Links and Updates

We’re barely two weeks into 2021 and it’s already proving to be a total headache. I’ve never been happier to not be on Twitter than I am today, though all the right-wing complaints about how their follower counts have dropped in the wake of an armed insurrection and five deaths certainly puts their priorities into perspective.

Still, at least a certain someone made history by becoming the only president to ever be impeached twice, and if anything good can come out of January 6th, it’s hopefully that society will finally start treating white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and other right-wing terrorists as the threats they are. They’re pathetic, but armed losers are still armed.

And for the record, New Zealand isn’t perfect either. Yesterday our own homegrown conspiracy nutter/cult leader led about a hundred people to government buildings to protest against lockdown and support old Trumpy. Somehow it’s even stupider here than it was in America, since... well, it’s not like they can vote for him. And why are they protesting against lockdowns anyway? Our one and only national lockdown happened almost a year ago!

The stupid, it hurts. Let’s look at stuff that’s coming up instead...

My holiday started on the exact same day I opened my laptop to find that Disney had puked up about a thousand or so new projects across various studios and franchises, to be released to theatres or on Disney+ across the coming years.

Honestly, I browsed through some of the MCU and Star Wars things and realized… I just don’t care. And I don’t want to come across as one of those dickheads who brag about how much they don’t care about things, because I really, really want to care about Star Wars again. I want to be excited. I want to feel the same buzzing sensation I did when I walked out of the theatre after The Force Awakens. But I just can’t get that feeling back.

Oh God, look at all this crap.

I don’t say that with bitterness, but Star Wars is definitely a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…” situation at this point. I’m not interested in stories that are dictated by the demands of an unpleasable fan-base. (I mean, Hayden Christiansen returning as Anakin? Enough with the fanservice and Hail Marys and narrative Saving Throws already!)

Even the Ahsoka spinoff doesn’t pique my interest that much, though it will presumably include Ezra, Sabine and (possibly) Jacen Syndulla. I ended up watching the opening of The Mandalorian’s Ahsoka-centric episode and found it completely underwhelming: the too-small foam lekku, the trite dialogue, the fact that I couldn’t not see Rosario Dawson in orange face paint – it just didn’t work for me.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice that none of these projects go within in a million miles of the sequel trilogy, which is a shame, since as long as the overarching story of the entire franchise ends with the equivalent of a wet fart, it’s impossible to get interested in anything that technically leads up to it. (See also, HBO’s The House of the Dragon. Spoiler alert: they all go crazy and die. How on earth are we meant to care about a story that doesn’t stick the landing?) 

There really needs to be a strong post-TROS conclusion in order to make everything else seem worth it.

As for the MCU, I was never that invested anyway, and I feel that Endgame was a satisfying finishing point for me. (I was however, very happy to hear that Jaimie Alexander will be returning as Sif in Thor 4. Can you believe that of the EIGHT original Asgardian supporting characters of that branch of the franchise, Sif is the only one left standing?)

But let’s put all this aside, because I know you have to be tired of me talking about it by now. Here are some other upcoming projects that got my attention:

Personally I think that Toy Story 4 was one too many Toy Story films, and yet I have to admit to being fascinated at the idea of a Buzz Lightyear film – that is, the Buzz Lightyear that inspired the toy line that was such an intrinsic part of the original movies. We’ve already had a version of this concept before, with Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2000 – 2001), a cartoon series that was pitched as the television show that Andy and his friends were so mad over – leading to the arrival of a toy Buzz for his birthday.

The concepts of defictionalization and things being “in-universe” and the difference between Doylist/Watsonian interpretations are fascinating to me, so a fully-fledged Buzz Lightyear film is something I was always going to be drawn to, no matter it’s actual quality. But it’s Pixar: whatever else it is, I’m sure it’ll be beautiful (in that Star Wars/Thor/Guardians of the Galaxy “fantasy sci-fi” way) and they’ve cleverly found a way to ditch Tim Allen in exchange for Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz. Now that’s a glow-up.

An inevitable question that arises is: will it be canon compliant with Buzz Lightyear of Star Command? If it deals with the early years of Buzz’s recruitment into the space ranger corps, then there’s no reason it shouldn’t (by the time the cartoon starts, he was already a seasoned ranger) though this will probably eliminate any cameo appearances from Mira, Booster or XL (not that this is a bad thing in the latter two cases).

But will we get Commander Nebula? Warp Darkmatter? The Little Green Men? I’m not going to hold my breath, but it makes for interesting speculation. And I hope it’ll finally reveal exactly why the children of the Toy Story world were so obsessed with Buzz Lightyear, something the show never quite managed to pull off.

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I was pretty astonished to hear that two animated shows are to be built around Tiana from The Princess and the Frog and Moana from the movie of the same name. Justice at last for these Princesses! Tiana in particular deserves something good, as it’s been a sticking-point for me that her immediate successors in the Disney Princess line-up (Rapunzel and the Frozen sisters) got a three-season show and a feature-length sequel respectively, whereas Tiana was largely forgotten.

Apparently the show will move between New Orleans and Naveen’s kingdom of Maldonia (which was never seen in the actual movie), and will hopefully remain in 2-D animation and bring back the original voice cast. (I’ll be glad to see Charlotte again, but please – don’t make her search for a man the whole focus of the show).

As for Moana, the film is so recent and so perfect in and of itself that any follow-up is not as strictly necessary, but I’ll wait and see what it’s like.

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Other upcoming projects include Encanto (magic treehouse in Colombia), Iwájú (Afrofuturistic sci-fi set in Lagos), Luca (coming-of-age Italian adventure), Turning Red (girl turns into a red panda), as well as a slew of short films from Pixar, all of which look pretty good. There’s inevitably a lot of crap in there too (we don’t need a sequel to Hocus Pocus or Enchanted or Sister Act) but there’s certainly no lack of variety.

Netflix has released a teaser for Shadow and Bone:

I really enjoyed the books; they had a great Russian fairy tale ambiance about them, but the fandom is going to be insufferable. All you need to know is there’s a quasi-love triangle between a young girl, her best friend (played by a man of colour) and a creepy, power-hungry, gas-lighting, violent older man who dresses in black. No prizes for guessing how this is going to go down.

In better news, my favourite animation studio of all time, Cartoon Saloon, has two new projects to enjoy: the upcoming My Father’s Dragon AND Puffin Rock, which is already on Netflix! And speaking of that studio, here’s a beautiful post about The Magical Queerness of Wolfwalkers.

We can add two more stories of Black actors being treated like shit on the set of the shows/films to the list: Leonard Roberts who played D.L. Hawkins on Heroes and Ray Fisher who was Cyborg in Justice League. The Ray Fisher story has been circulating for a while now, but the testimony from Leonard Roberts brought back just how badly they treated him: on what world does a writers’ room greenlit the fatal shooting of a man who can phase through things? They didn’t even give him the simple dignity of deliberately taking a bullet to save his family.

A nice look back on Tangled and how it reinvigorated the Disney Princess brand.

The Half Death of the Black Widow; a scathing look at how Marvel Studios has treated that character, and how weird it is that they waited this long before giving her a solo-movie.

Questions of Male Consent in both Wonder Woman 1984 and Bridgerton, which is worth reading and brings back terrible memories of how Once Upon a Time refused to acknowledge that Regina raped Graham for years before murdering him.

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings prequel is apparently all about the rise of Sauron. Sure, okay. Let’s see how this pans out...

James Gunn’s take on Suicide Squad looks great: