Stuff I watched over Christmas
Dec. 31st, 2023 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcThe Church on Ruby Road
That was great. The goblins were a fun mix of comedic and horrific, Ruby was brilliant (although I could maybe do without another companion with a Mysterious Backstory) and the Fifteenth Doctor is fantastic. Tying his own Mysterious Backstory to Ruby's almost justifies both hers and not pretending his never happened, and I'm genuinely interested in what RTD is going to do with the Timeless Child nonsense, if only because I expect the answer to be "something", which would put him ahead of Chibnall.
I liked the way the galleon skyship lead to the idea of knots as circuitry, and the gloves were a fun idea that got nicely reused. (Also, "mavity" is still a thing? Seriously?) And while "the song in the Christmas episode" was always a Murray Gold thing, this the first one to have an entirely random musical number in the middle of the adventure, with the Doctor himself singing!
I was trying to decide if there was an intentional Labyrinth riff or not, and I think I decided the differences outweighed the parallels, and not really in a "this is how we're responding to that" sort of way. But the goblins were very Froudesque either way. (ETA: Many other people disagree with me to the point of "it's so obviously a Labyrinth riff that it goes without saying", so fine.)
I'm not sure about the new screwdriver; I had to check diagrams online to even get a sense of what shape it was, and it's sufficiently different that I can't think of it as a sonic screwdriver. But I do like that it has Gallifreyan writing on it.
I have currently got absolutely no theory on who Mrs Flood is.
What If...?
I binged this and enjoyed it. The riffs on existing storylines were fun, particularly dropping Iron Man into the World War Hulk parts of Thor Ragnorok and Hela into the backstory of Shang Chi. And I wasn't expecting a story riffing on a single Marvel concept with a competely original cast, but I loved it.
The one I wasn't totally sure about, surprisingly, was the one I was most looking forward to. "What If ... The Avengers Assembled in 1602?" was fine, but what I loved about the original Neil Gaiman mini was how deeply it was embedded into the actual last years of the Elizabethan Age, while this felt distinctly more like Ye Generick Olden Dayes, with Robin Hood style outlaws and nobody questioning whether Victoria sponge should exist prior to Victoria. The fact that (unlike "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", set over 100 years earlier, but with much more historical awareness) I don't think there were even any firearms led to the distinct feeling that the writers thought they were adapting one of the many "What If ... the Avengers lived in a Heroic Fantasy world?" stories.
And I get that Javier's Men and the Four of the Fantastick probably shouldn't appear here before the X-Men and FF appear in the regular MCU, but no Peter Parquagh? Lady Natasha? Matthew Murdoch? Putting Wanda in Dr Strange's place was a good way of including her in the absence of Inquisitor Enrique and his Brotherhood, though, and avoided confusion when another Strange shows up at the end (although, again, I could have done without her being called "Wanda Merlin").
[ETA: Actually, as far as Peter Parquagh goes, it occurs to me that Spidey wasn't in any of them. I'd wonder if it was a rights issue, except they already weren't exactly using the Spidey from the Homecoming trilogy because the Sony agreement didn't cover this.]
The finale, with Strange Supreme going evil again, was a bit by-the-numbers, but nice to see more of Kahhori, and I'm always a sucker for a "the heroes get everyone's magic weapons" scene.
For season 3, I think I'd like to see more refs to the other TV shows -- What If... She-Hulk or Ms Marvel. (Not Loki, because that's already multiversal enough.)
Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom
I thought this was pretty good as well. I love the way the Aquaman movies remember that things underwater float, which sounds obvious but doesn't always happen. This time we get a completely three-dimensional car chase!
I shuddered a bit when I saw the baby because I know how AJ's story goes. But I was reasonably sure they wouldn't do that in a superhero movie, and while he was kidnapped by Black Manta, they didn't. But it's not often that I'm genuinely worried that they might.
Speaking of things from the comics, Kordax is an interesting choice of villain, and much more monstrous than his comics counterpart (who was just a dude with scales). And making him Atlan's brother (which he wasn't in the comics) is an interesting way of including Peter David's thing of the throne of Atlantis is always being fought over by two brothers. (Movieverse Kordax is actually a complicated mix of different "evil brother to the first King of Atlantis [whoever that was]" characters in different continuities.)
Fun to see Arthur and Orm reluctantly working together, and Orm being gobsmacked to finally realise that, actually, he was the baddie in the last film. The end seemed a bit abrupt. Not the actual defeat of Kordax,but the aftermath, with Manta deciding that he wants to do a Disney Villain Death and the Council of Atlantis deciding they do want to make peaceful contact with the surface world because ... reasons? Still fun, though.
That was great. The goblins were a fun mix of comedic and horrific, Ruby was brilliant (although I could maybe do without another companion with a Mysterious Backstory) and the Fifteenth Doctor is fantastic. Tying his own Mysterious Backstory to Ruby's almost justifies both hers and not pretending his never happened, and I'm genuinely interested in what RTD is going to do with the Timeless Child nonsense, if only because I expect the answer to be "something", which would put him ahead of Chibnall.
I liked the way the galleon skyship lead to the idea of knots as circuitry, and the gloves were a fun idea that got nicely reused. (Also, "mavity" is still a thing? Seriously?) And while "the song in the Christmas episode" was always a Murray Gold thing, this the first one to have an entirely random musical number in the middle of the adventure, with the Doctor himself singing!
I was trying to decide if there was an intentional Labyrinth riff or not, and I think I decided the differences outweighed the parallels, and not really in a "this is how we're responding to that" sort of way. But the goblins were very Froudesque either way. (ETA: Many other people disagree with me to the point of "it's so obviously a Labyrinth riff that it goes without saying", so fine.)
I'm not sure about the new screwdriver; I had to check diagrams online to even get a sense of what shape it was, and it's sufficiently different that I can't think of it as a sonic screwdriver. But I do like that it has Gallifreyan writing on it.
I have currently got absolutely no theory on who Mrs Flood is.
What If...?
I binged this and enjoyed it. The riffs on existing storylines were fun, particularly dropping Iron Man into the World War Hulk parts of Thor Ragnorok and Hela into the backstory of Shang Chi. And I wasn't expecting a story riffing on a single Marvel concept with a competely original cast, but I loved it.
The one I wasn't totally sure about, surprisingly, was the one I was most looking forward to. "What If ... The Avengers Assembled in 1602?" was fine, but what I loved about the original Neil Gaiman mini was how deeply it was embedded into the actual last years of the Elizabethan Age, while this felt distinctly more like Ye Generick Olden Dayes, with Robin Hood style outlaws and nobody questioning whether Victoria sponge should exist prior to Victoria. The fact that (unlike "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", set over 100 years earlier, but with much more historical awareness) I don't think there were even any firearms led to the distinct feeling that the writers thought they were adapting one of the many "What If ... the Avengers lived in a Heroic Fantasy world?" stories.
And I get that Javier's Men and the Four of the Fantastick probably shouldn't appear here before the X-Men and FF appear in the regular MCU, but no Peter Parquagh? Lady Natasha? Matthew Murdoch? Putting Wanda in Dr Strange's place was a good way of including her in the absence of Inquisitor Enrique and his Brotherhood, though, and avoided confusion when another Strange shows up at the end (although, again, I could have done without her being called "Wanda Merlin").
[ETA: Actually, as far as Peter Parquagh goes, it occurs to me that Spidey wasn't in any of them. I'd wonder if it was a rights issue, except they already weren't exactly using the Spidey from the Homecoming trilogy because the Sony agreement didn't cover this.]
The finale, with Strange Supreme going evil again, was a bit by-the-numbers, but nice to see more of Kahhori, and I'm always a sucker for a "the heroes get everyone's magic weapons" scene.
For season 3, I think I'd like to see more refs to the other TV shows -- What If... She-Hulk or Ms Marvel. (Not Loki, because that's already multiversal enough.)
Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom
I thought this was pretty good as well. I love the way the Aquaman movies remember that things underwater float, which sounds obvious but doesn't always happen. This time we get a completely three-dimensional car chase!
I shuddered a bit when I saw the baby because I know how AJ's story goes. But I was reasonably sure they wouldn't do that in a superhero movie, and while he was kidnapped by Black Manta, they didn't. But it's not often that I'm genuinely worried that they might.
Speaking of things from the comics, Kordax is an interesting choice of villain, and much more monstrous than his comics counterpart (who was just a dude with scales). And making him Atlan's brother (which he wasn't in the comics) is an interesting way of including Peter David's thing of the throne of Atlantis is always being fought over by two brothers. (Movieverse Kordax is actually a complicated mix of different "evil brother to the first King of Atlantis [whoever that was]" characters in different continuities.)
Fun to see Arthur and Orm reluctantly working together, and Orm being gobsmacked to finally realise that, actually, he was the baddie in the last film. The end seemed a bit abrupt. Not the actual defeat of Kordax,but the aftermath, with Manta deciding that he wants to do a Disney Villain Death and the Council of Atlantis deciding they do want to make peaceful contact with the surface world because ... reasons? Still fun, though.
