When choosing which movie to see last weekend there wasn’t really a debate. Above the cinema, and on every other bus in town, was the drab and unsettling poster for Justice League, DC’s Avengers, their first full line-up movie. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been more lenient to the DC movies than most of the reviewers I follow, but I still had absolutely no desire to see another DC outing.
The alternative was Thor: Ragnarok, the follow up to Thor: The Dark World, which is arguably near the bottom of Marvel’s film hierarchy, and God knows which number it holds in Marvels cinematic universe timeline. I should have Marvel fatigue, but I happily paid to visit this franchise yet again, knowing exactly what I was going to get, instead of giving DC the benefit of the doubt.
Setting aside the why and the how of my Marvel-tolerance, can Thor: Ragnarok be a better sequel than the first?
The review below contains mild spoilers
Can the Uncanny Valley ever be overcome? The line between a computer simulation or robot, and a real person seems like a great chasm today, but once we get closer and closer, will the line blur, or will we become hyper-sensitive to the minute differences? Will we ever need to have a debate over a “grown” human’s rights? Are they the same as a robot? A fleshy version of Commander Data? Can an automaton have a soul if it passes an emotional Turing Test? Is it different if it bleeds? Do tests even really mean anything when we’re looking for a soul? We could sit here and have ourselves a podcast’s worth of questions, but let’s talk about the movie instead. Is it a good movie?
There are some stories that we will never stop telling. The recent round of these stories, be it fairytales, legends or classic books, seem to lean towards the “darker and grittier” aesthetic. A lot of people complain that this is unnecessary; that it leaves the characters one dimensional, and makes the ridiculous aspects of fantasy worlds all the more obvious and harder to swallow. But there are good things to say about this “genre” of remake. For one, it occacionally looks totally badass. It also, when done right, allows otherwise “silly” aspects of stories to be reworked, which can be a good stepping stone to more nuanced versions of those stories.
I’m tempted to bastardise Dickens for my own amusement, so here it goes: all Disney-haters hate Disney in the same way, all Disney-lovers love Disney each in their own way. We all have our favourites, we all prefer one technique over another, some languages over others. I can swallow Hakuna Matata in Norwegian, but don’t you dare show me The Little Mermaid in my native tongue. I love Sleeping Beauty for its art, Tangled for its feel-goodness, The Hunchback of Notre Dame for its score, and Hercules for James Woods alone.
Rebels, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, or resistance members. All have at times throughout history used questionable methods, even terrorism, assassinations etc. to further their goals. Who are the good guys when those opposed to oppression kill without discrimination? That question has been at the core of my fascination with the Assassin’s Creed videogame series. “Nothing is true… Everything is premitted” is the Creed. The Assassins make no excuses for their utter lack of morals. Their sworn enemies are the Templars, who while claiming the moral high ground are just as shady, and they want to rule the world.
The Star Trek series Deep Space Nine was recently added to our local Netflix. Having not watched it since it came out on dvd after it aired, I was eager to get lost in it again. During the first episode (which is a great first episode) there were some surprising similarities between the aliens known as “prophets” and certain aliens I experienced just a day prior at the cinema.
A photographic memory, a complicated personality, 177A Blecker street, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Which genius literary hero am I speaking of? It’s Dr. Steven Strange, the charming, flirtatious, magical doctor, played, as the universe dictates, by the equally charming Mr. Cumberbatch.
It might be strange for Americans, who fought a war to get rid of a king, to learn that Norwegians voted one in after gaining their independence peacefully. Since 1905, when Norway left the union with Sweden, our kings have been a source of pride, patriotism and fondness. This is useful in that we can all hate on our politicians as much as we like. During the Second World War King Haakon VII was used by many as a symbol of resistance against the Nazi occupation.
I was never a great fan of Disney’s Tarzan. The songs and animation are outstanding, but the film can be quite annoying whenever it forgets its purpose, which is often. Tarzan is an iconic character, and like many such characters he has been reshaped from the book version into a more fixed idea in pop culture. The classic shout, for example, is from an earlier live action film. It’s surprising it took this long for us to get a modern remake, but perhaps not if we look at the success (or lack thereof) of similar properties.
Film Dice 