Links and Updates

I usually try to stagger these posts so that I can include as much interesting stuff as I can in one go, but I am entirely at the mercy of what news is being released at what time. Irony would have it that just a few days after my last Links and Updates post, a huge influx of interesting pop-culture announcements suddenly dropped, so a lot of what you’ll read here is probably considered old news.

But here goes...

The big news is that the casting for the fourteenth regeneration of the Doctor has been announced, and it’s twenty-nine-year-old Ncuti Gatwa, best known as Eric in Sex Education... which I have not seen. In fact, glancing over his IMDB page, I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything. But this bodes well, as I like it when people take a chance on a fresh face, and even just in photographs he looks as though he’s got the energy and spark to pull this off.

Along with the return of Russell T. Davies, on-set photos of David Tennant and Catherine Tate, confirmation of Neil Patrick Harris in a guest-starring role, and the expectation of a brand-new Companion... well, as much as I’ve enjoyed Jodi Whittaker, I won’t be disappointed to see the end of Chris Chibnall’s stint as showrunner, and there’s a palpable excitement surrounding this casting that may give the show a much-needed shot in the arm.

(It’s never been as bad as the detractors would have you believe, but you have to admit that fan engagement has been waning for a long time now. Remember the days of Superwholock? I wouldn’t want them to return, but as I’ve said numerous times now – there is so much stuff, and no one can possibly watch it all, so fandom is spread thin. A part of me misses the days when we were all getting collectively excited about the same stuff).

In the wake of Warner Media looking into the sale of The CW (or something, I don’t really understand the particulars) there’s been another round of mass cancellation. Joining Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow are the rebooted Charmed and Roswell shows, Naomi (after only one season), Riverdale, The 4400 remake, and whatever’s left of The Vampire Diaries franchise.

It makes me oddly sad, as not only have I always intended to get to Charmed and Roswell, but it’s definitely the end of an era when it comes to the CW’s Arrowverse. The Flash, Stargirl and Superman & Lois are still standing, but I suspect the age of crossovers and shared universes are behind us now. And it seemed like it was still going strong, what with fun stuff like the Beebo Christmas Special and the greenlighting of Gotham Knights (which looks terrible).

I’m still holding out hope that we might get one last hurrah with the extended cast of this franchise in either a TV movie or the final episode of The Flash or something. The crew of the Waverider can surely pay a visit to one of the remaining shows, right?

We have our first trailer for James Cameron’s over-a-decade-later Avatar sequel, and I have to admit that a part of me didn’t really think this movie would ever be released; that it would just float around in the ether for perpetuity.

There’s obviously not a lot to go on here as it’s just a teaser, but a part of me is actually looking forward to this – if not just to take my friend’s assorted kids to their first 3-D movie (it’s going to be 3-D, right?) Also, I’m sure Ryan Gosling is profoundly grateful that they dropped the Papyrus font. Truly one of SNL’s best skits.

I trust you’ve seen the outrage over the trailer for the latest Persuasion adaptation, and yeah – it really does look like they’ve completely missed the point. Persuasion is a story of yearning and regret, in which its protagonist struggles with the fact she’s missed out on happiness due to a misguided sense of duty to those who take advantage of her kindness.

This looks like an attempt to springboard off the success of Bridgerton by pouring contemporary dialogue/mindsets (“now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends”) into a sparkling romantic comedy.

There’s a reason why Pride and Prejudice and Emma are the most popular of Austen’s novels when it comes to adaptations, because Elizabeth and Emma are the easiest heroines to project oneself upon: they’re spirited and witty and “non-conformist” (they’re not really, but it’s easy to pretend they are). It’s a shame then that the Anne Elliots and Fanny Prices of the world have to miss out for being introverted, rule-abiding and of their time.

Seriously, if I have to see one more Jane Austen heroine described as “a modern woman” I’m going to scream.

Am I going to watch it anyway? Yes, obviously. There’s actually a surplus of period dramas coming up: Mr Malcolm’s List, the second season of Miss Scarlet and the Duke, and of course Persuasion, so I might hold off watching Sanditon in order to see them altogether. I have a hankering to rewatch North and South for the first time in ages too.

Hayden Panettiere is returning for Scream 6 (what are the odds they’ll kill her off for real this time?) but Neve Campbell is out, citing inadequate wages. This disappointed me for about five seconds, but the truth is that Sidney’s arc has played out. It finished in the third movie. Provided they don’t kill the character off-screen out of spite (I wouldn’t put it past them) I’m happy enough with letting her enjoy her life and passing the torch onto Sam and Tara. And good on Neve for knowing what she’s worth.

The fourth season of Westworld now has a teaser and a trailer, and I’m still on board to see what happens next. Perhaps because I watched the first three seasons in one big binge, I was spared the general consensus that it slipped in quality. I can appreciate the fact that the story hasn’t spun its wheels to any great extent, and instead has something new to explore with each season. And a 1920s gangster theme park? Yes please!

There’s going to be a new The Spiderwick Chronicles series? Uh, okay.

Speaking of children’s chapter book adaptations, we also have the casting for the Percy Jackson series: namely Percy, Annabeth and Grover.

As you can imagine, there’s already been some whining over Annabeth’s Race Lift, though it hasn’t been as bad as I expected. Author Rick Riordan tamped down on it pretty quickly.

And we get our first look at the upcoming two-part The Musketeers movies, for which we are all here to see Eva Green as Milady. Looking good so far...

An eighth Enola Holmes book is on the way, and according to the synopsis, Lady Cecily Townsend is back. Hooray!

For those who haven’t read them, Cecily is a reoccurring character (in two out of six books, and cast for the upcoming Netflix sequel) that Enola rescues twice and desperately wants to be friends with, though circumstance keeps getting in the way. The sixth book (for a long time the last in the series until the Netflix movie reinvigorated Nancy Springer’s inspiration) ended with Enola looking forward to going to the same school as Cecily, though she didn’t appear herself.

But now finally, it looks as though we’re going to get the chance to finally see these girls become friends.

They’ve just dropped news of a Jon Snow spin-off/continuation. I honestly cannot fathom this one. I mean, House of the Dragon I can understand, given that it’s a prequel and based off pre-existing material. But what on earth is there left to tell of this character? I absolutely could not stomach any manpain over what happened to Daenerys, and Jon wandering around the North in abject misery doesn’t strike me as something anyone would want to watch. (If you wanted a post-show continuation then surely Arya was the character to go with).

The only thing that might – might! – be of interest is if he journeys all the way up to where the White Walkers lived (that barely glimpsed castle) and found some mystical old artifacts or something. But even the promise of learning more about the Walkers doesn’t interest me like it did during the actual show, as they’ve since been wiped out in an incredibly anticlimactic way. I’m truly befuddled by his whole thing.

So let’s turn to something that I’m actually looking forward to, the latest in a long line of “legacyquels” in which aging stars are brought back to replay beloved roles in long-distant sequels that will (probably) involve them passing on the torch to the next generation at some point. They’ve done it to Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Scream, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Rocky, Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, Top Gun... am I missing any? The latest is slightly more obscure, though no less a cult classic: Lucasfilm’s Willow.

I grew up with this one, and I have to admit that there were some near-tears when I realized they’d gotten Joanne Whalley back on board. Sorsha probably meant more to me than Princess Leia all things considered (I was a latecomer to Star Wars) and to see her back in the role is pretty special. Also, check out the kid that Willow is hugging at 1:01 I’m pretty sure that’s the same actor that played his son back in the eighties! Holy shit!

Some brief thoughts: there is no sign of Elora Danan here (unless she’s one of the new actors) but SURELY she’ll have to appear at some point. Sorcha’s voiceover at the beginning explicitly references her and she was the whole point of the first movie. Hopefully they’ll have a clever reveal up their sleeves.

All the new characters look like fun, and I always love to see Erin Kellyman. Not sure what they’ll do about Val Kilmer – he was too central to the film to just ignore him completely, but obviously the actor is dealing with some serious health problems (oh jeez, I hope they don’t deepfake him). I also spotted some Nelwyns and Brownies, and at least three overt Ship Teases between members of the young cast.

And as with Netflix’s The Dark Crystal prequel, I’m looking forward to an expansion of this particular world. There’s only so much you can do in a ninety-minute movie, and now that the production values of television can be just as high as movies, there are very few limits on what they can portray.  

Just hearing that theme music again was cause for some spine-tingles. Dammit if it isn’t completely manipulative, but here we are. I’ll be watching it on my friend’s big screen the moment it drops.

Last of all, I want to draw attention to the fact that one of my favourite fantasy authors, Patricia McKillip, passed away on May 6th of this year. I did a Tumblr post of the news at the time, which got exactly one (1) like. As I said there, though there is an obituary in Locus, the news sadly seems to have been overlooked by other on-line fantasy outlets.

She penned well over twenty novels across the course of her career and was the recipient of several awards, including the World Fantasy life achievement award in 2008. Perhaps her most famous work was The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, but for my money her best work was written between 1995 and 2010, the years in which she wrote the likes of Winter Rose, The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Song for the Basilisk, The Tower at Stony Wood, Ombria in Shadow, In The Forests of Serre, Alphabet of Thorn, Od Magic, The Bell at Sealey Head and The Bards of Bone Plain – all standalone fantasy novels that melded her distinctive poetic-prose with stories based on fairy tales, mythology, ballads and other fantasy inspirations.

As a younger reader, there was seriously nothing else like them. Kinuko Y. Craft’s incredible cover art is a perfect visual compliment to McKillip’s dense, ornate prose, and oftentimes reading her books is like trying to unravel a tangled knot – but a lot more fun. No matter how complicated things got, you knew you would eventually land on solid ground. If you’ve never read one of her books before, then now is as good a time as any to start.