it all hamming it up with a dreadful script on some of the most unconvincing sets you could possibly imagine. I remember leaving the cinema in the late 1970s, with my brother, wondering what the actual fuck I'd just watched and that is pretty much what both the wife and I thought after watching it the other night. It's probably one of the worst films ever made.
The Exorcist III: Legion is about midway between I and II, it's pretty much a great film until the last ten minutes when it goes a bit wobbly and is both creepy and really clever. The book, which is a direct sequel to William Peter Blatty's original is better, but he did write and direct this far better sequel than the second sequel ever could be.
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The Walking Dead finishes in the next few days; it has been on a constant decline since series four and while the wife has been a fan, I watch it out of habit alone. There's news of more spin-offs - one featuring Daryl and another with Rick and Michonne reunited (without their kids), plus there's Fear, which was quite good for a while then got lost up its own arse. Once TWD is over I'm probably never going to watch another zombie related thing ever again because they're all shit.
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