film

Walking Away From the Same Old Same Old, or The Man Who Revises

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Time for the March report:

First, book-wise, which I’m sure is the main reason you guys are reading this, I want to report that I worked through the problems with that problematic scene. 

Weirdly, this extended scene doesn’t feel all that different, but it’s shorter now and the people in it act the way people act, which is nice. 

And with that, we segue into a pop cultural topic. 

When my son had just turned ten years old, I decided it was time for him to see Star Wars. I was a little older than him when I saw it in theaters in 1977, but I figured ten was the perfect age to see that movie. 

Anyway, I’ve told this story before, but we were watching the film together and, right in the middle of the climactic dog fight, where the X-wings are flying down the trench trying to explode the Death Star, my own son got up off the couch and walked away. He just wasn’t interested. I watched him sit at his computer and start up Minecraft game while the TV was filling the room with pew pew noises.

Now, there are a lot of platitudes that could be mined from a story like that, and I like to think I’ve typed my share of them into the big empty void of the internet, but I was reminded of the incident once again last Wednesday.

Because here’s the thing: I showed him the Star Wars movie without taking into account that he had already played the Lego Star Wars video game.

Those Lego games take every moment from a film and stretch it until every plot point of the movie needs fifteen minutes of smashing and building things before you can move on to the next. (I exaggerate, maybe, but not by much) The point is, it’s slow as hell, and along with all the other reasons my son would not respond positively to old timey science fiction movies like Star Wars, is the simple fact that he’d already been there and done that, at length.

And the reason all this came up again was because the teaser trailer for the Wizard Boy tv remake dropped. 

Personally, I have no interest in watching the upcoming Wizard Boy tv show. For every pound sterling that goes into that franchise, some portion is diverted into taking rights away from vulnerable populations. I’m not going to put a ha’penny into that. I don’t care if this new show is The Wire for fantasy YA lovers, human rights matter more.

But once people on my Bluesky timeline start talking about how terrible the teaser trailer looks, I absolutely want to see how and why it sucks. 

So I did and it looks slow. Harry deals with bullies in a muggle school. Aunt Petunia giving his hair a hate-trim. Harry and Hagrid sitting on the tube, having a conversation.

It looks like they’re going to show all the usual story beats, but slowed down to fill up a streaming season, and you know they’re not going to take IP this popular and make fewer than ten episodes a season.

So maybe that’s why the teaser–a teaser!–feels so slack. 

I’ve seen people complain about the way it looks, but I like the candlelight aesthetic for Hogwarts. It’s dumb–magic lanterns would make more sense–but it’s pretty.

Still, so much feels recycled from the films. (Confession: I haven’t read the books since Family Reading Time, more than 15 years ago, so the movies are my main reference.) The train scene, the wand shop, even the lettering on the Hogwarts envelope, it’s all stuff we’ve seen before. 

Worse, the tone is reverential when it should be playful and fun. And they’re button-mashing the “You’re secretly the specialest boy ever, Harry!” button when the character’s most endearing trait is his desire to be ordinary. And Hagrid has been reimagined to be smaller than life. 

And let me be honest: I’ve watched worse things. I recently told some friends that last years Red Sonja remake was a scrappy B-movie. I watched the live-action Last Airbender remake. And years ago, when the first D&D movie came out with Jeremy Irons chewing up the scenery, I knew it would be terrible but I put a 20-sider into my pocket as a talisman against high expectations and saw it in a theater.

But I won’t be watching this, not unless Rowling has a sudden realization that she’s become one of the bigots she was trying to lampoon when she wrote the Malfoy family. Or if she predeceases me, I guess. But I don’t wish her harm. I wish her enlightenment. 

However, if there is any force in this universe that will lessen Rowling’s ability to hurt vulnerable people with the power of her overstuffed bank accounts, it won’t be righteousness. It’ll be the perception that her new show is a dull, meandering retread of the same old same old. Which is what it appears to be. 

Back to work for me.

But first, I want to thank everyone who has been chipping in extra to my Patreon since my wife was struck by a car. We are incredibly grateful for your help.

Talk to you guys next month. 

An Out of Control Chief Executive (in a Brave New World)

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I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater lately. My health has been shit and in America that means money has been tight. Very tight. (Please buy my books and post reviews of them, and if you back me on Patreon, thank you thank you thank you)

However, there’s a new MCU entry with a black Captain America, and in defiance of the Worst People on YouTube, I was willing to throw an afternoon-matinee worth of my income into that big pool of box office returns. 

My spoiler-free take on the film:

  • Anthony Mackie should be a movie star (meaning, people see movies mainly because he’s in them
  • Brave New World is as good (and as flawed) as any of the ordinary MCU entries when the series was at peak popularity
  • It ditches the ironic snark of the last few films and thank God for that.
  • When is Sam Wilson going to get a love interest? 
  • Feige really needs to change the way he makes these movies.

The story is fairly straightforward: Thunderbolt Ross has gotten himself elected president, and he’s been trying to make amends for past mistakes both for his legacy as CiC and to make amends with his estranged daughter. He’s pushing hard for an international treaty on the exploitation of a newly discovered mineral, adamantium, inside the body of that dead Celestial from a few movies back.

What he won’t do is go public about his mistakes, even when they’re getting people killed by the dozens and eventually pushing the world to the brink of war. 

It’s up to Sam Wilson to figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it, and that’s a job that’s going to require a lot of action scenes.

If that sounds like the story is weirdly focused on the antagonist’s personal journey, it is. Wilson does have a personal journey of his own. Sort of. In the non-action scenes of the movie, he talks about feeling like he isn’t up to the challenge of being Captain America, and he even expresses his regret at not taking the super soldier serum. 

But because this is a Marvel movie, with different parts shot by different people, and in which a rough compilation of scenes were brought to Kevin Feige so he could whip up a storyline to glue them together in reshoots. 

Which is why, no matter how much Wilson talks about his fear that he could never live up to the standards set by Steve Rogers, that never once plays out in the action sequences (which are pretty terrific, honestly). Wilson talks about the possibility that he might come up short, but it never even comes close to happening.

It’s the biggest flaw this movie has. The second biggest is the on-the-nose dialog, but that’s par for the course with political thrillers. 

Is this the place to talk about President Hulk? Or President Red Hulk, I guess? The Hulk has always been a sort of werewolf for the atomic age, where instead of a fear of the beasts of the wild, it represented a fear of the destructive power of radioactive weapons unleashed by baby-men throwing tantrums. 

If I thought Feige could see the future, I would suspect this was a comment on our current political situation. It isn’t. It can’t be. Ross is a bad person, yeah, but he isn’t “You should drink bleach/ Isn’t my daughter fuckable/ Let’s take over that sovereign nation” level bad. Ross wants a treaty to allow international cooperation. A Trumpian figure would be trying to turn Celestial Island into the 51st state. 

Anyway, good movie. Fun action scenes. Great performances. It would have been a fantastic movie if they’d taken the time to make it a cohesive story.

—-

In other news, after a long reading drought, I’m finally reading something that I’m enjoying. There’s about 50 pages left, but as long as it doesn’t shit the bed during the ending, I’ll happily recommend it here. Details to come, maybe.

—-

Work on the final Twenty Palaces book continues in my every spare moment. I’m not as far along as I’d like to be, but I feel like I’m genuinely getting it right. I even have the ending–mostly–worked out. 

As always, revisions will be extensive and intense but progress is happening. I only wish it could happen faster. 

—-

I had more to say but I think I’m going to stop there so I can get back to the things that really matter. 

Learning to Love Horror Movies and some Patreon Annoyance.

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Two notes:

First of all, starting November, no one will be able to sign up for my Patreon through the Patreon app on Apple. The reasons are semi-complex and not all that interesting, but mainly don’t like that Apple insists on extracting 30% from every monthly donation (edited to add: my understanding is that this only affects new signups)

Folks who want to support my Patreon will have to sign up via desktop, laptop, Android device, or whatever alternative they can find. I’m sure this will cost me money, but it’s annoying to have another huge corporation sticking their fingers into my pockets and yours, and money is already so tight that the sacrifice of this small trickle of pennies won’t really matter.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure this situation with Apple is temporary.

Second, over on reddit, someone was talking about the appeal of horror movies, asking if viewers really truly honestly enjoyed watching them. 

It’s a silly question, obviously. Movies are entertainment and art. The people who watch them clearly expect to be either entertained or otherwise affected by them. But this person could not fathom the appeal in the same way that my wife doesn’t understand why I (or anyone) would choose to eat spicy hot food.

But in between the time I started typing this comment and the time I finished it, the post had been taken down. No idea why. 

Still, it’s advice. If you’ve always been horror curious but hate various aspects of the genre, like gore (I mostly hate that too, although I sometimes tolerate it now), or doom and gloom endings (mostly not in the mood for that shit), or jump scares (annoying but not a deal-breaker for me anymore), maybe this trick will make the effect of horror less severe and more enjoyable.

Here’s the comment:

—

Watching a horror movie is a safe way to experience the upside of being in danger–the chemicals that flood your body when you perceive a threat–without actually being in danger.

For a long time, I had a problem with scary movies, too. They stressed me out. Anxiety off the charts. Then I started focusing on older movies famous for being scary to the audiences of their time.

It turned out that the style of filmmaking, fashions for costuming and acting, and other “old movie” markers gave me the mental distance to feel a muted version of the scares without having to carry them with me after the film/show was over.

Now I’m able to watch modern horror, although there are still genre tropes I don’t like. Took a while to desensitize, but it wasn’t exactly punishment to watch great old movies.

I think it’s a lot like eating hot peppers. You’re not being burned–there’s an enzyme in the peppers that perfectly fits pain receptors–but your body doesn’t know that and floods you with endorphins. There’s no lasting harm but very real pleasure responses.

—

And if you’re one of those folks who have zero interest in scary movies, that’s great. Please unread the paragraphs above.

Happy Halloween.

October Update with an Important Notice about Patreon

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First up, I need to let you know there are new rules for Patreon. 

Apple has decided that anyone who joins a Patreon using the Patreon app on iPhone will have to pay a 30% surcharge on every payment so they can take their cut. 

It doesn’t affect other aspects of the service. You can still follow updates and whatever on your phone, but if you specifically sign up for a Patreon through an app on their phone, you’ll be charged more. 

I recommend signing up through a desktop or laptop, then reading updates however you like. 

As I understand it, this policy starts in November.

In other news, Spooktacular Shocktober is the time of year I dig out my old dvds and blu-rays to rewatch my little collection of old horror movies. Sadly, that’s not going to work this year because my blu-ray player seems to have lost the ability to recognize discs.

I’ve done the full online troubleshooting thing, powering things down and whatever whatever whatever. It resists repair. Sad, because a fair amount of my personal movie viewing comes from the public library, and while I’m okay with waiting to see any particular movie, I’m not really in a position to be paying for them. We’ll figure something out 

In writing news, Twenty One Palaces continues to allow itself to be written, but only reluctantly. A little frustrating, but survivable. 

Just yesterday I realized that a scene I’d written about a week before, in which Our Hero Ray Lilly startles an enemy by naming his supposedly secret base of operations would not work. Why, you ask? Because I had destroyed that building in a previous book. Totally wrecked it. 

The story couldn’t go forward without a place for it to go forward to, but I worked it out and everything is humming along again. 

In fact, just yesterday I ended my writing session with an awkward conversation between Annalise and a nameless walk-on character. As I signed off for the day, I thought “I’m going to have to delete that.” 

This morning I opened it up and realized that this exchange could be the perfect catalyst for a much needed breather moment that would not only reinforce Ray’s internal situation it would remind readers of the feel of the world they were moving in. 

Sometimes my subconscious knows its stuff. 

That’s it. Have a good spooky season. 

The Post I Actually Owed You Guys

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Still hard at work on the last Twenty Palaces novel. Here’s a bit of reading I’ve been doing to help me get the right and most realistic tone for this last book. 

The book Scatter, Adapt and Remember by Annalee Newitz

I’m embarrassed to say that I was lying in bed last night a few nights back thinking about a scene I’ve been struggling with, and I suddenly came up with a workable solution. Did I get up right away and jot a note to myself for the morning? I did not. It was chilly and I was about to fall asleep. Plus, I literally thought to myself that this idea was too obvious and good to forget. 

I forgot it anyway. 

I can create it again but it’s a pain in the ass. I just need the space and time to think those thoughts all over again.  

Sorry for missing an August update. I’d say “I’ve been busy” but we’re all busy all the time and I still managed to find time to watch Secret Royal Inspector & Joy, so I have to come clean to you guys and admit that I didn’t have anything interesting to say.

That said: 

My wife and I usually close out the day by collapsing, in pain and exhaustion, in front of the tv for shows or a movie. Back when we had Netflix’s dvd service, it was the rule that any disc they sent got watched that evening and went back out in the morning mail. With that service gone, we’ve had to institute Film Friday. 

But we sort of fell behind on new and old releases, so I made a list and we spent a few evenings crossing off films. 

Here are some mini-reviews of the films we (or sometimes just me) watched, offered in the nearly random order they were added to my list:

I Saw The TV Glow: A beautiful, sad movie about being trapped in a hellish life and being afraid to leave—to be too afraid even to look inside yourself and recognize who you truly are. Also, about finding personal meaning in pop culture. Yeah, the movie flies in the face of traditional expectations, but I loved it and I’ll be looking into that soundtrack. 

La Chimera: This apparently got a standing ovation at Cannes but I’m mystified why. I’d believe the description of the film on Hulu is a copy and paste mistake except the characters’ somewhat unusual names are correct. Premise: an Englishman in Italy uses his dowsing ability to help a bunch of tomb raiders steal cultural artifacts and sell them on the black market. Also, he’s a jerk to everyone, including the beautiful woman who inexplicably finds him fascinating. Everything felt predictable except for the very last moments. Last thing: there are very few movie endings that I find morally objectionable, but this movie proudly sports one of them. 

Marmalade: Fun, mildly twisty cops and robbers story. Joe Keery is obviously having a good time and is charming as hell, but I have no idea why someone with Aldis Hodge’s charisma keeps getting cast as stern hardasses. Light and relaxing.

Kalki 2898 AD: Huge blockbuster out of India with lots of pretty cgi and the obligatory absurd action scenes. Fun to look at and laugh. Corridor Crew should do a segment on the eight-foot-tall old man who dishes out kung fu to the bad guys. Too long and it ends on a cliffhanger, but mostly inoffensive fun.

Dracula (1979): Underrated version of the classic story. I personally thing Frank Langella still holds the crown of “sexiest Dracula ever” but only because Louis Jordan was hobbled by 1970s TV budget production style. Olivier is terrific, as always, and was even willing to slide down a pile of grave dirt even as an actor in his seventies. The version we saw on Peacock was weirdly colorless compared to the trailers. I thought John Badham was being artsy but maybe it was just a bad, desaturated print.

The Imaginary: Solid, enjoyable anime about imaginary friends. The story, characters, plot twists, etc were all well done, but the real appeal of this movie is how beautiful it looks. 

Rebel Ridge: Seeing a lot of responses to this action thriller that complain about the action. Personally, I loved the idea of one black man (as Jamelle Bouie called him: “Black Reacher”) pitted against a group of corrupt cops. The police have to be careful to maintain the fiction that they have cleaned up their corrupt practices after a legal settlement nearly bankrupts the town, but they have a power and freedom to act that a lone civilian, who would go to prison forever if he killed or seriously injured one of these murderous officers, does not. Does it strain belief? Sure, but it’s rare to find a Reacher-style story that doesn’t. 

Mission Cross: Korean comedy action movie about a decorated female homicide detective and her mild-mannered house-husband who used to be a James Bond-level secret agent. Funny fluff with some solid action. 

Officer Black Belt: Speaking of fluff with solid action, there’s this. Winning young heroic lead with a support system of likable pals combines with well-designed fight scenes to make this predictable genre film an enjoyable 90-ish minutes

The Fall Guy: The whole world failed this movie. It’s funny, romantic, and has great stunt set pieces. This movie elevates “having fun” into a religious experience. Just a goddam delight. 

The Boy and the Heron: I don’t really need to recommend a Miyazaki movie, do I? It’s beautiful and heartfelt, and I’m not sure I understand the stuff about the blocks at the end, as though rebuilding and maintaining the world was as easy as stacking blocks as long as your heart is pure, but I don’t need everything to be clearly explained to appreciate this.

Loop Track: In a conversation on Bluesky I said that modern audiences are much more receptive to a slow burn if the movie is modern. In an older movie, a slow burn start just means a film is a creaky entertainment meant for our grandparents. Well, this is a slow burn horror movie from New Zealand about a hiker on a three-day loop track through the wilderness while he undergoes a long, slow nervous breakdown. All he wants is to fall apart in private, but he happens to fall in with others and can’t shake them. And, with all this going on, he begins to suspect that someone (something?) is stalking them. Liked it very much, especially the very end. 

The Dude in Me: There are an awful lot of Korean movies and shows about body-swapping, but this one (as far as I can tell) set off a series of copycats. In this, a cocky, swaggering gangster gets stuffed into the body of an introverted, bullied high school student. There’s some dumb bullshit about fatness, but aside from that I laughed aloud throughout, even at the parts that didn’t make any damn sense. If you can brush off retrograde nonsense about weight, this film is damn funny. 

Hundreds of Beavers: A genuinely hilarious comedy with almost no dialog in it. Made on a modest (but not micro-) budget by funny, intelligent people, willing to do whatever to make you laugh. Best enjoyed if you know as little as possible when you start watching, so don’t even check out the trailer first. Just watch.

Still on the list but not crossed off: Exhuma, Burning, Jules, Gone Girl, Cocaine Bear, Tenebre, Fitzcarraldo, Molli and Max in the Future and several more. 

Progress on Twenty One Palaces is ongoing, although I’ve stumbled on the problematic scene I mentioned above and need to rethink the solution. 

When A Show Is Renewed But The Storyline You Care About Most is Cancelled

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Many—not all but many—movies have two genres. The first tells the story of the main plot line: the heist, the hunt for the spy, the fight to save the farm, the escape from the haunted house. Those are all the high-stress moments of the story, building tension to the finale. When the marketers cut a trailer, this is the genre they focus on.

The second genre tells a story in the down moments of the plot, when the tension of the main plot is allowed to ease and reset so it can be ramped up again. Traditionally, these would be romantic plots, but sometimes it’s a coming of age story.

TV does something similar. For example, Elementary was a mystery show that had, for its second, much smaller secondary plot, a little drama that played out within the main cast. Most focused on the growing friendship between Sherlock and Joan, but some were about Joan’s family, or Sherlock’s, or their circle of friends.

And since it’s an episodic show, the main-plot mysteries were one and done but the little dramas stacked one on top of the other, building over the long term to something wonderful.

Honestly, in TV it’s those tiny dramas, building one upon the other, that keep me coming back episode after episode. The Mystery of the Week keeps me entertained. The slowly changing relationships between the main characters makes me binge a whole season to Find Out What Happened.

Another example: for years, I was faithfully picking up Sue Grafton’s alphabet novels, one after another, because a) the private eye plots for each book were solid as hell, and b), the main character, Kinsey Milhone, discovered that she had a huge extended family that she knew nothing about, and the subplots of each book showed her inching closer to the family she never knew she had and wasn’t sure she wanted.

I really wanted to know what happened between Kinsey and her estranged family. I could find a solid mystery in any number of books, but the family drama is what kept me coming back.

Then the subplot suddenly shifted into a romantic plot featuring a good-looking homicide detective who used to be a hairdresser(!) which meant he could fix Kinsey’s famously terrible self-inflicted haircuts. I was so annoyed that I dropped the series immediately. I’d been coming back for the reconciliation with her family. The sexy hairdresser/homicide detective left me clammy.

One of the reasons I never watched House was that, while the main plots were interesting enough, I didn’t like watching the character dramas play out. It just felt so squicky. In fact, there are a lot of shows that I ditch after a few seasons because I feel absolutely done with the kind of subplot dramas the show puts its characters through.

Anyway, the reason all this has bubbled to the surface is the British show Miss Scarlet and the Duke. Brief description: Eliza Scarlet is a Victorian-era daughter of a police inspector and private investigator who is obsessed with being a private investigator herself, and of course she’s brilliant. “The Duke” is the nickname of a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, William Wellington. They’re childhood friends who love each other. The dynamic on the show is that he helps support her struggling business while she solves his most difficult cases.

Did I mention that they love each other? In season one they’re friends trying to accept their mutual attraction. Season two has them in a romantic relationship while Eliza’s dedication to her work keeps causing problems for William. Season three has them trying to be friends post-breakup, even though William begins dating Eliza’s childhood bully.

Then season four hit the library on disc and I was 100 percent ready for it. Three ended with the (now more adult and sensible bully) dumping William because he can’t admit that he’s still in love with Eliza. So four ought to be the season where they try again and actually make it work, right?

Well, no. Instead, William takes a posting in New York City. He tells Eliza that he loves her but that they need time apart.

And the next thing I discover is that season five will be called simply “Miss Scarlet” because Stuart Martin, the actor who played “the Duke”, is leaving the show.

Which I get. It can’t be fun to be the cop who scolds the main character for all the cool and fun ways they break the rules. Taraji P. Henson pulled the ripcord on Person of Interest because her role had changed and she’d become bored. I’m sure Martin believes there are better ways to spend the sexy leading man years of his life.

But I’m not sure I’m interested in a show without that subplot. The structure of each episode was such that each multi-season-long subplot was woven tightly into the execution of the mystery of the week. What, exactly, is supposed to fit into that space?

I have no idea, but it’s like imagining a Twenty Palace novel without Annalise. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I mean, I’ll give season five a try, but I have to admit that I’m feeling a little cheated. If he’s leaving the show, I’m glad they didn’t kill off the character, because that would have sucked. I’m still disappointed in the unresolved ending of this four-year storyline, though.

(I should write shorter posts)

Writing Update, Personal Update, Pop Culture Update

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It’s been too long since I dropped an update and talked about some random news, so let’s see if I can squeeze some time in for that right now.

Progress on the new novel has been glacial. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I’m tackling a big story with a lot of POV characters, so I’m doing a lot of research and rewriting.

Also, I haven’t been 100% well. I don’t want to get into details here, but my daily wordcount goals are somewhat reduced. I’m still writing, but it’s a struggle and I’m getting pretty frustrated with myself. Not only does it suck for you, the reader, that it’s taking too long to get this next book solved and finished, it sucks for me. In a huge way.

It’s hard to overstate how unhappy I am about this, actually.

But this is the state of things at the moment and there’s no choice but to persevere. On the plus side, I have a new doctor who recognizes that I am more than just my BMI, so there’s hope in that.

To be clear, I’m not talking about Twenty One Palaces. This is the book I’m writing before that book which doesn’t have a title yet.

What else?

I’m pretty much walked away from social media. I unfriended everyone on Facebook and stopped looking at it years ago, although I still post whenever I have a new blog post to announce. I check notifications there every two or three months, so please don’t try to contact me there. I probably won’t see messages or comments for weeks, at minimum.

Also, they’ve changed the format so much that I’m not sure how to navigate it anymore. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for me to learn.

I left Twitter, too, although I still occasionally check the Stranger Things account for news about the show. But now that the final season is in production, I’ve pretty much stopped that, too.

BlueSky is the only space where I hang out online nowadays. I’m byharryconnolly over there, if you’re curious. My follows over there make the site pretty political, which is fine and all but before Twitter became a collapsed outhouse, it was a great place to talk about pop culture and pop culture art. That’s harder to find on BlueSky. Not that it matters much, since I’m not there very much.

Speaking of pop culture art, here’s a quick rundown of random stuff:

I’m rereading Salem’s Lot. It’s just as fun as I remember and has the pacing of an avalanche. There are just a few snowballs at the start but the end is overwhelming.

Next up for me are a pair of novels by Catriona Ward. I heard good things and I’m hoping she can help me overcome my ongoing reading slump.

Musically, I’ve been listening to a bunch of The Breeders and Belly. Yeah, it’s old music. See Salem’s Lot reference above. I’ve always been like this. I could never take part in Hugo voting or whatever because I never read books as they’re released. The songs are still great, though, esp the most recent Breeders album.

In movies/tv, The Holdovers was moving but not lovely, which is a solid recommendation from me. However my wife likes a little eye candy in her films. Landscapes. Architectures. Gardens. That sort of thing. She she admired it but wished for more.

We definitely got our fair share of lovely images in the fifth season of Fargo, and the story was fantastic. I love it when stories that don’t seem much like SF/F throw a few sfnal tropes in there.

I enjoyed Echo quite a bit, in large part because I like street-level heroes. I’m not sure how I felt about the ending, though.

Yes, this is a story about a woman who’s disconnected from her community and her culture, so the way she levels up at the end made thematic sense. Also, Maya’s relationship with Wilson Fisk was complex, ominous and poignant, too. Still, it’s a show about a hero that kicks ass but the final confrontation had more than a bit of woowoo. It felt weak. Intellectually, I appreciated it. Viscerally, I felt vaguely disappointed.

And The Marvels just landed on Disney+. I’d seen it in the theaters and watched it with my wife Wednesday night. Honestly, I have no idea what people were complaining about. It was breezy fun with lots of color and light-hearted humor.

Also, while it’s a sequel to the movie Captain Marvel (and it helps to have seen that film) having seen the other parts of the MCU that it pulled story elements from seemed entirely optional to me. Everything that needed explaining was explained in The Marvels itself.

That’s all. I’ll try not to be absent for so long in the future, and when I come back, I hope to have better news.

A Child of Many Mothers: Sequels, Asterisks, and the Expanding MCU

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So, I went to see The Marvels when it premiered. Takeaway: I enjoyed it despite its flaws. It was funny. It was goofy. It had big, complex battle scenes. It established that flerkins have Hammer Space inside them. 

More importantly, the characters were engaging and the storyline was genuinely fun. It’s not the greatest of all MCU films, but it’s not terrible. 

Unfortunately, the box office was surprisingly soft and the second week drop was huge at nearly eighty percent. I’ve been looking at various reviews and online commentary to figure out why so few people bought a ticket for this one. 

There are a lot of hot takes out there, some sensible and some risible, but I want to focus on one in particular:

Some folks have been complaining that the MCU has gotten so big that casual viewers can’t keep up with it all. They call it “homework.”

This is the one that interests me most, because the people saying this are complaining about the way comic books have been telling stories since I first started reading them back in the 1970s.

Okay. Here’s what I mean: You’d be reading a Captain Hero Guy comic, and see a thought bubble above Our Hero’s head that read something like:

Every since I resigned from Fighting Hero Team*, Dad has refused to return my calls.

And at the bottom of the panel would be a little box with the caption:

* As seen in Fighting Hero Team #86!

Although sometimes it might say something as simple as

* see last issue

Now, obviously, comic book publishers hoped that that little caption would prompt Captain Hero Guy’s fans to buy FHT 86. They’re a company. This is a capitalist country. They wanted to boost sales. We live in a society.

But boosting sales wasn’t the only effect. This asterisks also gave the reader the feeling that they were entering a big, interconnected network of stories. Captain Hero Guy existed in a wider world than could be contained in a single floppy, and new comics readers had to decide if they were willing and able to accept that they did not know every detail of every aspect of the story. Because if they hated that, they weren’t going to keep reading. 

And the MCU has gotten big enough that it’s becoming more like the comics. The setting is full of characters. It sprawls. Maybe you, the generic viewer, won’t know every detail fo an established character’s back story, and maybe all you’ll get in the movie you’re watching is “I got my powers by pushing through the boundary of a witch hex” (or whatever it is Monica says). 

It’s ambiguity. It’s the deliberate denial of casual expertise. It’s the feeling that comes from knowing the whole party is bigger than party going on right here in the theater.

Can you, the critic or the generic viewer, handle that? Can you invest in these characters when you don’t know absolutely every bit of lore? Because if you can’t, they’re freely available behind the Disney+ subscription fee, assuming you have the time and interest to spend on them. Many don’t. 

Obviously, it was much easier for those poor, long-suffering critics to keep up when Marvel was only releasing a few movies a year. All they had to do was pop in to a theater every few months and, as long as they could stay off their phones during the movie’s runtime, they knew everything they needed to know. 

Now they’re expected to play an active role in understanding a movie that supposed to be (and is) pleasant-distraction-grade corporate entertainment, and they either don’t have the tools for for the job or they can’t be bothered. 

Here’s a simple fact: You can’t argue with other peoples’ boredom. We’ve had a lot of superhero entertainment over the last 20+ years, and while it’s an incredibly adaptable genre (you can combine it freely with so many other things, like heist movies, space opera, horror, raunchy comedy, conspiracy thriller, rom com, noir, coming of age stories… at some point, someone is going to make a mid-budget “Romancing the Stone” -style romance with superpowers and they’ll clean up) we’re not really getting the diversity. 

Instead, we get a lot of sci-fi action stuff. For example, Blue Beetle (the movie, not the character) was fun, but a lot of it felt like it had been made from pieces of other movies from the last fifteen years. Sidenote: I declare a moratorium on protagonists who blast through the roof of their homes because they don’t know how their flight works. 

I guess there was some wisdom in the early Marvel plan of making the TV shows follow the movies, but not expecting the movies to reciprocate.

Sometimes a movie is a sequel. The Marvels was a sequel to Captain Marvel, in that you couldn’t really get it without seeing that first film, but all sorts of people seemed to think it was a sequel to a laundry list of other stuff: Ms. Marvel, Wandavision, Secret Invasion, and who knows what else. I disagree. The important parts of Monica Rambeau’s backstory (her relationship with Carol) all took place in the Captain Marvel film. The parts that can be easily glossed over (where she got her powers) were easily glossed over. 

And there was nothing confusing about it to viewers who stayed off their phones.

Personally, I thought The Marvels handled its exposition perfectly, but many viewers seemed spooked by it. As the MCU continues to sprawl across characters and storylines, we’ll see if they can get comfortable with those asterisks. 

Followup to the end of Netflix DVDs

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Friday was the last day Netflix was sending out discs, and that morning I found an email in my inbox saying thanks and goodbye and use this link if you want to download your queue, history, ratings, reviews, etc.

Which I did, obviously.

Some of the discs I’d planned to get from Netflix would be available at my local library, so I could keep up my plan to make Film Friday a thing. (Confession: the day before yesterday was Friday and I forgot to postpone our shows to watch one. Derp.)

Also, looking through my history shows a weird randomness that sort of baffles me now. At the beginning of 2022:

  • Morning Glory
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home
  • Alice in Wonderland (2010)
  • Flee (2021)
  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage
  • The Lure
  • All About Eve
  • The Illusionist
  • Last Night in Soho
  • Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
  • Beauty and the Beast (1946)
  • Ghostbusters: Afterlife
  • Stillwater
  • No Time to Die
  • Munich

That is a genuine mix of shit and shine, plus a few interesting failures and reasonably enjoyable entertainments. I mean, I used to curate (fingerquotes: “curate”) this list via online recommendation and vague ideas about stuff my wife would enjoy, and while I’ve hit more than I missed, I have definitely missed now and again.

The Venom sequel is there because she liked the first one (I didn’t). The Ghostbusters movie annoyed my son so much that he walked out of the room and refused to watch anything with us for more than a year. I got angry with my wife because she chuckled at Beauty and the Beast, as though the 1940s-era special effects made it a kind of an adorable school play. And Bad Luck Banging… was highly recommended but we just couldn’t stand to watch so much footage of a woman walking down a crowded, ugly street.

But that’s me focusing on the bad experiences, as I so often do.

According to my account summary, I rated 890 movies and shows, which put me in the top 10% of subscribers. I also wrote out eight actual reviews, which put me in the top 30%. Only eight reviews! Maybe if I’d written three more I’d be in the top five percent.

And while I’ve rated more discs than I borrowed, there’s some stuff in there that I do not remember at all. For instance, I gave one star to Karate-Robo Zaborgar, a movie that I’m absolutely certain I’ve never even heard of before today. 

But in the process of Googling about it, I’ve found a bunch of other movies by the same director that might be fun to look up. Gothic Lolita Battle Bear might cause actual brain damage, but it sounds like a laugh.

The section I keep returning to is the history, though. I stumbled onto the long section where we borrowed a couple seasons of Veronica Mars, which my son liked very much. It was the first time he ever scolded me for liking the one season more than another.

Also, there was his enthusiasm for The Middleman, and his dismay when he realized it hadn’t been renewed.

And I can still remember the sound of his laugh when The Dude said, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

And my wife, who always put a high premium on watching movies that were full of beauty, absolutely fell in love with Tarsem Singh’s The Fall the very next week, which was followed by Tampopo.

It’s not necessarily about Netflix’s dvd service itself, but glancing back through the history reminded me of our family history. At least, the part we spent in the living room, watching old movies and TV shows.

If you have an account, I recommend downloading your file.

The End of Netflix Mail-Order Discs

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Friday the 29th is the last day Netflix will be mailing out discs for their mail order movie rental company and even though I live in a city, have reasonably good internet and access to a bunch of streaming channels, I’m still going to miss those red envelopes.

Here’s the thing: When Netflix dvd service started out, it was a great resource for people who couldn’t get access to high speed internet. If you’re living out in the boonies, you might have dialup, but stream a whole and entire movie? No way. didn’t have a Blockbuster down the road.

Mail-order dvds were also a reasonable alternative to driving two hours to the nearest theater, or to see a movie that hadn’t even come to a theater in driving range.

Also, in the early days, they offered access to tons of obscure films. Before Netflix, you might be able to read about the Czech New Wave in a magazine, but you could only watch something like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders if you had an art house cinema in your city, were diligent about checking the schedule, and could get away from work or the kids to catch a showing.

Then: dvd.com came online. I could drop Valerie… into my queue and watch it at home. No worries.

Or, people might rave about Jodorowsky all over social media, prompting me to throw a disc into the queue, then turn it off and mail it back when we saw a man take a shit into a glass box.

Not for me, right? No big deal. Just mail it back.

But as broadband has spread around the country and new players have jumped into the streaming service, you can watch Valerie… any time you want from any number of services. It’s three bucks on Amazon right now, no art house calendar or disc-a-week mailer required. The Holy Mountain is four bucks (just in case you want to see that glass box).

Still, I didn’t want to ditch the discs.

I think everyone has heard stories of dvd subscribers who would receive a disc in the mail, think Eh, I’m not feeling it, then drop it on a shelf where it would sit for weeks.

Like people who paid for a gym membership but never actually worked out there, these were the most desirable customers. Me, I always wanted to be Netflix’s least profitable customer. When the disc arrived, we watched it that night. It didn’t matter if we were in the middle of a great series or whatever. The disc came in and went back out the next morning.

Because even though so many of these movies are streaming now, they still don’t get watched. We’re not going to take a break from Only Murders in the Building or Ted Lasso mid-season to stream Army of Shadows. That’s the kind of film you scroll past, with the Augustinian idea that yeah, you (I) really should watch a piece of landmark cinema, but not yet.

But my self-imposed rule on the discs didn’t allow for procrastination, not if we were going to get our money’s worth. Now that’s gone. “Film Friday” is the replacement idea, but we’ll see if we can stick to that.

Anyway, for weeks now Netflix has been saying that subscribers can keep the last disc they receive, and since there isn’t time to mail this one back and have it turned around, the one that arrived yesterday will be the one I’m keeping. Shin Godzilla, if you’re curious. I was a huge fan of Godzilla when I was tiny, but this was the first Godzilla film that I have genuinely enjoyed in decades. I plan to check out the special features and will add it to my rotation of Halloween discs.

Netflix has also said they’re planning to mail extra discs to subscribers, just to give them away. Maybe  they’ll send ten. Maybe one. Maybe none. We’ll see if we get any. We’ve been subscribers for a long time, but only at the lowest one-disc-at-a-time level. I’ve dropped a few discs into our queue that I’d like to own, like the original Oldboy and the Criterion edition of the first Godzilla film, with that great commentary track. Also, my wife asked me to add Tarsem Singh’s The Fall and my son would like Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner movie.

We’ll see.

I’m surprised they’re giving those discs away to subscribers. Are they hoping to keep people signed up until the very end? Or maybe they don’t have a viable buyer for all that physical media and are just planning to write it off.

It’s just too bad, because this was something I valued, and it’s being dumped as though all that value is gone. Those discs were just about the last thing that came in the mail that I was happy to receive.