Tag Archives: fantasy

Wicked: Part 1

The disclaimer is this: I saw Wicked (the stage musical) at Fair Park in Dallas some years ago. There was this amazing moment when the power went out due to a spectacular thunderclap, and whoever was playing Elphaba made a perfect in-character joke that I can only remember the feeling of, but not the content. It is a tragedy. But the point is, I know this story, and normally would not do a review.

However, it is the case that Wicked is a story that has substantially built upon the musical’s foundations. Due to pulling more material from the book? I cannot remember it well enough to say, sadly. But all the same, there are things worth talking about between them. And I’m qualified to do it!, since we watched a bootleg copy of a show from the original run, after we got home from the theater last night.

First of all… for being Broadway, man, that was a sparse and boring stage the majority of the time. Of course a movie and a special effects budget is going to surpass a stage, for the visual telling of a story. But like, I look at Hamilton and the staging is just so good that effects and period architecture would feel extraneous. Whereas, and okay being a fantasy setting certainly makes a difference, but the staging in the movie outstripped the Broadway version in every way, so extensively that I feel like I’m kicking Kristin Chenoweth in the voice just by saying so. It’s simply not a fair comparison.

Anyway, I was saying it’s longer, and boy is it longer. This Part One is like 15 minutes longer than the entire show, and it only covers Act One. And I’ll be real, yes, they could have trimmed it back some. But lavish pointless dance numbers aside, almost everything they added provided more and better context. Fiyero meeting Elphaba before he met anyone else? Adding the poppies into the Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond scenes? The backstory on the introduction of Elphaba’s hat? All of these were small but mighty improvements to the story, well out of proportion to the effort involved.

Lastly: Ariana Grande does an amazing job of channeling Chenoweth’s bubbly blondeness, while Cynthia Erivo actually surpasses Idina Menzel, I think, perhaps not in the singing[1], but in the acting. Not that Menzel was in any way bad, but she always looked so happy when she was singing, regardless of the context. Erivo’s stone face rarely cracks, and it means a lot when it does. Because, honestly, what would she have had to be happy about for the majority of her life?

To sum up: unless they somehow dramatically foul up Part 2, this will be the definitive version of the story, just as Judy Garland’s 1939 outing will always be the definitive version of the mirror story. And yes, that’s meant to be high praise.

[1] Although I wouldn’t want to judge that contest

Dragon Haven

Longer ago than I’m happy about[1], I read the first Rain Wilds book, continuing Robin Hobb’s Elderlings Fantasy Universe. At the time, I thought it served mostly as a book-long prelude and character introduction for a forthcoming trilogy, plus maybe the first two chapters of the actual first book. On the one hand, I sort of stand by that. On the other, having read this book, I could easily consider it the concluding chapter of a duology instead.

At the beginning of the book, the dragon keepers[2] are on the move up an acidic river, learning to care for their dragons, hunt for them, and otherwise keep them alive and in good spirits and on the trail of fabled Kelsingra, where everything will finally be okay, both for the dragons and their keepers alike, not to mention for most of the other characters tagging along for the trip.

So I will say I definitely didn’t know particulars. Will all of the characters survive? Will they maintain their relationships and friendships? Will the dragons turn on them? Will the acid get stronger the further you go upriver, and eventually melt the flesh from everyone’s bones? Those answers would be spoilers. As, perhaps, is the certain conclusion that by the end of the book they will reach their destination[3]. But that one is on the author, not on me. After all, I didn’t write a second book in a four book series and name it Dragon Haven.

You know, though. It occurs to me, what with everything being tied up in a neat bow by the end of the book, and yet there are two books left? This is still Robin Hobb. I, uh, I have some real concerns for what might go wrong between where things stand now and wherever they will go next.

[1] This is an indictment of my speed more than of my alternative choices
[2] It is of note to me that the first book is named Dragon Keeper, singular. Are we talking solely about Thymara? She’s the only viewpoint character who is an official keeper of dragons, throughout that book. Or is it just that the other books are all going to be singular as well, so it had to match? (Or is Sintara a dragon, keeping her human? I guess that’s also possible.)
[3] Will it be the same destination they set out for, though?

Lyorn

After Lyorn, there are two books left in the Vlad Taltos series, and you can really tell. This is a book that is tying up loose ends in an effort to rush headlong toward a finale. But, and here’s the good news: it’s also a book that’s about something besides tying up loose ends.

In the words of General Rieekan, “A death mark’s not an easy thing to live with.” So Vlad has decided to lay low at a theater (because of sorcery-related reasons) to plan his next move. Which quickly turns into a series of musical numbers and side quests, but the former are unobtrusive to the reader (if that’s not your thing) and the latter are quickly rendered apparent to be the actual point of the book. I’ll explain myself below the spoiler cut, not because it is especially a spoiler for more than the book’s themes, but for brevity, because I’m about to overstay my welcome.

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Dagon

The random qualifiers for this podcast-inspired movie were: a foreign film (I think?) with monsters from under the sea. I have a hard time, though, considering Dagon a foreign film when it is a) directed by Stuart Gordon (of Re-Animator fame, as outlined in the poster) and b) mostly in English, and without subtitles when it is in Spanish. As in, it’s pretty clear that the audience is assumed to speak English and to not understand along with the main character when anyone else isn’t speaking English. All the same, its originating country is Spain, so what do I know?

What’s weird about this movie, though, is I have played it as a game, both video and board. …but I’m probably getting ahead of myself. See, the first act is a bit silly. Dream sequences, mermaids, early ’90s quality CGI (ie, budget quality as of 2001 when the movie came out), and eventually a storm and a shipwreck near an isolated fishing village, and quickly our cast of four is whittled down to one. Which is where the game reference comes in, because there’s your character in a hotel room surrounded by subtly aquatic people with torches and pitchforks or whatever, trying to get away from room to room and then from alley to alley, completely outnumbered and outmatched but maybe able to survive if the shadows can be kind.

I’ve never read The Shadow over Innsmouth, but the scenes people have created in homage to it are so evocative that it must have been pretty chillingly written. Then, eventually there’s an act three where things come together nicely and also horrifically. But then again, Stuart Gordon is known to be able to deliver in this genre, so, hooray!

Gojira · Ebira · Mosura: Nankai no daikettô

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, is… on the one hand, it’s a lot less weird than recent Godzilla movies I’ve watched, in that it’s not batshit crazy. But on the other hand, it’s actually weirder in some ways, because it’s heavily James Bond influenced I think? And also, this was probably the moment where Godzilla made the transition from anti-hero to good guy, which… I certainly see how it has affected all the future stories, making this clear delineation that he will never again be an existential threat. But I’m still not convinced in the contexts of these movies that it was a good idea, is all.

So get this. This dude’s brother is lost at sea, so he tries to enter a dance-a-thon to win a yacht, but since it’s already three days in, they won’t let him join. So instead, he and two other failed contestants and a third guy all steal a yacht together, semi-accidentally. Then they see a giant crab thing and shipwreck on an island, which is inhabited by a supervillain lair, except without a specific obvious supervillain. Instead, there’s a scientist (I think?) working on nukes, and an eyepatch guy who leads a group of henchmen with machine guns from place to place all over the island, just randomly firing at our heroes but always missing them. It is also inhabited by slaves from Infant Island (famously the home of Mothra) and by a comatose Godzilla, the latter of which is too coincidental for words, and yet here we are.

So anyway, these guys try to figure out how to escape, and how to free the Infants, and how to deal with the giant crab monster (who I believe is referred to exactly once by name?), and eventually there’s a lot of kaiju-fighting, to dance-a-thon music. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Mothra 2 finally grew up and is no longer a caterpillar.

Dragon Keeper

It has been a minute since I read a Robin Hobb book in that one series with all the Elderlings. So I’m not sure if she is softening as she ages, or if I’m hardening as I age, or what. But the first volume of The Rain Wilds Chronicles was not what I expected.

Dragon Keeper returns us to the Bingtown and the Rain Wilds Traders, last seen surviving an invasion due to a timely alliance. Now, brief years later, they are chafing under the terms of that alliance, mainly because its principal member got a boyfriend and stopped hanging around. I’d say more about why that’s an added burden, but it would involve pretty big and unexpected spoilers, so I shan’t.

Our main characters are 1) an unexpectedly married scholar of dragons, 2) a not quite Liveship Trader who has engaged himself in a morally troubling endeavor, and 3) a Rain Wilds teen with no real future, until the option to become eponymous is thrust in front of her. Well, and there’s also a fourth main character who is not strictly human at all as such, although she is the subject of scholarly pursuits.

And here’s the thing I was talking about in the first place: it didn’t feel all that miserable to me? I mean, in the sense that the hallmark of these books to date is how unrelentingly dark they can get, with only occasional flashes of hope and/or success. Do all of the characters have pretty huge problems to overcome? Yes, for sure. But it’s weird that it kind of feels like they can, and maybe even will in some cases.

A couple more weird things, rattling around at the bottom of the barrel. One is, okay, yeah this is a four book series instead of a three book series. Even still, it felt like this was 85% setup, and then 15%… not payoff like you’d expect, but rather 15% the start of the next book, because she was told she could not just have a book that was all setup. Whoever told her that was wrong, because the end we got was weirdly forced and artificial, and the ending we’d have gotten with all setup would have made rather a lot of sense, payoff or no. And two is, at the back of this book, I learned that Robin Hobb also has the pen name Megan Lindholm, which is the same person as a Steven Brust co-author on a book I haven’t yet read but am now much more excited to pick up.

But not, y’know, next. Or indeed anytime soon.

San Daikaijû Chikyû Saidai no Kessen

Okay. I have reached the point where I know what’s up. There are/were only two Godszilla, I have high confidence in this fact. The downside is, now I’m five movies into the series, and I was supposed to watch the first one and the ninth one. So, like… should I just go ahead and power through since I’m already more than halfway there?

There is one compelling factor here: Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster is one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen, and that is saying a lot.[1] See, there’s this princess of a nearby island nation who is trying to make a peace treaty with Japan, maybe? Or something. but also internal politics means there are people trying to assassinate her, and also sometimes with no explicit explanation provided, she is from Venus and has been on Earth for thousands of years. Also, the Mothra twins are visiting for a TV show appearance. Also, a meteor shower woke up Rodan, who you would have no reason to know (aside from watching a separate movie without a Godzilla) is a giant pterodactyl thing. Also also, there was a meteor shower that had one weird meteor that changes sizes and has sporadic magnetism, and landed in the Japanese Alps, a mountain range with which I was unfamiliar.

My point is, Godzilla doesn’t even show up until 40 minutes into the movie, and okay, it’s not his name on the title card, but King Ghidorah isn’t much sooner (and might be later still, for all I remember). In the meantime, the Venusian princess is warning people that “Rodan will wake up in a second so don’t go get that guy’s hat that blew down the hill”, or “don’t get on that ship because last time we saw Godzilla he was maybe drowned again, and ships go on water”, or “King Ghidorah destroyed all life on Venus and he’s here on Earth now so get your affairs in order.” Luckily, they didn’t write her as Cassandra, so after the first time she’s right, people start listening.

But the best part of the movie is close enough to the end that I’m going to warn of spoilers, even though I’ve been really cavalier up to now.

[1] I mean, it should be the weirdest movie basically anyone has ever seen, averaging out across the populace. But in the nichier markets there are some true unpolished gems. The Baby, anyone?

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Mosura tai Gojira

When I realized that there was a Mothra movie that predated her interactions with Godzilla, I came very close to falling into the Marvel trap. But since OG Mothra wasn’t available to stream anywhere, I narrowly sidestepped a grim fate. It is important I think to remind myself that I’m only trying to figure out what’s going on with Godzillas, and just how many of them there are. This is not a Toho deep dive.

It’s not, I said!

This brings us to Mothra vs. Godzilla. Last time, Godzilla was left to an uncertain underwater fate. Naturally, therefore, there are zero Godszilla for the entire first third of this movie. Instead, we are treated to a tsunami, and a giant floating egg in the nearby ocean, and tiny twin girls who want the egg back from greedy amusement park developers who bought the egg from local fishermen, and my point is, there’s a lot of things going on which would be familiar to people who watched Mothra and unfamiliar to people who watched Godzilla movies.

Later, it is implied but not outright stated that Godzilla washed ashore and was buried in mud by the same tsunami that brought the egg into the area, and therefore it is implied that this is still Godzilla #2. Which I’m good with. Later, the powers of journalism triumph over the powers of capitalism, and the powers of kaiju silkworms triumph over the powers of kaiju lizards, resulting in approximately the same ending as the last movie, except with more of a Spider-Man webshooters vibe. Also, they made sure to re-use the native villagers set, although then again how do I know the Mothra movie didn’t have it before the Kong movie?

I hope nobody cares how extremely filled with spoilers these reviews are.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Date night! Which means going to a used bookstore and then a combo dinner / late run movie since we had watched all the other ones again recently. Can’t always pick when babysitting will happen, and so.

Anyway, how does one even say this movie? Godzilla ex Kong? Godzilla times Kong? Godzilla and Kong? Do even the producers of the film know the answer to this question? (Do they care? I posit that they do not, since they have brand recognition regardless.) Anyhow: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is about how things are going since Godzilla and Kong had some fights to determine who was the alpha giant monster and ultimately decided, hey, you stay up here and you stay down here, and everything’s cool, right?

Right?

A brief digression, if you will indulge me, to discuss spoilers for the Monarch series up to this point. See, they’ve been trying to make a Hollow Earth theory happen forever. And once they got there, it’s… weird and not fully thought through. Somewhere between ten and X miles beneath the earth’s surface, there’s another land. That land is full of Titan sized animals, which makes sense in context, and is maybe a quarter of a mile deep before gravity flips and there’s more land, which makes no sense. Like, you’re on a mountain, and above you some few hundred yards off, is a different mountain, whose top could poke you in the head if it fell. Also, there’s no obvious source of light, and yet everything is extremely well lit. Is there a night time? no clue, neither if nor how.

Anyway, below that area are caves leading down another mile or three (or X; how would I know?) to another land, which I think is also double sided in the same way? I forget. So I guess we’re dealing with the Honeycomb Earth theory at this point.

What’s important is the movie is following three divergent plotlines. In the first, Godzilla is wandering around on the surface looking for energy sources because he’s planning to be in a really big fight soon, which obvs terrifies everyone. In the second, some of the characters we’d recognize from the last movie but none of the earlier ones (as usual) are chasing a signal underground that has agitated Kong (and maybe Godzilla?). In the third, Kong is following what could just possibly be his family, deeper into the honeycomb. And eventually he follows Gollum into the land of Mordor[1].

Later (and also earlier), some titans fight each other. No, it’s true! And in the end, there is what I think can fairly be called a new empire. The things I still don’t know are if I’ve spoiled myself for the Apple+ TV show and what they might possibly do with yet another sequel.

[1] This is more factual than you believe it to be.

Barbie (2023)

Far, far later than intended, I finally saw Barbie. It’s always really annoying to see a cultural touchstone movie months after everyone else, because it means it was impossible for me to form my opinion in a vacuum as I prefer. Obviously it touched some nerves and was important, but it bugs me that now my review has to at least in part be about that, instead of solely about what I thought of the movie independently.

Oh well.

So it’s like this. A bunch of people named Barbie, a smaller but still significant number of people named Ken, a few people named Skipper, and one or two other folks all live in Barbieland, where Barbie is capable of doing anything and certainly does. But when generic Margot Robbie Barbie[1] starts to have weird feelings about death, she learns that the only way to keep her perfect life is to travel to The Real World[2] and meet up with the girl who owns her-as-a-doll to get that girl back into a good headspace. But when Ken[3] decides to tag along, the movie veers in wildly unpredictable directions, and soon the fates of both Barbieland and the real world are at stake.

Alright, I guess everything past here (and the footnotes I will leave above the break) are spoilers. Because you simply cannot talk about this movie without spoiling it. There would be no point.

[1] ie not an astronaut not a president not a McDonald’s employee, just Barbie
[2] There’s a map and everything. I remember people making a stink about the way the brief blip of a kid’s map of the earth was drawn because it betrayed some kind of woke agenda, and I just… I suppose I was going to have to deal with months of baggage about this movie in my review if I had watched it on opening day, wasn’t I?
[3] who the movie helpfully tells us in the first five minutes lives only for the brief moments when Barbie’s gaze falls upon him

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