Reading/Watching Log #115

This month, I gorged myself. I had two weeks off and I challenged myself to watching something from each of the biggest franchises and/or networks on the planet: Star Wars, Star Trek, the MCU, the DCU, Disney Animation, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Muppets, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter (don’t worry, didn’t pay for it), Mission Impossible, Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, The Hunger Games, Doctor Who, Dune, Indiana Jones, Max Mad (or rather Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), The Terminator, The Predator, The Matrix, Alien…

I also managed a few slightly more “second tier” things: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, The Wheel of Time, short films from Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda and Toy Story, as well as the making-of documentary of Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway, since the show’s final season won’t be out until November. Oh, and I threw in a Stephen King movie for good measure.

And because I’ve seen every single episode of Xena Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I made do with a comic book and a tie-in novel respectively. Along with that, I read the graphic novel adaptations of His Dark Materials, and the last book of the Mortal Engines quartet.

Whew, did I miss anything out? I had only one condition to this little project: that everything from each of these franchises had to be something that I had never seen before, the goal being to fill in the gaps of as much of the big-name stuff as possible. It was all pretty exhausting, actually.

Not everything got ticked off: there simply wasn’t any material for James Cameron’s Avatar, or The Chronicles of Narnia. Other stuff like James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, The Musketeers, Robin Hood and King Arthur-related media I decided to hold off on until a later themed-month, as they aren’t so much franchises as they are stories about specific individuals.

All of it has coalesced into one giant blob in my mind, and there was just so much of it that there’s absolutely no way I’m reviewing it all individually. Aside from the books, I’ll comment on everything only briefly, though there are some projects that I absolutely intent to revisit and discuss in more detail later on (Andor, The Wheel of Time, The Rings of Power).

One more thing: as gluttonous as all this looks, I felt rather sad on completing it, as I almost certainly won’t ever be able to do this again. The Wheel of Time has been cancelled, and I doubt there’ll be any more Ghostbusters, Pirates of the Caribbean or Mad Max Sagas (at least not ones that I’ll ever want to see). So in many ways, this felt like the end of an era.

But for what it’s worth, it was a lot of fun.

Links and Updates

I realize it’s been quiet on this blog lately, but there’s just so much going on in my life right now: work, niece/nephew, more work, focusing on getting through the winter…

I’ve recently enjoyed some annual leave, and used the time in order to catch up on big-budget franchise shlock that has been stored in the hard-drive for a while now – I’ll have more to say on all that in my next Reading/Watching Log.

For now, here are some interesting up-and-coming projects…

Woman of the Month: Callisto

Callisto from Xena Warrior Princess

There’s an argument to be made that Callisto is one of the most iconic villains of popular culture, breaking more than a few glass ceilings in how women can be represented as compelling, dangerous threats, while also remaining complex and pitiable, with no easy answers provided in how someone like her should (or even could) be dealt with.

But what makes a “good” villain? Panache? Presentation? A sympathetic point-of-view? That debate continues, but on some level it’s generally agreed upon that the most effective bad guys often serve as a mirror to their heroic counterparts, highlighting their foibles and reflecting their strengths, bringing them into sharper focus by operating as a dark foil to their thoughts and deeds.

That pretty much sums up Callisto, who first appears in the episode aptly named “Callisto,” in which she’s introduced destroying villages under the name and guise of Xena herself. When our Warrior Princess rocks up in order to put a stop to it, she’s hit with a devastating truth bomb:

When she was just a child, Callisto was the sole survivor of a raid that Xena led on her community, one that took the lives of both her parents. Driven mad with grief and rage, Callisto has now come of age and is ready to take her revenge. She’s a destructive, unanswerable, in-your-face consequence of Xena’s own past, who has no motive or ambition beyond making Xena suffer as much as Xena made her suffer when she was a girl. She cannot be stopped or swayed or reasoned with. She doesn’t want power or wealth or even an apology – only to wreak havoc on Xena’s life. 

As Callisto herself announces at one point: “you created a monster – with integrity.”

It’s reminiscent of the whole “you made me/you made me first” exchange between Bruce Wayne and the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, but with infinitely more depth since Xena has to take full responsibility for what Callisto is. And yet her existence leaves Xena powerless: she can’t deny what she did to Callisto, and she certainly can’t defend it. She can’t apologize for it in a way that changes anything, and she can’t make it better in any meaningful way.

What gives Xena the right to kill a woman whose family she murdered and life she ruined? And yet, how can she justify sparing her when Callisto kills indiscriminately? It’s the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object: an enemy of Xena’s own making.

This of course is where the show stumbled a little. Being naturally unwilling to kill Callisto off permanently, and yet not being able to let her roam free or incarcerate her for any length of time, the writers relied heavily on cave-ins and falling rubble and other contrived ways of rendering her incapacitated until the time was right to release her from these narrative holding pens.

Which was often, as she was a recurring villain throughout five of the show’s six seasons. Though her final fate was a bit of a headscratcher (she’s eventually reborn as Xena’s daughter), until that point you could guarantee that any episode which featured her was sure to be a highlight. Her episodes often focused on the cycle of vengeance and its inescapability, and along the way she also murdered Gabrielle’s husband, temporarily swapped bodies with Xena, allied herself with a demonic child, died and started working for the devil, and became an angel before her eventual rebirth. She even enjoyed a few guest appearances on Hercules.

And none of this would mean anything if it wasn’t for Hudson Leick’s performance. In the past I’ve described her as a blend of cat and spider, child and woman, mental insanity and clarity of purpose, complete with a little-girl voice, creepy mannerisms and deranged look in her eyes. As Xena’s accidental protégé, physical match and living reminder of her past sins, she was easily the show’s most evocative villain.