I’m in the middle of my annual leave, which started during the final week of May and will continue through the first week of June, so I’m enjoying myself by catching up with a lot of things – and I’m finally about to get cracking on Doctor Who, The Wheel of Time, Andor, Star Trek Discovery and other big franchises that I’ve been ignoring for a while.
For whatever reason, May ended up being a month of Arthurian legend and vampires – I’ve no idea how two such different genres came together in this month, but it’s lead to a number of familiar faces popping up in various projects, years apart from each other. Oliver Jackson-Cohen starred on NBC’s Dracula as Jonathan Harker, who I’m now watching on Surface every week with my mum, while Ben Miles also featured on Dracula as the head of the Order of the Dragon, and just recently played Mon Mothma’s unfortunate banker friend on Andor.
And between Gawain and the Green Knight, Elphaba in Wicked, and the dense forest setting of Frances Hardinge’s The Forest of a Thousand Eyes, this was also a month brought to you by the colour green.
(We also had another movie night at work recently, but because I’ve spoken extensively about Spirited Away in the past, I won’t repeat myself here).
The Legend of Korra: The Mystery of Penquan Island by Kiku Hughes, Alex Monik and Diana Sousa
I will spare you any complaining about how Korra and Asami are relegated to a one-panel cameo in this book and get straight down to it. Incredibly, I didn’t even know this graphic novel existed until it turned up in the returns bin at work, and didn’t even have a hold on it. There was no promotion whatsoever for this publication; at least none that I noticed.
This story focuses solely on Mako and Bolin, following them as they solve a mystery that eventually ties back to their own family. Poor Mako was a drastically unpopular character when The Legend of Korra first started, and though he never became anyone’s favourite, some remedial writing at least made him palatable by the show’s conclusion. Now he headlines an adventure of his own, starting when three children arrive at the police station asking for help in finding a mission friend, only to be whisked away by their angry and suspicious guardian.
Mako can’t let it go, and so starts an investigation, discovering an upturned room, witnesses that refuse to talk, and a strange carved stone that has an unexpected link to his deceased mother. He and Bolin decide to travel to Penquan Island, where all the evidence points.
Like most of the graphic novel tie-ins for this series, it’s a nice enough little story, whilst simultaneously being rather disposable. One gets the sense that the writers don’t want to risk contradicting the canonicity of any potential events that might spring up in future television shows or films, and so keep things quite low-stakes and self-contained.
The artwork is as good as always, with the panels looking like screenshots of the show itself, and as a result, it’s very easy to hear the voice actors in your head when reading the dialogue. This also contains some pointed commentary about the stagnation of people who want to live in the past with all its outdated rules and traditions, and some insight into Mako and Bolin’s deceased mother. As you’ll recall, she came from the Fire Nation, and the visit to Penquan Island gives us an extra glimpse into its culture, which was always slightly on the periphery throughout Korra. If memory serves, it was only visited briefly in season two, so in nice to see it again in some small capacity.
Keep Out, Claudia! by Anne M. Martin
I was dreading getting to this one, since I’m not exactly in the best headspace to read a Very Special Episode on racism from the nineties. Poor Claudia always seems to get the heavy material in her books (her grandmother’s stroke and then death, a near career-ending injury, being accused of cheating on a math test, getting ostracized from the club for having the audacity to make another friend – she just can’t catch a break) though I suppose this would have been too much of an ordeal to be told through Jessi’s perspective.
As it happens, I own this one, and I suspect it’s because as a child I was intrigued by the blurb at the back of the book – specifically the mystery that it posits. A new family called the Lowells book a couple of babysitting jobs, but though little Caitlin, Mackenzie and Celeste are well-behaved for Mary Anne, Claudia gets quite a different reception. The children are disrespectful and Mrs Lowell is borderline rude. When Mrs Lowell calls the club for the third time, she specifically requests that anyone but Claudia be sent to the house.
Naturally, the girls are alarmed. Claudia wracks her brain and can’t figure out what she did wrong – and it’s actually kind of heartbreaking reading about these thirteen-and-eleven-year-olds trying to figure it out. Jessi is sent next, with the advice to dress conservatively, get there early-but-not-too-early, and not take the kids anywhere without Mrs Lowell’s permission. She turns up and isn’t even allowed through the front door. Mrs Lowell stammers that she no longer needs a sitter and shuts the door in her face.
At this point it’s pretty obvious what’s going on, and say what you will about Kristy, but when she deems that her friends are being treated unfairly in any way, she steps up. During her babysitting session with the Lowell kids, she asks some rather veiled questions and figures it out. It’s at this point that the book stumbles a little since... well, there’s only so much that a bunch of teenagers can do about systemic racism.
And of course, it was the nineties, so what follows is some poignant introspection and sound advice... but also some completely tone-deaf nonsense. I think the most irritating thing was when the girls try to convince Jessi and Claudia that none of them are good enough to babysit for the Lowells, since Dawn, Stacey and Kristy’s parents are divorced, Mary Anne has a stepsister, and Mallory’s family is... too big. Huh? Kristy then calls Mrs Lowell back after she actually has the audacity to request a “blue-eyed, blonde-haired babysitter” and offers the services of Logan, which Mrs Lowell refuses since apparently boys can’t babysit.
Say what? This is a book about racism, not sexism! And how on earth does racial prejudice figure into having divorced parents or a large number of siblings? At another point, Claudia tells Kristy to inform Mrs Lowell that the club won’t work for her anymore since “we don’t babysit for bigots,” to which Kristy replies: “you know darn well we can’t say that!”
Um, why the hell not? Just ring Mrs Lowell back and tell her: “this organization has collectively come to the decision not to provide our services to you any longer. We have sent two capable sitters to your house and are disgusted by the way in which they were treated. Do not call this number again.” It’s not the girls’ responsibility to fix racism, but letting a bigot know there are consequences for their shitty behaviour isn’t an outrageous course of action.
And it wouldn’t be a very serious situation without Mary Anne making it all about herself somehow, so during a conversation about hate groups and prejudice in America, she comes up with this gem:
“This is scary. I wonder if those skinheads could get me for anything. I think maybe some of my ancestors were Russian. I wonder if that’s a problem.”
This bitch, I just CAN’T with her.
Another weird thing is that throughout all of this, a MR Lowell is never present. He’s never at the house, the girls never see him, and Mrs Lowell never mentions him either. Now, this could easily be because Mrs Lowell is a single mum or a widow, but it’s never brought up at any point. And this is weird because the babysitters never talk about it either. Granted, it doesn’t make a difference to the situation they find themselves in, but it’s still kind of strange they don’t discuss him at all, even by his absence. Perhaps the ghostwriter felt that a grown man who had the potential to get aggressive towards one of our protagonists on account of their race would have been a step too far into genuinely frightening reading material?
The B-plot naturally involves unity and acceptance among the other neighbourhood children, who work together to form a band called All The Children. It doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, since the children that can play an instrument are forced to perform alongside kids that are just blowing on kazoos or banging on cereal boxes, and there’s absolutely no way the end result could have sounded anything like actual music – but given how awful the world is these days, I was still getting a bit weepy.
As a final coda, Jessi and Claudia notice the Lowell kids gathered at the gate during the performance, looking wistful but knowing their mother has forbidden them from joining in, and the girls speculate without much hope that maybe they’ll grow beyond their mother’s prejudices – but naturally we never hear about the Lowells (or the band, for that matter) ever again.
Mary Anne and the Secret in the Attic by Anne M. Martin
Despite the presence of Mary Anne as the narrator, I was looking forward to this one, as I had virtually no memory of what it was about. And look at that cover art! Teenage girl with flashlight gasps in shock at old photographs in an attic room? Truly, this is what Apple Paperback Mystery dreams are made of.
But perhaps the reason I had no memory of what happened in it is because nothing much does happen in it. That it’s in the Mystery subseries is a bit of a misnomer, as this could have very easily been part of the main series given its content.
By remarkable coincidence, three things are happening in our little town of Stoneybrook at exactly the same time: Mary Anne has recurring dreams of holding a kitten and calling for her mother while in the company of an elderly couple, her father starts getting phone calls from his deceased wife’s mother who has suddenly decided she wants Mary Anne back in her life, and Heritage Day is coming up. What are the odds?
Inspired by some of the projects that her babysitting clients are putting together for Heritage Day, Mary Anne waits until she’s alone in the house before climbing up to the attic in order to find some clues about her own extended family. In an old album she discovers photos of herself on a farm, in the company of her maternal grandparents. On reading the letters that come with them, she learns that immediately following her mother’s death, her father send her to live with Bill and Verna Baker for an extended period of time – explaining the dreams she’s been having.
Apropos of nothing besides being a teenager (and Mary Anne) she leaps to the conclusion that her father not only didn’t want her, but that the recent phone calls from her grandmother means that a custody battle is looming. While her father and Sharon are out of the house, a stranger comes to the door while the babysitters (and Logan) are painting life-sized cutouts of historical figures for Heritage Day, and Mary Anne panics, believing her to be a social worker.
Admittedly, much like the babysitters trying to convince Claudia and Jessi that Mrs Lowell would have a problem with ALL of them for various reasons, this scenario is actually hilariously true to life when it comes to how teenagers think. Absolutely everything has to be about them and their immediate problems, no matter how illogical their thought-process is.
Mary Anne eventually has a conversation with her father, which would have cleared everything up in the first chapter had she just had the wherewithal to do so then. But had she done so, there’d be no book, would there?
Nothing about this story makes a heck of a lot of sense, from the fact that Mary Anne knows virtually nothing about her mother, including where she’s buried (what the hell, Richard??) to the reason behind why she’s never heard of her grandparents before: apparently when Richard insisted on having Mary Anne back again, Bill and Verna decided that it would be too painful to have her in their lives. Say what? (Okay, this insanity is clearly because until this book, these characters didn’t even EXIST, so the ghostwriter had to come up with something to explain their absence, but yeesh.)
The final chapter is just a series of letters and postcards sent back and forth between Mary Anne and her friends/family in Stoneybrook, during her visit to Grandma Verna in Maynard.
So all’s well that ends well in this non-mystery. Some minor details of note are that the babysitters paint cardboard cutouts of Old Hickory and Sophia (the old-timey father and daughter that feature in Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery and Mallory and the Mystery Diary) to raise money on Heritage Day, and that the picnic features cameo appearances from Corrie Addison and the three Craine girls, who I honestly thought would never turn up again.
And because I’m an absolute wreck these days, I got a little teary when a. Mary Anne goes looking for her mother’s grave and finds Mimi’s instead, and b. is given a letter by her father that was written by her mother, to be opened when she turns sixteen (he decides she’s old enough to read it now). That said, it tells Mary Anne that: “my mother and father, who dote on you, are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that you have a happy and secure childhood.” Whelp, her folks certainly dropped the ball on that!
For the record, this is another book that I actually own, and I suspect this will be the last time I’ll be in possession of both the books scheduled to be read each month. We’re going into uncharted territory soon...
The Woods in Midwinter by Susanna Clarke
Clarke’s publishers must be really desperate for material, as this short story – beautifully bound and illustrated – will take about three minutes to read. It was originally commissioned by a producer at BBC Radio 4 asking for a story to be broadcast over Christmas, and Clarke’s afterword, in which she explains the inspirations behind it, feel longer than the story itself.
Sisters Ysole and Merowdis halt their carriage beside a snowy wood so that the younger of the two can take a walk. She’s a strange, dreamy sort of person, and Ysole suspects that she has the makings of a saint. As Merowdis wanders alone, conversations take place between her and the animals, trees and world that surround her. Eventually she’s granted a vision bourn out of her longing for a child, having been put in mind of one due to the winter snow and the approach of Christmas.
And... that’s it! In her aforementioned afterword, Clarke discusses Jorge Luis Borges’ “The House of Asterion” and the songs of Kate Bush as her inspirations, as both involve a woman loving something intensely, only for the object of her love to be inhuman in nature. She also reveals that she wrote this story as a tie-in to a footnote that supposedly appears in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, though being unable to find or cite it, she speculates that the fairies took it away.
The Forest of a Thousand Eyes by Frances Hardinge
It would seem that Frances Hardinge is having a bit of a break from full-length novels, as this is the second book she’s published which we would classify as “sophisticated fiction” in our library. That is, it’s essentially a very long picture book for children (though for some reason, it’s been shelved in the YA section, which tracks with ongoing difficulties regarding what demographic exactly Hardinge is writing for).
This also feels like a companion piece to Island of Whispers, her previous book that was similarly large and in hardback, with illustrations by Emily Gravett. But where Island of Whispers was set on the shoreline and the sea, this takes place in a formidably dense forest, which has long since destroyed most of civilization. Little pockets of communities still exist on what remains of a massive structure called the Wall (no relation to Game of Thrones) that is slowly but steadily falling to the encroaching vines and dangerous fauna of the forest.
Feather lives in one of these aerial settlements, but she has a secret. She’s met a stranger that’s traversing the length of the Wall, and is desperate to learn more about him and the worlds he’s been exploring. According to him, he’s heading for the ocean, a great expanse of water that the forest can’t possibly overcome.
So taken in by his stories, Feather has brought him the community’s spyglass, a vital tool that’s used to see if any danger is approaching from the forest. But of course, once it’s in his grasp, he pushes her from the Wall and disappears. Feather survives the fall into the treetops, but knows she cannot return home without the precious tool she’s inadvertently stolen from her people.
There’s no other choice but to go after her would-be killer to retrieve it, and naturally she learns more about the world and herself as she does so. It’s a fairly slender story, and not nearly as complex in its world-building as a lot of Hardinge’s work (not even Island of Whispers, which was about the same page-length) but the beauty and menace of the forest (which reminded me a little of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted) is brought to vivid, ominous life.
I also loved Sleek, the little scaled ferret who works as a living alarm system whenever someone moves through the dangerous forest lands – though he’s not entirely immune to the lull and lure of the forest depths.
It’s ironic that the colour green played such a large part in this month’s reading/viewing material (I also re-read The Green Knight and watched Wicked) but it made me wonder if Hardinge is perhaps colour-coding these books. If Island of Whispers was blue, then this is naturally green – I wonder if her next short book will lean into a different colour scheme altogether.
Merlin: The King’s Wizard by James Mallory
The second instalment of Hallmark’s Merlin novelization is probably the least essential of the three, seeing as it’s more or less a verbatim transfer of the show to the page. Stretching from Merlin’s forced conscription into Vortigern’s service, his reunion with Nimue, his role in the conception of Arthur (that is, disguising Uther so he can bed Igraine in her husband’s absence), the making of the Sword in the Stone, the early education of Arthur, the transformation of Morgan from a homely maid to a beautiful woman, her subsequent seduction of her half-brother, the birth of Mordred, and Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere and his departure on a quest for the Holy Grail, it covers over twenty years in all, using the ongoing feud between Merlin and Mab as its narrative backbone.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t a few fresh insights along the way: we get an understanding of what exactly the stone that’s placed into Arthur’s crib did to him as an infant (this goes unexplained in the show), and the surprising reveal that Merlin actually travelled forward in time to find Lancelot at Joyous Gard (though I can’t recall if this has any meaningful pay-off in the third book).
It also helps tie up a few loose ends, such as what happens to Igraine, and provides greater context to the characters and their decision-making. For instance, having unknowingly slept with his half-sister and sired a bastard, Arthur chooses not to consummate his marriage to Guinevere until he’s discovered the Holy Grail and returned it to Britain – his line of reasoning being that this is the only way he can atone for his sin.
Naturally, he doesn’t bother to explain any of this to Guinevere, which neatly sets up her infidelity with Lancelot. And that aforementioned stone that was placed in Arthur’s crib? Was a charm that ensures whenever Arthur makes up his mind to do something, he can never be swayed from his course. Preordained fate at its finest. Tragedy could have been avoided, yet at the same time everything that unfolds is inevitable.
James Mallory makes a few odd choices, such as changing Sir Ector’s name to Hector, mentioning a Leodegrance but not making him Guinevere’s father, and creating that whole “Lancelot is from the future” angle, but it reminded me of just how well the miniseries managed to streamline the main plot-points of Arthurian legend and place them within a brand-new framework of the Merlin-versus-Mab conflict. Many of the creative choices made to compress the material are pretty sensible (conflating Excalibur with the Sword in the Stone, Morgan with Morgause, and the two Elaines into Lancelot’s pre-existing wife and mother of Galahad), and it’s impressive that it all works as well as it does.
Now, if only I could find a copy of Merlin: The End of Magic. The online prices for a second-hand copy are insane.
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
This is a rather different offering from Philip Reeve (though the man doesn’t like to repeat himself) in that it’s a very grounded, historically-based retelling of the Arthurian legends. That is, it purports to be the “real” story behind the familiar tales, based in Wales around 500 AD.
Gwyna is a young girl that’s just escaped a raid upon her village, who finds herself the unexpected helpmeet of Myrddin, a crafty old showman who is trying to rally various warbands around Arthur, a fierce warrior that he believes is capable of driving back the Saxon invaders.
Under his guidance, Gwyna is made a water goddess, who delivers a magical sword to Arthur’s hand by holding her breath and submerging herself under the surface of a holy lake. It’s all showmanship of course, but Myrddin is an expert storyteller and holds Arthur’s men in thrall to their leader.
But of course, trying to corral reality into a narrative is easier said that done. A discerning reader will begin to notice familiar parts of the legends creeping in: Gwenhwyfar, Cei, Medrawt, Camlann... Not helping is the fact that this Arthur is a brute: proud, violent and quick to anger, which means Myrddin’s work is cut out for him in recontextualizing his boorish behaviour into deeds of chivalry and heroism.
I get what Reeve is going for, but what can I say? I don’t like my Arthurian legends deconstructed. Seeing them demystified here as the “true story,” which is really just a series of skirmishes, manipulations, brigandry and acts of violence, gets rather depressing after a while.
The themes are interesting, such as the power of storytelling and the question of how far you’re willing to lie and manipulate for “the greater good,” but I can’t say I really enjoyed the context in which they were found. What I enjoyed the most was Gwyna’s narrative voice, especially her years spent disguised as a boy before having to readjust to life as a young woman when she gets too old to uphold the ruse. About halfway through her story she meets Peredur, a boy that’s been disguised and treated as a girl by his mother for his whole life, to the point that he honestly believes he is a girl.
As ever, Reeve was exploring contemporary issues of gender in YA fiction long before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.
It was also rather amusing to see how much this reminded me of all the other Arthurian retellings I’ve read or watched these past two months: it has the period setting of The Winter King, the attempt at deconstruction like in The Bright Sword, Merlin as a stage-manager and fixer like in Camelot, and even Nimue as a protagonist, just like Cursed did (at least, I assume that’s who Gwyna is meant to represent).
Arthur: The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Another King Arthur retelling, though with a bit of a twist. There are actually two narratives at work here: one involves a young boy called Arthur de Caldicot living with his family on the Welsh Marches at the turn of the twelfth century, experiencing the day-to-day realities of life in the Dark Ages, and one is a retelling of King Arthur’s early life, as glimpsed by the protagonist through the Seeing Stone, a gift given to him by his father’s wiseman.
I read Crossley-Holland for the first time last month with his take on the entire Arthurian cycle in The Forever King, and was looking forward to what he would do with the material here. It makes for an interesting project, with a very tightly structured narrative that clocks in at precisely one hundred chapters, alternating between the more “modern” Arthur’s life and the ways in which it reflects that of his legendary namesake.
Crossley-Holland obviously knows his stuff when it comes to medieval life, as there are plenty of fascinating details about religion, the law, agriculture, class differences and other facets of life in 1199, and when it comes to the interactions between various characters, he very much makes the reader work to understand the full context of what’s going. Things are implied rather than stated outright, and many characters have secrets that aren’t revealed until quite late in the game.
More than anything, I think it was written to be an immersive experience. The short chapters make it easy to lose yourself in the various snapshots of the time and place, focusing intently on a singular incident (whether it’s an escaped bull, a Christmastide celebration, or attending a court hearing at the manor) so that you can’t be distracted by anything else that might be going on outside of Arthur’s immediate perspective.
Having placed this at the time of King Richard and the Third Crusade, the book also made me realize that the entirety of Arthuriana provides an interesting comparison to the Robin Hood legends in regards to the Saxons. This, The Bright Sword, Merlin and The Winter King all portray them as the existential threat to the world our protagonists inhabit – and yet by the time of post-Ivanhoe retellings of Robin Hood (which consolidated their placement during the reign of King Richard and Prince John), they’ve been fully integrated into the country and are in their turn the oppressed class under the Normans. And so the world keeps spinning...
Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
Why does Gawain get the two best stories in all of Arthurian legend? The Loathly Lady and The Green Knight have got to be the most memorable and rewarding tales in that whole canon, and I’m surprised there aren’t at least a dozen more retellings on the page and screen (though of course, there are a few, with Selina Hastings and Juan Wijngaard’s collaboration being one of the best).
I read this fourteenth century poem for the first time in 2021, though that was J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation and this is Brian Stone’s. The former was read too long ago for me to say anything relevant about differences in detail; the two translations are still laid out in one-hundred-and-one stanzas of alliterative verse that each end in rhyming couplets (which I’ve just found out, are a form known as “bob and wheel”).
Everyone knows the story: on Christmastide at the court of Camelot, a mysterious Green Knight enters the banquet hall to issue a challenge to the gathered knights – any volunteer has the right to strike him down, with the understanding that the Green Knight will deliver the exact same blow to his opponent in a year’s time. Gawain duly lops the Knight’s head off, only to discover in horror that the Green Knight can simply retrieve it from the ground and ride away as though nothing has happened.
Now Gawain has only a year left before he’s required to set off for the Green Chapel to keep his side of the bargain and receive the fatal blow. It’s a question of whether or not he can retain his honour, even if it means his own death.
As Stone points out in his introduction, it’s a French Romance, a Celtic legend, an English fairy tale and a Christian treatise all rolled into one. Storytelling motifs like the Beheading Game, the Exchange of Winnings and the Temptation by Hostess are all to be found in ancient Irish epics and French romances, though Stone points out that this is the first time all three have been combined in a single tale. According to him, a major theme of the poem in its entirety is truth, which makes sense given all the disguises and secret tests, the fair exchange of both injuries and gifts, and the story’s innate reliance on honesty.
In his words, Gawaine’s quality is truth, “literal truth, good faith in dealing with others, good faith in dealing with oneself in relation to an accepted scheme of values.” Even the colour green was associated with truth in the fourteenth century, and Stone draws a link between the Knight’s weapon of choice (an axe) and John the Baptist: “and now also the axe is laid unto the roots of the trees… he that cometh after me is mightier than I…” In other words, the Green Knight is a truth-bringer.
Stone includes two essays in this edition, one that examines the Green Knight (“The Common Enemy of Man”) and one pertaining to Gawain (“Gawain’s Eternal Jewel”). Both are interesting, though I loved the insight that even though the Green Knight/Bertilak steals the show as the story’s “jovial moral demon,” the anonymous poet manages to create in Gawain a man of honour and integrity, who never comes across as a self-righteous prig.
Because of course, Gawain ultimately fails one part of the test, in that he keeps the lady’s girdle in the hopes that it will save his life. But how can we judge him for this? As he’s told by the Green Knight himself, he only failed because he loved life, and that makes him truer and more human than if he virtuously subjected himself to a beheading with no doubt or hesitation.
More than that, it’s just a fun story to read, especially when it comes to the alliteration. Some favourites of mine include: “climbed by cliffs where the cold clung,” “over at Holy Head to the other side, into the wilderness of Wirral,” and the mysterious departure of the Green Knight: “and the gallant garbed in green, to wherever he would elsewhere.”
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
This unexpectedly became a month for vampires as well as for Arthuriana, and even though I watched this film only last October, I was compelled to do a rewatch just to cap things off in regards to the vampire theme (so even though it’s listed first, I actually watched it last).
I’ve already discussed it at length, so I won’t repeat myself, only to say that its gorgeous cinematography and practical effects are what elevates it above being just a not-particularly-faithful adaptation of the original text. It has a lot to answer for when it comes to the portrayal of Dracula as a tragic romantic anti-hero, though admittedly I can’t blame it solely for the wimpification of Jonathan Harker – that’s been around for much, much longer.
I can handle the completely fabricated love affair between Dracula and Mina, even though we’re not given any reason to care about them as a couple beyond the fact they’re reincarnated lovers (which still doesn’t give us any information about what their relationship was actually like) but stories that have been around for as long as this one should be played around with a little, just to keep things fresh.
One thing I did like, or at least appreciate, is that it shifts the clearcut “band of heroes versus the supernatural monster” narrative into something that’s rather more spiritual in tone. By positing Dracula as Vlad Tepes, another original addition that has no basis in Stoker’s novel, the prologue depicts the whole story as more as a battle waged against God Himself. After the death of his wife, Vlad commits himself to evil and darkness, damning himself to the curse of vampirism – and yet centuries later, said wife reappears to him in the form of Mina Murray, who ultimately provides his salvation.
Did God personally reincarnate her in order to put her back in Dracula’s orbit and so secure His wayward son’s redemption? It would seem so, and it’s a nice touch that even though her act of “saving” him is to grab a big honking sword and cut his head off (apparently we have George Lucas of all people to thank for this scene, as Mina dispatching Dracula was his suggestion) it all ends on a note of grace for such an iconic monster.
Yeah, it’s a bit like watching Darth Vader murder innocent people for three straight movies before becoming a Force-ghost, but there’s a power to this kind of narrative that can’t be denied. The new angle to the story that this film brings is that it’s essentially about a single man’s war against God, who is nevertheless defeated with the power of eternal love.
I generally hate this sort of thing (that is, a woman being made the vessel for a male character’s redemption), but what can I say? I watched this at a formative age and so am giving it a pass. And let’s not forget, at the end of the day he dies, and she lives.
In fact, I managed to find some of the deleted scenes on YouTube, and among them there’s an alterative (or at least extended) ending in which Mina is reunited with Jonathan in the chapel, and they leave the castle together. There’s also one that confirms Renfield’s death, more of Jonathan’s mind-bending antics at Castle Dracula, and a different opening in which Elizabeta’s corpse segues into Mina getting her hair washed. They’re worth watching, and it’s a shame there isn’t any sort of official “alternative cut,” just to see them all in their right place.
But it’s the opulence of the costumes and set design that I love most of all, and having been filmed back in 1992, we simply don’t see this sort of care and level of detail anymore. It’s all so tangible and real, even when it’s clearly matte paintings and miniatures and prosthetic masks.
One day I hope to watch a truly faithful adaptation of Dracula, one that leans heavily into the eerie atmosphere that the book conjures, as there are so many great scenes and characters that have never been dramatized on-screen before (Mina racing after a sleepwalking Lucy through the town and up into a graveyard being foremost among them). Maybe one day.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
I had forgotten just how truly bizarre this movie was. It’s a mash-up of about a dozen different things: the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid, the giant elephants from The Lord of the Rings, the outlaw guerilla fighters from any Robin Hood retelling, a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, a final battle with all the weight of a video game, the quick editing of Guy Ritchie’s similarly-shot Sherlock Holmes films... even David Beckham is here for some reason.
Maybe there’s a decent idea buried deep in here somewhere, straining to be heard, but it’s impossible to discern amongst all the noise that’s blasted at you. More than anything, it’s obvious that director Guy Ritchie would have preferred to have made a Robin Hood film, as this material is far more suited to that character’s Jack-the-Lad quality; especially since Arthur is characterized here as a charming thief rather than an innately noble king raised in obscurity.
That said “charming” is the operative term here. This Arthur (Charlie Hunman) has the swagger of Jonas Armstrong’s Robin Hood, but without the charisma. Instead he’s a backtalking smartarse who spends the entire film being a dickhead to everyone whose path he crosses, has no interest in becoming king, and engages in plenty of primal screaming and chest-beating during his daily exercise routine. And sure, there’s always room for character development, but it’s obvious that the film doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with him in the first place.
Throw in a hidden forest village and a ragtag team of men who are less knights than they are brawlers (because Ritchie also loves his gangsters and street warfare), and yeah – it’s a Robin Hood film in disguise.
Perhaps what is most grating is that the whole thing is framed as a revenge story. While still a boy, Arthur is witness to his mother’s death and his father Uther’s betrayal at the hands of his brother Vortigern (sure, whatever) who then seizes the crown and kingdom. Turns out that Vortigern has joined forces with Mordred (huh??) and used magic to consolidate his power. Much like Moses, Arthur escapes downriver on a small boat, though unlike Moses, he is subsequently raised in a brothel.
Whatever else the King Arthur legends are about, they must at some level be about striving for something better: the concept of justice, or equality, or unity among disparate groups of people. This is a figure who has always been motivated by ideals, not vengeance, and to ignore all that in favour of a by-the-books revenge plot is just plain boring.
And then there’s the whole rest of the movie. Where do I even start? No less than four women are fridged across the course of the film (two before the opening credits have even ended, and two at the hands of a man who supposedly “loves” them in order to claim more supernatural power for himself), and the female lead (played by Astrid Berges-Frisbey) isn’t even given the dignity of a name. She’s referred to as “the Mage,” but seriously – who the hell is she meant to be? She’s kind of a love interest to Arthur, so Guinevere? But she has magical powers, so Morgana? She’s also described as an apprentice of Merlin (who doesn’t actually appear in this film) which would make her Nimue, but that’s never confirmed either.
Eventually some characters are revealed as staple parts of the legends, such as Tristan, Percival and Bedivere, but those are odd names to use when you’re omitting the likes of Gawaine, Lancelot and Kay. Other characters are called Goosefat Bill and Wet Stick and Kung Fu George and just where are they getting this stuff? I mean, go with one extreme or the other, but the fact they’re grabbing half their material from the traditional stories and then throwing in some bizarre original components just adds to the confusion.
Worse, there’s no real camaraderie between the characters, which is always what makes these sorts of films so much fun. At least there’s some Retroactive Recognition at work since last time I watched it: turns out Freddie Fox was one of the rebel fighters, and Peter Guinness pops up for about two seconds as a skeptical noble, which is funny only because I also saw him in Cursed this month (see below). Guess he’s the go-to guy for jerky nobles in Arthurian dramas.
There are plenty of Ritchie’s trademark quick-cut action montages that were clearly meant to be more drawn-out setpieces that got hacked to bits in the editing room, as well as some obvious missing scenes – how, for example, did Vortigern realize that Annabelle Wallis’s character Maggie was a spy for the rebels? And what happened to Freddie Fox’s character after he’s captured and presumably tortured into giving away the location of the forest encampment?
As is usually the case, Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone end up being one and the same, with the stone itself being Uther after he transforms himself into a rock and sinks to the bottom of a reservoir with the sword buried in his shoulder to prevent Vortigern from claiming it. Years later, the water recedes far enough to reveal the sword, and all the young men in the kingdom are forced to try their hand at removing it. This is how Arthur is identified, though the sword is so powerful it makes him faint every time he touches it. This feels like a very serious design flaw in a weapon, so thank goodness he wasn’t killed immediately after pulling it from the stone while he was conveniently unconscious!
I mean, I can’t say that I was ever bored, and the soundtrack is genuinely good (especially “The Devil and the Huntsman,” a rendition of an old folk ballad). And if nothing else, there is spectacle. One five-second establishing shot in this film probably cost more than an entire episode of Merlin.
Carmilla (2019)
I actually watched this one after Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, and it brought something into crystal-clear focus: vampires are now a metaphor for oppressed sexuality and society’s fear of it. That’s one of the reasons why these stories are usually set in the Victorian Era, which is the go-to period for this kind of material (repression, religious fundamentalism, rationality, corsets, puritanism, etc).
In fact, Ellen Hutter voices this very idea in Nosferatu, asking the Van Helsing stand-in: “does evil come from without or from within?” Well Ellen, centuries ago when vampires were incorporated into a Christian framework, filled with demons and witches and goblins that served to explain the more incomprehensible parts of life, then they came from outside. But with the waning of religious doctrine (or at least superstition) in our collective lives, they’ve instead become linked to our concept of psychosexuality and everyone’s collective hang-ups over it.
Again, that’s why the setting of this adaptation has been changed from Austria to Victorian Era England. It doesn’t make much sense anywhere else. As such, you can expect close-ups of corsets being laced up, our left-handed protagonist having that hand bound behind her back, blood being used as lipstick, forbidden books with tantalizing illustrations, dreams where violence and sensuality are mingled... by this point, vampires as the embodiments of transgression and forbidden fruit has become the new cliché.
I’m actually pulling together a whole new post on this gradual change in how vampires have been portrayed, so I’ll refrain from delving too deeply into the subject here. This was a very slow-paced film (perhaps a little too slow – did we really have to watch every single meal that takes place?) but it works with the basic premise of the book: the mysterious Carmilla is brought to recuperate at the house of Laura’s father after a carriage accident, and soon enough puts Laura in thrall to her beauty and exercise of freedom.
Unfortunately, the change in setting loses a lot of the novella’s inherent weirdness. Not just the opulence and fairy tale atmosphere of a remote Austrian schloss, but stuff like Laura having dreams of Carmilla years before meeting her, the little glimpses that we get of Carmilla’s vampiric family, and the framing device of a completely unknown character gathering testimonials from those that interacted with Carmilla, years after the fact.
They’re all part of the novella’s strange, dreamy nature, but what it’s all replaced with here is equally bizarre, without the ambiance to justify it. Here, it’s Laura’s governess that suspects Carmilla of being a vampire (though it’s never explicitly stated, and spoken in such veiled terms that it’s clearly meant to allude to lesbianism as well) who ropes the local doctor and the house servants into helping her kill the threat to Laura’s life/purity/straightness.
But since the story has been transported to the Victorian Era and the vampirism hidden under the subtext of a gay sexual awakening, these characters now simply come across as absolute lunatics who flat-out murder a young girl in cold blood for no good reason. It’s difficult to discern what this adaptation is trying to do besides (as stated) use vampires as a metaphor for sex instead of as literal monsters that embody sex. What it doesn’t realize is that by doing so it changes the entirety of the original plot’s meaning and purpose.
In short, it’s weird – but not in a good way.
Wicked (2024)
What is Oz to me? Like most kids, the MGM film was a staple part of my childhood, and I distinctly remember a teacher reading the original Wizard of Oz book to us on the mat at primary school. I’ve seen the stage musical twice, first in Sydney and then in Christchurch, and I’ve read Gregory Maguire’s book upon which it is based (which was in turn inspired by L. Frank Baum’s series of children’s books).
And yet, I was never a huge fan of Oz. Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I found the stories a little too weird, too random in their structure and world-building. Even as a child, I liked consistency in my fantasy worlds. So I wasn’t in a huge hurry to see Wicked, the long-awaited adaptation of the stage musical finally brought to the big screen – though at the same time, I always intended to see it eventually. And it’s fine. It’s fun and bright, and everyone looks like they’re having a good time.
We probably have this story to thank for the influx of “what if an iconic villain was actually just misunderstood?” retellings that haunt us to this day, and in the grand tradition of this subversive form of a storytelling, the heroes are subsequently made out to be either the real villains, or at least in possession of feet of clay. Still, Wicked at least gets away with it, on account of being a solid story in its own right, and because the Oz books are so mutable anyway (even Baum’s original stories are riddled with inconsistencies, and he had no one to answer to but himself).
The MGM movie is profoundly different from the source material, just as the stage show is profoundly different from Maguire’s novel in its turn. (Heck, I did a whole post about this a few years ago). None of them really match up tonally or even visually, and I noted here that the famous ruby slippers have gone back to being silver ones.
I’ve heard it said that Maguire was inspired to write Wicked after noticing the quick exchange between the Wicked Witch and Glinda in the MGM film, which revealed the two were on a first-name basis. What would their prior relationship have looked like, then? Wicked postulates that the two were rivals at school, then friends, then long-distant frenemies – though this film (adapting only the first half of the musical despite being longer than the show in its entirety) only covers the first two stages of this relationship: rivals then friends.
They meet at Shiz University, populated by students who are all clearly in their mid-thirties, where the green-skinned Elphaba is unexpectedly enrolled after demonstrating an act of powerful magic. As soon becomes clear, there’s something rotten in the Land of Oz, and magic is on the wane, leading to the scapegoating of sentient animals who are losing their ability to talk.
Golden Child Galinda (soon to be Glinda; it’s a long story) is envious of the obvious favouritism Elphaba receives under Madame Morrible’s tutelage, though Elphaba is more concerned with the well-being of her little sister Nessarose, who is in a wheelchair. That’s not even getting to Boq the Munchkin and his crush on Glinda, or the arrival of Prince Fieryo and his carefree outlook on life, or the ever-present surveillance of the Wizard and his designs on the student body.
Yeah, there are a lot of moving parts here, and I have to say that (much like The Princess Bride) the story is very front-heavy. All the good stuff – juicy plot twists, banger songs and character development – takes place in Act I, so I’m not entirely sure how they’re going to keep up the momentum for the handling Act II on the screen.
At least the cast is pretty superb all-round. Ariana Grande apparently campaigned heavily for the role of Glinda, and you can tell she worked hard to get the role. Cynthia Erivo is a little surprising as Elphaba, as she plays the role as much softer and more introverted than most of the performances on the stage. The usual Elphaba is all edges and hard surfaces, putting up a pre-emptive defensive front before anyone else gets the chance to hurt her, but here she’s infinitely more vulnerable and soft-spoken.
The best demonstration of this change is to be found in the delivery of her summation of Glinda in “Loathing.” Usually the utterance of: “BLONDE!” is half-shouted in rank disgust and disdain; yet here Erivo simply mutters it to herself with a shrug. Perhaps I would have liked a little more bite, but in all honesty, her take on the character is so profoundly different from what I’m used to that it’s like comparing chalk and cheese.
The pair of them carry the movie, though Bowen Yang does his best to steal the show, Ethan Slater looks exactly like a Munchkin without actually being a little person, Michelle Yeoh emanates both kindness and menace as Madame Morrible, and Jeff Goldblum is ... well Jeff Goldblum. They were the standouts, but among those I didn’t mention – well, most of their big scenes will take place in Part II, so stay tuned.
However you may feel about movie adaptations of stage shows, they do give directors the freedom of editing, special effects and physical space, which means that Elphaba can now belt out “Defying Gravity” while levitating one hundred feet from the ground against a purple sunset, while quick-cuts and dance scenes can better capture the ongoing rivalry between Elphaba and Glinda during “Loathing” as they move from their dorm room to the cafeteria to the library.
Of course, there are cons as well. All the talking animals are here rendered in CGI, and honestly, I would have been perfectly happy with Peter Dinklage in some facial prosthetics and fake hooves. As ever, sometimes you just want to see something real, especially when it’s inspired by some of the most visually gorgeous films ever rendered in glorious technicolour.
Nosferatu (2024)
Okay, let’s unpack this one. I think it’s important to note that this is a remake/update of Nosferatu, not Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What’s the difference? Well, not a lot. We all know the story behind the 1922 film: it was originally an adaptation of Stoker’s famous novel, only for the studio to be unable to secure the rights, forcing them to hastily change the names of all the characters: Dracula becomes Orlok, Mina becomes Ellen, Jonathan becomes Thomas and so on. Stoker’s widow sued anyway, won the law suit, and had nearly all copies of the film destroyed. We’re very lucky that the original film still exists.
The irony is that Nosferatu is probably more faithful to the original novel than many of the later films that were explicit adaptations of Dracula, and hits all the main beats of the story: a lawyer is sent to manage the purchase of an estate on behalf of a foreign count, who quickly reveals himself as a nefarious creature of the night who subsequently travels to the lawyer’s hometown and targets his wife as a source of life-giving blood.
The crucial difference between Dracula and Nosferatu is that in the former story, the lawyer’s wife is saved, while in the latter, she dies at the vampire’s hands (or teeth) – though not without Taking Him With Her since he becomes so glutted on her blood that he loses track of time and perishes in the morning light. It’s this key difference that apparently caught Eggers’ interest, for it’s Ellen’s sacrifice that he recontextualizes, explores, and deepens in his retelling.
Set in Germany, 1838, Thomas Hutter leaves his young wife Ellen in the care of family friends while he seeks a promotion by travelling to Transylvania to ratify the sale of an estate in his hometown of Wisburg for the mysterious Count Orlok, and – okay, I’ve already recapped this part. The most important new element in all this is the focus on Ellen, who is reimagined as a young woman with latent psychic powers that makes her a beacon to the supernatural. In her childhood, she prayed for companionship after her mother’s death and (somehow) ended up attracting Orlok instead, who preys upon her in what’s clearly a series of sexual as well as blood-drinking assaults.
Years later, Ellen finds herself once more the focus of his long-distance attention, though it remains unclear what granted her a reprieve, why Orlok has decided to get back in touch all these years later, or how he even contacted her in the first place. What the rules of all this are, we never discover, and that they have a bond brought on by Ellen’s psychic power is the only explanation we get. Unlike previous retellings, Thomas’s journey in its entirety is just a pretext for Orlok to reestablish his hold over Ellen – she is the true subject and protagonist of this story.
She reminds me a little of Vanessa Ives from Penny Dreadful (her psychic bond with/attraction to the darkness), when combined with Erin Green in Midnight Mass (stalling for time by using herself to force the vampire into a blood-drinking fugue state).
For better or worse, Eggers doesn’t change the outcome of the story. Ellen still dies, though here it’s done with deliberation and self-awareness on her behalf. On hearing the conclusion of Von Franz’s research into the plague that Orlok has brought to Wisberg (“And though the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast and with him lay in close embrace till first cockcrow, her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the curse of Nosferatu”) she gives herself up as his victim, distracting him long enough with this bloodlust (or actual lust) for the sun to come up, destroying both of them at the same time.
And sure, it’s done with Ellen’s consent and full understanding of what she’s doing this time around, but if Orlok is an analogy for her depression, or for the specter of child abuse and the ongoing shame it clearly left her with, then it’s a pretty grim ending. Ellen doesn’t survive the trauma that was heaped upon her, and the most positive spin one can make on this conclusion is that at least she goes out on her own terms, exposing Orlok’s abuse to the light of day for all to see. Nobody ever listened to her during her life, but no one can deny the truth of her death.
Or else if we take into account Ellen’s feelings of desire for Orlok (such as her early confession that she dreams about marrying death, or her admission that some of their encounters were initially pleasurable) then the moral is... give into the abuse that you secretly wanted because you were lonely? Yikes, that’s one heck of a subtext, dude.
But hey, that’s just how it goes sometimes. Life is dark and complicated and difficult, and Eggers never promised a happy ending to his vampire story.
At the end of the day, my feeling is this: I can’t criticize a film for being about what it wants to be about: the mingling of sex and death, horror and lust, and the confusion that comes when they all intersect, a theme which is captured in the beautiful/horrifying tableau that closes the film: Ellen beneath Orlok’s corpse, both strewn with flowers in the morning sun. But in the wider scope of female-centric storytelling, the whole thing is exhausting. How many times must we watch a woman’s sexuality be portrayed in this way, as something terrifying and awful? Or of a woman’s choices in life being embodied by two men, one representing staid conformity and the other her repressed feelings about sex?
It doesn’t and shouldn’t mean we can’t have any films on the subject, but I’m reminded of this quote from A.S. Byatt’s Possession:
Do you never get the sense that our metaphors eat up our world? I mean of course everything connects and connects, all the time, and I suppose one studies... literature because all these connections seem both endlessly exciting and then in some sense dangerously powerful, as though we held a clue to the true nature of things? I mean, all those gloves, a minute ago, we were playing a professional game of hooks and eyes: medieval gloves, giants’ gloves, Blanche Glover, Balzac’s gloves, the sea-anemone’s ovaries... and it all reduced like boiling jam to human sexuality.
As I noted in my thoughts on Carmilla, nothing is about the external forces of good and evil anymore (especially in the vampire genre) but rather internal psychodramas concerning how weird women can get about sex. My counterargument is that there’s more to us than this reductive interpretation of how we think and feel about the subject.
Miscellaneous Observations:
As with all of Eggers’ work, I loved the look of the thing: the brickwork, the shadows, the costumes, the cinematography – the man knows how to frame a shot.
I was interested in the characters played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin, as it’s often through entirely original characters that you can get a grasp of what the filmmaker is trying to convey throughout the film – after all, they’re not beholden to any preestablished “lore,” so they can exist entirely to serve the themes. Unfortunately, they’re not very well-sketched characters, and as far as I can tell, they’re simply meant to embody the Victorian ideals of masculinity (rational, overbearing, in control) and femininity (gracious, demure, heavily pregnant – her only transgression is that she spends her feminine kindness as much on her friend as she does on her husband), both of which are helpless in the face of Orlok’s subversive undermining of normality.
Speaking of, I know I was meant to hate Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character as the embodiment of Victorian patriarchalism, but I ended up feeling just a smidge sorry for the guy, mostly because the idea of having a houseguest like Ellen Hutter would be my absolute worst nightmare. And yeah, if the doctor called in to attend her started earnestly insisting it was all because of vampires, I too would be telling him to get the fuck out of my house.
Simon McBurney from Carnival Row plays the Renfield character in this, though he’s far too kindly and gnome-like to be an effective threat. He wouldn’t thank me for that, as I’m essentially insulting his range, but truly – he’s just not right for the part. Eggers’ longtime collaborator Ralph Ineson is in this too as the Doctor Seward expy, and he’s a bit bland this time around, despite being one of the industry’s most reliable character actors. Not sure what happened there.
I watched this on a DVD that came with an extended cut of the film, and honestly, there’s barely any difference between the two versions. I think it comes down to about three or four extra minutes of dialogue, and for most of its duration I wasn’t even sure if I was watching the extended cut as the two are just too similar.
The film is almost completely devoid of Christian belief and iconography, which – okay, I get it was already packed to the gills with all the repressed sexuality motifs, but it was a bit of an oversight given how prevalent Christianity was in the lives of nineteenth century people and Ellen’s sense of shame and guilt, brought on by her society’s warped understanding of Christianity’s definition of good and evil. And when you’ve got Willem Dafoe’s character saying things like: “she is the way,” and “you are our salvation,” and “only you have the faculty to redeem us,” then you kinda want the religious figurehead who promises the spiritual peace that Ellen craves to have some sort of presence in her life, if not just to provide a contrast/compare to her own sacrifice, the strict social mores of Victorian patriarchism that causes all this trouble in the first place, and/or Orlok’s exploitation of Ellen’s body.
They just could have gone a bit harder on the role of religion – for good or bad – in all of this, is all I’m saying. It’s kind of weird in a way, that it’s not used as either a protective measure against evil, or as context for how these rigid social assumptions on the subject of sex and a woman’s place came to be in the first place – it simply doesn’t exist in any meaningful way at all.
Gladiator II (2024)
If there’s one reason to watch this film, it’s to see Denzel Washington make an absolute meal out of everything that surrounds him. He feasts on it all: the costumes, the dialogue, the other characters. I’m not sure why anyone else even turned up – especially since this is a bit of a dud.
Remember how poignant the end of Gladiator was, when Maximus’s last words were: “Lucius is safe,” before dying in the knowledge that he protected his former love’s son even though he couldn’t save his own? Well, that apparently didn’t last three seconds, as Lucilla circumvents Lucius as he’s following Maximus’s body out the colosseum (they actually use the original footage of him doing so) and whisks him out a side exit before he’s even left the arena.
Why? Unclear. I mean, who is actually threatening his life at this point? Twenty years later two deranged twins are joint-emperors of Rome, but maybe they would never have reached that position if Lucius had been there to take his rightful place on the throne.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a Happy Ending Override, and this ensures that everything Maximus fought and died for in the last movie was for nothing.
The plot is basically just a retread of the original: Lucius becomes a slave, then a gladiator, then works his way up the pecking order, then uses his allies among the other fighters to overthrow his enemies in the arena. He too gets a fridged wife to spur on his quest for vengeance, though because it’s 2024 instead of 2000, the screenwriter deigns to give her a name and allows her to fall in battle instead of getting butchered off-screen. (I mean, they know this doesn’t make it better, right? Why not have her taken hostage and used as leverage against Lucius? That’s still not great, but it would have avoided the film being such a blatant retread of the original).
Connie Nielson returns as Lucilla and somehow gets even less to do before she too is fridged for Lucien’s manpain. Derek Jacobi also comes back to reprise his role and gets a Bridge Dropped On Him for his trouble. I’m not sure why he bothered, to be honest. The evil twins have nothing Joaquin Phoenix’s vicious, mercurial, unravelling Commodus. Pedro Pascal is more of a plot-point than a character. The excitement of watching real stunts and real tigers in the original film has been replaced with CGI slop.
Oh, and it turns out Lucius was Maximus’s biological son all along. It really adds nothing, but certainly detracts from the poignancy of the “just missed each other” dynamic between Maximus and Lucilla throughout the first movie. Besides which, why wouldn’t Lucilla have TOLD Maximus this when she needed to gain his trust? It would have instantly secured his assistance in saving the boy that was her entire motivation in the original film.
You have my permission to skip this one.
Dune: Part II (2024)
I have an odd relationship with the Dune property: I’ve read the first book about three times but none of the others, I’ve watched the Sy-Fy miniseries about three times as well, but not the infamous David Lynch offering, and I’d have to say I appreciate rather than enjoy it, especially for how it inspired so much of what came after it in the sci-fi genre. As an adaptation of the second half of Frank Herbert’s novel, there’s not a lot I can say about Dune: Part II that I didn’t already say about Part I.
What’s striking is how these films have shied away from so much of the truly weird psychedelic stuff, opting for a very grim-and-dour aesthetic to match its super-serious content. There are no aliens or golems here, and rather astoundingly, the words “the spice must flow,” is never uttered in either of the two films (if anyone watched these without prior knowledge of the book, I’m not sure they would understand the significance of the spice, or even what it was).
The film also cuts down significantly on the character of Alia, whose adult self (played by Anya Tayor-Joy) only appears in a dream/vision, and isn’t even born by the time the movie ends. In fact, quite a lot of material is truncated or omitted entirely, notably the fact that Paul and Chani have a son together, who is subsequently killed in a raid led by Feyd-Rautha.
Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica remains spot-on casting that is let down by the script’s fail to capture the Silk Hiding Steel aspect of her character, and the likes of Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Ramping and Josh Brolin fill their minor roles with all the weight and gravitas that their talent can manage. They do a lot with very limited screentime.
The most intriguing change from page to screen is found in Zendaya’s Chani, who is profoundly different from her book counterpart. There, Chani was a true believer, completely devoted to Paul and his mission, and complacently accepting of his political marriage to Princess Irulan. This Chani is a warrior and leader in her own right, openly skeptical about Paul’s claims to Messiah-hood (in this she switches roles with Stilgar) and who leaves Paul for the desert when it becomes clear he’s going to prioritize his destiny over their relationship.
I’m not sure how I feel about this to be honest, for this Chani may as well be a completely different character, and it’s impossible to imagine them being faithful to the fate Herbert proscribes to her in the next book. Denis Villeneuve walks a fine line between updating a somewhat underwritten character in the books, and leaning too hard into modern sensibilities when it comes to her depiction.
And yet, the two films seem to have avoided the usual bellyaching from fandom, and the general consensus is that this is the new definitive adaptation. I didn’t dislike it, but my fondness for the source material was always a little lukewarm anyway.
One day, I’ll watch the two films again, one directly after the other. In time, I’m sure I’ll see Dune Messiah as well.
Dracula: Season 1 (2013)
I have been going through the contents of my ancient hard-drive, looking at all the shows stored therein and occasionally a trip down memory lane by rewatching them. Back in the day, NBC’s take on Dracula garnered some interest among my fandom circle for being the first project to feature Katie McGrath after Merlin wrapped up, but it was ultimately cancelled after one season for simply not being very good. I actually wrote some episode reviews for it way back on my LiveJournal, but even I gave up after a while.
And yet I found myself oddly enjoying this rewatch; perhaps because it’s been so long, perhaps because there were no expectations at work this second time around.
Still, it’s worth noting that there’s a genuinely horrific story of what was going on behind-the-scenes with creator Cole Haddon, who relates his nightmarish experiences working on the show here. It’s pretty hair-raising stuff and worth the read, if not just to shed light on why this show ended up being rather terrible. Heck, the fact that it’s in any way coherent under these working conditions is something of a miracle.
According to Haddon, his initial premise was a retelling of Dracula which focused on the periphery cast (Jonathan, Mina, Van Helsing, Lucy) while the titular character remained on the outskirts of the action, veiled in shadows. The studio notes overruled him, stating that Dracula had to be the protagonist, though there was still an interesting core concept: that Dracula and Van Helsing would work together in an uneasy alliance against a common enemy: the Order of the Dragon. (To the surprise of absolutely no one, both their wives were killed by the Order). In other words, an Evil Versus Evil premise.
That said, a lot is borrowed from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1996 film, namely conflating Dracula with Vlad Tepes and positing that Mina is his reincarnated wife. (For the record, he was never identified as Vlad Tepes in Stoker’s original text, and one cannot even 100% confirm that he was inspired by that particular historical figure in the first place. Sure, it seems very likely given certain details, but Stoker never mentions Vlad by name in any of his extensive notes – and in any case, he gives a very different background for Dracula in the novel than what is presented here).
The gist of the plot is that Van Helsing finds Dracula’s resting place and brings him back to undead “life” to put his long-term plan to defeat the Order into effect: by posing as American magnate Alexander Grayson, Dracula will introduce electro-magnetic power to London, thereby undermining the Order’s interests in coal and fuel.
Yeah, I’m not sure why Van Helsing needs Dracula to do any of this either. But of course there’s a spanner in the works: during his grand introduction to society, Dracula sees Mina Murray on the arm of her fiancé Jonathan Harker (now a reporter) and instantly recognizes her as the splitting image of his long-dead wife Ilona. The show unfolds down a number of different subplots: the fraught alliance between Dracula and Van Helsing, the actions taken by the Order to track down the perceived threat in London, Dracula drawing Mina and Jonathan into his orbit, and other little threads, such as Lucy’s unrequited Sapphic love for Mina, or original character Jane Wetherby (the only female member of the Order) embarking on an affair with Grayson.
The whole thing is very 2013, which means that there’ll be exactly one Black regular (a lawyer who acts more as a manservant, though there are also two Black seer siblings that have their skulls bashed in after two episodes), at least three gay characters who all end up dead, and lots of murdered women... except the super-special female lead, who gets a career this time around, which has no real bearing on the plot and is eventually eaten by a love triangle. It’s just that well-meaning but utterly clueless type of representation you saw a lot of a decade ago.
And of course, Dracula is recharacterized as an anti-hero. Sure, he murders dozens of innocent people, but at least he’s not racist, supports women’s rights, dances with bedlam inmates, and isn’t homophobic (though he isn’t above blackmailing gay men). At one point he becomes tearful over a vampire woman that’s been locked up in Jane’s basement, though this doesn’t stop him from experimenting on his own vampire woman prisoner later on, who is subjected to a horrific death as a test subject for a serum that’s meant to allow him to walk in the daylight.
Meanwhile, poor Jonathan steadily has his life destroyed from under him by Grayson’s machinations, but because he commits more mundane sins, starting with chauvinistic comments and ending with cheating on Mina with Lucy (say what??) he’s considered the scum of the earth. It’s almost funny when Mina calls him a “murderer!” in the final episode, and then promptly runs off to have sex with Alexander, whose death toll considerably outweighs Jonathan’s.
(To add insult to injury, Jonathan’s transgression is treated as an unforgivable crime, even though it’s not like Dracula has been sexually loyal to Mina either – he spends most of the first season having torrid sex with Jane Wetherby).
For that matter, this is a hit piece on poor Lucy as well. After admitting her feelings for Mina and getting rejected, she decides that the best way to proceed is to seduce Jonathan. Ah yes, the logical course of action for any lesbian to take. And why does Jonathan sleep with her? Because he suspects that Mina might have feelings for Grayson. And then, after learning what they’ve done, Dracula decides to turn Lucy into a vampire as punishment, telling her: “if you’re going to behave like a monster, I’ll make you one.” Why doesn’t Jonathan get similar treatment? And why would Dracula even care since Lucy seducing Jonathan is a net positive for him?
I mean, this clearly only happens because Lucy getting turned into a vampire is a big thing in the original novel, but it plays out here in the most convoluted way possible. Come to think of it, it’s Jane who initially encourages Lucy to share her secret feelings with Mina... but why? What on earth is her motivation to shit-stir in Lucy’s life like this? To mess with Mina and therefore Grayson by proxy? That’s quite a reach.
Speaking of, Jane Weatherby (Victoria Smurfit) is easily the show’s most interesting character, as she’s already reached a level of autonomy and agency in life that Mina can only gesture at. In fact, her existence undermines Mina’s quite a lot, for while the younger woman sighs and strains against social mores, Jane is out there doing whatever she wants with complete sexual freedom and financial independence, rather like a middle-aged Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How on earth did she become part of the Order in the first place? And why? Where’d she get her training? Why isn’t she the main character?
There are more problems. For starters, the Order of the Dragon makes for an extremely dull antagonist. For the record, this was a real chivalric order that the real Vlad Tepes was a part of, and here is made responsible for the creation of Dracula in the first place. How? Why? Aside from a vague assertion that he disobeyed their commands, it’s left unclear. There’s an animated prologue that’s still on YouTube, though that doesn’t really shed any light on the situation. Likewise, we never learn what Van Helsing did that led to the Order killing his wife and son.
And by the present day, the Order is comprised of a completely different set of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the execution of Dracula’s wife. So why would he care?
Back in 2013, I had trouble telling apart the show’s range of bearded white dudes, though by 2025, I can now more successfully identify them as Paul Milner from Foyle’s War, Sir Anthony from Downton Abbey and Tay Kolmer from Andor! In fact, there are plenty of familiar guest stars (Jemma Redgrave, Jack Fox, Neve McIntosh and Alec Newman, who also played Paul Atreides in the Sy-Fy miniseries) as well as at least one familiar set. Look familiar?
.png)
.png)
It’s Castle Nottingham, as featured for three seasons in the BBC’s Robin Hood! This is actually part of a “real” medieval village in Budapest that’s rented out for productions such as this. There’s even a link between Lucy Griffiths and Jessica de Gouw – both gave performances in this very courtyard, and a few years later the former replaced the latter in the role of Amelia Lydgate in Vienna Blood, a show I’ve been meaning to get to for the past five years.
There are some fun ideas along the way, but also some incredibly idiotic creative decisions. Why does Dracula decide to conduct an interview with Jonathan with the shades open and the sun streaming in? Why does Van Helsing decide to slit a guy’s throat to wake up Dracula instead of just taking blood with him and avoiding cold-blooded murder? Why can’t Jane, a skillful vampire hunter, identify Alexander Grayson – the man she’s sleeping with – as a member of the undead? At one point Van Helsing needs to get rid of the Order’s seers; instead of just sending them poison, he doses them with a paralytic so he can smash their heads in with a hammer instead.
And because of the overarching plan to undermine the Order’s investments in oil and fuel resources, you’re treated to an overwhelming degree of fraught conversations about coolant.
Of course, the inherently silly nature of the story also lends itself to some accidentally amusing incidences. At one point a rogue Order member has Renfield (here characterized as an American lawyer who was ostracized by his firm on account of his race, which is a decent twist) kidnapped in order to ascertain who Grayson loves in order to avenge his son, who committed suicide after Grayson’s extortion – part of the torture involves Renfield being repeatedly asked: “who does Alexander Grayson love?” The show wants you to believe that the answer is “Mina Murray,” but given the lengths Dracula goes to in order to save his lawyer’s life, it would appear the answer is Renfield!
Jonathan Rhys Meyers gives a performance that’s not a million miles away from his take on King Henry VIII, and he does look rather devilish with that widow’s peak and pointed little beard (also, he chews the scenery like nobody’s business. If you can keep a straight face through his “THERE WAS A MAN!” scene, then you’re stronger than I am). Jessica de Gouw is stuck in the rather thankless role of demure and angelic object of desire for at least three other characters, depicted as a medical student to insert some feminist cred into the proceedings. Unfortunately, she faces no real obstacles or prejudice in her dream to become a physician, and her skills are never integrated into the story in any meaningful way. By the end, the whole thing is eaten by her various love triangles, and she ends up having sex with Grayson while still not knowing that he’s a vampire (by this point, practically everyone else does).
Plus, it’s hard to root for a couple when all they’ve got going for them is “they’re reincarnated lovers, just go with it.” Okay, but what was their relationship like? I felt that she actually had more chemistry with Jonathan, and only later found out that the actors were dating at the time, which explains it.
Oliver Jackson-Cohen seems to have made a career playing either hapless Nice Guys or secretly evil Nice Guys, which at least means he’s keeping me guessing while watching Surface with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and although Thomas Kretschmann is a great choice for Van Helsing, with his unholy alliance with Dracula presented as the hook of the show in its entirety, he always seems on the periphery of the main storylines.
In short, Jane is the most interesting character and so gets killed off in the final episode, Van Helsing is well-cast but barely in it all things considered, everyone’s behaviour gets increasingly absurd in the final stretch of episodes, Lucy and Jonathan’s characters are ruined to prop up Dracula, and there are unresolved cliffhangers for everyone.
And yet, I found myself wanting to know what would have happened next.
Cursed: Season 1 (2020)
This is the third and final King Arthur-adjacent show I watched these past two months, and probably the one I would have most liked to see continue. But hey – Netflix.
It’s also the adaptation that had the least to do with its subject matter; in fact, this could have been an original fantasy with no overt connection to Arthuriana and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to how the story unfolds. As ever, it plays fast and loose with the traditional stories, mixing up familial relationships, adding original characters, changing who did what (and when and where) and setting the story within a framework of their own unique premise. Every now and then, dark fantasy tries to make a comeback (Carnival Row and Damsel also come to mind) but so far nothing in the genre has become a smash hit.
That said, it’s been rather fascinating to see how conflict is built and structured across all these retellings. Camelot worked with an extreme case of sibling rivalry: Morgan-versus-Arthur in a straightforward clash for the throne, without much religious or historical context. The Winter King was far more geopolitical, not to mention grounded in a sense of realism, in which the divided tribes of Britain tentatively draw together under Arthur’s leadership to fend off the Saxons.
But Cursed (and Hallmark’s Merlin for that matter) works with a Christian-versus-pagan conflict; the old ways making way for the new religion, and the clash of cultures that ensues. Both naturally turn an extremely complex set of circumstances into a more straightforward narrative, but Merlin did more in demonstrating that each side had its heroes and villains; that in fact, the move from paganism under the capricious Queen Mab to the onset of Christianity was a net good.
Cursed has an inverted scenario: the peaceful and oppressed “fey-folk” (made up of several different tribes) versus the Red Paladins; a religious order that operates with all the cruelty and fanaticism of the Inquisition. In the middle of this conflict is Nimue, a young fey girl who – for some reason – is as much ostracized among her own people as she is by society at large. Why, since her community lives alongside plenty of individuals with preternatural abilities? Unclear.
When her home is destroyed by Red Paladins, Nimue takes to the wild with a single command from her dying mother: to take the Sword of Power to a man called Merlin. This comprises the main thrust of the first five episodes, though there are myriad of other subplots that the show juggles along the way: Merlin’s court intrigues with the young and petulant King Uther, Nimue’s friend Pym escaping the destruction of her home and falling in with some Vikings, a sellsword called Arthur getting drawn into Nimue’s orbit and finding a purpose to his life, his sister Morgana leaving the convent where she lives in order to assist the fey folk, and a deranged little novice from the same nunnery who wants to become a Red Paladin at any cost.
There is a lot going on here, and I haven’t even mentioned characters such as the Green Knight, Red Spear and Weeping Monk, who end up being Famous All Along characters from the legends.
None of it is what I’d call objectively good, and yet there’s a lot to enjoy here. There are some arresting visuals and character designs, and the saturated colour palette is a treat to behold. Many of the supporting characters are a lot of fun, particularly Pym and Morgana (they are in fact, far more appealing than the lead character) and some of the twists on Arthurian legend are interesting (especially the true identity of the Weeping Monk).
Gustaf Skarsgård as Merlin initially seems like too-easy casting after his prolonged stint as Floki on Vikings, and yet despite the superficial resemblance between the two characters, his Merlin ends up being the highlight of the show, with deeply hidden reserves of empathy that Floki lacked (there’s no getting rid of the actor’s trademark swagger-stride through). If nothing else, it’s a shame the show didn’t continue for his sake, as Skarsgård delivers a great spin on the character and seemed to be enjoying himself while doing it.
To continue the contrast to The Winter King and Camelot, this is clearly aimed at a much younger audience. It’s YA through-and-through, from the teenage female protagonist who makes terrible mistakes that always seem to work out for her, a love triangle between warm and supportive/dark and broody boys, and themes of surface-level revolution at the hands of an oppressed class. It can get surprisingly dark at times though, with plenty of gore and bloodshed.
That Nimue is an outcast among her own kind really makes no sense, and the whole thing is dropped after a couple of episodes anyway. Merlin spends an inordinate amount of time retrieving a strange green flame from a kingdom of lepers that live underground, but once it’s in his possession, it plays no further part in the story. And it ultimately ends on a number of cliffhangers that will never be resolved, from Gawaine’s maybe-death to Nimue falling in the river to whatever the heck was going on with Morgana and the Widow. (And unlike The Winter King, I can’t track down the original book in order to see how it all ends – apparently, it also ends on a cliffhanger and the sequel has never been published).
Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about it is that I ended up accidentally skipping episode five... and I didn’t even notice until two episodes later. The plots are so patchy that I didn’t question how the characters randomly jumped from place to place.
As stated, it was an interesting experience to watch three Arthurian retellings in quick succession, and that they all ended up being so different from each other is a testament to the mutability of the legends. Camelot and Cursed shared an aesthetic of bright colours and coiffed hair, while The Winter King goes for gritty realism and a grimdark tone. Camelot and The Winter King were aimed at adults, while Cursed was pure YA. Camelot was an ensemble piece, The Winter King had an original character (Derfel) as its protagonist, while Cursed focused on Nimue for what (as far as I know) was the first time on television. And all three of them were cancelled after their first season. Ah well. I suppose a story cut-short can never disappoint.
Ludwig: Season 1 (2024)
Everyone and their grandmother was raving about this one, and it was everything they said it would be. The premise requires one heck of a suspension of disbelief, but once you’re on-board, it’s a delight.
John Taylor is reclusive, awkward and probably on the spectrum, spending his days concocting puzzles for various newspapers and other publications. One night he gets an unexpected phone-call from his sister-in-law Lucy, requesting that he get into the taxi that’s just pulled up outside his house. Her tone brooks no argument. On reaching her place, John’s twin brother James (Lucy’s husband) is nowhere to be seen, an absence that’s soon explained when she shows him the letter he’s left her, telling Lucy to pack up her belongings and disappear with their teenage son. No explanation is given, and Lucy has no idea what’s brought it on other than James’s strangely distant behaviour for the past few months while working on a case.
Having no intention of following her husband’s instructions, she’s called in John. The answers to her questions are no doubt in James’s files, records and computer at the police station. But the only person who can access them are James himself... or someone who looks exactly like him.
It sounds like a reasonably straightforward endeavour: John will impersonate his brother long enough to get into the police station, find any relevant information, and get out again. But of course, John has to grapple with his overwhelming social anxiety, a building full of people who think he’s somebody else entirely, and then the unexpected pleasure he derives from solving the murders that suddenly fall into his lap.
Such is the formula of the show: a one-shot crime that John resolves on a weekly basis, and the overarching mystery of what exactly is going on with his missing brother. David Mitchell is firmly in his wheelhouse as the blunt-but-shy-and-socially-awkward John, and the reliable Anna Maxwell Martin as Lucy is thankfully given more to do than just stay at home and worry about her male relatives.
A cozy British mystery series with a wry sense of humour and a winning premise. What more could you want? Well, hopefully a release date for season two, as you’ll be unsurprised to hear that very little regarding the missing James Taylor gets resolved, though there’s enough cozy mystery vibes to justify a rewatch during the wait. The world may be a noisy and chaotic place, but sometimes people will lift police tape for you to duck under if you’re having trouble stepping over it, and they’re the ones you have to live for.
I think the plan is to shoot Ludwig 2 in the second half of the year, but Mitchell is quite a busy man.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime the BBC launched another cozy mystery series this week, Death Valley, which stars Timothy Spall and the enormously underrated Gwyneth Keyworth... it's a genre they're doing pretty well with at the moment.