House of the Dragon (S2:E1 – A Son for a Son)

Set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, season 2 of House of the Dragon picks up days after the conclusion of Season 1. Westeros is on the verge of war as the already cloven royal family reals in the aftermath of Prince Luke’s death at the hand of his cousin Aemond. Unwilling to forego vengeance, will Queen Rhaenyra’s next actions set the whole of the country in dragon flames?

House of the Dragon (S2:E1 – A Son for a Son) Review

Season one of the series was already at a disadvantage when compared to the electrifying early seasons of GOT. However, it quickly found its own voice, distinguishing itself as a more deliberately paced affair far more interested in political intrigue than in being an epic adventure with global repercussions.

Episode 1 of this season continues the trend even though it also sets the groundwork for what look to be set pieces to rival the scope, if not the emotional connection of Game of Thrones. And that’s really where this episode suffers the most: a lack of emotional connection.

Unhelped by the two-year gap between seasons 1 & 2, A Son for a Son doesn’t possess the same connective tissue as even some of the weakest episodes of its older brother. Its characters seem to blend together with names that are even more similar and indistinguishable from one another than they are.

All in all, the somewhat slowly-paced episode 1 of season 2 of House of the Dragon is held together by good performances and promise.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Oh, Varys

• Game of Thrones had no shortage of strong women in leadership roles. However,  unlike Daenerys and Sansa, who went through hell only to gain power organically, or Cersei, who schemed and connived her way to power and ultimately ruin, the leading ladies of House of Dragon wield power much more like their male counterparts. Furthermore, the competence scale has significantly tipped in their direction.
  • With all of his flaws, even after losing his hand, Jaime Lannister’s character arc was both that of finding redemption and, once again, becoming competent. Season 2 of HOTD seems to be setting the stage to make the men more or less irrelevant.
  • It’s fairly subtle at this point, and I might be wrong about the show’s trajectory, but I doubt it.

House of the Dragon (S2:E2 – Rhaenrya the Cruel)

The drama continues as the consequences of Daemon’s impetuousness begin to bear poisoned fruit. The Red Keep is in turmoil, the king is furious, and war is inevitable.

House of the Dragon (S2:E2 – Rhaenrya the Cruel) Review

Rhaenrya the Cruel is another perfectly satisfactory entry into the series. The performances are consistently fantastic, and the dialogue is better than almost anything else out there right now. However, the show still hasn’t reached GOT’s intrigue or on-the-edge-of-your-seat thrillingness. Instead, it continues to give off a very soap opera-like vibe, though with infinitely better script, performances, and production value.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Floppy Wieners

• I’m all for the franchise’s complete omission of gratuitous nudity. It added nothing to the original series and served as little more than cheap titillation. However, while this series shows a marked reduction, they make a concerted effort to hide female nudity without the same consideration for the men. Don’t get me wrong, junk isn’t spinning in the wind in scene after scene, but they will show completely naked men (junk hidden) while giving half-ass-crack shots to women playing dancing whores. It’s not an accident.

Geography Schmeography

• One of the things that gave the original such a wonderful sense of scope was its clearly defined geography, as shown by clear racial and cultural divides. You know, like the totality of human existence was before cheap and easy mass transit was a thing. Heck, have you been to modern-day Japan or Norway? They’re filled with Japanese and Norwegians.

House of the Dragon (S2:E3-E8)

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Kingdom of The Planet of The Apes

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set “many generations” after the conclusion of 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes. In this post-apocalyptic world, ape societies have flourished while humans have been reduced to a feral-like existence. The story follows a young chimpanzee named Noa, who embarks on a journey alongside a human woman named Mae. Together, they seek to determine the future for both apes and humans alike.

Kingdom of The Planet of The Apes Review

The latest Planet of The Apes installment is just another in what seems like a neverending succession of movies with all the right ingredients except the storytelling ability to gel them together. Director of the now-defunct Maze Runner series, Wes Ball, and writers Josh Friedman (Terminator: Dark Fate), Rick Jaffa (Jurassic World), and Amanda Silver (Jurassic World) will have you asking more than just “how does this movie about virtually nothing have three writers,” but also, “when will the nothing end?”

With nine films (including the original franchise and the Marky Mark disaster) spanning over sixty years, the concept obviously holds enough interest for the movie-going public to justify this installment’s existence. It’s too bad, then, that Ball (whose expertise lies in visual effects and video graphics) and crew seem to have no concept of pacing, character development, and how to pen meaningful dialogue.

Kingdom of The Planet of The Apes has all of the cool-if-clichéd reveals and twists one might expect from an easy-to-digest yet fun sci-fi action thriller. Unfortunately, the filmmakers appear to go out of their way to elaborate on uninteresting moments and simple concepts only to rush through core storytelling components. Leaving the audience in a general malaise and apathetic coma.

For instance, the film opens with a title screen that summarizes the events of the three previous films. Then, it displays a several-minute-long narrated prologue that more or less gives the same information (at least the narratively important bits). Then, about a quarter of the way through, it introduces a character who practically relays everything from both sequences again, only this time it’s told over the course of several scenes. Yet, the “big” reveal about the main human is tossed away like a Rian Johnson Lukesaber, and important antagonists aren’t (poorly) introduced until the film’s last minutes.

Since we’re discussing the main human anyway, let’s take a moment to discuss Freya Allan, who plays the lead human role of Mae. She’s a fine actress, but her delicate features and childlike stature make her character’s survival in an incredibly hostile environment in which humans are killed on sight less believable than the film’s subpar CGI apes. Wasn’t ruining The Witcher enough? There’s willful suspension of disbelief, and then there’s casting a chihuahua as a German Shepherd.

Freya’s miscasting aside, the film falters on virtually every narrative front. Having fun and thoughtful twists only matters to audiences if they care about to whom they are happening or haven’t been put to sleep before they are finally enacted (I wasn’t joking about the woman’s snoring keeping me awake). Furthermore, it takes more than thirty seconds at the film’s climax to give audiences the sense of engagement necessary for a cathartic payoff. Finally, the reveal in question must be meaningful unto itself. Finding out that you’ve been sitting through one hundred and thirty-five minutes of a one hundred and forty-five-minute fetch-quest for something that you’ve been given no reason to care about does not equal excitement.

Were arcs not both truncated and rushed for many characters, and the plot not wholly driven by a mixture of Stormtrooper janitor convenience (generations-old miraculously rust-free seaside technology powers up without issue) and blatant stupidity (leaving through the VERY large VERY noisy HEAVILY GUARDED front door of a building you snuck into from a secret back door because you didn’t want the bad guys to figure out how to open the front door), perhaps even these shortcomings could be overlooked.

Regrettably, not even the movie’s visuals can save it. Out of thousands of cuts and almost two hundred minutes of film, only a single brief scene stands out as one in which any of the apes appeared real. So, while the cinematography was generally good, and the action had the earmarks of potential thrills, the juxtaposition of realistic environments and north of “National Geographic’s T-Rex Walks Again” apes is jarring enough to disengage the audience from the all-important empathic connection with the film’s main protagonist and his non-human allies.

It’s not all bad with The Kingdom of The Planet of The Apes; the lead character, Noa, is pleasant, and his motivations are identifiable enough for us to root for his success. The performances are better than the atrociously bad dialogue and last-generation CGI. Furthermore, the filmmakers do a decent job of sprinkling in unobtrusive Easter eggs and nods to previous films from both this and the original franchise.

Ultimately, The Kingdom of The Planet of The Apes is a disappointment that hardcore fans of the Ceasar franchise may be able to enjoy but is otherwise a complete waste of quite a bit of time.

WOKE ELEMENTS

No Movie’s Complete Without A Waif Girlboss

• The casting for the lead actress is ridiculous. Nothing against her talent, but in a post-apocalyptic world in which the law is that of the jungle, her stature, model good looks, perfect hair, sculpted eyebrows, and complete lack of muscle tone was less believable than Willam H. Macy’s beard.
• The 80 lbs toneless waif of a girl bodily takes down an enemy more than twice her size by strangulation.
• The same itty bitty girl never gets injured once, while her male Chimpanzee (with at least 5 times the strength of an average man) counterpart regularly gets the crap beat out of him.
• She is brave, smart, and cunning, while the men are either cowards and traitors, evil, ignorant savages, or pleasantly naive.
• Her character arc goes from her being justified in all behaviors and right about everything to being justified in all behaviors and right about everything.
• ***SPOILER ALERT*** Virtually every Vault Dweller is a Victoria’s Secret model. ***END SPOILER***

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Fallout (season 1)

Two hundred years after a nuclear war that ravaged the planet, a young woman who has lived a sheltered life of relative ease beneath the ground in a special Vault must brave the alien dangers of the post-apocalyptic surface if she hopes to rescue her kidnapped father from mysterious raiders.

Review

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never played a minute of the games. This review is based solely on the series.

Season one of Fallout on Amazon Prime is a rip-roaring good time. It’s overflowing with well-thought-out and interesting characters with believable and relatable motivations who experience nuanced character growth that belies the trappings of its over-the-top post-apocalyptic Atompunk aesthetic. For every giant salamander monster, there is a jaded loaner bent on revenge.

The world of  Fallout is one of the best examples of world-building since the first three seasons of Game of Thrones. The showrunners’ attention to detail and their masterful intertwining of people, places, and things gives the viewer a fully immersive experience in which to get lost and helps to make the otherwise unbelievable scenarios and characters feel like a completely integrated universe of which the viewer is only getting the smallest of glimpses.

While the series is overflowing with characters ranging from interesting to excellent, two stand out as both the best in the series and two of the best characters on TV right now.  Ella Purnell’s Lucy MacLean is chipper and well-meaning at heart. Yet, when she is tasked with an impossible mission for which she is grossly unprepared and begins to experience the horrors of the Wasteland, a journey that would break lesser women, she rallies and soldiers on. She never loses the core of her identity.

It’s through Lucy’s fish-out-of-water eyes and 1950s America can-do spirit that the nightmarish reality of the show is filtered, and it’s this spark that makes it survivable for both her character and the audience. She’s spunky. She’s fun. Best of all, despite the fantastic circumstances, she’s a relatively grounded character who only bests those who would stop her with sunshine grit, a lot of luck, and knowing the value of humility.

However, as needed as Lucy’s optimism might be for the show, there is no show without Walton Goggins’ Cooper Howard/aka The Ghoul. Goggins is a character actor many will recognize from his over 30 years in the business. However, for all of his time spent on camera, his is a name that most don’t know. If there is any justice in the world, Fallout will be his breakout.

Goggins infuses his ducentigenarian (had to look that one up) nuclear-zombie (atombie?) bounty hunter with all of the cool stereotypical stoic badassery that anyone who knows the difference between High Plains Drifter and A Fistful of Dollars could want, but he doesn’t stop there. Aided by an excellently conceived and executed backstory strategically scattered throughout the season, his character is given a pathos that resonates with every red-blooded man in the audience. It’s not that it’s never been done before; it’s that it hasn’t been done well in a long time.

Concurrently, Fallout’s story isn’t wholly original, but it’s done with enough original style and peppered with sufficiently charismatic characters with sympathetic arcs to overlook just about any wart, including the complete failure of the “twist” ending and ultimate villains’ unbelievably stupid plan.

If you can handle the following Woke Elements, season 1 of Fallout is totally Worth it.

WOKE ELEMENTS

The Good

• In any other show of this type, run by anyone else, Lucy MacLean would be an unstoppable girl boss taking down three-ton mutants with nothing but spit and a bad attitude while putting down her beta cuck bestie. But not in Fallout. Instead, despite the fact that the show establishes in its opening montage that she’s been in fight training for the entirety of her life, she realistically gets her butt handed to her in nearly every confrontation. She only manages to come out on top thanks to a mixture of luck and situational awareness.

The Non-Binary Elephant In The Room

• This is the big one. There is a mentally ill character that appears briefly in one episode and a little more in a second, played by a mentally ill woman, both of whom believe that she’s a make-believe gender. As bad as that is, the show also goes out of its way to manufacture a scene that provides the opportunity to refer to this series’ original character as “they.”
  • The show doesn’t preach or get sanctimonious about gender ideology, and this is the only instance of it in the show. Still, in a post-apocalyptic world in which only the strongest and cruelest survive, and even then only barely, one of the most unbelievable things is the inclusion of a spindly armed trash-stache-having mental case sharing a barracks with a bunch of testosterone-filled alpha zealot soldiers who beat the crap out of one another to pass the time, yet accept her as one of the boys.
  • Her character could have literally been anyone or just as easily completely omitted.

Just Enough Gay For Parties

• The showrunners managed to squeeze two lesbians dancing in the background during a wedding.

Objectification Is Bad… Unless it’s of men

• Two or three too many gratuitous naked dude butt scenes. Who do they think the audience for this is?

Capitalism Done It

• There’s no way to discuss this one without spoiling some things. You’ve been warned.
  • ***SPOILERS*** Money-hungry capitalists blew up 99% of the world’s population and irradiated the soil and water… to make money. Someone slept through their Economics 101 course. While scarcity of desired goods increases their value, scarcity of potential customers does not.
  • Literal communists are the good guys. ***END SPOILERS***

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Civil War

Wartime photojournalist Lee and her partner Joel pick up some stray journalists on their way to confront the corrupt President of The United States who has waged war on his own people in what is now a second American Civil War.

Review

Despite what its marketing campaign might have you think, Civil War is not a war movie. Yes, a war is in progress throughout the film, but it primarily occurs in the background. That it is an American civil war is incidental; it could have easily been any other fictional conflict anywhere in the world.

In addition to not being a war film, Civil War is not a lot of other things as well. It’s not a narratively driven film. It’s not filled with interesting revelations about the human condition. It’s not peopled with compelling characters whose unique perspectives on life give audiences something to think about long after the credits have rolled. It’s not much of anything.

What Civil War is is a $50 million love letter to war correspondents in general and photojournalists in particular. Primarily Lee’s story, we watch as she goes from an emotionally bedraggled veteran reporter who is slowly being destroyed by the futility of her life’s ambition to stop war with pictures to an emotional basketcase who enables the younger generation to do the same by repeatedly placing themselves in mortal danger with nothing but high minded ideals and Kodak between them and certain death.

Far from imparting wisdom or even provoking a single thought, Civil War’s laudable goal of remaining completely apolitical had the unfortunate side effect of giving the audience no one whom to route for or against. The main cast is generally likable, with Wagner Moura’s charismatic adrenaline junkie Joel holding most of the film together while everyone else is just sort of there and along for the ambling ride, but their mission to interview the President has no hope of changing anything, so why should anyone care?

The movie clearly intends for audiences to be moved by the parallels drawn between the young, bright-eyed enthusiasm of Cailee Spaeny’s aspiring photojournalist and Dunst’s withering one. Unfortunately, there’s not enough emotional connective tissue developed to care, largely because what they do isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things (a fact Dunst’s character establishes early on) and partly because not much of anything happens in the film.

Civil War is a middling road trip set in an inconvenient time for traveling and interspersed with a mix of meaningless dialogue and the occasional war crime. However, it’s not entirely unenjoyable. The actors are all very present and natural, Wagner Moura is excellent, and even though most of the action is incidental and does nothing to drive the story, it’s done fairly well. It’s not worth the price of a ticket or even streaming for free, but if you ever find yourself relaxing on a lazy Saturday and you’re held prisoner by a misplaced remote, you’ll survive it.

WOKE ELEMENTS

What’s In There? Only What You Take In.

• The movie does well at leaving the interpretation of events up to the viewer.
  • Those who (rightly) see Biden as an incompetent would-be tyrant and fascist can easily see the few moments that Nick Offerman is on screen as a condemnation of the Dementia Patient and Chief.
  • Those whose brains have been washed clean by CNN and MSNBC will no doubt see uber-leftist Offerman’s president as a thinly veiled stand-in for their most despised of orange men.

Whitey’s Got The Guns

• If there’s one thing that months and months of BLM riots, billions of dollars worth of destruction, and hundreds of injured police taught us, it’s that only white guys have access to guns and use violence to torment others.
  • In two of the self-described “action” film’s three action set-pieces that do anything to drive what little narrative the film has, white country hillbillies with AR-15s are evil gun-toting yokels and or murderous racists. These are among the film’s only white guys.

Stoicism: Strong Enough For A Man, But PH Balanced For Women

• The primary man in the group is not the group leader but the emotionally accessible adrenaline junkie who gets his kicks putting himself in mortal danger for a story.
• Kirsten Dunst’s Lee leads the group and is a stoic and jaded leader who has been worn down by man’s inhumanity to man.

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