Lockdown has finished in New Zealand, and hopefully we’ll be moving into Level 1 soon, which means a loosening of the social distancing and ongoing disinfecting regulations we’re currently living under (and subsequently, an assurance that we’ve flattened the curve on the spread of Covid-19. At the time of this writing, there’s only one active case left in the country; everyone else is recovering).
With the end of lockdown, I moved back into my New Years Resolution of focusing on women-centric stories, though a few variations on this rule slipped by during quarantine, in which I returned to a lot of my favourite films from childhood/adolescence. Some I hadn’t watched in years, and it turns out I had great taste in my younger years, considering they all hold up extremely well today. It got a little surreal at times actually, as watching things in isolation that were so formative to my childhood (which already managed to mess up my sense of the passing of days) was like stepping into a time vortex.
So in here we've got treasure islands, secret gardens, stage magicians, wild swans, Greek gods, magic carpets, sentient robots and undead mummies. Plus, another win for LGBTQ happy endings. Man, a part of me is going to miss having all the time in the world to race through so many books and shows...
Treasure Island (National Theatre)
This was released as part of the National Theatre’s contribution to lockdown: releasing recordings of their productions on YouTube that otherwise wouldn’t have been seen by the non-paying public. Honestly, I think this should be something that all theatres do, all the time, as seeing staged performances on the screen certainly doesn’t dim my enthusiasm to go see things live, and gives those who don’t have the means to attend the theatre a chance to enjoy it.
In any case, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this didn’t break my “female writers/leads” rule, as this take on Treasure Island was adapted by screenwriter Bryony Lavery, directed by Polly Findlay, and gender-flips not only Doctor Livesey and several of the pirates, but also Jim himself (who here is a girl called Jemima Hawkins). This is a pleasant change from the original text, which very deliberately had no female characters thanks to the requirements of the author’s grandson, for whom the book was written.
This production follows the familiar beats of the story, from young Jim encountering pirates in the Admiral Benbow Inn, taking on the role of cabin boy in the voyage for the buried treasure, overhearing a plan of mutiny organized by the ship’s cook while hiding in an apple barrel, and searching for the treasure itself while avoiding pirates on the titular Treasure Island.
What’s most interesting about this book when it comes to adaptations, is that many of the most memorable components aren’t actually in the book at all – or else not as they’re originally described. Stevenson’s Treasure Island is a gloomy, morbid place, but you can’t blame adaptations for leaning more into the glamour of a tropical island and all its colourful flora and fauna.
Jim is a surprisingly reactive protagonist in the novel, whose greatest triumphs come from disobeying direct orders, rather than the wide-eyed innocent of most adaptions. And although Long John Silver is one of literature’s greatest anti-villains, he is definitely more villain than anti in Stevenson’s novel, even though adaptations can cast him as anything from a harmless scallywag to a father-figure for Jim.
Here, in an exceptionally strange moment, they decide to go for Silver-as-inappropriate-love-interest, depicting Arthur Darvill’s Silver kissing Jim on the lips, a creative choice that baffles me. This clearly never happens in adaptations in which Jim is a boy, so why introduce a romantic complication between the two characters once Jim is a girl? Especially since it’s never mentioned again after it happens.
But there are some great effects and stuntwork throughout, what with a revolving stage and ascending/descending backdrops. The animatronic parrot nearly steals the show, and once you get used to the actors loudly projecting their voices (after all, it’s a recording of the production, not a made-for-television performance) it ends up being a lot of fun.
Hadestown (bootleg)
After listening to the soundtrack several times and seeing piles of fan art on my Tumblr dashboard, I had to find a way to see this musical for myself, even if it was in the most hideous quality known to man (and it was). Filmed on what appeared to be a cellphone, I now at least have the gist of the staging and ambiance of Hadestown, and can settle down for the long wait before it reaches New Zealand shores (if it ever does).
This is one of those musicals that pings my every love: the retelling of a Greek myth, the inevitability of fate, a tragic romance, using an old tale to explore contemporary ideas (Hades as a capitalist fat-cat? Perfect!) and an interest in the autonomy (however tenuous) of its female characters. It reminded me of Pan’s Labyrinth, in that I watched it once and felt like I had always known it (this is what the best stories always do).
This was my first real introduction to the show, and damn... I was done for:
Its history is interesting in that writer Anaïs Mitchell took it through many reiterations, with a variety of performers involved, before it finally premiered on Broadway and caught the attention of mainstream audiences. The difference in the portrayal of Eurydice, for example, is fascinating: in earlier productions she’s feminine and free-spirited; later she’s bundled into a large overcoat and filled with regret and yearning.
The greatest gift it does for the original myth is in bringing characterization to the likes of Persephone and Eurydice. How did the Queen of the Underworld really feel about being kidnapped and taken beneath the Earth? And what if Eurydice had a choice to make about where she ends up, instead of just being bitten by a poisonous snake? Here the Underworld is reimagined as an immense industrial complex, where people are put to work building a wall for roundabout reasons they mindlessly chant while labouring. Persephone runs a speakeasy during the wait for spring.
And Orpheus tries to string together a melody that might ease the conflict of the gods and bring the world back into balance – a project that is interrupted, but also further inspired, when he meets Eurydice.
You know how the story goes, and so do all the performers. One of the show’s earliest refrains is: “it’s a sad song, we’re gonna sing it anyway,” along with: “maybe it will turn out this time.” It doesn’t of course, but we all recognize the futile hope we inevitably feel on retelling the old tragedies, no matter how many times we’ve heard it before. Maybe this time that message will reach Romeo, maybe this time Antigone will be discovered before it's too late, maybe this time Lancelot and Guinevere won’t fall in love… and maybe this time Orpheus won’t look back.
Where Hadestown truly excels is the interconnectedness between the themes it explores and myths it builds upon. The revolving stage, where characters walk but inevitably never get anywhere, reflects not only the cyclical change from winter to spring, but also the immutability of fate. It will end the way it always does, not just because we’re watching a rehearsed performance, but because it’s an ancient story that has always gone this way.
Yet this time around, it’s infused with a sense of hope – for other people, if not our two protagonists. Orpheus manages to melt the heart of Hades, to inspire the masses that are slaving away at the mills of industry and capitalism. In this retelling, Orpheus doesn’t fail because the Fates deem it so (after all, people have debated for centuries as to why he did the one thing he wasn’t supposed to – the answer is because he was fated to do so), but because he stops believing that he could. His tragedy therefore exists to give the rest of us hope – not to accept the world as it is, but always strive towards what it could be.
And not just on a societal scale. Orpheus’s story isn’t just about upending the evils of the status quo, but in loving another person without fear.
Aww man, I gotta go listen to this again.
The Wild Swans by Jackie Morris
This is a companion book to Morris’s earlier East of the Sun, West of the Moon, a publication with exactly the same style and formatting, which is not just a lovely retelling, but a beautiful object in its own right. The story and illustrations could have been rubbish, and I probably still would have brought it on account of how gorgeous the book itself is.
But luckily for me, the story and illustrations are stunning. Morris’s work has always been dreamy, stylized watercolours, and naturally that works really well with fairy tales. Basing this largely on the Hans Christian Anderson story (though there have been other swan-related tales throughout history) Morris adds detail and characterization to the plot, while still keeping the strange little details of Anderson’s story, such as the appearance of Morgan le Fay (here called Morgana) or the presence of lamia in the churchyard where Eliza has to pluck the nettles for her brothers’ shirts.
After the surprise ending in Morris’s East of the Sun, in which the young lassie decides not to stay with the transformed prince (instead going to re-join the North Wind) I was expecting something similar to happen here. After all, the prince of The Wild Swans is the guy who greenlit Eliza being burned at the stake on charges of witchcraft, and I would have appreciated our disenchanted heroine going: “no thanks dude, I’m out.”
But no, they get married in this version as well (though not after a very long conversation, at least). But there are other nuances to Morris’s story that I enjoyed: like how Eliza’s silence makes her a confidant to people in the castle, or the backstory to her “evil” stepmother, and why she casts a spell on Eliza and her brothers in the first place. And Morris’s illustrations fit her text perfectly; creating the gloom of the forest and the desolation of the moors while still keeping their natural beauty intact.
Like the polar regions of her previous book, the landscapes are inhospitable, but not overtly hostile. Loved it; hope she's planning to work her magic with more fairy tales.
Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan
After rereading Gallows Hill for the first time in years last month, I was immediately filled with a desire to track down the rest of Lois Duncan’s body of work. Stranger with My Face was one I read in my adolescence, and one that stuck with me more than any other, perhaps because of its uneasy resolution. Unlike Duncan’s other works, which largely end on a happy note, or at least a sense of closure, Stranger with My Face leaves plenty of questions up in the air.
Laurie is an attractive teenager, enjoying her newfound popularity among the in-crowd thanks to her relationship with Gordon (the school jock). Her life is pretty much in order, until she’s confronted by friends who accuse her of deliberately skipping a dinner party. Laurie is astounded considering she was sick the night of the party, but two witnesses insist that they saw her on the beach at the time she was meant to be in bed.
More strange occurrences start to stack up: her younger siblings think she’s in the house when she’s actually outside. She feels like she’s being followed, or being watched. And there are more sightings of a girl who is mistaken for Laurie herself.
It’s difficult to say much more without giving the game away, and the book is structured in such a way that things are revealed at a pretty steady pace. It’s moody and atmospheric – easily one of Duncan’s best-written novels, but there is a development towards the end of the novel that really should have happened halfway through, in which the book’s antagonist makes her big move, disrupts the very foundations of Laurie’s reality, opens up a whole slew of storytelling possibilities – and then gets resolved within a single (final) chapter.
You could rewrite this book and its main premise a dozen different ways, which makes it a fascinating read, but also a slightly uncertain one. It’s written with such melancholy and regret that it takes on a rather dreamlike tone, which – within the context of Duncan’s novels – makes it one of her strongest offerings.
Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
The second in the Howl’s Moving Castle trilogy (though it was never designed as such; Diana Wynne Jones just wrote as the mood struck her) which takes place in a country far to the south of Ingary, allowing for her to play with a whole other set of fairy tale tropes: those contained within The Arabian Nights and other Eastern tales.
This means there’s a surplus of genies, magic carpets, sultanates, minarets and bazaars, though also a few more wince-able features, such as the overly-flowery language used by the Eastern characters when greeting or negotiating with each other – and of course, the two potential wives whose engagement to our main character horrifies him, in part because they’re described as “extremely fat”.
It’s certainly not as bad as C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, but there are definitely some dated elements here. But if you get yourself in the headspace of a British woman using the trappings of Orientalism specifically as a backdrop, then there’s lots to enjoy in the characters and plotting. As in Howl’s Moving Castle, there’s a deep interest in playing with familiar fairy tale tropes (this one was particularly interested in prophecy) and in hiding everyone’s identity – the entire cast of the previous book turn up, but you won’t know it till the final few chapters.
Abdullah is a merchant of carpets who spends his days indulging in elaborate daydreams about meeting a beautiful princess in an equally beautiful garden. Then, after procuring an old but effective magic carpet, he wakes up in the garden of his dreams, inhabited by – you guessed it – the girl of his dreams. Flower-in-the-Night is the sheltered but very intelligent daughter of the sultan, who believes (according to her logic) that Abdullah is a woman.
A prophecy states that she’s destined to marry the first man she ever sees (aside from her father), and so has lived her life removed from all male company – but since her father has plans to marry her to the prince of a neighbouring country, Abdullah’s life is now in grave danger. Or is it? After all, if he’s destined to marry Flower-in-the-Night, then that has to take place, right? Unless the Sultan can find a loophole by marrying them both, and then immediately having his new son-in-law executed.
So there’s a twisty-turny plot at work, in which Abdullah tries to both avoid and fulfil his destiny, complicated by the fact Flower-in-the-Night is captured by a terrifying genie and taken to the titular castle in the air. Hmm, a castle… that moves… why does that sound familiar?
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
The second book in Pullman’s second trilogy concerning Lyra Silvertongue, this one jumps ahead about ten years after the events of The Amber Spyglass, and a few after the short story Lyra and the Birds (the events of which warrant a mention here). This is brand new narrative territory, in which Pullman explores Lyra’s life as a young woman, the conflict between herself and her daemon Pantalaimon, and a new threat posed by the Magisterium – basically an alternative-world version of the Catholic Church.
It involves rose-oil of all things, and the mysterious legend of a city that lies deep in the desert, a place that’s not only said to house daemons that’ve been separated from their humans, but also roses that can be distilled into an oil that allows people to better perceive Dust. If you don’t know what any of this means, it’s because you haven’t read any of the previous books, which you really should do.
It’s hard to know what to make of this story: it’s long and meandering at times, involving a journey into what passes for the Middle East of this world, and driven by the newfound tension between Lyra and Pan. The source of their conflict is that Lyra has been reading philosophical books that challenge the existence of God, magic and daemons, an idea that Pan finds abhorrent and offensive, and culminates with him abandoning her and disappearing into the night.
This is surprising for two reasons, one being that Pullman seems to have loosened up – or at least decided to challenge his own worldview – on matters of spirituality. His Dark Materials is notoriously critical of organized religion, with the Magisterium embodying all the evils (and none of the virtues) of the Catholic Church, with his protagonists eventually assisting in the suicide of God Himself – or at least the angelic being that was posing as God.
This time around it feels like he’s directing criticism at the exact opposite of religious zealots, with shots fired at what appear to be fundamental atheists who denigrate not only the possibility of God, but imagination, wonder, mystery and emotion. Throw in at least one very helpful priest to be counted among the wise and gentle nuns of La Belle Sauvage, and it actually feels like he’s backpedalling on some of the statements he made in the original trilogy.
His introduction of what he calls “the secret commonwealth”, a hidden world of fairies, spirits, ghosts and other unexplainable things puts another wrinkle in his world-building, especially in the way the commonwealth is said to communicate with people – though coincidences and signs and repetition of certain motifs.
But to what end? The second reason the crux of the story is so surprising is that the bond between humans and daemons is fundamental to the understanding of the world Lyra inhabits, and the fact that she can separate at long distances from Pan makes her unique among the people of her world – or at least we thought. This book is veritably full of people with a similar gift, who go about their lives without the constant presence of their daemons.
The fact that the book ends on a cliff-hanger means that we have no idea as yet where all of this is going, and there are some truly strange metaphysical things included here – like the guy who is constantly on fire? And whose daemon is a mermaid? And whose father is using him in a bizarre experiment that momentarily makes every dead thing in his laboratory come back to life?
After a certain point it’s a bit like reading a fever-dream, and I honestly don’t know what to make of it. Perhaps the third and final book will shed some light on what happens here, or perhaps it’s just weirdness for its own sake.
It’s also clear that these books are intended for a much older audience than the original trilogy, with more violence and plenty of f-bombs, as well as a scene in which Lyra nearly gets gang-raped by soldiers in a train carriage. Really, Pullman? Really?
The book also includes something I was half-expecting, but not really sure about: that Lyra would get a new love interest in the form of Malcolm Polstead. For the record, I wasn’t opposed to this (even though the age difference is pushing it just a little, especially since he was a tutor to her at one point).
But I wasn’t hugely moved by what Pullman presents here (Malcolm admits to himself he’s in love with Lyra, and… that’s it basically) and even as someone who wasn’t fully convinced or caught up in Lyra and Will’s great love story, I’ve always pre-emptively felt a bit sorry for whoever might come into their lives in a romantic capacity afterwards.
Now, I’m a great believer in depictions of first and second loves, and the difference between them (see also: The Legend of Korra) but Lyra and Will felt the full force of first-time attraction and adolescent hormones and world-saving love together – more than that, they realized they would lose each other almost immediately after their feelings were realized.
Their love never had a chance to be tempered by time or arguments or mundanity – it was cut short at the height of its power, and as such, is incomparable. No one that either character could meet will ever in a million years hope to compete with what they shared, because now it’s remembered as absolute perfection, the very height of a romantic ideal. In hindsight it is as much a curse as it was a gift, and I’m not entirely sure how any love story between Lyra and Malcolm can proceed, or whether Pullman will be able to pull it off.
The Rescuers (1977)
After watching The Black Cauldron and The Aristocats recently, I felt the urge to track down more films of Disney’s Dark Age. Like The Black Cauldon, I watched this film so early in my childhood that I’d forgotten most of it, while also finding it deeply familiar (I think I also had the Little Golden Book based on this film).
And it’s a weird one, guys. The last film that Walt Disney himself had any direct involvement in, the story is based on the admittedly charming premise of a Rescue Organization made up of mice. It’s classic anthropomorphic animal Disney content, released at an earlier date but very reminiscent of Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers (apparently The Rescuers was going to get adapted into a television show before they switched to Chip and Dale).
And there is some good stuff in here, from the idea of a flying service being an albatross with a sardine can strapped to his back, to a motorboat made out of a dried leaf and powered by a dragonfly at the stern. Also, the dilapidated showboat in the middle of the bayou makes for an inspired bad guy lair.
But there is an incredibly weird sense of pacing as well, in which everything is dragged out for no apparent reason: early on Bernard and Bianca head to the orphanage to get more clues about a little girl’s whereabouts... only they take a shortcut through the zoo and Bernard gets scared by an off-screen lion before they continue on their way – and it is completely pointless.
There are turgid songs, long flying montages, a sequence involving alligators playing a pipe organ – basically so much padding, perhaps to make up for the fact the story is so slight. A little orphan called Penny has been kidnapped by a Cruella-inspired villain who wants someone small enough to lower into a grotto to search for pirate treasure, specifically the diamond called the Devil’s Eye. It’s not until she and the mice are in this underground cave, which is occasionally flooded with water, that the slightest bit of danger or urgency makes it into the film.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for sad orphans, but between her pigtails, gap-teeth and lisp, Penny definitely edges into Glurge territory, and Bianca is given practically nothing to work with but gumption – it’s glaring how often Bernard is seen pulling her to safety, helping her get over or down obstacles, or assisting her in doing pretty much anything. I know it was the seventies, but sheesh!
I don’t regret revisiting, but it’s a shame such a promising idea was turned into such a strange, flaccid kind of movie – and yet there was enough life left in the franchise to try again with a rare theatrically-released sequel…
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
It was two brief mentions of this film in the comments of online articles that made me track this down, first that it was a cult classic, and second that it was Disney’s attempt at The Exorcist. Given that I had never heard of this movie before in my life, that was enough for me to get curious.
Jan and her little sister Ellie move with their parents into a large house next to a forest, where strange things almost immediately start happening – cracked mirrors, strange visions, mysterious lights out in the woods. The landlord (and former owner) seems to take a particular interest in Jan, and it soon emerges that she once had a daughter about her age, who vanished some years ago. Ellie occasionally acts as if possessed, and Jan soon becomes convinced that whatever’s happening has something to do with an odd ritual performed in a forest chapel thirty years ago by a group of locals.
It gets surprisingly sci-fi toward the end, and I was interested to read that a rather fraught production resulted in the film actually getting pulled from its original release after only a week so that they could completely reshoot the finale. There are two alternate endings available on YouTube, which demonstrate that the original script had bitten off more than it could chew in regards to the special effects that were achievable at the time.
I guess I was a little underwhelmed, which is often the case with cult classics that weren’t watched at the time of their release and therefore unable to percolate in the minds of those that didn’t experience them at the right age, in the appropriate era, with the all the elements that made such films so special at the time. I love The Goonies, but people who didn’t watch it as a child tend to hate it, and I can totally understand that.
For me is was a reasonably engaging story, with a great setting to compensate for some dodgy acting, and a last-minute swerve into such a totally different genre that it caught me off-guard.
The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
Coming out more than a decade after its first instalment is rather odd timing for a sequel, but here we are: the second and final Rescuers film that sees Bernard and Bianca travel from New York to Australia to help a young boy called Cody who’s been kidnapped by an outback poacher (there seriously aren’t any rescue agents in Australia?)
McLeach is a surprisingly dark Disney villain, who is out to kill Marahoute the golden eagle, and abducts Cody after the boy realizes he’s up to no good. In his introductory scene there’s a deeply uncomfortable moment when he “helps” Cody out of a pit by pointing the end of his gun straight at him, instructing the kid to take hold of it so he can pull him up.
Oddly, Marahoute is the only creature in this film that doesn’t talk or wear clothes, but makes up for it by having the coolest name ever. Seriously, it’s the name you give to a bird that is both a) Australian and b) giant. If you were to give me that name out of context, I would say: “yup, that’s definitely the name of a giant Australian eagle.”
As in the last film, there’s some weird stuff in here, such as a crazed mouse doctor trying to fix Wilbur the albatross’s injured back with a chainsaw, or the fact that there’s no resolution to the animals locked up in McLeach’s lair. Heck, Cody’s mother is last seen grieving over the supposed death of her son, and Marahoute isn’t even reunited with her eggs on-screen. Just some stills over the end credits would have done wonders to provide a little closure.
Also irritating is the fact that once again Bianca is barely involved in the rescue mission, and (despite the running gag of Bernard’s marriage proposal constantly getting interrupted) the real emotional resonance of the film comes from Cody and Marahoute. For most of the film’s runtime, it’s like they exist in completely different plots (not helped by the fact the mice don’t turn up until twenty minutes into the film).
But the animation is infinitely better than the first one, and Cody himself is a great character. Some of the flight scenes are truly gorgeous, and it’s enough to wish that there had been just a little more narrative care in the crafting of these two films. There’s something special in the idea of tiny animals coming to the rescue of vulnerable kids, but they never quite cracked the potential.
The Secret Garden (1993)
This movie is like a balm to the soul. I first watched it when I was about eleven years old and was totally enchanted, kickstarting a fascination with this story and its characters that still lingers today. One day I’ll get myself to the Yorkshire moors, and probably have some sort of emotional breakdown when I do.
Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the story is shot through with a deep strain of sadness – even though Colin Craven eventually gets better, anyone with even a passing knowledge of Burnett’s life knows that her own son died at an early age, making The Secret Garden a not-very-subtle wish fulfilment story about a young boy who comes back from the brink of death to live a happy, healthy life.
The film is just beautiful, something I always knew but never truly appreciated until this latest viewing. The three child actors are amazingly good, the cinematography is gorgeous, the music is haunting, and every shot is stunning. There’s such a poignancy to everything that takes place, as well as such humanity: the staff of Misselthwaite Manor are always hovering at the edges of the main story, but if you pay attention, you’ll see they have personalities and even little arcs of their own.
What really interested me this time around was that the changes made from the original book unmistakably make this a better story. They cut out Dickon’s mother (sorry Mrs Sowerby, but you were pretty extraneous) and make the ingenious choice to change the familial connection between Mary and Lord Craven: in the book her father is his brother, but the film makes it so that the relationship comes via Mary’s mother, who was a twin sister to the deceased Lilias Craven (Colin’s mother).
This leads to the poignancy of both Archibald and Colin recognizing their lost wife/mother in Mary’s face, and truly I caught my breath this time around when John Lynch’s Archibald whispers: “My God, your eyes,” on first seeing his niece.
On that note, there’s no doubt in my mind that J.K. Rowling’s conceit of Harry having his mother Lily’s eyes, and Snape being undone by the sight of them, was borrowed from this film (I recall her saying she sold the rights to Warner Brothers on the basis of having enjoyed their take on The Secret Garden). Lily = Lilias? That can’t be a coincidence. Then I find out there’s a Secret Garden musical, and that one of the songs is literally called Lily’s Eyes. So yeah, definitely not a coincidence.
The kids rightfully steal the show, but the adult cast is wonderful as well, especially Maggie Smith’s Mrs Medlock. Naturally she’s the antagonist to the children, but the film never paints her as evil – just misguided, and her final scene takes her out on a note of grace.
But what really caught me this time around is the moments of stillness, of quiet introspection: the wind blowing fallen leaves across the swing where Lilias died, Dickon watching the approaching carriage from the moors, Mary finding the matching ivory elephants that her mother and aunt shared, and of course that scene between Mary, Dickon and Colin that suggests a love triangle is in their future. For now they’re too young to worry about such things, but was there anyone who didn’t sit up a little straighter when Mary and Dickon got so caught up in each other on the swing that Colin has to shout to get their attention?
Even Martha summoning up her courage and saying: “perhaps they’re in the garden” to Lord Craven, utterly unaware of the connotations that carries for him, sends shivers down the spine. Or how Lilias’s music box plays Greensleeves, a song that is later sung loudly by the cook in the kitchen. Or the strange dreams that Mary and Lord Craven share about their lost wife/mother in the garden.
It’s all so beautifully done; joyful and life-affirming and yet also so strangely, achingly, deeply sad.
Cinderella (1997)
I watched this on an absolute whim one night after seeing a Tumblr gif-set and remembering how I was mildly obsessed with it for a few months during my childhood. It still holds up in the sense that it wasn’t ever amazing to start with, but fun and colourful, with an early example of a colourblind cast and a truly unique aesthetic.
Among the cast only Bernadette Peters and Whoopi Goldberg seem to understand the type of movie they’re in and manage the right broad comedic tone in their performances, while everyone else… is maybe taking it a bit too seriously?
Based on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (which means we get “folderol and fiddledy dee” instead of “bibbetty bobbity boo”) the songs are beautifully performed and paced throughout the feature, with a dash of nineties girl power to go with it (which is a double-edged sword: we get Cinderella telling the prince it’s better to be treated as a respected human being than a princess on a pedestal, but also endless reiterations of how she’s “not like the other girls”).
Based on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (which means we get “folderol and fiddledy dee” instead of “bibbetty bobbity boo”) the songs are beautifully performed and paced throughout the feature, with a dash of nineties girl power to go with it (which is a double-edged sword: we get Cinderella telling the prince it’s better to be treated as a respected human being than a princess on a pedestal, but also endless reiterations of how she’s “not like the other girls”).
Disney looked like they poured a lot of money into what was just a television special, with sets that look like a missing corner of Disneyland and costumes that often threaten to devour their actors, but you can’t say it’s not colourful, and scenes of the ball (in which dancers are dressed in different shades of blue) is genuinely beautiful.
This production probably did more than we can possibly realize to normalize colourblind casting and unprecedented diversity (I don’t think the sight of a black queen, white king and their Filipino-American son has been seen since) and holds up better than I’d expected.
The Mummy (1999)
During lockdown I revisited several of my favourite movies, and The Mummy was close to the top of the list. I saw it at age fourteen, and still I remember squirming with suspense and delight and fear in my seat when watching it on the big screen. I didn’t really know at the time that it was a deliberate homage to a variety of adventure/horror films of the past, but was aware on some level that its setting (1920s Cairo) was tapping into a very distinct aesthetic.
And usually I can’t stand films that go all meta and start winking at the audience, but there’s a moment in the first act of this movie, in which a mysterious wind blows across the heroes’ campfire with a strange wailing sound for the umpteenth time, and O’Connell remarks: “that happens a lot around here.” It perfectly captures the tone of the story, one that promises you a good time, and delivers.
But it’s not just action and explosions. You’d hardly call it a character piece, but all the featured players are given distinct personalities and character beats. Is there anything more illuminating than cowardly, opportunistic Beni coming face to face with the undead mummy, pulling out a range of religious symbols from around his neck, and attempting to use each one separately to repel the monster?
All three leads are given enough layers to make them more than the expected tokens (even Jonathan, the comic relief, has his moments of bravery and quick-wits) and it even manages to be a little subversive at times. Yes, the initial attraction between O’Connell and Evie is based on negging and a forced kiss, and yes, Evie gets the inevitable cliché of taking her glasses off and letting her hair down… AND YET by the time they hit Hamunaptra the gears change and O’Connell becomes unexpectedly gentle and awkward around Evie (I credit Brendan Fraser utterly for this) and Evie’s intelligence remains an intrinsically important part of how our heroes defeat the titular mummy.
Oded Fehr deserved to be a star after this film, bringing power and authority to an extremely generic role (I firmly believe he was originally slated to die, only for test audiences to demand a reprieve) and even bit characters – the prison warden, the museum curator, the drunken pilot, the four gunslinging Americans, have vivid and memorable personalities.
The score is great, the chemistry between the leads is crackling, and it manages to walk the tightrope between genuine scares and goofy gags. And there are so many great scenes. A drunken Evie declaring: “I… am a librarian!” Jonathan fooling the brainwashed zombies by pretending to be one of them. O’Connell yelling: “stay here, I’ll get help!” to the warden before throwing himself overboard.
Perhaps the one dated element is that in trying to make Imhotep a more sympathetic villain, they give him a backstory that explains he was in love with the Pharaoh’s mistress Anck Su Namun, a woman coated in gold paint to ensure she’s not touched by any other man. To evade punishment when the love affair is exposed, she kills herself with the words: “my body is no longer his temple!” suggesting that her relationship with the Pharaoh was not something she ever actually wanted.
There is nothing else to suggest that during their lifetimes, Imhotep and Anck Su Namun were bad people. They were just two lovers who fought to be together. And we’re meant to root against them? That the film never offers any sympathy or nuance to this backstory beyond the fact it actually exists can’t help but cast a rather unpleasant shadow over the proceedings, something that has to be deliberately ignored if you want to enjoy what follows.
The Illusionist (2006)
This is one of the few films that – on watching the trailer over ten years ago – sent shivers down my spine. It’s impossible to explain, but sometimes you see a preview for something and know you’re going to love it. It hardly made a splash at its time of release, and I can understand the mainly positive but still rather disinterested reviews, but nearly everything in it seems especially designed to appeal to my personal taste.
A period drama with an emphasis on accuracy but also a fairy tale-esque atmosphere? Check. A romance between star-crossed lovers who were childhood friends before being cruelly separated by the social expectations of their time? Check. A stage magician with galleons of intensity who decides to use his skills to win back the woman he loves and destabilize the systems that hurt him so badly as a child? Check. Okay, that last one is pretty specific to this movie, but it’s a great idea and Edward Norton pulls it off fantastically.
If Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell was a perfect action hero, then Edward Norton as Eisenheim is an equally perfect example of the trickster archetype, albeit a much more serious and romantic one than usually depicted. The ever-underrated Paul Giamatti puts in a great performance as chief inspector Uhl (in many ways he’s the audience surrogate), and Rufus Sewell is an old pro as the dark arrogant prince, whose violent tendencies brew just below the surface. Oh, and who plays the younger versions of Eisenheim and Sophie? Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elinor Tomlinson, in two of their earliest roles.
But the biggest surprise is Jessica Biel as Eisenheim’s love Sophie – it’s a shame she’s mostly known for trashy comedies, because she imbues Sophie with a grace and intelligence and humour that far transcends how the character is written on the page.
But the biggest surprise is Jessica Biel as Eisenheim’s love Sophie – it’s a shame she’s mostly known for trashy comedies, because she imbues Sophie with a grace and intelligence and humour that far transcends how the character is written on the page.
Just as Rachel Weisz turned Evie into a bumbling, geeky historian, Biel conveys a deeply feminine yet spirited woman of her time who remains calm in the midst of a political firestorm. Either one could have been a cardboard cut-out; largely thanks to the actresses, they’re fully-realized heroines with vivid personalities and a depth you wouldn’t expect from their respective films.
It unfolds in sepia hues, like Victorian photographs lit by flickering candlelight, making the most of the Prague locations and the moody time period. There’s intrigue and gaslight and imposing aristocrats, but also mystery and enchantment and an ending that will make you breath a deep sigh of satisfaction.
But the problem with raving about a film like The Illusionist is that if you go too hard, viewers will be disappointed. In many ways it’s predictable – quite stately in its pacing and not with any astoundingly clever twists you might expect from a film about a stage magician. That’s what The Prestige was for, having been released in the same year and to much more popular acclaim. In comparison, The Illusionist is smaller, more sedate, but with far more heart and beauty.
Megamind (2010)
It a little sad that of the two Dreamwork properties that explored the human side of a megalomaniacal supervillain, it was Despicable Me that spawned a franchise. I’d be interested to know if anyone out there genuinely thought that its first film was better than Megamind, though perhaps it’s for the best that Megamind was spared the sequelitis treatment. We can enjoy the movie on its own terms, happy in the knowledge that its creative spark isn’t going to be run into the ground.
An obvious parody of Superman, the story begins when baby Megamind and his nemesis Metro Man are evacuated as infants in escape pods from their dying planets. But whereas Metro Man was raised amidst loving foster parents, Megamind lands in a prison facility, and it would seem their fates are sealed. Years later, they partake in a rivalry that involves the usual apparatus of super hero/villain feuds: gadgetry, monologues, henchmen, doomsday weapons, and a damsel in distress.
The damsel is Roxanne Ritchi (a Lois Lane analogue) and what follows is a surprisingly complex and thought-provoking storyline, in which Megamind accidentally kills Mega Man and realizes that without his greatest foe to do battle with, he has no purpose in life. Evil cannot exist without good and all that.
His existential crisis leads him to seek out another superhero – to create and groom one if he must, accidentally settling on Roxanne’s cameraman Hal Stewart (the Jimmy Olson) for whom he concocts an entire cosmic backstory to go along with his transfer of superpowers. And yet Hal ends up being the epitome of a term that was only just garnering attention back in 2010: toxic masculinity.
Embittered and resentful at the world, Hal’s newfound powers have a negative effect on his personality, for now everything that was denied to him – that he believes is rightfully his, including the romantic attention of Roxanne – can now be taken by force. And in the wake of his creation turning out so badly, Megamind has to step into a brand-new role himself: that of a hero.
It’s a wonderfully subversive examination of identity, purpose, destiny, perception, heroism, and what to do with the power you wield. Despite identifying as a “villain”, Megamind has a pretty clear grasp on the difference between good and bad behaviour, and most of his villainous grandstanding is exactly that: grandstanding. On the other hand, Hal proves that for a lot of people, mediocracy is the only thing keeping them from becoming truly dangerous.
So it strikes me as funny that so many people could astutely recognize Hal as the true villain of the film, whose shitty behaviour is derived directly from his sense of entitlement and self-aggrievement… while ignoring and excusing the exact same qualities in Kylo Ren. I mean, putting aside their physical differences and levels of “coolness”, they’re practically the same character, with the same responses and attitudes to not getting what they want.
As such, Megamind is another tale that muddies the waters between heroes and villains, with Megamind as the misunderstood loner who just needs care and attention (specifically from a particular woman) in order to become a better person. It’s not like I have a moral objection to this, and Megamind certainly does it better than most, but it definitely has its place in the ever-increasing range of “redemption for the villain” stories that ask us to feel sorry for those that claim to want to hurt us.
In this case, Megamind dating Roxanne under a false identity is a massive red flag (one that certainly doesn’t mesh with the film’s understanding that Hal’s pursuit of Roxanne is creepy and wrong) and I don’t think the movie does nearly enough in allowing her to be angry over the deception or in Megamind working to re-earn her trust.
In this case, Megamind dating Roxanne under a false identity is a massive red flag (one that certainly doesn’t mesh with the film’s understanding that Hal’s pursuit of Roxanne is creepy and wrong) and I don’t think the movie does nearly enough in allowing her to be angry over the deception or in Megamind working to re-earn her trust.
But that’s just me overanalysing. Will Ferrell is a very touch and go actor for me, but when he’s good (Elf, Ron Burgundy) he’s one of my favourite comedians, and Megamind is a great role for him –particularly in his inability to correctly pronounce certain words. Who can’t appreciate a guy who dresses up as the character he plays for Comic Con?
Witness for the Prosecution (2016)
This is Agatha Christie as penned by Sarah Phelps, which means everything is permeated with abject misery and filmed through either a puke green or sickly yellow filter. It’s not enough that a murder has taken place, everyone needs a sordid backstory and a range of devastating unrelated-to-the-murder hang-ups.
I watched the 1957 film a while back, so went in knowing what the solution to the puzzle was, but still interested in seeing how the presentation would differ. Based on a stage play which in turn was based on a short story, Agatha Christie’s detective in this case is actually a lawyer, John Mayhew (Toby Jones) who is called in to defend a pretty open-and-shut case: Leonard Vole, accused of killing his much older mistress who recently named him her sole heir. He had means, motivation and opportunity, and not much stands between him and the death sentence.
Perhaps the only wildcard is his wife Romaine, who is clearly keeping secrets of her own – if only Mayhew can convince her to acquit her cheating husband.
SPOILERS
Despite my weariness with Phelps’s grimdark adaptation process, there are some genuinely good thematic or narrative changes here. The story posits that Mayhew’s son died in the war, which gives his defence of Leonard a more personal edge – then of course he finds out that Leonard was playing him the whole time, that his wife blames him for taking his son to war despite not being old enough to enlist, and that he’s helped send an innocent women to the gallows in Leonard’s place, so it all ends with Mayhew killing himself by walking into the sea. Sure. Why not.
You just couldn’t leave it at the dead son replacement, could you Phelps?
Narratively speaking it improves on the film by having Romain disguise herself as a pre-established character to give Mayhew the faked letters, instead of a brand new one, which adds veracity (at least in the minds of the audience) to the deception, and it’s also fairly interesting that (again, unlike the film) Leonard and Romain were in cahoots the whole time, and remain loyal to each other once the latter gets out of prison. Once Mayhew figures out just how deeply he’s been conned, they deliver a pretty hilarious “ok boomer” justification for what they’ve done.
At only two episodes long, at least the misery isn’t too prolonged, and by all accounts the story here skews much closer to Christie’s original short story (which she changed in the screenplay since Leonard really did get away with murder).
Westworld: Season 1 – 3 (2016 – 2020)
In the final days of lockdown, I tore through these episodes and emerged largely positive, possibly due to the aforementioned binge-watch, in which things fly by too fast for you to properly question them. But with sky-high production values, a plot that largely revolves around two (then three) complex female characters, and a few episodes that are genuinely revolutionary in their content, I was pretty engrossed.
In the not too distant future, society as we know it is so utopian that rich people visit elaborate theme parks in the quest for something interesting to do (and/or occasionally indulge their dark sides). The “hosts” at the parks have no idea that they’re very advanced automatons, set in various storytelling loops to advance interactive narratives, to be treated by the guests in any way they please – after all, raping and murdering an inanimate object isn’t a crime, right?
Not so long as the inanimate objects stay that way, and so naturally – as it is with all A.I. stories – it becomes apparent very quickly that the robots are gaining sentience. Uprisings ensue.
As a concept, the park itself makes very little sense – apart from the immersion, why would people pay thousands of dollars to have a Wild West adventure they could more easily experience on their PlayStation at home (or else the interactive holograms that I’m sure have been invented by this stage of human history)? Why come to a park just to murder people and have sex with fake prostitutes? Some levels of the park seem to exist well outside the parameters of a normal getaway, so are we meant to assume that hosts on the fringes are just on repeating loops that only occasionally get interacted with?
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
I’ve recently realized that stories about artificial intelligence only revolve around two subjects: the emergence of self-awareness and subsequent questions surrounding the nature of humanity/identity, and the ethical debate about how well robots should be treated, which inevitably creates allusions to oppression and slavery, which in turn puts any decent viewer on the side of the androids. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, so all that really matters is how well they’re told.
This one is told pretty well, largely due to the fact that the two lynchpins of the story are Dolores, a rancher’s daughter, and Maeve, a brothel madame, who each become aware of their true reality over the course of the first season, and respond in profoundly different ways in the following two. At first glance their characterization is a little questionable: Dolores is a beautiful white woman swathed in shades of pale blue, while Maeve is the black madame of a whore house, usually wearing shades of red and black.
There’s definitely a Madonna/Whore parallel here, but one that eventually gets deconstructed: Dolores’s role is not to be revered and respected, but to be constantly victimized, with her narrative designed specifically for guests to choose whether they want to rescue or take advantage of her. Meanwhile, Maeve works in the local whorehouse, but by dint of her role as the madame, has a slightly larger degree of agency and respect afforded to her.
Each one gains sentience through the suffering inflicted on them – Maeve at the loss of her child and her desire not to have that pain taken from her, and Dolores through endless repetitions of violence at her homestead. Though they’ve so far only interacted a handful of times across the three seasons, their paths are too similar to be a coincidence: each are searching for self-actualization and the choices that come with it, and each have to negotiate the men around them and the power they wield.
The usual refrain for fictional women is that to become empowered, they must first be victimized – and at first glance, this is also the case in Westworld. But there are a few wrinkles here and there. Each woman has a fellow host as a love interest, a man (Teddy or Hector) who is completely devoted to her; two romantic relationships in which the women are incontrovertibly wearing the pants. By the end of the first season they are perhaps in each other’s shoes: Dolores has embraced violence, while Maeve puts aside her programming in order to go in search of her lost child. Based on their early characterization, you would have expected Maeve to commit to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and Dolores to be seeking out her loved ones, but instead the exact opposite is true.
The show is co-created by Lisa Joy, and though the presence of a woman in the writing room doesn’t necessarily ensure that a story’s female characters are going to be treated with respect, it seems to have helped in this case. Throughout the show there is plenty of rape and violence towards women: partly due to its setting, partly because it airs on HBO, and partly due to the possibility that the writers may eventually have something interesting to say about its existence.
Often it feels like one step forward and two steps back, such as the Man in Black looking shocked when Dolores finally gives him a well-deserved beatdown, only for him to regain the upper hand, fatally stab her, and Teddy to ride off with her so she can die tragically in his arms. Which turns out to be a staged performance for a rapt audience, so again – it’s hard to really know how much of this is an explicit commentary on the way women’s narratives are structured for them, or if the writers are completely unaware of what they’re doing. Whether they’ll have anything to say about studio-mandated violence towards women in the long run remains to be seen, but since Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton are carrying this show between them, it would be an insult to them not to.
And I haven’t even mentioned any of the supporting characters. There’s a lot to juggle, and honestly you could have simply stuck with Maeve’s storyline, cutting out the more convoluted stories and timelines of the other characters to focus solely on her, and still had a riveting bit of television. But despite its complexity, you never lose the sense that you’ll land on solid ground if you concentrate hard enough. The story might not have anything profound to say, but it’s pretty good at saying it.
(Fun side-note: a major supporting character played by Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon and showcased in the most exquisitely beautiful episode of the second season also popped up in one of the Baywatch episodes parodied on Obscurus Lupa’s channel that I coincidentally watched that same weekend. Small world).
Tangled: The Series: Season 2 (2018 – 2019)
The second season of this Tangled continuation was renamed Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure, perhaps to indicate that it was spreading its wings and expanding its scope. After the first season was set entirely in the kingdom of Corona (talk about a name that aged badly) the second begins with Rapunzel and her entourage (Eugene, Cassandra, Lance, Pascal, Max, Hook-Foot and Shorty) in a physics-defying caravan, following the mysterious black rocks to an unknown destination.
These black rocks are part of the show’s underlying mythos, which are connected in some way to the return of Rapunzel’s long blonde hair, which in turn has something to do with the original drop of sun that formed the healing flower, along with a complimentary drop of moonlight that has transformed into a dangerous stone… yeah, it’s all rather convoluted and not at all consistent with the rules established in the original movie (now Rapunzel’s hair is indestructible, and it doesn’t have healing powers, it only activates the rocks, but not anymore…)
But whether there was a master plan in place from the start, or they just planted early narrative seeds to work out later, there is an underlying sense of a complex story at work. Big things, like the involvement of Varian’s father in a secret brotherhood, or little things, like an offhand comment from Eugene about how he once stole a crime-baron’s stallion, were dropped across the first season, and we start getting payoff in the second.
The road trip takes the usual tangents (an oppressed village that needs liberating, an island filled with hostile natives, a creepy haunted house) and I’m not entirely sure why Hook-Foot and Shorty are involved in the journey (it would have worked fine with just Rapunzel, Eugene, Cass, Lance and the animal sidekicks) but it’s a fun ride throughout, with great stylistic animation and several genuinely harrowing sequences. It’s also a huge point in the show’s favour that they brought back Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi to reprise their roles as Rapunzel and Eugene.
And yet it becomes increasingly clear as the episodes go by that the most important relationship of the show is that between Rapunzel and Cassandra. Narratively speaking it’s more intrinsic to the plot, and by the end of the season the two have a full-on Romantic Two-Girl Friendship going on, complete with hand-holding, eye-gazing and solemn declarations of love and loyalty. It’s what makes the final twist all the more shocking, so I guess I’ll be watching the third season sooner rather than later…
Arrow: Season 7 (2018 – 2019)
I will catch up on these shows, so help me. With the airing of the first season of Batwoman and the fifth season of Supergirl earlier this year, I got completely bogged down by the sheer size of the Arrowverse project, as well as tired of watching all the crossover episodes in the wrong order. So before the ninth episode of each consecutive show, I halted my viewing progress and went back to catch up with the earlier seasons of the franchise’s other three shows.
Season seven of Arrow begins with Oliver in prison, which isn’t a hugely interesting setting for a television show (at least not one that’s not specifically about life in prison – Barry only spent about one hour there until the writers realized their mistake) but the opening lets us know it’s already been five months, and they do manage to come up with some semi-engaging material.
But the real interest lies in what soon is revealed to be flash-forwards, in which a grown-up William tries to track down his remaining family on Lian Yu and the Star City of 2038. This includes Roy, Dinah, Felicity and – most interestingly, an adult Zoe Ramirez and Mia Smoak, the daughter of Oliver and Felicity. A lot of it feels like set up for a spin-off that hasn’t been greenlit yet, but I have to admit, I dig post-apocalyptic flashforwards where everyone is older and gritter. They even brought back Joseph David-Jones to reprise his role as Connor Hawke, son of John Diggle, last seen in the first season of Legends of Tomorrow. That’s just cool.
In the present day, things are a pretty mixed bag. It’s insane that Oliver wouldn’t be in isolation, Felicity and William are in useless protective custody, Diggle is working for the increasingly shady ARGUS, the awful Diaz (who has nothing much to offer but crazy eyes at this point) is inexplicably still around, and the appearance of a new Green Arrow reignites a new debate on vigilantism.
Look, I won’t repeat myself, but there’s a reason vigilantism is illegal in the real world: it’s unnecessary and unhelpful, so any opportunity to try and justify it within the realm of fiction will totally fall flat. Don’t bother, just let the audience suspend their disbelief and pretend that it’s a good idea for costumed ninjas to go out each night and beat up bank robbers. It doesn’t have to go any deeper than that.
These writers try and rationalize its existence by having Oliver, Diggle, Dinah and Rene get deputized and work alongside the SCPD, and you don’t need me to tell you how ludicrous that idea is. Why not have them join ARGUS only to become increasingly suspicious of their tactics and secret agendas? That’s a great plot right there.
A nice surprise is the return of Colton Haynes as Roy Harper, though the absence of Willa Holland as Thea in both the present day and the flashforwards is glaring. The Golden Age of the show was Laurel/Sara, Thea and Roy in the places currently occupied by Dinah, Rene and Curtis, and yet I feel like we got the former team for far less screen-time than the latter. Bringing Roy back was a stark reminder of how terrible Dinah and Rene are by comparison, especially since Roy/Oliver was one of my favourite dynamics in the early days.
Okay, I will get to some positive stuff soon, I promise. After preparing to get on my high-horse about how in seven seasons of Arrow, five of The Flash and four of Legends, we’ve NEVER had a female Big Bad, the show actually pulls one out: and it’s Oliver’s secret half-sister Emiko, who is planning to level the city and kill Oliver’s family because she’s mad at their long-dead father for abandoning her as a child. This isn’t the first time I’ve watched a villain try to destroy a person’s life over events completely beyond their knowledge and/or control, and it’s just as stupid here as it is elsewhere.
Oliver and Felicity are also held to impossibly high standards when it comes to their treatment of the people literally trying to kill them, whether it’s the writers trying to convince us that Felicity is crossing a moral threshold (and is therefore potentially becoming a dangerous person in the future) by pre-emptively trying to protect herself from Diaz, and Oliver is constantly advised (by pretty much everyone, including a character that’s been dead since the first season) to give Emiko a second – then third, then forth, then fifth – chance, even though she’s literally out there murdering people every night.
Is anyone else getting genuinely distressed by the constant reiteration of this theme throughout popular culture these days? That the onus of redemption is on the good guys? That it’s their duty to show boundless compassion to unrepentant villains, no matter how evil they are, how much suffering they inflict, or what evil acts they willingly commit of their own free will? It’s such an ugly, toxic message to promote. No one owes these people jack-shit, I don’t care how sad their childhoods were.
Like I’ve said many times before, it’s not that I morally object to redemption arcs, I only ask that the level of narrative work that goes into them be proportionate to the amount of harm that individual has committed. The Arrowverse is especially egregious when it comes to this, whether it’s Killer Frost or Malcolm Merlyn or the alt-world version of Laurel Lance.
And look, for the sake of Katie Cassidy, who has always been treated like shit by this show and its fandom, I wanted a decent redemption arc for Black Siren. And I give them credit for at least making her do something that very few other “redeemed” villains do: she looks Dinah in the eye and sincerely apologizes for murdering her boyfriend. But she’s still a murderer, and should still be in jail, not wandering around in the life she hijacked from original-flavour Laurel.
But in better news, there’s finally something resembling a friendship between Felicity and Laurel (whaddaya know – two actresses who are clearly friends off-set and who have worked together for seven years have a great rapport!) and there’s an episode featuring Caity Lotz that involves the Canaries working together to stop Laurel from returning to the Dark Side (though her “not-so-badness” is demonstrated by her planting a bomb that could have potentially killed Felicity and Dinah, but she set the timer just right, so they had plenty of time to escape. You see – she’s totally a good guy!)
At this point they’re juggling dozens and dozens of characters, and not all of them are dealt a fair hand, but for the most part everyone gets time to shine. I appreciated the return of Alena, Felicity’s tech-friend, though Curtis gets a rather abrupt send-off, right in the midst of an interesting storyline at ARGUS. The al Ghul sisters get brief appearances, as do several members of the rogues’ gallery, and the documentary-style beginning of the show’s one hundredth episode manages to bring in even more familiar faces (Sin! Thought we’d never see you again).
It’s definitely a messy season, with an overload of subplots and characters, and even with one more to go, I’m sure Adrian Chase will remain the show’s last great villain. But I like how it ends with more set-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths and that the “original trio” of Oliver, Diggle and Felicity are given deliberate focus towards the end.
That said… I don’t want to be a dick about it, because people are gonna like what they like, but the overwhelming popularity of the Oliver/Felicity ship has always baffled me. Not quite as much as the desperate campaign to see a teenage girl hook up with the mass-murdering psycho that spent three movies violently assaulting her, but the sheer amount of passion viewers have for a pretty milquetoast heterosexual white person ship is just… well, it’s a thing. I mention it only to express my bemusement at how one viewer’s wine is another’s tepid tap water.
The Flash: Season 5 (2018 – 2019)
Much like Arrow, season five of The Flash is a mixed bag of good stuff and questionable stuff, revolving around the arrival of Barry and Iris’s daughter Nora from the future, the return of Eobard Thawne as a manipulative Chessmaster, and some timey wimey (yes, they use that phrase) antics regarding a mysterious villain called Cicada.
Naturally all these elements are connected, but we start with Nora introducing herself to the family as Barry and Iris’s future daughter, who has come back to the past to warn her father that in her early childhood, he disappears and never returns. She’s there to get to know him and learn how to use her speed abilities – though it soon becomes abundantly clear that she’s not too fond of her mother.
And the season quickly establishes that Nora has already changed the past: because she interferes in Barry’s attempt to stop the Enlightenment, debris from a satellite rains down upon Central City in a completely different trajectory than in the time-line she’s from – which means that most of the information she brings back with her from the future is now obsolete, including the true identity of the anti-meta villain Cicada – the one villain that Barry was never able to apprehend. She insists that she’s here to help her father finally catch the one that got away, but naturally her presence has a ripple effect on proceedings.
Nora gets increasingly tiresome as the season goes on, for as soon as the viewer knows she’s in cahoots with Thawne (guiding her actions from a prison cell as the countdown to his execution begins) we know she’s being hopelessly manipulated. It’s only due to the Arrowverse’s theme of “all mass murderers deserve a second chance!” that the viewer might be left in a little doubt as to Thawne’s true intentions, but in this case the writing’s insistence that he has genuine feelings for Nora turn out to be a red herring – or at least irrelevant to what he ends up doing anyway.
So Barry was right to trust his instincts that his worst enemy was up to no good, but not before everyone treats him like the asshole for thinking that. Welcome to Sympathy for the Devil culture, where you suck if you don’t give your mother’s killer the benefit of the doubt.
All that aside, the writers actually put together a very clever timey wimey plot that hangs together if you don’t think too hard about it. Clues are strewn throughout the episodes, involving time-travel to the past and future and alternative time-lines in which crucial events may or may not have happened – and who puts it all together but Ralph Dibney, the surprising MVP of this season. Who’d have thought? He’s a vastly improved character this time around, and I suspect the budget limitations on his stretchy-powers made the writers lean more into his role as a detective.
And yet between him, Joe West and another Harrison Wells persona played by Tom Cavanagh (a French private investigator called Sherloque… oof), we’ve got three members of Team Flash providing what is essentially the same skill-set to the proceedings. The cast is pretty bloated at this point, and culling Sherloque could have given others more to do – especially since Cavanagh is already reprising the role of Eobard (replacing Matt Letscher, the character’s “true face”).
For a hot second the writers suggest a fantastic twist in which the clownish Sherloque could be Thawne (both utter the phrase “clever girl” at different points) but that dies the moment it’s introduced, making the character rather superfluous.
Apparently Jesse L. Martin had some serious back issues that led to him sitting out the first half of the season (he ends up in Tibet with an off-screen Wally and his infant daughter – a character that goes hilariously unseen and unmentioned upon his return) but I can’t help but feel that the role of piecing together Nora’s true purpose in the past and the real motivations of Thawne from his prison cell should have gone to him.
And some scenes that go to Cecile were clearly meant for Joe – such as trying to get Nora to warm up to Iris by telling her stories about her mother as a child. How would Cecile even know all that? I like the character, and they make good use of her empath abilities, but she’s gotta be the most disinterested mother to a newborn ever – I’m not even sure we see her interact with baby Jenna after the season premiere. And doesn’t she have a whole other daughter out there somewhere?
Cisco and Caitlin also end up getting the short end of the stick: once again the writers go to the tedious well of Killer Frost and how she operates within Caitlin’s psyche, which only contradicts what they’ve already established in previous seasons.
Apparently she’s not actually a meta at all, but the product of her father’s experimentation. Since no other meta on the show has a split personality like hers it makes sense that her power comes from a unique source, but in attempting to rectify this inconsistency, the writers ignore that the biggest problem in all this was that none of the characters have ever commented on the anomaly of Caitlin’s condition. Why the manifestation of her powers was so different from everyone else’s was a question no character in the show was even asking!
And of course, all of Killer Frost’s violence, including attempted murder, assault, hostage-taking – is considered no big deal. Meanwhile Cisco decides to give up his extremely useful and easily concealed powers for reasons that totally escape me. Okay, whatever dude.
Still, it’s easy to pick holes in what must be a pretty complicated process of putting together twenty-two episodes of an overarching story in a limited amount of time, and for the most part I think they pulled it off. Even though the time travel makes no sense (how is Eobard even alive after Eddie Thawne deliberately killed himself in season one?) it’s always fun to watch all that jumping into the past and future, and there’s just enough consistency to make it rewarding. As Thawne says: “see you in the next crisis.”
Belgravia (2020)
Julian Fellowes isn’t perfect, but he seems to be the only prolific writer out there who’s prepared to give focus, interior lives, and juicy storylines to women over fifty. So though there have been a few mishaps (the terrible Anna-gets-raped arc on Downton Abbey) he shows a surprising interest in the points-of-view of women in times when they weren’t really allowed any sort of arcs but ones involving marriage. He really does have a surprisingly good grasp on how women think and feel.
For instance, one scene has an older man wonder what his son’s life would be like had he lived, saying that by now he’d have “clever sons and pretty daughters.” I blanched a bit, but sure enough, his wife immediately rejoined with: “or clever daughters and pretty sons.”
As Downton Abbey kickstarted things with the sinking of the Titanic, Belgravia starts with the famous Duchess of Richmond's ball that took place in the hours before the Battle of Waterloo (sadly we don’t glimpse Becky Sharpe or her cohorts). Tamsin Greig’s Anne Trenchard is ambivalent about attending given that her family’s newfound wealth is based on her husband’s success in trading. They’re not aristocrats, and to make matters worse, her daughter Sophia (though it’s pronounced “Sapphire” for some reason) has struck up an attachment to young Lord Bellasis.
Tragedy strikes and in the aftermath of Waterloo, Bellasis is dead and Sophia left pregnant, the victim of a deception in which she was tricked into believing she and Bellasis had actually married. She gives birth to a boy and passes shortly after, leaving her parents to give up the boy to a foster home far away.
Twenty-five years later, and the Trenchards have moved into the newly established Belgravia, where they find themselves neighbours to the Brockenhursts, the parents of the deceased Bellasis, who have no knowledge of their grandson. Anne is torn over whether or not she should share the secret, knowing that her daughter’s reputation will be torn to shreds if the truth comes out, but feeling Countess Caroline of Brockenhurst’s grief for her child as keenly as she does her own.
It’s nice to see Tamsin Greig in a non-comedic role, and she certainly infuses her character with a deep sense of sadness at losing her only daughter. Harriet Walters pops up as well as Caroline of Brockenhurst, making this the second thing I’ve seen her in this month (behind Killing Eve). It has the expected assortment of cads, ingenues, scheming wives and resentful servants, but the narrative really revolves around these two women and their subtle powerplay for the custody and recognition of their grandson.
It’s Julian Fellowes, so you can expect a happy ending by the final credits, with plenty of upstairs/downstairs tension along the way. It’s a nice little story, exactly what you would expect and no more.
She-Ra: Season 5 (2020)
When the first announcement dropped that a reboot of She Ra was in the works, I was surprised (it’s technically an animated spin-off of a much more popular show from the eighties) but intrigued. Those old cartoons are pretty bizarre, largely designed to sell plastic toys, and more than a little indebted to Star Wars, but also packed full of interesting characters and concepts.
In She Ra’s case, it was a strange blend of sci-fi and fantasy, with characters that went by such names as Netossa (she tosses nets), Castaspella (she casts spells) and Catra (she’s a cat person, would you believe). But since then Avatar: The Last Airbender has changed the game for everyone, and it’s that show which serves as the real inspiration for this reboot: though She Ra gleefully keeps the princess aesthetic (in which people fight with sparkles, rainbows and flying horses) and goes more hard on the whole “friendship is magic” thing than even My Little Pony, it also took its central theme of abuse – from either parents or peers – very seriously.
Now it’s amazing to consider that we’ve blitzed through five seasons in just three years (though I still maintain are only four seasons, since two and three were cut in half).
Before I get into it properly, let me just say that the series ended on a high note, in which the storylines are wrapped up, the characters complete their arcs, and it all concludes on my favourite type of ending: not sitting down for a domestic homemade meal, but looking outwards and upwards towards the next adventure.
Catra gets her long-awaited redemption arc, which – despite all my recent complaining about such things – I was never actually opposed to as long as it was done right. Which for the most part, it was. Catra realizes that she’s hurt people, risks her own life to make amends, apologises to the people that deserve it, and works on changing her behaviour.
The gold standard of redemption arcs will always be Prince Zuko, and in comparison, I still have some issues with how Catra’s played out. For instance, Zuko turns on the Fire Nation because he spends time among the people they’re oppressing and therefore is horrified to discover that his father plans a literal “scorched earth” policy to subjugate them once and for all.
But Catra never seems to have any qualms about the fact the Horde is killing innocent people; rather she flips because a) she gets everything she thought she wanted and realizes it still hasn’t made her happy, and b) wants to protect Adora. She achieves this by rescuing Glimmer from Horde Prime’s ship, but specifically states she’s not doing it for her, but to prevent Adora from making the rescue attempt herself. Because she doesn’t want Adora to die. Which is weird, because a few seasons ago, she left her dangling over the edge of a precipice and walked away, declaring that she was finally free of her.
And the jury is still out on whether the war crimes Catra committed while in the Horde are forgivable. She doesn’t cold-bloodedly murder anyone, and we’re given enough insight into her abusive upbringing that we at least understand why she behaves the way she does, but I think it’s pretty telling that (for example) Glimmer never brings up the fact that Catra’s actions led directly to Angella’s death. Because the writers can’t bring it up. It’s too big a spanner, too close to the finish line.
Basically: Catra’s redemption arc isn’t nearly as good as Zuko’s, but also miles better than Kylo Ren’s (I mean, not like that’s hard).
And sure, there’s something beautifully poignant about Catra having nursed her love for Adora throughout all of this, and interpreting Adora’s team-up with the rebels as a rejection of her personally (a flashback depicts the girls as children, in which Catra demonstrates jealousy over Adora being friends with another recruit), but it comes without any consideration given to the fact that Adora’s decision was based on realizing she was on the wrong side and wanting to stop hurting innocent people.
Catra never has this kind of epiphany (neither does Scorpia or Entrapta, to be fair), and though I appreciate her apologizing to people – even though she finds it absolutely mortifying – and establishing relationships with Glimmer, Bow and Melog in order to wean her off only caring about Adora, she still seems to lack the “big picture” quality of understanding why exactly the Horde was bad. From start to finish, it’s entirely personal with Catra.
(And on that note, I have no idea how I’m supposed to feel about Entrapta and Hordak. And no, Mermista wryly commenting on it doesn’t make it better, especially since it remains unclear if either one really understands how much harm they’ve caused others over the last five seasons).
***
Then there’s the fact that Adora and Catra are an official couple by the end of the show. Again, I don’t have any moral objection to an enemies-to-lovers arc, but only ask that it’s done well. It in this case, it mostly worked for me, though it did feel a little rushed towards the end.
I’ve already seen some people complain that it’s a portrayal of a toxic relationship, which is annoying since Catra’s character development demonstrates that it’s clearly not. Kylo and Rey? That’s a toxic relationship, something the writers were well-aware of, which is why Kylo died immediately after the very loud shippers got thrown a bone. Catra was nowhere near as bad as him, and Adora had a vested interest in her former friend’s wellbeing, responding positively to the obvious change in Catra’s behaviour.
On the other hand, it is a little rushed, especially given that Catra comes across as far more invested and frantic about their relationship than Adora is – who aside from a few laughs and blushes, really doesn’t give as much to the dynamic as Catra does. Even the kiss feels like it’s coming from Catra to be received by Adora, which left me wondering… are they are couple now?
Well yes, of course they are. There’s nothing more obnoxious than people declaring “gal pals!” after two women kiss onscreen. But are they? The kiss happens in a moment of intense fear and heightened emotion – heck, that’s how I had to rationalize Rey kissing Kylo (which I still haven’t seen, and which still grosses me out) and after the battle is won, there’s no follow-up kiss. So… are they a couple?
To prove I’m not trying to be a dick about this, I feel the exact same way about Glimmer and Bow. Towards the end of the show, Glimmer tells Bow she loves him and he gives her a forehead kiss. In Adora’s vision of the future, she sees the two of them interacting with very couple-y body language. But if it wasn’t for the Noelle Stevenson's interview, I absolutely would not have got that this was a declaration of romantic love. Were we meant to be shipping them this whole time?
There needed to be so much more conversation between various parties at the conclusion of this war, but we were racing towards the finish line by then, and there just wasn’t time to establish it properly (in comparison with other Sapphic ships, it was too early in their development for Korra and Asami to do anything but hold hands, and Harley and Ivy – having kissed halfway through the second season – have all the time in the world to discuss their relationship problems) so this just felt a bit truncated.
I feel like the writers tried to reframe Catra/Adora as something that had romantic overtones all along (which they clearly hinted towards at times, and to give them their due, they probably had to sneak these moments under Netflix’s radar) in the sense that Catra’s beef was actually being in love with Adora since childhood, despite Shadow Weaver stoking a rivalry between them… which is a good setup, but one that I’m not sure is entirely clear in the earlier seasons.
At least one person I’ve spoken to since the finale expressed some ambivalence about the kiss due to the fact she had considered Adora and Catra to be sisters, each vying for Mother Shadow Weaver’s approval, complete with the very sad but realistic mentality (as seen with Gamora and Nebula) of one eventually resenting the other, on account of having been continually pitted against her. And I can’t say I blame her for having formed this interpretation.
(Amusingly enough, in two separate conversations I had with this friend and another, I stated that I accepted Catra’s redemption more than Kylo’s because the former wasn’t a murderer, after which one friend texted: “she tried to destroy all of reality” and the other said: “I’m pretty sure she’s killed some people.” So until a rewatch occurs, the jury is still out on that one – though I still maintain that Catra gets a pass because she didn’t succeed in destroying reality, whereas Kylo was complicit in a genocide that definitely took place on-screen).
It just goes to show how subjective shipping is: that some people will work to fill in the blanks of a relationship, while others want more on-screen development. What works for some doesn’t for others. Rey/Kylo will always be completely repellent to me, I’ve never felt anything for Felicity/Oliver, I enjoyed Adora/Catra while wishing there was more time to develop it, and loved Korra/Asami to bits.
For others, they may feel the exact opposite in regards to all four ships. All I can say is that when Catra and Adora kissed, I thought: “okay, cool, they’re going there.” When Asami and Korra simply held hands, I felt my heart grow three sizes.
***
But the show hit the mark far often than it missed. They utilize the princess alliance – Perfuma, Mermista, Frosta, Scorpia, along with Swift Wind, Micah and Seahawk – to perfection, with a couple of neat side-quests and fun interactions. There are plenty of great one-liners and emotional pay-offs. They prove that a happy ending can be deserved and satisfying.
But I dearly wish it could have been spread out over just one more season, to give everything the development it deserved. It’s especially strange to me since the end of season four ended on such a great cliff-hanger, in which Glimmer and Catra are left stranded on Horde Prime’s ship, forcing them to work together with the ghost of Adora between them. You could have built an entire seasonal arc upon that!
And what if Catra hadn’t immediately reunited with Adora? What if she had escaped Prime and gone off on her own for a while, to think about her life and her choices? She could have teamed up with the Star Siblings (three characters who are introduced only to immediately disappear), galvanised by their adventure with She Ra, and spent some time helping them save their corner of the galaxy. or assisting the princess alliance anonymously, from afar. She could have made an effort to rescue Angella, because MY GOD did they set that up in season three, what with establishing that people would be trapped, not die, in an interdimensional space, and Micah only just missing out on telling his wife that he was still alive on Beast Island.
That should have been a cornerstone for Catra’s redemption, not something that was just glossed over.
Likewise, surely the reunion between Glimmer and Micah could have happened sooner, thereby allowing them to actually build a relationship and mourn their wife/mother across several episodes. Micah ends up forming more of a bond with Frosta, for heaven’s sake! I mean, a few seasons ago the fact that Micah was alive and had a connection with Shadow Weaver felt like a big deal – but it really wasn’t in the end.
I also could have stood to learn more about Shadow Weaver and her connection with Castaspella, Micah and Hordak. Swift Wing often talks about how he and She Ra share a “sacred bond”, but that never materializes in any meaningful way – I’m not even sure she rides Swift Wing at any point during the season.
And what about Huntara and Madame Razz? Didn’t they deserve more than brief cameos? Netossa and Spinerella are finally given some more screen-time, but they never got that character-centric episode I was hoping for. Likewise, I would have liked to check in with Kyle, Lonnie and Rogelio once they left the Horde – what were they up to? Didn’t they warrant a reunion with Catra and Adora?
There is so much material left over, and I could definitely stand to see an epilogue of some kind. All in all, I was all ready to love this final season, and I did – it just didn’t quite get under my skin the way I wanted it too – partly because so many potential story-arcs were skipped over, and partly because they didn’t quite stick the landing with Catra’s redemption and her love story with Adora. They did mostly… but not entirely.
It was good. It was even great. But with just a little more time, it could have been fantastic.
I'm still not sure *what* I made of The Secret Commonwealth, but I recognise it is very much part one of two. I did enjoy the whole idea of The Constant Deceiver, mostly for the self-referential nature of it.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall being too keen on Witness for the Prosecution, but I'm not sure it's fair to blame Phelps for the murky green/yellow filter thing. Some executive, somewhere, decided a few years ago that's how all television should look to make it look "dark", on the basis that darker = better.
Yeah, the next book will very much contribute to my eventual feelings on this one.
DeleteA heartwarming little tale I just remembered: I read a lot of The Secret Commonwealth during train journeys, and at one point was reading it at about 1 am whilst in the same carriage as a very drunk stag party. Eventually one of them noticed me, came over and politely asked how long the book I was reading was. When I told him "about 700 pages", he sincerely told me "well done, mate, because I've never read a book in my life".
DeleteWe then had a twenty-minute conversation about learning difficulties.
Aww, that's sweet. Though honestly, reading books on trains sounds like absolute heaven.
DeleteAnother great post with some interesting things to check out; I've had Belgravia sitting there for when I'm in the mood.
ReplyDeleteCastle in the Air, I think, might be better-regarded if it wasn't the "sequel" to Howl's Moving Castle. DWJ's sequels are almost never actual sequels but given HMC is so iconic a sequel that is solidly mid-level DWJ can't help but feel like a letdown. Compare this to the Chrestomanci series, where at least one of the follow-ups is top-tier (although people disagree as to which!), or even Dalemark (where the high point is book 3).
I happened to re-watch The Secret Garden for the first time in years (since I was a kid in fact), and it improved on re-watching. A beautiful film in more ways than one. I haven't read the book in at least that long so I never made the connection on changing Mary's relationship to Craven, but what a brilliant adaptation choice. (How is her surname Lennox if her father is Craven's brother in the book, though?)
I remember Witness for the Prosecution as one of the less dreary Phelps adaptations, but maybe that's just because it's short. Grimdark Agatha Christie continues to be such a strange choice.
The best thing about Arrow S7, as you point out, is the flash-forwards, which I really loved. It's interesting how Mia, William, Zoe and Connor click as characters so much better than Rene and Dinah - perhaps because they're not such transparent replacement for characters past. And a hearty hear-hear to your rant on villain apologia, which is a constant problem with Arrowverse shows.
I have to say, I'm not quite sure how anyone will be able to keep up with the Arrowverse soon, given there will soon be SEVEN shows on air, and I'm afraid that's just too much for me. I'll keep up with the core four of Flash/Supergirl/Legends/Batwoman, and catch up on the rest when one of those ends (Flash has to be close to the end of its run at this point).
And yes, there was a lot of nonsense in Flash S5 too. Why do they keep writing such boring villains???
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DeleteCastle in the Air, I think, might be better-regarded if it wasn't the "sequel" to Howl's Moving Castle.
DeleteWeirdly, the first time I read this book it was BEFORE ever reading HMC, and so it jumbled my perception a bit. Suffice to say, when all the assorted creatures starting turning back into their true forms, it had no resonance for me whatsoever. This time around, I could enjoy the surprises in their proper context.
I haven't read the book in at least that long so I never made the connection on changing Mary's relationship to Craven, but what a brilliant adaptation choice. (How is her surname Lennox if her father is Craven's brother in the book, though?)
I just double-checked, and I got it a bit wrong - in the book Aunt Lilias is Mary's paternal aunt; a sister to her father. So the change they make is in turning Mary's aunt and mother into twin sisters instead, which leads to the exceptionally powerful reactions Colin/Lord Craven have to Mary, who looks like her mother, and therefore her sister. It adds so much to Colin's first words to her: "are you a ghost?" and then Lord Craven's: "you brought us back to life."
And of course, the twin thing leads to the same actress being used for both roles, which forms a parallel between Mary and Lord Craven's dreams of her (Mary's mother runs away; Lilias calls Archie home). OMG, this movie is SO GOOOOOOOOD.
It's interesting how Mia, William, Zoe and Connor click as characters so much better than Rene and Dinah - perhaps because they're not such transparent replacement for characters past.
They managed such a strong dynamic - the brother/sister bond between William/Mia, childhood friends William/Zoe, romantic history Mia/Connor, rivals-turned-friends Mia/Zoe - I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, so hopefully they'll greenlight the spin-off (even if, like you, there's no chance of me watching it any time soon).
It's funny, I also recently rewatched the Rescuers movies, and while I remember loving both as a kid, boy did they draaag. Miss Bianca is a wonderful character, and while they certainly tried with Rescuers Down Under, I am a bit miffed they could only scrounge up a single Australian voice actor (for Jake I believe) and Cody's very American accent grates (but that was par for the course back then, I suppose). And the animals in MacLeach's lair never get rescued either? It's bizarre.
ReplyDeleteThe Secret Garden is a perfect movie (I look warily at the cgi-fest new adaptation), and Cinderella will always hit that warm nostalgia note for me - this is an excellent read if you haven't already:
https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/a13138172/brandy-whitney-houston-oral-history-cinderella/
I'm glad you liked Westworld! For me season 1 is near perfect and a masterclass in how to pull of a season long twist that actually works, is completely satisfying, improves the narrative and is even better on rewatch. Seasons 2 and 3 have copped a lot of flack for not being season 1, but I give Joy/Nolan credit for telling the story they want and not trying to stretch out the flashy park premise beyond credulity.
it’s hard to really know how much of this is an explicit commentary on the way women’s narratives are structured for them, or if the writers are completely unaware of what they’re doing.
I think it's absolutely the former, as following that scene is arguably when Dolores achieves consciousness and makes the choice to embrace the Wyatt narrative over the "rancher's daughter" and kick off the revolt. I say arguably because that is exactly what Ford wanted her to do, but imo the next two seasons are her breaking away from that and returning again to "see the beauty" but this time with all the power. But I could talk endlessly about this!
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DeleteYeah, I have zero interest in the new Secret Garden. I get that classics will be adapted regularly, but there's no doubt in my mind that the 1993 version is as good as it's ever going to get.
DeleteIt was your recommendation that got me onto Westworld, so thanks! I can appreciate that they took the story out of the park, though it would have been tempting to remain there, or at least flit from one theme to another.
Re: Bianca - one of many truly wonderful female characters who are given nothing to actually DO in the stories they're part of.