This month was all about spending my Christmas break in front of the television, gorging myself on all the delicious content that I’d been saving for the end of the year, which essentially amounted to a bunch of fantasy and sci-fi shows from the world’s biggest franchises: Star Trek, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. I even watched a bit more of the MCU's She Hulk and Lucasfilm’s Willow, though you won’t find the latter on this list since I haven’t finished it yet (still two more episodes to go).
I didn’t make as large a dent in the pile of movies I wanted to watch though, but managed a few I desperately wanted to squeeze in before the end of the year: Glass Onion, the original West Side Story, a third Hayao Miyazaki film, The Two Towers (to coincide with its twentieth anniversary) and a ton of leftover Halloween movies. I’ll tackle the rest in January.
I also got to see a ballet for the first time in years, which is always a great feeling, and made very slight progress on the massive pile of library books I’ve been renewing for the past three or so months. Oh, and graphic novels. A lot of graphic novels.
Alice in Wonderland (Isaac Theatre Royal)
It felt SO GOOD to see a ballet again. I usually go and see the Southern Ballet Company’s end-of-year recital (I’ve seen Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin in the past) as it’s always rewarding to see the younger generation of dancers show off everything they’ve been practicing, but it was particularly nice this year to sit in the Isaac Theatre Royal and see it play out.
This time around they went with a take on Lewis Carroll’s famous story, which gave them plenty of scope for more out-of-the-ordinary dance routines, specifically a lot of jazz in psychedelic costumes set to pop songs. There was less story than in previous years: Alice chases a white rabbit during a Victorian garden party, finds herself traversing the bizarre landscapes of Wonderland, and eventually returns home with her new friends in tow.
There were some neat little tricks here and there: they manage the growing/shrinking scene by having Alice drink from a bottle, then enter a door downstage, only for a younger dancer to emerge from a second door and take over in the role for a little while. There was a cute dance in which a swarm of seagulls get overexcited by the sight of fish and chips, a Queen of Hearts who turned the entire theatre red with her tantrums (thanks lighting guy) and the inevitable wave of coos and “awww”s when the ballerinas from the junior class toddle out, mess up their cues, bump into each other, and generally get overexcited by the fact they’re on stage for the first time.
There’s something so calming and therapeutic for me about watching ballet, and having missed The Firebird last year, it was nice to get back to my rule of seeing at least one annually.
Rain Before Rainbows by Smriti Halls and David Litchfield
I don’t usually feature picture books on these posts, largely because I don’t often read them, but there were a couple I checked out of the library these holidays that were too lovely to ignore.
This one is simplicity itself: a little girl and a fox travel from the ruins of a burning castle to a wide and open field, where they rediscover peace and happiness. We never learn their names or their backstory, instead the words are rhyming couplets that tell of a journey from darkness to light: “Rain before rainbows. Clouds before sun. Night before daybreak. The old day is done.” This eventually gives way to: “There are footsteps to follow. Words that are wise. A map that will guide us when troubles arise.”
The illustrations are the real selling point though. You know how people always sound a bit pretentious when they use terms like cerulean, turquoise, crimson and amber instead of blue, green, red or yellow? (We have that meme to thank for this). But in this case, the former words are the only ones that do the colours in this book justice: they are practically luminescent, and they enrich the entire reading experience.
Remember that chapter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Lucy creeps into the magician’s house, finds his spell book, and reads one called “for the refreshment of the spirit”? We never discover what that story actually contained, but it could have easily been a bit like Rain Before Rainbows.
The Magic Feather by Sandra Dieckmann
I’ve never met Sandra Dieckmann, but I’d stake money on her being a fan of Dumbo, as this book also involves a small animal gaining courage from a magic feather that ends up being a placebo for the very-real qualities that he already possesses. However, despite these similarities, it still stands on its own.
A little bear lives with his mother and two siblings in the wilderness, but does not yet have a proper name. His fear of the world around him prevents him from discovering anything about himself, until the day a firebird flies down from the sky and bestows on him a fiery feather. With the power of the feather, the little bear now finds himself able to climb trees and cross rivers without fear, though when he spots a hare stranded in the middle of turbulent water, he loses the feather during the rescue.
Though he searches fruitlessly, his mother tells him he didn’t need the feather after all. It sounds trite, but again, it’s the illustrations that elevate the book into something special. They’re stylized but also realistic, and the firebird itself is stunning: reds and oranges and yellows and gold. There aren’t enough firebirds in children’s literature, it’s always dragons or unicorns – my only complaint is that it doesn’t feature in the book for long enough.
Last year I talked about having a “folkish” Christmas, and this book would fit in perfectly with that aesthetic.
Monstress: Volume 6 and 7 by Marjorie Liu and San Takeda
You turn away from a long-running graphic novel series for a while, and when you look back there’s two more instalments out. Time does fly. I’ve talked about Monstress so many times I’m tired of giving a summary. A matriarchal society engulfed in war. A teenage girl who is host to an eldritch abomination. Dozens of factions, each trying to grasp power by whatever means necessary. That’s about the gist of it. The plot is impenetrable at times, many of the characters are difficult to tell apart, and I can honestly say I usually have very little idea of what’s actually going on.
But it’s compelling for two reasons: one is the aforementioned fact that it’s set in a matriarchal society, in which pretty much all the characters are women: young, old, good, bad, victims, perpetrators, warlords, soldiers, politicians, refugees – almost every facet of womanhood is accounted for here, and many are as bloodthirsty and power-hungry and complex as any male anti-hero.
The second reason is Takeda’s extraordinary illustrations. A combination of Egyptian, Chinese and Art Deco style, every single page is a feast for the eyes. You could drown in this aesthetic, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in a graphic novel (or any medium) before. Some of the imagery is astounding, from organic-looking palaces floating in the clouds to worlds inhabited by creatures of living light. It’s so opulent, so detailed, you could spend hours looking at it all.
Volume six starts with two “talk-stories” (or so they’re called, not the greatest name) that have Maika and Kippa share stories about their early childhoods: Kippa and her half-sister scavenging for food, and Maika running away from home to a mysterious island where she hopes to stay forever.
Getting back to the present-day plot, we’re in the aftermath of the battle at Ravenna which Maika has helped to defend. Her enemies are still outside the walls, but she’s finally reunited with her childhood friend Tuya, another young woman who has climbed the ladder of power and influence by marrying Maika’s aunt. Their eventual reunion has been treated as a Big Event across the course of this series, so naturally it doesn’t go as either of them would have wished.
Volume seven has Maika take a supporting role after she’s drugged by her apparent friend/lover Tuya (my favourite Goodreads review is simply: “Tuya, what the fuck”). Various factions fight over her body and the power she wields as Maika negotiates the dreamscape of her memories and experiences with Zim.
We also get some background on Tuya which helps explain some of the choices she’s made, though the key to the entire project is in the title itself: Monstress. When you get down to it, this story is about Maika (and Tuya to a lesser extent) coming to terms with who she is and what she’s done in order to survive. There’s so much death and violence, from genocide to self-harm, that it comes as a cathartic relief when Maika’s inner child is told: “You are the part of her that matters most.”
Once this series finally draws to a close, I’m definitely going to get hold of every instalment (or perhaps buy a huge compilation volume) and read the whole thing from start to finish, hopefully understanding all the twists and turns and nuances it contains. For now, I’m happy to float along with the surplus number of female characters and the incredible way in which the world they inhabit is rendered.
Demon in the Woods by Leigh Bardugo and Dani Pendergast
This is a graphic novel adaptation of a short story that’s been in circulation since 2013: a brief glimpse into the Darkling’s childhood that helps contextualize some of his villainy in the main Shadow and Bone trilogy. I’m pretty sure I read it as a bonus feature at the back of one of these books, but it’s nice to read it in comic form as well, if not just to see it play out in a visual medium.
As you’re well aware, I have very limited tolerance for the woobification of villains (especially if they’re pale, dark-haired pretty boys, which 99% of them are) but if pressed, I could form a reasonable and dispassionate defence of General Aleksander Kirigan (also known as the Darkling).
He reminds me very much of Magneto in two respects: firstly, that he went through a legitimately traumatic childhood based on factors that were beyond his control. Erik Lehnsherr was a Jewish child caught up in the Holocaust, Aleksander was an outcast among outcasts, forced to live on the run with a litany of acquired names – in fact, I’ve only just realized that Aleksander’s alias in this short story is Eryk, and on reflection, I doubt that’s a coincidence.
Secondly, he’s one of those villains that has a genuinely noble purpose: to provide safety and succour to his people, who are feared and hated for their gifts throughout the rest of the world. Again, like Magneto, it all falls apart when it comes to the way in which he pursues these goals, which requires not only the ruthless treatment of his enemies (many of whom are ordinary civilians) but also his own people, who are treated as little more than pawns in service of a greater goal.
Do the ends justify the means? That’s really the question that hangs over the character from start to finish. So in crafting his backstory (or at least this glimpse of it, obviously more shit had to have gone down since he’s literally hundreds of years old) Bardugo comes up with a surprisingly clever and psychologically sound scenario that accounts for his mentality throughout the original trilogy.
Aleksander and his mother are constantly on the move, hiding from the otkazat'sya (that is, ordinary folk) in any number of Grisha encampments, who are themselves wary of the two rare shadow summoners. A core part of the world’s lore is that certain creatures and humans are amplifiers – that is, if they are killed and their bones worn as trophies, can lend strength and power to already-existing Grisha – and the latest encampment of Grisha are excited at the news of a bear in the area that is certain to be an amplifier.
Aleksander strikes up a tentative friendship with a girl called Annika, whose mother was killed by drüskelle (witch hunters) and who wants to enhance her own weak abilities by killing the bear.
SPOILERS
Having failed in this task, and on realizing that Aleksander himself is an amplifier when he saves her life, Annika lures him to a hot pool and tries to kill him to add his power to her own. In defending himself, both Annika and another boy from the village end up dead. So not only is he hunted by the outside world, but is mistrusted and betrayed from within his tiny circle of would-be allies, neatly accounting for his hated of otkazat'sya (who rule the world that forces his people to live in hiding) and mistrust of his own people (who out of desperation, can and will hurt each other to protect themselves).
Just as we sympathize with Aleksander, there’s also room to feel pity for Annika, who was driven to attack her new friend/quasi love-interest out of fear – her mother has already been murdered by drüskelle, and she doesn’t have the power she needs to defend her little sister from a hostile world. She even apologizes and is crying as she attempts to go through with her murder plot, and it’s all just terribly sad.
Like I said, villain apologists are usually obnoxious as heck (Darkling ones are no exception) but I could build a case for Aleksander having cause and motive for doing most of the terrible things he’ll later do. And suffice to say, this backstory is a million times better, more nuanced, more poignant and tragic then just stabbing Lucy Griffiths to death (which is what the Netflix show went with).
Enola Holmes: Mycroft’s Dangerous Game by Nancy Springer, Mickey George and Giorgia Sposito
There’s not a lot to say about this one. Ostensibly meant to bridge the gap between the two Netflix films (with all the characters being rendered as their filmic counterparts) this ends up being a negligible addition to canon, with nothing to explain why Mycroft might be absent for the sequel, or in setting up anything for that subsequent movie. It’s not bad, just a wee bit pointless.
Enola wants to retrieve the book on the language of flowers that her mother gifted her for her sixteenth birthday, and which Mycroft confiscated during the course of the first film. She breaks into his office, just in time to witness her brother being kidnapped by the All London Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (or Alarm) for reasons unknown. Calling in the help of characters like Viscount Tewkesbury, Edith Garrud, Inspector Lestrade and a street-runner called Shag (was that really the best name they could come up with?) Enola puts herself on the case.
It's a welcome surprise that the story was written by Nancy Springer, the author of the original Enola Holmes books, but although she again has a shrewd eye for how Enola’s key strength is in drawing upon connections with other women to get ahead (here it’s the secretary for the police department) it’s a little strange that anarchists are the baddies planting a bomb at Parliament. Yes, anarchists are generally bad news, but in a series that has so far been about upheaving the status quo and casting marginalized figures as heroes, it’s an odd move to pick far-left operatives as your baddies.
But artist Giorgia Sposito does an amazing job at capturing the facial expressions of the cast, especially some of Mille Bobby Brown’s reactions. Altogether it’s not bad – just needless.
The Dragon Prince: Bloodmoon Huntress by Nicole Andelfinger and Felia Hanakata
This was a strange one. Part of Netflix’s The Dragon Prince canon, it tells a story of Rayla’s childhood after she’s been left with Runaan and Ethari by her mother and father who are off to protect the last dragon egg. This makes them great patriots, but really shitty parents.
Rayla naturally isn’t at all happy about this abandonment, and it’s an adjustment for the young couple as well, especially as Runaan has a secret career as a master spy and assassin. He and Rayla clash, making Ethari the man in the middle, though she’s both intrigued and horrified when she discovers Runaan’s true calling. (When we first meet her in the Netflix show, she’s on her first mission as an assassin, so the story here has a slightly weird subtext about how sometimes it’s okay to murder people).
With the harvest moon festival soon approaching, Rayla is essentially told to mind her own business, only for her to stumble upon a distraught Skywing elf-child who claims his entire family is being held hostage by a Moonshadow sorceress. This woman is known by legend as the Bloodmoon Huntress, and honestly, she’s like nothing we’ve ever seen in this franchise before. She’s essentially a vampire, and she just doesn’t fit with the world that’s been established on the show.
Rayla and her adoptive daddies end up defeating the huntress, though she’s not fully defeated, making me wonder if she’s going to turn up in the show at some point. Not sure how I feel about that, since – as stated – she’s a rather incongruous addition to the mythos. Also, it feels like there was an obsession here with introducing different types of alien food in this book: ruby potatoes, star-seed biscuits, dew-flower jelly, voltberry jam, mushcups, sootheberry cream, razzleberries, bittersquash, honeyburst rainbow grapes – OMG, WE GET IT. They’re magical elves living in a magical forest eating magical food. Yeesh.
But the artwork matches the tone and style of the show to perfection, and little Rayla is extremely cute, not to mention exhibiting the types of traits that define her older counterpart in the show. And of course, the theme of leaving the people you love for the greater good is part of what defined her choices and character arc in season three/four. It’s worth a read if you’re a fan of this particular franchise, though I’ve yet to see how it will tie into the greater story at work.
Little Miss Stoneybrook... and Dawn by Anne M. Martin
The ordering of this particular cycle (seven books per seven babysitters) is a bit odd: it started with Kristy, Claudia and Stacey, as usual, then veered into Mallory as she took her place as the newest member of the club. You’d think Jessi would be next, as the second Junior member, or Mary Anne, who usually goes fourth in the cycle, but instead it’s Dawn, juggling two distinct plotlines: the Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant and the permanent departure of her brother Jeff to California.
In the latter case, this development has been seeded for a while, as Jeff has constantly been getting into trouble at school, citing his homesickness for California as the reason for his bad behaviour. Now, his mother finally relents and allows him to return, much to the tears and frustration of Dawn.
Perhaps the most striking element of the subplot is that Jeff is delighted to be going home, and demonstrates not the slightest ounce of regret or sorrow for leaving his mother and sister, who are both distraught at his leaving. It lends a bitter quality to the story, but a sadly realistic one. Nine-year-old boys are not particularly sensitive to the emotional needs of others.
The A-plot is not quite as strong, which involves most of the babysitters getting involved in a beauty pageant held for the little girls in Stoneybrook. Because this was written in 1989, Martin gives lip-service to the fact that pageants are sexist and outdated, but she also clearly wants to write about one, so settles on “sexist but fun” as a defense.
The gist of the underlying tension among the girls doesn’t make a lot of sense: because Charlotte Johansson misses Stacey, she specifically requests that Claudia be her babysitter, something the other girls react to with grace and understanding. Hah, just kidding. They get ludicrously jealous of each other and once they’re roped into helping Margo, Claire, Karen, Myriah and Charlotte prepare for the pageant (or most cases, goading the girls into entering the pageant) they stake their entire sense of self-worth on winning and thus proving themselves to be the best child-carer, even though the correlation between babysitting and pageantry is tenuous at best.
Their competitiveness bleeds over into the contestants, who get frazzled at the resentfulness their sitters are emanating at each other, and nobody ends up winning anyway.
Look, I’ve so far been patient with the fact these girls are technically just thirteen, but they’re all completely awful in this one – ironically it’s “junior members” Mallory and Jessi who demonstrate the most maturity over the whole thing, correctly pointing out that pageants are as stupid as they are harmful, as well as Myriah, who was genuinely talented and delighted to come in second place since the prize was a voucher for the local toy-store.
Jessi’s Secret Language by Anne M. Martin
So this was an exciting milestone (relatively speaking) in my re-read of this series, since it’s not only the first Jessi book, but also the first volume that I had never read before. I’m not sure how I missed it in my childhood, since it’s an early title and I was practically neck-deep in The Babysitters Club books at that stage of my life, but Jessi’s Secret Language managed to elude me.
It also turns out to be the introduction to the Braddock family, who I’m pretty sure is the last family to become a regular babysitting client in the series going forward (the Arnold twins are still coming, but they never really turned up much after their introductory book, and other “very special” children like Susan and Lou are just one-and-dones).
Anyway, the first Jessi book is touching in the sense that she (still self-conscious about being one of the only Black people in this entire town) bonds with another genuinely marginalized child, the deaf Matt Braddock (none of that “I come from a big family, so I’m also a victim of prejudice,” MALLORY). That said, there’s really not much of a story here. Aside from a brief run-in with Jenny Prezzioso, Matt is supported and encouraged by the entire community, with the neighbourhood kids becoming fascinated by the “secret language” of signing and learning the basics in order to better communicate with him.
Jessi comes up with the idea to take Matt and his class to her ballet production of Coppélia (in which she plays the lead, to the consternation of a couple of her fellows, another extremely minor conflict) and it goes off without a hitch. It’s basically a Very Special Episode about deafness, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and Martin gets a couple of nice insights into human nature. I particularly liked Jessi basking in the approval bestowed upon her once her plan goes into effect: “I was beaming. Everyone, at least once in their life, deserves such praise.”
Midnight’s Twins by Holly Race
Have you ever read a book and not been entirely sure what to make of it? That’s how I felt with Midnight’s Twins, something I’ve had checked out of the library for a while (it’s the first of a trilogy) but only recently gotten around to. Weirdly, it reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones and Alan Garner, only in the sense that it drew upon Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend to tell its story, and that it required the same amount of careful attention from the reader in order to keep up with what was going on. That’s basically where the similarities ended, but the underlying, indescribable vibe remained.
Fern is a fifteen-year old Londoner who has never felt like she fit in. Her teenage angst is more understandable than most, as she genuinely doesn’t fit in: her strange red irises and terrible burn scars have made her something of a social pariah, not helped by the estrangement that exists between herself and her twin brother Ollie. Her mother died when she was a child, her father clearly considers Ollie the favourite, and her future stepmother tries way too hard. So, like all teenage misfits who don’t belong anywhere, she’s thrilled at her induction into a secret, magical world.
Annwn is the world that people inhabit while they’re asleep, and the collective force of their subconscious imagination fills it with all manner of strange creatures, landmarks and (occasionally) nightmares. It’s a symbiotic relationship, as Annwn also inspires people in the ordinary waking world, spurring them towards success in whatever field they work in. This dream-realm is protected by knights assigned to various roles, an order Fern is desperate to join. But unlike her brother, who is also one of the chosen, Fern’s position among the knights is more tenuous, and she must do more to prove herself worthy of the belonging she so desperately covets.
So, the good stuff: Fern is a great heroine, someone who's bitter and resentful of the world and does her fair share of enraged internal monologuing, but when you read about the full extent of the trauma she’s gone through (so much so, that’s I’m not entirely sure I bought her eventual reconciliation with her brother) you can understand where she’s coming from. I was actually impressed that she wasn’t more imbittered, and it makes her palpable longing for a place among the knights even more poignant.
She’s also pitted against a fairly formidable villain: a former knight known as Sebastian Medraut (as you seeing the Arthurian connection?) who knows all the tricks of Annwn and is applying them to his real-world political campaign. A populist leader, he’s extremely good at drumming up fear and hostility toward those that don’t belong, and with her burn scars and strange eyes, Fern definitely falls into that category. To make things worse, Medraut has a secret connection to Fern’s deceased mother, and her investigation into her mother’s history in the archives of Annwn brings about several unforeseen revelations (including one of those patented “this seemingly trustworthy character is actually a bad guy” twists).
The not-so-good stuff: in many ways it’s a difficult book to read. This is not necessarily a bad thing – I’ve already cited Diana Wynne Jones and Alan Garner, two authors who are also committed to making a reader WORK for an understanding of their texts, but in this case it’s a little unclear just what’s going on at times. Fern’s strong narrative voice carries us through, but I can pretty much guarantee that this time next year, I’ll have absolutely no memory of what happened in this book. The author masterfully strings out the reason behind the twins’ animosity, but when the reveal comes, it’s apparent that what Ollie did to his sister is so appalling I’m not entirely sure either one could come back from it without a serious apology and plenty of therapy (which neither actually gets).
And yet, I’m currently halfway through the second book in the trilogy, so clearly SOMETHING caught my interest. It’s surprisingly dark at times, with Fern exploring the capacity for evil within herself and at least one important characters dying in an abrupt, tragic way. The prose is fairly good, and Fern has a strong narrative voice. And though I think the concept of Annwn is a little underdeveloped, it does lead to several good twists. I’ll let you know what I think of A Gathering Midnight.
The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman
Author Lev Grossman is best known for The Magicians trilogy, something you’d never want to put into the hands of a child, which makes his foray into children’s literature all the more interesting (you could say that about any author who is originally better known for adult fiction).
Kate and Tom are siblings who long for adventure, though when one finally turns up – a huge steam engine delivered to them by their irresponsible Uncle Herbert – they’re not entirely sure what to think of it. Soon enough they’re speeding along a magical railway, picking up animals for reasons that aren't entirely clear, and dropping them off at other stations. Though there’s plenty of wish fulfilment at work (one of the carriages is a library; another is a sweetshop) there’s something else going on – some secret, vastly important mission they’ve been sent on.
I couldn’t help but compare this story to how the Magicians trilogy was plotted, since each of those three books involved a twist halfway through that flipped everything on its head, whether it was a secret identity revealed or a hidden motivation uncovered. There’s nothing like that here; instead Grossman goes for an underlying environmentalist message, which manages to be neither too heavy-handed nor too subtle.
It’s presented through a discussion about invasive species being introduced to habitats where they don’t belong and which inevitably disrupt the natural balance of things (Eugene Schieffelin and his bizarre goal of introducing every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to North America is brought up) and ties into the destinations of the animal passengers that Kate and Tom invite onboard.
So not what I expected, but very charming in its own way, and certainly much less nihilistic than The Magicians. It is for kids after all, and what kid doesn’t love a magical train? Especially one with custom-made carriages that cater to your specific interests.
The Ministry of Unladylike Activity by Robin Stevens
I just managed to squeeze this in before the year ended. I was a big fan of Stevens’ previous serious, the Murder Most Unladylike books, in which schoolgirls Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong solve a variety of mysteries in the 1920s (often based on Agatha Christie novels). Now the torch has been passed to Hazel’s little sister May, who – despite only being eleven – is determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps.
However, things are a little difficult considering the country is at war. World War II has started, and nobody has much time for little girls, especially ones like May, who are stranded in England (when the fighting broke out, her father hurried home to his wife and new-born son, and lost the opportunity to send for May). She hates Deepdean School for Girls, and so runs away to London, eventually disguising herself as an evacuee and getting transported to Elysium Hall, where she believes something untoward is happening.
With her is Eric Jones, another young immigrant (hiding his German heritage) and Fionnuala O'Malley, an unwanted relative to the owners of Elysium Hall, who heralds from Ireland and misses it terribly. The three don’t instantly get off on the right foot, but as strange occurrences disturb life at the Hall, culminating in a murder, the trio realize they have to work together to get to the bottom of it.
Robin Stevens has always had a good eye for strong characterization. The mystery gets a little convoluted this time around, with several extremely-hard-to-swallow coincidences, but she nails the dynamic of the three protagonists, the dysfunctionality of the family they’re forced to live with, and the mounting stress and horror of the war being raged around them. Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of WWII will prick up their ears at the setting’s proximity to Coventry, and things like blackouts and bomb shelters are incorporated into the day-to-day lives of the characters.
May is the exact opposite of her sister – tenacious and outspoken where Hazel was shy and observant, but she’s backed up well by the introverted animal-lover Eric and theatre-kid Fionnuala. The story is told through the diary entries/reports of the girls, and Roberts does a good job at differentiating between the two voices (hopefully Eric will get a chance to speak for himself in later books). As with the Enola Holmes books, which have inspired author Nancy Springer to write more since the Netflix movie, I’m glad it’s not the end for Daisy and Hazel either, even if they’ve made way for a new generation of detectives.
West Side Story (1961)
As with The Ministry of Unladylike Activity, this is something I just managed to watch before the year ended, having finished it on the last day of December. It made for a nice bookend considering I saw Steven Spielburg’s remake at the start of the year, and going back in time to the original filmic adaptation naturally threw up all sorts of comparisons and contrasts.
Obviously the premise is the same: based on the stage musical, it’s a retelling of Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers are in the middle of a New York turf war between two gangs: the Caucasian Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. As the gangs organize a rumble to determine once and for all who owns the streets, Tony and Maria fall in love at a dance hall and make plans to run away together.
But Tony’s best friend Riff (Mercutio) and Maria’s brother Bernado (Tybalt) are the leaders of each respective gang, and their mounting hostility towards each other leads to fatal bloodshed. Look, it’s Romeo and Juliet, you pretty much know where this is going. (For the most part. I suppose Maria doesn’t suffer the same fate as Juliet, and Bernado is a much more sympathetic character than Tybalt).
It struck me that although this adaptation has dated in many ways, it has the exact same amount of energy as Spielburg’s film, and the dance choreography is impeccable, right down to the clicks and the whistles. The more recent film does some clever shifting of its songs, most obviously in pushing back “I Feel Pretty” so that Maria’s lovestruck joy takes place (unbeknownst to her) after Bernado’s death, and “Cool” is reformulated as a confrontation between Riff and Tony.
The later adaptation also has more freedom to play with camera movement and angles, whilst this feels very stagey in its production. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but aside from the birds-eye view shots of New York that open the movie, there’s little here that you couldn’t conceivably see play out in the same way on the stage.
It’s more than a little excruciating to watch some of the actors, who are very obviously white with a garish tan and having their singing voices subbed in by more talented performers, but I wasn’t remotely surprised to see that Rita Moreno's Anita stole the show (though in both cases, it’s a shame the story ends before there’s a reckoning between herself and Maria over the lie she tells). Having watched it, I feel a greater understanding as to why the musical is as beloved as it is, and ready to rewatch the 2021 version again.
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
I really wanted to squeeze in one more Miyazaki film before the year ended, and this one vibed well with another of his most gentle offerings: Kiki’s Delivery Service, which I watched in July. This is one of the few Studio Ghibli films I don’t have on DVD, so it’s been a while since I last saw it.
Set in 1950s Japan, university professor Tatsuo Kusakabe and his daughters Satsuki (ten) and Mei (four) move to an old house in the country to be closer their wife/mother, who is recovering from a prolonged illness in the nearby hospital. For the girls it’s an adventure, one in which exploring the house, meeting the neighbours, and finding a large camphor tree is just as exciting as discovering soot spirits, meeting the titular Totoro, and riding the extraordinary cat bus.
Much like Kiki’s Delivery Service, the stakes are not particularly high – at least not until the last ten minutes when little Mei goes missing and is believed drowned after a child’s sandal is found in the pond, but that situation soon resolves itself. Instead, Hayao Miyazaki is content to drift through the plot, spending as much time on Mei picking flowers in the garden or Satsuki interacting with her lovestruck neighbour/classmate Kanto as with the more preternatural experiences.
And because so much lavish attention is spent on the day-to-day rhythms of the girls’ lives, the incursions from or to the spirit world feel all the more extraordinary by comparison. The scene in which the girls are waiting by the bus-stop under their umbrella, only to realize that Totoro has been standing beside them for some time, is truly magical.
With this latest rewatch, two things occurred to me. The first is that despite the sorrow of their mother’s absence hanging over them across the course of the film, the story does not end with the girls welcoming her to the new house. She’s still in hospital when the credits roll, though with a vocal assertion that she’s going to try and get better as soon as possible. It’s a strange choice, but one that might well be more reassuring to any child also struggling to cope with a parent’s illness, knowing that it’s not going to just disappear overnight.
The other is that I’m not entirely sure what to make of Totoro. He’s cuddly and harmless, but he lacks the personality or warmth of other “child guardians” like Aslan or Kermit or Mickey Mouse. Naturally, there’s a bit of the uncanny about him, which I’m sure was deliberate, but I’d love the opportunity to ask a child how they feel about him (there was something about the eyes that ever-so-slightly creeped me out, and of course, he only ever speaks in loud wordless bellows). Perhaps I’ve just committed some form of blasphemy by admitting that, but there you go.
Miyazaki’s true gift has always been in making the ordinary seem utterly fascinating, and in capturing the behavioural quirks of his human characters. You’ve SEEN these people in real life, and Mei in particular reminds me so much of my little sister as a child: a little podgy and relentlessly determined to keep up with her older sister. That LOOK she gets on her face when Satsuki takes off and she churns her little legs in the attempt to follow, clutching an ear of corn the whole time. There’s one adorable moment early on when she gets a fright and takes off, only to run around in a large circle and end up exactly where she started. And then there’s the time she asks her father when lunch is, after they’ve just finished breakfast...
It probably doesn’t crack my top three Miyazaki films, and it didn’t feature quite so heavily in my early exploration of his work as the likes of Spirited Away or Kiki’s Delivery Service did, but this film more than any other in his repertoire has inspired so many others since its release, from Pixar Studios (a soft toy Totoro cameos in Toy Story 3) to Avatar: The Last Airbender (once you see the cat-bus, the conception of Aang the air-bison becomes clear).
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
I’m not sure what astounds me more – that it’s been twenty years since this film was released in cinemas, or that it’s been one whole year since I went round to my friend’s house and saw The Fellowship of the Ring in accordance with its release date anniversary.
In keeping with this newfound tradition, we followed it up with The Two Towers last week, and it brought back so many great memories of seeing this at midnight on opening night with my group of high-school friends. I so rarely get excited about movies these days, and the nostalgia factor heightened my enjoyment exponentially.
The Two Towers is in that most difficult position of any trilogy: the middle. You can’t start anything and you can’t finish anything. Sometimes this can work to the story’s advantage – after all, I doubt there’s anyone who would deny that The Empire Strikes Back isn’t the best film in the original Star Wars trilogy, and it’s from that film we can identify the strengths of any good middle instalment. You can generally expect the core characters to split up on separate quests of varying importance, and there will be new characters that shake up the dynamics of the cast. The stakes will be raised, and the boundaries of the world expanded to include new environments and locales.
The story has to be relatively self-contained, and yet provide follow-up from what’s come before and whet one’s appetite for what’s still to come. And in my opinion, it’s a good idea to have the protagonists on the backfoot, letting the bad guys walk off with a victory just to remind us of the strength and danger they pose.
All this is as true of The Two Towers as it is The Empire Strikes Back – except that last point. If anything, I think it would have served the film to end on a more somber note for our heroes. More than just Gollum’s dark allusion to that mysterious “she”.
Watching it all these years later, a few things stuck out. The plot very much turns on two narrative objects: Gollum and Rohan. The former provides a complex array of dynamics (trust, obsession, betrayal, projection) between himself, Frodo, Sam and the Ring, while on a macro-level, the kingdom of Rohan provides the setting for most of the action. The main players are introduced, the jeopardy in which the place finds itself is established, and the climactic battle is fought in defense of its very existence.
Surprisingly, the main villain is Saruman, who poses the biggest threat to both Rohan and Fangorn Forest (where Merry and Pippin’s subplot takes place). For now at least, Sauron lingers on the periphery of the action, represented by just a few appearances of the Ringwraiths. It’s a wise decision given that he’s a. not a disembodied spirit, and b. played by Christopher Lee. Work with what you’ve got.
The unexpected MVP this time around was Bernard Hill as King Théoden. It’s a hugely underrated performance, and yet Hill pulls off the insufferable pride of a king, the innate frailty of a man, the gentleness of a devoted uncle with his niece Éowyn, and inner reserves of strength when the need arises. I’d never appreciated just what he brought to the role before, but I do now.
Other things resonated more as well. For the first time, I really felt Arwen’s grief in a way I obviously couldn’t as a teenager, and her prolonged vision of Aragorn’s death and the inevitable onslaught of time hits much differently now. I also realized that I’m not all that fussed with the changes made to Faramir’s characterization (the flashback to his time in Osgiliath with Boromir and Denethor goes a long way toward contextualizing his decisions) and I can very much sympathise with Peter Jackson’s conundrum in having no obstacles for Frodo to face once the decision to push back Shelob was made.
The extended edition adds a whopping forty-five minutes to the theatrical cut, though honestly, I was hard-pressed to notice what had been added. There’s a brand-new introduction to the main players in the Rohan royal court, but it feels so essential to establishing the dynamics between them that I’m genuinely stumped over whether or not our original first glimpse of Éomer was when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli happen upon him on the Riddermark. That seems incredible after all the court intrigue of the extended cut, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
It's also so unapologetically long. Again, it seems incredible that Faramir doesn’t turn up until the very last scene of the first disc, and yet there’s never anything that drags or seems unnecessary. A frequent comment while we were watching was: “I can’t believe we haven’t even reached [this scene] yet!” Jackson should also be commended on how he expertly weaves together the three subplots (Rohan, Gollum, the Ents) without one ever drawing too much from the others – every time they cut away I was both disappointed that we were leaving one, and yet eager to get back to the other two.
My only problems are little niggles. I wish the two kids fleeing from their burning village had been reunited with their father rather than their mother at Helm’s Deep, to drive home the latter’s sacrifice in giving them the last horse. It bugged me that the people of Rohan were depicted as dirty, straggly-haired peasants, instead of a wider range of social-strata. Éowyn tearfully hugging Aragorn at the conclusion of the siege really should have been her tearfully hugging Éomer considering their long separation (and I’m annoyed that her defence of the women in the Glittering Caves didn’t even make it onto the extended cut). That the wargs look like hyenas and not wolves (with badly dated CGI) still annoys me, as do all the Shortland Street actors – though that’s probably just a kiwi problem.
And couldn’t they have gotten someone other than John Rhys Davis to voice Treebeard? It’s clearly Gimli’s voice, and it’s a little distracting. There were really no other baritones available?
But all of this is nothing in the face of the gorgeous images that the film provides, all the more so because you know they’re real and not composed on a green-screen with computer effects (as they would be today). The horses, the stunts, the sets, the New Zealand landscapes – we will never see another production like this one. Heck, not even The Hobbit trilogy made by the exact same people could manage it. Thank God I still have The Return of the King to look forward to, even if I’m going to force myself to wait another year before seeing it again.
Trick or Treat Scooby Doo! (2022)
I’ll admit, I saw this because I knew it involved Velma coming out as gay, which is honestly a terrible reason to watch something, but I was curious. Plus, I loved Scooby Doo as a kid.
As it happened, the depiction of her preferences is blissfully understated. She gets a crush on the movie’s villain and makes several awkward attempts at flirting with her. That’s it. The fact that the object of her crush is a criminal mastermind is no source of angst, as the flirtation doesn’t get very far, and the two part on friendly terms when Coco inevitably has to go back to prison after helping the gang with their latest mystery.
The gist of the plot is that Mystery Incorporated has ended up a victim of its own success. After realizing that all the criminals they catch have one thing in common – elaborate costumes that they use to scare people away from their real estate scams – they track down the designer, one Coco Diabolo. She’s what you get if you cross Dr Evil with Edna Mode, but once she’s behind bars, the mysteries dry up.
Fred takes it particularly hard, so when a ghost appears at the Halloween fair he leaps at the chance to split up and look for clues. Due to the elaborate costume involved in the attack, they’re forced to work with Diablo (who has a great character design) much to Velma’s combined delight and mortification.
It wasn’t until after watching this that I found out there have been thirty-four of these Scooby Doo home-video movies, which is genuinely astonishing to me. I’ve seen a few across the years, and if memory serves, they tend to lean more towards the supernatural (in contrast to the original cartoon, which always revealed a human culprit) though that's ultimately not the case here. There are also plenty of in-jokes and cameos from the most famous episodes, and Matthew Lillard voices Shaggy, reprising his live-action role from back in the early noughts.
And of course, there’s a chase montage, scooby snacks, and Velma losing her glasses. Also, one extremely funny visual gag, which reveals that Coolsville Elementary School is right next to the penitentiary. It’s about what you’d expect from a Scooby Doo mystery: hardly a classic, but fun while it lasts.
The Curse of Bridge Hollow (2022)
Watching this reminded me that Hocus Pocus was a flop on release, so keep your eye on this one. It may yet turn out to be a cult classic. Maybe. Don’t put any money on it, but keep an open mind.
The Gordon family are moving to the small New England town of Bridge Hollow, though naturally their teenaged daughter Sydney is unhappy about it, despite the community’s impressively low crime rates. Still, she perks up a little when she notices how seriously this place takes its Halloween decorations, even if it means she butts heads with her father Howard, who places no stock in the supernatural and wants everything to be grounded in scientific explanations.
He's basically a grinch, but for Halloween. His thing is being aggressively scientifically-minded to the point where he shuts down his daughter’s interest in spooky stories, which is a bit of a weird hang-up that left me silently pleading that the movie not tie it in with a childhood trauma (but of course, it does).
When Sydney ends up lighting a lantern belonging to Stingy Jack, a magical spell brings all the Halloween decorations to life, which promptly unleash chaos on the township. In a nice touch, the father/daughter team-up use science-based solutions to get ahead of the possessed decorations, and Sydney’s ninja skills (which she learnt on her father’s insistence) come in handy.
So Howard learns to let his daughter discover her own interests, Sydney learns that sometimes dads know best, and their wife/mother learns that she should just use normal ingredients in baked goods instead of making everything vegan and gluten free. Yeah, she didn’t get the greatest arc.
Basically, it’s a perfectly serviceable low-budget Halloween special. Priah Ferguson (Erica from Stranger Things) puts in a solid performance here, and Marlon Wayans mercifully keeps himself in check – he can’t quite get rid of the silly faces, but it’s nice to see him toned down from the Scary Movie days, and he manages a very cute father/daughter rapport. There are some fun set-pieces (the rest home, the maze in the gym) and the clowns are suitably freaky. Also, just after I wrote “there’s a lot of woolly sweaters in this movie,” the mayor drives up and delivers some exposition by using the pictures on her knitted sweater as a visual aid.
And believe it or not, this lover of folklore had no idea that Stingy Jack was a real story. I’m going to have to research that one some more...
Wendell and Wild (2022)
I have to admit I’ve never been a huge fan of the type of aesthetic found in Wendell and Wild. I love stop-motion, but this is of the spiky, macabre quality that just feels grotesque on a visceral level. That is naturally a very deliberate and sustained choice to make, but I was left thinking: how did this get made? Not because it’s bad, but because everything about it is just so bizarre.
Five seconds into the runtime, and young Kat Elliot is orphaned after a car accident that she’s responsible for. Shuffled into the foster care system, her increasingly antisocial behaviour sees her return to her hometown and the all-girls Catholic school, where a sudden physic premonition saves her from a falling brick.
Meanwhile, a couple of demons (voiced by Key and Peele, and looking pretty much like them as well!) are busy eking out an existence in the nostrils of their father, Buffalo Belzer. As small as ticks upon his massive form, they spend their days plopping rejuvenating hair cream on each hair of their balding father’s scalp and dreaming of running an amusement park for the souls of the dead.
This is where it gets weird(er). It turns out that Kat is what’s known as a “hell maiden”, and on discovering this, Wendell and Wild appear to her in a dream, beseeching her to summon them to the world of the living in exchange for returning her parents back to life. No orphan alive could pass up an offer like that...
Throw in an evil teddy bear, a murderous corporation known as Klax Korp, a transgender girl with a secret art project, a tube of hair cream that can resurrect the dead, a helpful but secretive nun, and plenty of forays between the realms of the living and the dead, and you’ve got what is truly the strangest movie I’ve seen in a long time.
Like I said, there’s a spiky look to all the characters that make them seem like paper cut-outs; lending the film a very distinct aesthetic. It’s like a mixture of James and the Giant Peach, Corpse Bride and (in the case of the two titular characters) the imps from Disney’s animated Hercules, in a story that’s part Faust, part Key and Peele skit. I’m not sure I’ll ever watch it again, but I can certainly say it was unique.
The Invitation (2022)
Have you ever watched a movie desperately wanting it to be better than it actually is? I couldn’t help but be reminded of Ready Or Not, given that both films are about young women having to survive a Gothic mansion full of crazy people, but that contrast only highlights how inferior The Invitation is by comparison.
Having lost both her parents, Evie Jackson lives a life of profound loneliness. On giving herself a DNA test, she discovers she has distant relatives in England and a second-cousin who contacts her, wanting to form a relationship. They hit it off (kind of) and she accepts his invitation to attend the wedding of two more relatives. On arrival, she’s taken to a stunning mansion where the ceremony is to take place and is introduced to the owner, the very charming and handsome Walter de Ville.
SPOILERS
I went in vaguely aware that this was a spin on Dracula, but rather than being an updated retelling, it’s actually something of a sequel (if you assume Dracula did not in fact die at the end of the book, which let’s face it, he never does. As Buffy once said: “you always come back.”) The film even tries to throw in a bit of lore-building, in which the three brides of Dracula are revealed to have come from three ancient families that serve him. By having them as his brides, both he and the extended families can enjoy the immortality and preternatural strength of being a vampire. Er, okay.
This is precisely why the family is so delighted to find out about Evie’s existence: they need her to continue the tradition of offering up a heredity daughter as a wife to their master.
I guess it’s not a bad premise, so what went wrong? First of all, it takes WAY too long to get to what we’re all waiting for: the reveal that Evie is surrounded by vampires. Seriously, it’s over an hour before she realizes what’s going on, followed by a paltry twenty-five minutes of her trying to escape/fight back. This is because it takes a lot of time to set things up: establishing her isolation, having her connect with her cousin, taking the flight to England, meeting and flirting with Walter, preparing for the wedding, steadfastly ignoring all the massive red flags being waved frantically around her...
With just a little wrangling, all this could have been fixed. Like, drop all the DNA testing stuff and have her already know about the English side of the family who are distant because she’s the offspring of an illegitimate black sheep, only to have one close cousin that’s deliberately been keeping an eye on her (just in case, which turns out serendipitous since one of the wives kills herself). Then he invites her to his own wedding because everyone wants to offer her an olive branch after the recent death of her mother.
Boom, this cuts out about half-an-hour of set-up, and removes the preposterous notion that a woman would travel to another country with a cousin she’s just met to attend the wedding of people she doesn’t know. (If you want a movie that sets up a fairly elaborate scenario with much more elegance and panache, I again refer you to Ready Or Not).
There’s also the subplot of five maids that are brought in to prepare the house for the wedding. A huge amount of time is spent on their consecutive death scenes, but since we never get to know any of them, nothing about them really matters (beyond the fact that Evie establishes a rapport with one of them, which comes in handy at the climax).
Nathalie Emmanuel is very beautiful and winsome, but she never really sells her character’s loneliness, terror or determination. Even when the fetters come off and it’s time to unleash in a feral way, she’s still remarkably polite about it all.
There is one thing I really liked: that Evie’s race isn’t ignored when it comes to how she’s treated and how she treats others. Like I said, the fact that she learns the name and establishes a rapport with one of the maids is an important factor in how she survives, which exists in stark contrast to the way in which her class and race is commented on by the rest of the family (one of the other “bridesmaids” at the wedding pointedly touches her hair when they’re introduced). In this, it’s also a little like Get Out – complete with a Black best friend who spends the duration of the film desperately trying to contact her friend – though there’s nothing here that comes even close to the cathartic arrival of Rod in his airport police vehicle.
It's simply a matter of comparison. It’s not unwatchable, but there’s so much stuff out there that’s worked with the same type of material to much better effect. I want to recommend it, I really do, but you’re better off with Ready Or Not.
Avatar 2: The Way of Water (2022)
Yes, I saw the thing. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have if someone else hadn’t paid for my movie ticket (it was a family outing) since there’s really nothing about Avatar as a franchise that excites me.
The leadup to the film’s release has been tedious, and if I ever have to see the words “Dances with Smurfs” or “it left no cultural footprint” or “don’t bet against James Cameron” ever again, I may just scream. No matter what side of the debate people fall on, everyone has managed to be deeply obnoxious about this film, though it’s perhaps a testament to its substance that no one has anything interesting to say beyond those three platitudes.
It's been several years since we last saw Jack Sully and Neytiri. They’re still living on Pandora, and they’ve had three kids together (I've already forgotten their names) as well as adopting two more: Sigourney Weaver’s and Colonel Quaritch’s. The former is a Na’vi, the latter is human, but don’t ask me how either of those characters found the time or inclination to spawn offspring in the first film.
Humans have returned to Pandora, and this time they’re here to stay: Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable, so it’s no longer a mission to strip the land of resources, but a full-blown colonizing invasion. Remember unobtanium? Because no one in this movie does.
After trying to fight off the first waves of human incursion, Sully realizes his family is being specifically targeted by Colonel Quaritch’s backup plan, in which all his memories and training have been uploaded to an avatar so that he can seek vengeance for his own death. In response, Sully uproots his family and takes them to a tribe of Na’vi that live by the ocean, a place where his children struggle to adapt.
That’s essentially the first two hours of the film; the third one involves Quaritch finally catching up to them, and the assorted Sully clan trying to survive the onslaught.
The big drawcard are the visuals, but even then, the most gorgeous film in the world needs a decent story and characters. There’s not a lot here that we didn’t already see back in 2009, only without the first flush of novelty. Even the 3-D wasn’t a big deal this time around, though it strikes me as remarkable that once again it’s crossed the billion-dollar mark in box-office sales, while still not having any wider impact on popular culture. That’s history repeating!
And it reminded me why I just don’t bother going to movies at the cinema anymore, since we ended up on the same row as three pre-teen boys who weren’t there to watch a movie. They talked loudly to each other, they stood up and wandered about, they flashed their cell phones around, they spilt their drinks over each other – one was crawling around on the floor at one point. The movie was three hours long, and they had food enough for all three hours, so we were treated to the incessant rustling of chip packets and loud chomping noises every time there was a quiet moment.
After three separate people with varying degrees of patience told them to shut up, they finally settled down when an elderly woman informed them she’d call security and have them kicked out.
Why pay up to thirty dollars in order to be stuck babysitting a bunch of spoiled brats who can’t sit down and shut up for a few hours? What a waste of time and money. I can just wait a couple of months and head around to watch things on my friend’s massive television screen where we can relax on the couch and eat snacks and talk quietly and hit pause whenever we need a bathroom break. Sorry big-screen advocates, but the experience of being in a movie theatre just ain’t worth it anymore.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
I watched this on Christmas Eve with my folks and it was unsurprisingly a complete delight. Isn’t it great when you settle down to watch a film and you KNOW it’s going to be good? Daniel Craig (and his accent) is back as Benoit Blanc, slowly going mad under the lockdown restrictions of 2020. As such, he leaps at the chance to join billionaire Miles Bron for weekend party on his private island in Greece, along with an eclectic collection of guests: an influencer, a governor, a scientist, a men’s rights Youtuber, and their hangers-on.
The party has been promoted as a murder-mystery party, with Miles as the (pretend) murder victim, though Benoit is clearly savvy enough to sense that something else is going on here: there are rippling tensions among the guests, particularly directed at Cassandra “Andi” Brand, Miles’s former partner who he successfully cheated out of her share in the tech company they founded. What she’s doing here is anyone’s guess, though it’s obvious she’s arrived with a massive chip on her shoulder.
The aesthetic is very different from its predecessor Knives Out, which took place in a New England home crammed full of fascinating knickknacks, a place one character accurately described as “a Clue board.” The setting isn’t quite so charming this time around; a futuristic mansion filled with inexplicable tech, where the sandy beaches and azure ocean are overwhelmed by the gaudy décor (including a sportscar that just sits on the roof because the island is too small to drive it anywhere).
Likewise, the social commentary is more on-the-nose this time (not that Knives Out didn’t have its moments, but there’s also nothing in Glass Onion to compare to one of the guests thoughtlessly handing Marta – a hired nurse – a used dinner plate). Still, most of what’s presented here, from Edward Norton’s character being an Expy of Elon Musk (he's really done enough in the past two months to really make this film relevant) to Dave Bautista’s ludicrous MRA rants, are integrated into the story and characterization – it’s not just back-patting window-dressing.
But as in the first film, in which it’s Ana de Armas’s Marta and not Benoit Blanc who’s the real protagonist, Janelle Monáe ends up taking centre stage in another script-flip (reminiscent of the surprisingly early reveal in Knives Out of who really killed Harlan Thrombey) that throws everything we’ve seen up till that point into a brand-new light.
I think I’d probably have to see it a second time just to absorb all the details, but it’s a worthy successor to Knives Out, even if it doesn’t quite match its heights. There, the Thrombeys still felt like real people, even as they became steadily more awful as the movie went on; here the four “disruptors” and their cronies are described repeatedly as “shitheads” and are never anything else but shitheads. Which granted, is pretty much the point, but it does call into question how on earth any of these people came to be friends in the first place.
But it’s also one of those movies that you feel like a dickhead for criticising, simply because it’s everything people say they want in a film: funny, clever, exciting, suspenseful, with a slew of great actors (hats off to Edward Norton as well as Janelle Monáe and Daniel Craig) and a writer/director that knows what he wants to say and how to say it. Plus, it’s not a reboot, a remake or a sequel. Okay, technically it is a sequel, but it’s so standalone that it barely counts.
The Dragon Prince: Season 4 (2022)
It’s been three years since we last checked in with this show, and it returns with... a bit of a shrug. I’m not entirely sure what the gameplan was here, but after the fairly conclusive end to the third season (in which only a few threads are left dangling) it feels like the showrunners are resetting the board – just not in a particularly compelling way. This very much feels like setup to the next season, with a bunch of competing subplots that aren’t connected and don’t really go anywhere. Seriously, I don’t think any of the characters achieve their stated goals this time around.
This show’s biggest problem has always been its pacing, which stretches out interminably without pushing the plot forward. In any case, a two-year time skip allows for the main cast to do a little off-screen growing up: Ezran is king, Callum is a practising mage, Soren seems to be in charge of the castle guard, and Zym has gotten a whole lot bigger.
Elsewhere, Claudia has finally brought her father Viren back from the dead – though it comes with a caveat. In order for him to stay on this mortal plane, they must travel to the prison of Aaravos (a Startouch Elf, known as “the fallen star”, an incredibly dangerous Archmage) and set him free. Ignoring the fact this is obviously a profoundly bad idea, Viren, Claudia, and her boyfriend Terry start their journey, guided by the creepy butterfly-creature that’s been growing in a chrysalis since Viren’s demise. A lot of wheel-spinning commences.
And then there’s Rayla, the Moonshadow elf that joined forces with the enemy, delivered the dragon egg to safety, and fell in love with Callum along the way. Do you know a trope that I hate? Like really, really hate? When an ostensibly heroic character decides they have to go off alone to defeat the bad guy and so nobly sacrifice their romantic relationship by leaving their significant other behind without explanation or farewell, only to pop back up some time later and assume they can just pick things up where they left off. And although the story might allow the wronged character to be a bit peeved about this abandonment, the narrative is still squarely on the side of the “hero” and it’s only a matter of time before the relationship is resumed.
It’s even more bewildering in this case, as Rayla deciding she had to go after Viren is not only a complete failure of a mission (making me wonder what the heck she was doing in the last two years) but the breakup with Callum took place in a between-seasons graphic novel. Isn’t this content that should be in the actual show?
Look, I’m in this for the long haul, so it’s not like I’m going to abandon it now, but there were some very odd choices made time around (don’t get me started on how this season is subtitled “The Mystery of Aavaros”, though that character barely makes an appearance). Let’s hope they can right the ship going forward.
Star Trek Discovery: Season 4 (2022)
For my money, Star Trek Discovery gets better with every new season. That doesn’t mean it’s ever been blow-your-mind television, but each time around it feels like the writers have a better handle on the story and characters.
Now that Michael is in the captain’s chair and the Federation is gradually getting back on its feet, we’re in need of a new catastrophe that allows the crew of Discovery to rise to the occasion. It turns out to be a strange space anomaly that destroys planets (yeah, like the Death Star, but with more mysterious origins) though the real heart of the season lies in the fact that this cataclysmic event puts Michael and Book on opposite sides of how the Federation should respond.
Granted, this might have been more emotionally involving if we’d been given any reason to care about Michael and Book as a couple, but the actors at least sell their inner struggle even if the audience can’t quite feel it. Where the season succeeds is in creating a situation in which there are no easy answers, and the people involved – regardless of what side of the debate they fall on – are reasonable in the conclusions they draw and the actions they take.
Ultimately, it’s a story about scientific discovery and careful diplomacy, in which leaders are forced to balance out the magnitude of the threat with the Federation’s ideals, knowing all the while that there’s so much they don’t know. There are a few little subplots threaded throughout: Gray gets a new body, Adira finds their place on the ship, Saru kindles a romance with a Vulcan diplomat, and Tilly leaves to pursue new career options (she comes back for the last episode, but it would seem that Mary Wiseman is leaving the show permanently).
But the overarching story is one of the mystery and threat that the anomaly poses, and discussions on how best to deal with it. For my money, they resolve it pretty satisfactorily, with the impetus being on the Federation to act without panic or prejudice.
It’s mostly all the little things I enjoyed: expanded roles for Detmer, Owosekun and the rest of the bridge crew, a brief return from Nhan, plenty of female characters in positions of power and influence (suffice to say, this passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours) and Tig Notaro as Jett Reno (perhaps the only Star Trek actor whose real name could easily pass for a Star Trek one). Oh, and the reveal of who plays the President of Earth is a treat, though you’re probably already spoiled by now.
The Midnight Club: Season 1 (2022)
It soon becomes clear that The Midnight Club is not only an adaptation of Christopher Pike’s book of the same name, but many Christopher Pike novels, integrated into the runtime by the use of Nested Storytelling, in which the characters tell each other stories which are then performed by the same actors in the appropriate roles (usually the person that’s telling the story is cast as the protagonist).
This is a great way of integrating as many Pike books as possible into a limited series, though some aficionados might be disappointed at just how truncated stories like Gimme a Kiss, See You Later, Road to Nowhere and The Eternal Enemy end up being (they’re all full-length novels, but here have to be squeezed into episodes that also have their own “real-life” plot going on with the main cast).
It’s not always successful, but I’d rather watch a show that swings for the fences and tries to do something different than something that adheres to the same-old formula.
It’s the nineties, and Ilonka is looking forward to graduating high-school and attending college. Even if you knew nothing about where this show was headed, you’d probably be able to spot the warning signs flashing around her head: she’s first seen practicing her graduation day speech, a skeptical college girl says: “you look kinda young” when she sneaks into a party, she gushes about how young Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, and she repeatedly tells people: “I’m the youngest in my class.”
So yes, she’s very young, she has a bright and shining future ahead of her, and tragedy is about to hit. After a nosebleed, she’s diagnosed with thyroid cancer and given little more than a year to live. Not wanting to spend it in the hospital getting treatment she doesn’t think will work, she discovers a hospice called Brightcliffe on-line and decides to enrol – though not because she’s ready to throw in the towel.
On reading up on the history of the place, she’s fascinated to learn about a girl called Julia Jayne, who suffered from the exact same cancer that Ilonka has. Julia was a patient at Brightcliffe, only for her to disappear from the grounds and return several days later completely healed. Ilonka therefore, is not going to the hospice in search of finding peace, but of finding a cure.
She arrives at Brightcliffe, a nice but slightly creepy old house run by Doctor Stanton (played by Heather Lagenkamp in a great bit of casting) and meets the other young patients, who are themselves nice but slightly creepy. They’re at different stages of bitterness, denial or resignation, but Ilonka arrives with hope – which means that the moment things start getting weird (which is literally immediately; she walks in the front door and sees a woman’s corpse-like ghost) she sticks around.
There’s a chilling implication to her arrival – that there’s only room for her because another patient has recently passed away, and she’s now living in her room; sleeping in her bed. According to her roommate Anya, the deceased Rachel spent the last few weeks of her life trying all kinds of bizarre remedies in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, and furthermore was complaining of a strange “shadow” that was following her around the building.
Among the groups are different diseases and different backstories, and Ilonka soon picks up on the rivalries and friendships, tensions and crushes, heartaches and thwarted dreams that make up the residents of Brightcliffe, and joins them on their nightly excursions to the library, where they take turns telling scary stories by the fireplace. This is the Midnight Club, filled with rituals and mantras that add rhythm to their waning lives, and which is very much like Theseus’s ship, in that different people are continually stepping in to take the place of people who have departed.
The Midnight Club provides the framing device for the stories that each of the teenagers tell, which (as said) are performed by the same actors in the most appropriate roles and which reflect in some way on their own lives. I suspect this is where the show lost a lot of people, for as interesting and well-performed as each one is, they divert considerable attention away from the “real” storyline, which is Ilonka investigating the mystery of Brightcliffe and Julia Jayne.
That plotline cannot help but feel more immediate and important, while the stories feel like a distraction, that provide insight on the characters, but which are oddly paced and largely irrelevant, even on a thematic level (and like I said, too truncated to be satisfying for any long-time Pike fans).
But again, Mike Flanagan and his team tried something different, and I can respect that. Alas, the first season ended up being the only one, so I can’t really recommend watching due to the fact it has no ending. Flanagan was thoughtful enough to provide an in-depth summary of what he planned to do with season two, laying out the character arcs, explaining the various mysteries, and sharing what Pike novels would be incorporated.
On the one hand, it provides a semblance of closure, on the other, it’s frustrating that none of this will be realized on-screen. For all its flaws, The Midnight Club should have been allowed to reach its natural conclusion. They were going to adapt Remember Me, dammit!
Andor: Season 1 (2022)
Yes, the rumours are true, this is the best Star Wars in years. Possibly since the original trilogy, though if you agree with the recent Polygon ranking of all Star Wars media, then Andor comes in at number one, surpassing even The Empire Strikes Back. It’s so good, it ironically has the adverse side-effect of making everything else look worse. I mean damn, knowing that we could have been getting THIS level of quality from Star Wars just makes the sequel trilogy and the Obi Wan Kenobi show even more infuriating.
It's so good that I spent a good portion of its runtime wondering to myself: what is it that makes for good writing? What was it about this show that grabbed everyone’s attention? That made us all so emotionally invested? Especially when stuff like The Rings of Power and Avatar 2 and even House of the Dragon (things that I generally enjoyed) just... didn’t do that?
For my money, it comes down to strong characterization, intelligent dialogue, and a sense of urgency. The audience must pay attention to what’s going on in order to understand it, which naturally leads to a sense of engagement that simply isn’t there if you’re spoon-fed clunky exposition or clichéd character beats. In this show, people talk like they’re actual people with complex histories that don’t include As You Know dialogue to fill the viewer in with what’s going on at that precise moment. You have to watch, pay attention, and trust that you’ll get context in due course.
I mean, just compare the first interaction between Cassian and Bix (which tells us they were once an item simply through their exasperation with each other, their body language, and the way the latter’s boyfriend watches them, all while setting up the next plot-point of Cassian’s stolen goods) with Galadriel and her elf companion in The Rings of Powers’ prologue, who waits until they’ve climbed a freaking mountain before telling her stuff she already knows for the benefit of the audience, and which doesn’t shape the course of the narrative in any way.
Everything in Andor feels so real, so lived-in. We simply care about these characters, by dint of the fact we feel we know them, almost immediately. And the fact that things have been considerably scaled back means that iconography like tie-fighters and stormtroopers now feel intimidating again. I mean, we’ve seen so many tie-fighters getting blown up over the years that they’ve lost all their power – yet here, when one decides to swoop down over the valley where our heroes (disguised as shepherds) are practicing their heist, it’s utterly terrifying. Likewise, the fact that there are so few on-screen aliens means that when they do show up, it feels special.
The show also understands the importance of good character actors being cast for every role, no matter how small. This show is chock-full of solid, distinctive performers, many of whom you’d find familiar without necessarily knowing their names (Mon Mothma’s husband Perrin, Cassian’s friend Brasso, Luthen’s Imperial spy Lonni – they’ve all been working for years now and they know what they’re doing with this material).
And of course, when you can book talent like Fiona Shaw, even in a limited role, you know your dialogue is in good hands. Faye Marsay is excellent as well, though I doubt anyone would realize they’ve already seen her her in Game of Thrones, The White Queen and Doctor Who. Oh, and how can I forget Andy Serkis?! Damn, that man brings down the whole house!
Andor is also blissfully uninterested in fanservice or Easter eggs. I was so overjoyed I almost cried. Just imagine: a story that doesn’t screech to a halt so a deranged superfan can point at a decades-old prop and brag about how he knows what it is. Despite being a prequel, it doesn’t feel beholden to anything else in the canon, not even Rogue One (perhaps slightly to the detriment of continuity, as Cassian’s line in that film: “I’ve been in this fight since I was eight years old!” no longer rings true).
Instead, there are a couple of namedrops buried in the dialogue (my ears caught mentions of Canto Bight and Scarif), a few thematic call-forwards (Cassian’s claim that “nobody’s listening,” Luthor’s declaration that: “I burn my soul for a sunrise I’ll never see,” even a supporting character’s panicked cry to: “climb!” all have deep resonance with the events of Rogue One) and some early appearances from the likes of Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whittaker delivering more in two brief scenes than in the entirety of his rather baffling Rogue One performance) and Melchi, which I wouldn’t have even picked up on if the internet hadn’t identified him for me. In all cases, the characters are integrated fully into the narrative and aren’t just there for the sake of being there.
I can’t wait to rewatch Rogue One on the heels of Andor’s season two, as I guarantee the context of this show will add even more heartbreak to Cassian’s demise. (Though it’s interesting to ponder the fact that season two will have to start acting more like a prequel and less like a completely standalone story. I’m thinking specifically of K-2SO, whose bond with Cassian is his most important relationship in Rogue One).
But what about this season specifically? Comprised of twelve episodes which are roughly divided into four “mini-trilogies” it charts the course of Cassian’s radicalization and induction into the Rebel Alliance – which is still in its early stages, made up of a range of cells that have little to no contact with each other, and spend as much time arguing internally as they do fighting the Empire. Cassian himself is little more than a petty thief, though having stolen an important piece of Imperial tech, he’s given an offer by resistance leader Luthen Rael (an incredible Stellan Skarsgård) who sees a potential recruit.
It’s from there that the story branches out: Cassian gradually inching towards going “all-in” for the rebellion, Luthen’s behind-the-scenes machinations, Mon Mothma finding herself in financial trouble after bankrolling Luthen’s activities, various Imperial officers gradually becoming aware of an organized resistance (and taking steps to flush it out) and other would-be rebels finding their reasons for fighting back. There are flashbacks to Cassian’s childhood, and subplots that explore the oppression of his friends and family on the shipbreaking settlement of Ferrix, and a heist sequence, and a jail break, and a local uprising – there’s another sign of good writing: a hell of a lot happens in a limited amount of time.
In its entirety, the show is very much about what it takes to commit oneself to a cause, and what that cause will eventually cost you. As Luthen says in an incredible monologue, one has to sacrifice one’s integrity, decency, kindness, state of mind, inner peace – simply because institutionalized fascism cannot be destroyed otherwise. Someone has to be a monster so that the likes of Luke Skywalker can be a hero. And as we know, Cassian will eventually pay this price in full... well, almost. That’s the most poignant thing about his characterization, all the way to the end of Rogue One – is that he never loses all of his humanity, and as such, he’s not alone as he faces the end.
Of all the things I watched this month, Andor is the one that made me immediately want to rewatch the moment I finished it, which is really the highest praise I could give it.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 1 (2022)
There was so much Sturm und Drang surrounding this show from the very first announcement of its imminent existence that it’s difficult to talk about it without having to wade through the whining from the purists, the racists, and the racist purists. (And I think fandom on the whole doesn’t like the fact there’s more overlap between those two groups than they want to admit).
Here’s where I stand: the works of J.R.R. Tolkien mean a lot to me, though they aren’t sacred texts. I do, however, understand how some things can feel that way for many people, though I’ve never quite understood why, when things people don’t like based on properties they hold dear are released, they don’t just ignore it. If enough people ignore the bad thing, it will go away.
I’ve never watched Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, because it looked terrible and the animated movie was a touchstone of my childhood. As such, both you and I are free of the tedium of me complaining about it, though I can pretty much guarantee that many people who were determined to hate this show ended up watching every single episode and posting twelve-hour YouTube videos on how much they hated it.
So, The Rings of Power. Like most things that inspire a massive backlash, it doesn’t end up deserving either excessive praise or enraged condemnation. Aside from the obvious massive budget that went into its sets and costumes, it’s a fairly standard fantasy saga, whose justification for existence largely seems to be the fact that it’s set in Middle Earth. Every now and then, the episodes do manage to touch something that draws close to the numinous quality of Tolkien’s work, specifically the first glorious shots of Númenor, or the strains of Poppy Proudfoot’s This Wandering Day, or the eruption of the volcano that covers its surroundings in smoke and ash (somehow the fact that the Southlands would become Mordor completely eluded me, so when I watched this sequence, I cried: “Oh shit, it’s Mount Doom!” out loud).
It’s never unwatchable, but it does seem to creak a little under the burden of expectations. Perhaps its biggest problem is the time period in which it’s set (and yes, I know this is down to the showrunners being unable to secure the rights to The Silmarillion). It’s the earliest we’ve ever seen the history of Middle Earth on-screen, in which the most important event is the forging of the titular Rings of Power, but in presenting itself as a prequel to Peter Jackson’s two film trilogies, not a lot can actually happen.
Realizing this, the season shapes itself around the puzzle-box plotting of “who is Sauron?” There are three main contenders: a strange man who plummets to earth in a meteorite, an equally strange half-man, half-orcish commander who turns up about halfway through the series, and Halbrand, a common exile from the Southlands whose storyline becomes entangled with Galadriel’s early on. Unfortunately, I was spoiled as to which of the three was the Dark Lord long before sitting down to watch the episodes unfold, and so am unable to say how successful this reveal works on an emotional level.
On a narrative level, I think it works pretty well. The writers played their hand too clumsily for it to really be a surprise, but if this was a magic trick, then the pledge and the turn make logical sense for the characters involved, even if the prestige doesn’t land as powerfully as it could have.
SPOILERS
It’s Halbrand. First of all, I do love the irony that Galadriel spent so many centuries searching for Sauron, and didn’t notice when he casually inveigled his way into her orbit. Second of all, it’s worth noting that for the most part, Sauron is relatively honest with her about his intentions (omitting only his true identity) which is in keeping with Tolkien’s canon – after Morgoth’s defeat, Sauron did repent (though in fear rather than true humility) and went half a millennium before returning to evil. It’s this period of his existence that the show latches onto, and actually explores it in what could be a fairly interesting way. As this post points out:
One choice I really like is that Sauron is not a grandmaster who manipulates the heroes into playing a role in his secret plan. Yes, there are glaring red flags that everyone, not just Galadriel, ignores, and yes, his experience of the season is very different from what all the other characters assume it is. But he’s not lying. He genuinely is in a funk after having suffered a catastrophic defeat. He genuinely wants to just disappear into a normal, anonymous life. He probably would have been quite happy playing the Southlands king, at least for a while. And Galadriel does genuinely browbeat and inspire him into finding himself again. His character arc over the season is exactly as it appears, with one small but highly significant missing piece of information. Which I think is a really smart way to play the sudden villain reveal, and make us both sympathize and recoil from a villainous character.
To me at least, this is more interesting than if he’d simply been playing the long con with Galadriel the whole time, and for what it’s worth, apparently actor Charlie Vickers had no idea he was Sauron until they were ready to shoot the final episode, which means that his pre-reveal performance is one of complete earnestness (in other words, keeping this information from him wasn’t about messing with the actor, it was about getting the sincerity they wanted from him).
In hindsight of course, Halbrand’s choices and dialogue are given a new context. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the time to rewatch this, but a lot of his behaviour was clearly designed to have deeper meaning in light of this twist: appealing to Galadriel’s vanity by attributing his redemption to her influence, handling her in such a way that made it seem she was in charge of making all the decisions, hypocritically calling her out on her own manipulative behaviour in order to humble her, disguising his moments of raw ambition and ruthlessness as light-hearted banter...
I’m still trying to gauge just how clever it was: the writers deliberately went for a type, that of the rugged and cynical non-threatening cute guy with hidden depths who gradually comes back to himself through the steadfast belief of a good women. Audiences are generally suckers for that sort of thing, even as the whole proto-Aragorn act they applied to Halbrand was a bit of an eye-roller. And yet since that was precisely the reaction of the audience at large, one has to assume that it was the writerly intent.
On that note, I also want to briefly address the whole Halbrand/Galadriel shipping fiasco, which is typical fandom wank. There’s nothing anyone can do about the shippers, who will always flock to this sort of dynamic, but those that are insisting Galadriel’s character has somehow been assassinated are also missing the point of what actually unfolded here. Are there romantic elements to Sauron/Galadriel? Maybe, but it’s entirely one-sided, extremely minor, and – as of the final episode – completely over.
Yet I’m seeing hot takes like this one (no links as I don’t want any dogpiling):
On top of that, now what’s given Sauron an in to the Ringmaking and what’s given him influence over elvendom and over Middle-Earth is a Hysterical Woman Who Was So Distracted By A Hot Man That She Forgot To Be Aware Of The Danger.
Um, what? I suppose it’s not surprising that people are reaching for the Discourse™ to justify their dislike of something, but this is profoundly not what happens. To watch the episode in question and decide this is what’s happening is more an indictment of fandom’s complete lack of imagination, which naturally cannot look at two attractive people with light/dark symbolism and not assume it’s a toxic romance, since there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that Galadriel is ever, at any point, attracted to either Halbrand or Sauron.
Her whole arc is that her arrogance and narrow-mindedness not only alienate her from potential allies, not only draw her closer to her own darkness when she takes ever-more extreme steps to stamp out evil, but condemns her from seeing what’s right in front of her. If anything, I felt she was projecting her brother onto Halbrand/Sauron (who he impersonates at one point) and the fact that her immediate reaction to the truth is unhesitatingly trying to stab him to death pretty much shuts down any “she was hot for him!” arguments.
To say Galadriel is at any point “hysterical” or “distracted by hotness” is blatantly false, and reminds me of Zutara shippers complaining that Katara was “turned into a broodmare” or "made a voiceless prize" because she ended up with Aang and not Zuko. It’s okay to not like things, but don’t just make up rank nonsense to justify it.
(If anything, I didn’t feel the betrayal had as much sting as it should have; I suppose it’s fitting that Galadriel is angrier about being blindsided so thoroughly, but a little sadness at losing a friend would have worked as well. As ever, Fear Street did this exact same thing much better on all levels. Freaking Fear Street!)
But this take on Sauron has wider implications concerning Galadriel and Tolkien’s spiritual subtext that I’m not okay with. Essentially, Galadriel is now the victim of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, for if Sauron did in fact just want to be left alone, only to get reintroduced to power and ambition for having gotten caught up in her obsessive quest to find and destroy him, then it’s essentially her fault that things end the way they do, with Sauron embracing his true identity and hiking his way into Mordor.
Furthermore, she repeatedly states across the course of the season that the hand of fate is guiding them, that higher forces were deliberately drawing them together (“It was no chance meeting. Not fate, nor destiny, nor any other words men use to speak of forces they lack the conviction to name.”) But if that’s the case, then... wow, thanks for nothing Powers That Be! You have literally made everything exponentially worse.
Tolkien was subtle but clear about the fact that a benevolent God’s influence was at work in Middle Earth, so in this case, either Galadriel was just high on her own brand when she stated belief in the two of them being miraculously brought together, or else Eru Ilúvatar deliberately orchestrated their meeting in order to start a domino effect that would lead to Sauron to falling back into evil designs. And I just don’t think Tolkien would have written something like this.
Okay, so what about literally everything else? It looks beautiful, as it should, given how expensive it was. If nothing else, it’s worth it for the landscapes, costumes, cinematography, action sequences, sets and CGI effects (which manage to be fairly restrained). Honestly, Cynthia Addai-Robertson alone strolling about in the stunning costumes and headpieces they give her justifies the time spent watching this.
All the various plots do tend to blur together a little, and none of the characters really popped for me. I didn’t even realize the significance of Elendil or Isildur to start with, and so spent a lot of the runtime wondering why on earth we were bothering with these characters, and the whole “rebellious son is a disappointment to his father” was tediously trope-heavy. Neither could I summon up much feeling for Arondir and Bronwyn, the requisite elf/mortal romance story, though the dwarfs and hobbits are considerably more personable given they’re not saddled with the oh-so-very-serious dialogue of elves and men.
(While we’re here, this is my theory concerning Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot: there were some complaints that her name is a continuity error since the first hobbit to be called Elanor was Samwise’s first child, deliberately named after the small elfin flower that grew in Lórien. But what if later down the track, this Elanor ends up being the inspiration for the flower? That would have a lovely full-circle element to it. You heard it here first, folks).
The underrated MVP of the season, who is also the show’s ostensible protagonist, is Morfydd Clark, who pulls off the very difficult task of making Galadriel someone who could generally be considered a good person, with motivation and goals that make you want her to succeed, but also incredibly arrogant, short-sighted, obsessive and ruthless. (I’ve seen at least one YouTube video on my sidebar called “Galadriel is unlikeable”, which... yeah, no shit Sherlock).
But it all aligns with Tolkien’s original portrayal of the character, as well as her canon actions in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings (book and films). She was always drawn to power and warfare, only to become increasingly aware of her own flaws and the danger they posed. To structure this prequel around her hubris and the catastrophic consequences it has for Middle Earth is an impressively brave choice for the writers to make, and certainly not something you’d expect to be given to a female character.
That said, the writing can be extremely awkward at times: I get the sense the writers decided on the finishing-points for each of the characters’ arcs and wrote backwards from those points, which lends a sort of artificiality to the decision-making processes of each one. In other words, characters are moved by the plot, not their personalities. The show is at its strongest when it’s playing with symbolism, letting the characters enjoy quiet moments together, or depicting the world of Middle Earth – from its sweeping landscapes to its small cultural details.
So yeah, I’m sure I’ll be back for season two, however long that will take to reach our screens.
House of the Dragon: Season 1 (2022)
Yes, I caved and watched the Game of Thrones spin-off. There’s a lot to say, but I want to keep this reasonably short as I wasn’t totally blown away (to be fair, I was never a huge Game of Thrones fan either) and for every intriguing creative decision, there were at least six really weird ones.
I have only ever flicked through Fire and Blood, the book on which this show is based, but I know two important things: firstly, that it was written as a sort of “in-universe history”, in which the “sources” used to piece together the narrative come from a variety of fictional scribes, which are contradictory or deemed inaccurate by the others, each holding their own opinions and biases.
This means that the showrunners were in the unique position of telling the “true” story behind the historical account – a good example is that in Fire and Blood, Daemon and Rhaenyra are held responsible for the assassination of the latter’s husband Laenor. In “reality”, it turns out they faked his death so they could wed and benefit from the mystique of ruthlessness that the hit provided them with.
The other issue the show runs into is that the underlying thesis of Martin’s work is that monarchies suck, heroes suck, feudalism sucks, power sucks, and the only solution is to burn it all down – but that also sucks, and makes you a geocidal psychopath. In other words, there are no good guys here, and the showrunners obviously deem this a problem. It’s clear by the final episode that they want the Blacks to be the side the audience is rooting for, which means that most of Rhaenyra’s brutality has been outsourced to Daemon, even as they mitigate several of the deliberate acts of violence done in the book (Aemond’s killing of Luke is now staged as a prank that goes horribly wrong. Watching it, you can almost hear the: “it was at this moment Aemond knew... he’d fucked up” meme).
In the book, Rhaenyra was a pretty awful person as well (or at least was portrayed as one; like I said the writers have the option of taking the “she was misrepresented by prejudiced historians” angle) and the real victims of the piece are the smallfolk who get caught up in the middle of a civil war, eventually taking it upon themselves to storm the Dragonpit and destroy the eggs and dragons kept therein.
It reminds me very much of the characters found in Shakespeare’s first Henriad tetralogy, the likes of Jack Cade, Saunder Simpcox, Walter Whitmore, Margery Jordain, Thomas Horner and the entire House of Commons, all of whom speak out against the chaos and carnage that comes with the incessant in-fighting of a single family – and who, ironically enough – were entirely cut out of the BBC’s most recent adaptation of these plays, The Hollow Crown.
In House of the Dragon, a similar thing happens. In the penultimate episode, Princess Rhaenys bursts through the floor of the sept where Prince Aegon is being crowned, atop her massive dragon whose thrashing and flailing clearly cause several fatalities among the crowd, who are flung into walls and crushed underfoot. It’s framed as a kickass, girlboss moment, with no attention given whatsoever to the fact that Rhaenys has just killed a ton of people (but not the ones that actually mattered).
Earlier in the season, Laenor’s death is faked by snapping the neck of a random guard to provide a body, and again, the audience isn’t expected to care about whoever this innocent bystander was. Only the named (and royal) characters matter. Just as in The Hollow Crown, the perspective of the commonfolk is completely ignored.
Granted, it’s only the first season, and the showrunners may well delve into this subject as the death toll of the imminent civil war begins to rise – but we’re not off to a good start.
***
In choosing the show’s emotional centre, the showrunners zero in on Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower as the “doomed childhood friends” that are torn apart by the patriarchy (with some bonus Sapphic subtext). I’m all for this, and the four actresses who play these characters – as young girls and then young women – are uncannily good at channelling each other’s speech patterns and body language (except in the case of Emma D’Arcy losing Milly Alcock’s inner fire, though I suspect that’s on purpose – more on this in a bit).
A female friendship destroyed by the corruptive influence of power is something I can definitely get behind as a central thesis, but the problem is that the show never, not at any point, provides us with any sort of insight as to how either Rhaenyra or Alicent feel about their relationship to power. Does Rhaenyra want to be Queen? Does Alicent? How do they exert the power they already possess? What would they do with executive power if they had it? Maintain the status quo or upend it? Do they understand the difference between soft and hard wielding of that power?
There are a few lines of dialogue here and there that give us a glimpse of their inner thoughts/feelings on the matter, but the show never cuts to the quick, and so the main wedge that’s driven between the two women (their individual power, in whatever form that takes) remains vague.
For instance, I get the sense that Rhaenyra would be happy to abdicate the throne and go off to do her own thing, but the sense of duty that her father instilled in her by sharing the prophetic Song of Fire and Ice means that she "d’wants" the throne (that is, she doesn’t really want it, but she doesn’t want anyone else to have it either – thank you Killjoys for coining that phrase).
Alicent meanwhile, like a lot of women, has been raised to believe that if she dutifully obeys the men in her life, giving them whatever they need or desire, she will herself be rewarded with respect, adoration and a sense of fulfilment. And like all those other women, it becomes a source of much disillusionment and resentment once she realizes this transaction is total bullshit.
But without fully defining how they feel about power or what they want to do with it, the central premise of the show in its entirety feels shaky. There’s a scene in the penultimate episode in which Rhaenys confronts Alicent about how she chases power through her relationships with men while secretly coveting the Iron Throne herself, and you feel that the writers have high-fived themselves for doing a feminism while forgetting to lay any groundwork for this moment. Because I have no idea if Alicent has imagined herself on the Iron Throne, or what she would do if that opportunity presented itself.
As such, Alicent’s expression is unreadable, and the scene falls flat. (Heck, I would have said Alicent was not so much driven by seizing power as she was resigned to a life of duty as the men around her dictated it, a good reason as to why she embraces her faith so strongly, that old crutch for those forced into a life they didn’t want).
The best scene by far when it comes to the relationship between women and power is the one in which Alicent deals with the aftermath of a servant girl that’s just been raped by her son. She doesn’t disbelieve the girl, nor slut-shame her – she’s soft and gentle, embraces her and asserts it wasn’t her fault... and then covers the whole thing up with money and abortive tea, because honestly, what else can she do? She's the most powerful woman in Westeros, and it all depends on covering for her son.
Conversely, the show doesn’t really give us any reason to root for Rhaenyra as Queen – though as mentioned, whether the writers like it or not, this is pretty much the entire point of the story: that no one deserves to be monarch. In any case, the main thing she’s got going for her is that she’s not as bad as her debauched and irresponsible step-brother who doesn’t even want the job anyway, despite not showing any aptitude for ruling herself (she removes herself from the nexus of power to live on Dragonstone; she waits until her father is dead before seeking out alliances with the other great houses, and so on).
Essentially, the show very much wants to say something about the subject of women and power, but has absolutely no idea what that might be. And sometimes, they just flat-out don't do these women justice. Rhaenyra seriously thinks she can keep having dark-haired sons without comment? Alicent is genuinely shocked that her father and other members of the Small Council have been plotting a usurpation behind her back? Rhaenyra never once considers the power imbalance between herself and Ser Criston, and how that might effect his perception of her? Alicent really presents her bare feet for an informant to jerk off to instead of enlisting the help of a servant girl? Just how idiotic are these women meant to be?
***
The show has considerably less gratuitous nudity and violence this time around, for which I’m grateful, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the episode containing the most sex (especially for the two young actresses playing Rhaenyra and Alicent) was directed by a woman. Every now and then the mothershow would surprise me with its insight on women (right before it dove back into stripping, assaulting and murdering them) and here House of the Dragon makes room for things like the agony of childbirth and the fact that breasts sometimes leak milk.
I wasn’t bothered by the portrayal of childbirth, not only because one of the show’s most important elements is the subject of succession (where do people think all these kings and queens come from?) but because I think it’s incredibly rich that people can play the “that’s how it was back then” card when it came to all the rape we had to sit through in Game of Thrones, only to get squeamish when one of the potential consequences of rape was depicted in graphic detail. This is why women take reproductive rights so damn seriously.
Among the cast there are many standouts: Olivia Cooke who does so much with her eyes, Paddy Considine who charts the course of Viserys’s physical decline across the course of the season, and Milly Alcock, who straddles the line between the privileged arrogance of being a princess, and quiet desperation in knowing she’ll always be considered second-best due to her sex. Oddly, I felt the character lost a lot of her fire when she transitioned into Emma D’Arcy. She’s certainly a capable enough actress, so perhaps she deliberately tamped-down on her passionate side so she could ramp it up again for the war, but it was weird to see the character becomes so soft-spoken and calm after the time-skip.
I have to confess the appeal of Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen is a bit lost on me, though it was more than a little amusing to watch the fandom-wide freak-out when he choked Rhaenyra in the final episode – apparently watching him cheat in a tournament, break the rules of fair combat, bludgeon his first wife to death with a rock, slice a man’s head open and generally act like a spoiled, violent child for nine episodes is just fine – but when he lays hands on the female character the shippers have projected themselves onto, proving himself to be exactly who he’s always been this whole time? Well, that’s just bad writing!
Unsurprisingly, the production values are sky-high, and everything from the sets to the costumes to the special effects on the dragons look fabulous – I think for a lot of people, that’s always going to be the big drawcard for this franchise. They were surprisingly restrained when it came to the dragons; a few episodes passed in which none were seen at all, but I suppose season two will let us know whether this was a deliberate choice, or whether the budget made them limit their appearances.
Look at that, I’ve written an essay after all.
Some good stuff here - Glass Onion was fun, and I liked reading your thoughts on the original West Side Story. I am on a general franchise hiatus but Andor is looking good enough to reel me back in ...
ReplyDeleteI think I had so effectively lowered by expectations for The Rings of Power that I ended up liking it more than most people, flawed though it was. (I have generally stayed away from a lot of the fandom - reading your notes on Galadriel/Halbrand shipping discourse makes me very glad of that!) It wasn't an utter desecration of anything, and although there was plenty of questionable stuff there wasn't much they can't fix down the line. (Geography was nonsense, but on these shows it always is.) The timeline is going to need some ironing out (Celeborn exists, apparently - but Celebrian doesn't seem to, which seems like an issue). I didn't guess about Halbrand until the last episode - possibly I was being oblivious, but it seemed relatively well done to me.
I'm interested to read your thoughts on Galadriel's role in Sauron's relapse, because my reading was completely different - I thought Sauron had already returned to evil and was manipulating her the whole time. Was the idea not meant to be that that fortress in the first episode was somewhere he'd been hiding out? Possibly I misread that ... but I definitely thought that he was actively trying to get Galadriel either off his back or on his side. (My reading book-wise has always been that Sauron fell back into evil pretty much immediately after the Silmarillion, when he decides not to go to Valinor for judgment - but either way the compressed timeline complicates things here; there's no way he should not be active by the time Numenor reaches this point.) From an in-world theological perspective I had a much bigger problem with the idea that Gil-galad could just order Elves to return west, let alone Galadriel who has a very specific ban on her that absolutely has not been lifted (as is very very clear from the text of LotR). Gil-galad can't just overrule the Valar!! (And to be honest his authority over Galadriel should be questionable as well.) The idea of mithril halting Elven fading was pretty dodgy too.
I too was fully intending not to watch House of the Dragon, and I too caved. I thought it was a bit of a snooze until the halfway point (perhaps partly because knowing the re-cast was coming made it difficult for me to invest properly in the characters). I think your comments above are on point about the show not quite knowing what it wants to be or what it wants to say, but I was engaged towards the end.
(Very much looking forward to your thoughts on His Dark Materials!)
Re: Andor, I definitely recommend. The best thing about it is that you don't have to watch it as a Star Wars project; it stands completely on its own as a story about fascism and the cost of fighting back.
DeleteRe: Rings of Power. The second season may clarify what exactly was going on, as I'm certainly left wondering why Sauron was on that flotsam floating about in the middle of the ocean in the first place. It suggests an accidental meeting if he just got caught up in a storm, but if he deliberately sought Galadriel out, then we're looking at a very elaborate long con.