Tag: Dr Who

DR. WHO AND THE OOD – A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK WARNING?

Just about every sentient creature in the known universe has at least heard of Dr Who. Not surprising, since the show has been around since the JFK assassination. No really. As in Dr. Who’s November 23, 1963 premiere was briefly postponed in the UK for coverage of the horrific tragedy which had taken place the day before.

But for the benefit of the two or three people left in our solar system who do not know “WHO” – ahem – the good doctor is: Dr. Who is a British TV show about a Time Lord, an Earth-protecting alien from the lost planet Gallifrey, who travels around in a T.A.R.D.I.S. (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) – a sentient vehicle which looks like a British telephone booth – which takes him and his chosen companions to different times and places, usually of the Doctor’s choosing, but occasionally places where the TARDIS thinks he needs to be. And as though he were Superman’s nerdy British cousin, Dr. Who uses his brains, and plot convenient tech to do good, and usually dangerous, deeds across the multi-verse.

And as a side note, interesting, but somewhat irrelevant to the purposes of this article, in the most brilliant show contrivance in history, when the lead actor wishes to depart or his ratings drop they “kill” the current one off so that a “new”, but the same, Doctor “regenerates” into a different looking body. So you have the same character but with a completely different actor and personality. Soooo – since the latest incarnation regenerated into a woman the pronouns above could be he OR she.

With this kind of an intro, it should raise no eyebrows to learn that Dr. Who has run across more and weirder creatures than Star Trek and Star Wars combined: from flirting lady trees, to space whales that can carry all of England on its back, Cybermen and Daleks, vampire fish masquerading as people, water-bourne parasitic Martians which turn normal humans into water spewing zombies, disembodied vapor creatures who live in suns, the TARDIS herself (yes, she is a female), terrifying and untraceable hypnotic monsters who live in intense radiation on a planet with sapphire waterfalls, two-dimensional beings (and yes, that was a particularly creative episode), Western cybernetically enhanced victims of war crime experimentation, and psychotic Time Lords; NOT to mention the famous and infamous throughout history: Charles Dickens haunted by ghosts, Lady Pompadour pursued by robots, Shakespeare tormented by witches, Vincent Van Gogh (possibly my favorite episode) chasing a monster, President Nixon, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, and the prototype for Robin Hood.

BUT – one of the Oodest – or rather – Oddest of them all are the – Ood. Normally docile, meditative, both telepathic and empathic, they carry a portion of their brain — on the outside, holding it at all times. Come to think of it now I see why they are docile – kind of tough to wield a weapon while jostling a chunk of your cerebrum in the other hand – NOT to mention the vulnerability of it. Their sensitivity and awareness, their connectivity to other creature’s minds, their constant attention to this fragile link with all the other minds and thoughts of so many other creatures, their constant input of images and emotions of those around them – make them vulnerable to corruption by more powerful telepathic minds with evil intent … or even to enslavement. As they spend all their time continually monitoring the Ood hive mentality of their interconnectedness, it has engendered in them a subservience and lack of independence which crippled their society. At one time their slave masters even physically removed that external portion of their brain in order to replace it with a mechanized one in order to more easily control them, but which backfired on the slave masters allowing the suppressed Ood rage to turn them blindly homicidal.

While it is always nice, it is not always pre-requisite to have a logical basis for science fiction generated creatures’ unique characteristics. Nonetheless I couldn’t help but play the “what if” game, and wonder, if such a creature existed, why might God, in His infinite wisdom, craft or allow such a creature, so uniquely hobbled, to evolve? This one attribute’s disadvantages seemed to so spectacularly outweigh its benefits that it held their entire civilization’s progress back, dragging like an anchor against the promise of their potential development.

So I continued to puzzle. How might such a singularly disadvantageous and peculiar physical attribute EVER been catalyzed to manifest itself? I wondered how the concept of a portion of one’s brain being held in one’s hand EVER came about……..

Then it occurred to me.

F — Ood for thought, certainly.

NOT MY COUSIN VINNY, BUT MY COUSIN SCOTT, THE DISTRICT HEALTH DIRECTOR FOR THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH OFFERS GOOD OLD FASHIONED COMMON SENSE SUGGESTIONS

AUDIO PODCAST OPTION THE ARTICLE ON MY COUSIN SCOTT

My delightful cousin, Dr. Scott Spillmann, the District Health Director for the Virginia Department of Health, and one of my favorite people in the world, was interviewed a couple of times this March on a news show. While this is not exactly the kind of movie I normally review, it IS a video, it is certainly educational, and as I have been publishing a series of quarantine related posts, figured this was apropos.

If you want to watch the videos go HERE and HERE.

WHO SHOULD WATCH: EVERYONE. Scott is calm, informative and offers instructions full of prudence and wisdom. And as an added fillup there are NO: jump scares, profanities, or innuendoes.

SPOILERS

Here is the synopsis. During the most recent interview he made the following suggestions (Please NOTE: All picture editorials are my fault – see if you can name the movie they are from. Answers at the bottom.):

Be calm.

Wash your hands.

Exercise social distancing by keeping at least six feet apart.

Wash your hands.

Sneeze or cough into something disposable and throw it away.

Wash your hands.

A zebra is not a horse. If you have seasonal allergies and start to sneeze when you go outside don’t panic. It’s probably your allergies.

Wash your hands.

If you are truly concerned contact your favorite doctor before heading to an emergency room.

Wash your hands.

Use this opportunity to initiate cleaning projects at home.

Wash your hands.

Be kind to each other.

And…Wash your hands.

ANSWERS in order of picture appearance: Armageddon, Cool Hand Luke, Lion in Winter, Batman: The Dark Knight, I Robot, The Aviator, Madagascar, Shrek 2, The Incredibles, Tom Baker as Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi as a WHO doctor in World War Z mere months before he became Dr. Who, Peter Davison as Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who, John Hurt as Doctor Who, David Tennant as Doctor Who, Colin Baker as Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy as Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who, Matt Smith as Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton as Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who, As Good As It Gets, As Good As It Gets, Jumanji 1995, Mrs. Doubtfire, Guardians of the Galaxy, Monsters, Inc., The Shape of Water, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Doctor Strange, Aquaman, Mr. Bean.

IT’S NOT THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. FIRST LESSON – THIS IS NOT THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!!

AUDIO PODCAST OPTION FOR MY ARTICLE “IT’S NOT THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE”

OBVIOUSLY – NONE of these movies are child fare. Gore, violence and profanity are frequently prevalent in these types of movies.

While people the world over freak out, hunker down, start fist fights over toilet paper, refuse to hug, make face masks out of bra cups (I kid you not. I saw it on a Youtube video), crash the stockmarket in panic selling, postpone the release of movies I want to see (Marvel Studios I am TALKING to you!!), and generally act as though this is the end of the world – let me tell you – it’s NOT the end of the world. Biblically speaking if someone says it IS then there is pretty much a guarantee that it is not. The Son of Man has not, to my knowledge, been witnessed coming down from Heaven. And while toilet paper and sliced bread remain as elusive as glimpses of the Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker, you can still buy Heineken Beer and Blue Belle Dutch chocolate ice cream.

As someone who stayed put at Ground Zero in Lake Charles, LA during the CAT 4/5 Hurricane Rita as she landed and through the 10 days aftermath without electricity – read no air conditioning – while we still had 6 kids, a dog and 2 cats under the same roof in 100 plus degree weather, I can safely tell you – this is NOT all that bad.

This is also NOT the zombie apocalypse. I have been SAYING that to calm people down for weeks now, so I think it is about time I make the official comparison. And – as the rest of the world is now HOMESCHOOLING! YAY! Let me take the opportunity to point out a few healthy –

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

This is the filmed adaptation of the cult popular mashup novel by Seth Grahame-Smith combining Jane Austin with zombies and ninjas. It is an idea so bizarre that, like the first “found footage” The Blair Witch Project or the horror rock opera Phantom of the Paradise, you have to see just to honor the gutsy risk the film makers took. This weirdly satifying outing features a cast American audiences are more likely to recognize than be able to name: Lily James (Cinderella, Yesterday), Sam Riley (both Maleficients), Jack Huston (Angelica’s nephew, John’s grandson and Walter’s great-grandson, appeared in The Irishman, Twilight Saga: Eclipse), Matt Smith (The Eleventh Dr. Who, The Crown), Charles Dance (veteran actor in everything from the Royal Shakespeare Company to Game of Thrones and Godzilla: King of the Monsters).

I like this movie for its tongue-in-cheek attitude as it takes itself SO seriously you know the actors are giving you a “wink” without even having to break the fourth wall. It adapts the original P&P tale, keeping all the original witty story of misunderstandings, cross purposed good intentions and haughty indignation while steeping it in a world of zombie threats, reimagining the Bennett girls as skilled Ninjas of the martial arts. I KNOW this sounds weird – because it is – but it is also impossibly appealing.

LESSON: Don’t take your situation, no matter how dire you THINK it is, so seriously you can’t continue engaging in and with the things and people you truly love.

WORLD WAR Z

Brad Pitt stars in this Bourne meets War of the Worlds meets zombies. Pitt is Gerry Lane, an operative experienced in investigating dangerous war zones. He is caught, with his wife and daughters, in the middle of a crowded Philadelphia when, with no warning, a zombie virus cataclysmically breaks out. It is only his calm analytical mind and experienced quick thinking under extreme stress which give him and his family a chance for survival.

This film appealed to me, not only by showcasing Pitt as a protective father stepping up in the biggest way possible, but because he uses more mind than muscle, more savvy than strength against the implaccable hordes of semi-dead ravenous zombies. AND it ALSO has a small part with Peter Capaldi who BECAME Dr. Who only a few months after World War Z was released, credited as “the WHO Doctor”. (WHO – World Health Organization. Coincidence or extreme cheekiness on the part of the film makers I know not.)

LESSON: THINK before reacting to even the most horrific circumstances.

ZOMBIELAND and ZOMBIELAND TWO: DOUBLE TAP

(SEE REVIEW FOR DOUBLE TAP HERE)

I have never laughed so hard at gore. Please keep in mind I don’t normally like gory slasher movies, or even most zombie movies. But the Zombieland movies are SO over the top it becomes slapstick. The story is of a group of survivors loosely led by a delightfully cavalier Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson – from the adorably clueless Woody Boyd in the TV show Cheers, to the tragic alcoholic father in The Glass Castle (SEE REVIEW HERE) and everything in between), who disposes of zombies with such panache you can not help but be impressed by his infectious (excuse the pun) enthusiasm. Without spoiling too much, you HAVE to see the brief homage to Deliverance in the first Zombieland movie as Tallahassee takes out a zombie with a banjo. The rest of the troupe includes: Jesse Eisenberg (Social Network) who is Tallahassee’s side kick, Columbus. Emma Stone (La La Land) is Columbus’ love interest, Wichita. Abigail Breslin (the little water girl from Signs all grown up) is Wichita’s little sister, Little Rock.

LESSON: Use your natural skills to cope with any crisis, and while you’re at it – be enthusiastic and try to enjoy yourself.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

One of the first of its kind, this gem is a parody of zombie movies as only the British can do it – with style and a dark humor pragmatism. SPOILER: For example, in order for Shaun’s group to pass safely through a mass of zombies one of the troupe teaches the rest how to imitate a zombie, by following the movements of a skewered/trapped zombie as though it were a Jazzercise class in a Richard Simmons video.

This clever cult film stars Simon Pegg as the titular schlub Shaun, the world’s most unlikely hero. Pegg’s best bud, Nick Frost, portrays Shaun’s best bud, Ed. Kate Ashfield is Shaun’s ex-girlfriend, who Shaun is desperate to save. Bill Nighy (About Time and Dr. Who alum from one of my favorites “Vincent and the Doctor”) is Philip, Shaun’s stepfather with whom Shaun is estranged. Penelope Wilton plays Shaun’s Mom. (Wilton is another Dr. Who alum, portraying Harriet Jones in a number of Dr. Who episodes. Harriet is a recurring character in Dr. Who, whose appearance is, at some point, reliably accompanied by a running gag – Harriet always introduces herself by presenting identification and declaring: “I’m Harriet Jones,” to which everyone else in the show, from Dr. Who himself to Daleks, replies: “Yes, we know who you are”). Jessica Hynes aka Stevenson (yet ANOTHER Dr. Who alum from”Human Nature”) is Yvonne, the leader of a group which Shaun’s group briefly encounters, and which bears an uncanny resemblance to Shaun’s ensemble group. Watch for Martin Freeman (our favorite Bilbo/Dr. Watson) in a cameo  as a member of the doppleganger group! (Note that Zombieland: Double Tap does a homage to the group meets echo group scene in Shaun when Tallahasse and Columbus meet THEIR dopplegangers.)

LESSON: Sometimes the best coping method is humor.

So – off you go. Immerse yourself in a binge of these Zombie movies. Then: continue doing the things you LOVE, THINK before you respond, find a way to enjoy what you have to do with ENTHUSIASM, and LAUGH!!!

And remember …… even though we still can’t buy toilet paper, at least IT’S NOT THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL – CLEVER AND LOADS OF FUN

AUDIO OPTION FOR REVIEW OF JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL

SHORT TAKE:

Clever latest installment in the Jumanji franchise.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Mid-teens and up because of unnecessary profanity, including blasphemy, as well as some extreme cartoon gory violence.

LONG TAKE:

Paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin the way my high school teacher did with any recalcitrant students: “Experience is a hard teacher but some will have no other.” This seems to be a thematic motto of the Jumanji franchise (and in that group I would include Zarathustra). Like a harsh fairy godmother teaching in The Wizard of Oz school of learning things, the Jumanji game seeks out unsatisfied people to grant their wishes … but makes them earn it.

The General Studies program at the Jumanji School of Insanely Hard Knocks focuses on maturity, altruism, loyalty and the priorities of friendship and family which can overcome any obstacles no matter how off-the-wall: from eagle size mosquitoes to malicious bands of monkeys, carnivorous hippopotami and lethal semi-sentient poisonous vines, bonding comes from teamwork, accepting others weaknesses, and making the best use of your own strengths to help those you love.

Excellent lessons to learn and, as Mary Poppins might have said, it helps that the sugar to make the medicine go down is wildly funny scenarios, and great actors who are very good sports and don’t mind taking pokes at their own famous reputations.

The original Jumanji and its two sequels excel beautifully in all of the above points. Zarathustra, (the step-child of the group, as it uses a similar scenario and themes but is not strictly part of the Jumanji franchise) follows in those footsteps as well.

For those not up-to-date, Jumanji is a wild game of crazy challenges: stampedes, instant localized monsoons  which fall only where you are, monster crocodiles, a homicidal big game hunter of people, malevolent monkeys — and places you IN the game. Not virtually, but in the real world. In the original Jumanji the creatures came into our reality. In the subsequent Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the players are pulled into the game and manifest as Avatars. Spencer, a slight bookish boy with no appreciable upper body strength becomes Dwayne Johnson. Bethany, a narcissistic “Valley” girl becomes Jack Black. Martha, a girl with no inherent athletic abilities becomes Karen Gillan with preternaturally gymnastic fighting skills. And Fridge, an egotistical football player becomes the much shorter and weaker Kevin Hart.

This latest Jumanji, Jumanji: The Next Level mixes it up, starting only a few years after the first reboot. All the original team: Fridge, Bethany and Martha have gone to college, done well and look forward to a reunion. Spencer is in a funk, and finds himself longing for the days when he was the size of Dwayne Johnson with extraordinary powers of strength and speed. The temptation gets too much and without consulting his worried friends goes back into the game.

I don’t want to tell you much more and spoil things so I will shy away from specifics. But I will say Next Level has all the humor and inventive scenarios of the original, keeps to the same themes, brings back all the familiar faces but does not just rehash the old. There are lively and justifiable (for that universe) variations which make Next Level as new and intriguing as the very first 1995 incarnation.

The acting is A level and a lot of fun. Not an enormous amount of subtlety but each of the actors do a wonderful job performing multiple characters outside of what you might think is their comfort zone. Returning are: Dwayne Johnson (burly muscle in WWE, and the likes of Scorpion King, GI Joe and Fast and Furious) who truly shines in comedies like Get Smart, The Other Guys, The Tooth Fairy and here in Next Level, where he shamelessly and hilariously makes fun of himself as Dr. Bravehouse/Eddie and Spencer. I was genuinely impressed at the enthusiasm with which he launched into characters way outside of his usual fare. Karen Gillan returns as Martha/Ruby Roundhouse as well as Fridge (you’ll see). She was most notably known before this as Matt Smith’s Dr. Who‘s companion Amy Pond and here does a marvelous job with not only multiple personalities but an authentic American accent. Kevin Hart (The Upside SEE REVIEW HERE) is delicious as Fridge and Milo. Jack Black is delightful as Bethany and Fridge. In addition there are some wonderful small role/cameos by: short, growly voiced iconic comedian Danny DeVito (TV classic series Taxi, Throw Mama From the Train, Romancing the Stone, Twins) as Eddie; Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon franchise) as Milo; original Jumanji veteran Bebe Neuwirth as Eddie’s friend Nora; Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle reprise Nick Jonas (memorable in Midway SEE MY REVIEW HERE) as Alex; and Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians SEE REVIEW HERE) as Spencer and Eddie (again – go to the movie to see what this means).

Portraying the young versions of the “real” people are: Morgan Turner as Martha, Madison Iseman as Bethany,  Ser’Darius Blan as Fridge, and Alex Wolff as Spencer. Colin Hanks (Tom’s oldest son) plays grown up Alex.

The soundtrack by Henry Jackman channels Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars in very clever and appropriate moments, as if unable to resist the retro and multi personality motifs that the actors get to play.

Jake Kasden, writer/director (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) who is of significant lineage (son of the famous writer/director Lawrence Kasden who brought us both Indiana Jones, many of the Star Wars reboots, and The Big Chill), with cinematographer Gyula Pados, and the other writers Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, do a terrific job creating multiple extreme scenarios. I was especially impressed with the realism in a ridiculously harrowing one with … let’s just say geometry was important.

I would love to recommend this for all ages. And while there is no sexuality, the writers unwisely decided to “enhance” a couple of the characters’ personalities with a smattering of profane and even blasphemous language: (*cough cough* Danny DeVito, Kevin Hart, Jack Black). Therefore I would recommended only to mid-teens and up and then only those who will have the sense not to parrot-repeat things they should not. That is a shame because it is the only limiting proviso to this otherwise charming film.

JUMANJI!!!!

EPIPHANY – WHAT REALLY BUGS ME ABOUT CAPTAIN MARVEL

I finally figured out what bugs me about Captain Marvel. Not the movie, the character. The movie, as I pointed out in my post on Captain Marvel, is flawed but good and not really deserving of most of the negative hype it got. My problem is with the CHARACTER of Captain Marvel as it manifests itself, not just in the origin story, but in other movies as well – like Endgame.

It’s not the alleged anti-male bias in her origin story, which I mostly disabused in my post about Captain Marvel, that bothers me. It’s not Captain Marvel’s snarky attitude – I love  Rocket’s acerbic comments in Guardians of the Galaxy, the sarcasm of Tony Stark, the quips from Nick Fury and even the defensive banter from Marvel’s version of M.J.

It’s not the fact she is a woman in a lead action adventure role – even though her origin movie (while rather fun) is no where near as good as Wonder Woman was or Black Widow’s will be (OK I’m just a teensy bit biased but B.W. is SUCH a great character).

I don’t even mind arrogance if it is earned, as it is with Iron Man or Loki, especially when they occasionally allow themselves to be the butt of humor.

And yes, I DO mind that the character of Captain Marvel HAS no sense of humor. That takes a bit of edge off of every scene she is in. BUT that is NOT what really BUGS ME!

It suddenly occurred to me when lines of dialogue popped into my head from Avengers: Endgame which nailed her entire persona and shone a light on the major flaw with this character, which crops up in everything she does, everything she says and all of the relationships, or lack of them, she has with the other characters in this Marvel Universe. Danvers is talking to the group of grieving super hero survivors, and Rhodey, rightly, asks where she has been all this time (the last 5 years) and she replies: “There are a lot of other planets in the Universe. And unfortunately, they didn’t have you guys.”

OK, I can accept that and she’s right. It’s almost complimentary to the Avengers. But it’s what she DIDN’T say that rankles. Danvers is from Earth. She was born in America and used to be American military. So she understands loyalty. But her comment, or lack of it, reflects a (literal and disturbing) “universitality” to her mindset; a comment that speaks volumes in what is unspoken about where her allegiances lie. Sure, she was brainwashed, but she remembered her best friend Maria and Maria’s little girl, so her memories were and are resurfacing.

What she should have said, and did NOT say was: “I’m sorry. I wish I could have been here helping AT HOME, but you must understand that …..” Along with a grounding of Danvers’ place in the galaxy it would have afforded her a more three-dimensional personality, a vulnerability which every other character displays at one time or another – from Drax to Thor. But not ice queen Captain Marvel and without it she is a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out.

What she does reflect is a distance and sort of condescending entitlement attitude, wherein she will not deign to show up on Earth unless she determines we are worth the effort. There is no attachment, no sense of gratitude to the place of her birth, no expression of affiliation to the rest of her species even.

Instead, Earth to her is not the exceptional place of her birth, nor America the exception country of her upbringing, but just another rock in the cosmos with beings that need her help.

Well thanks loads and we’ll grovel later, but I’m sorry – maybe she should consider that without the nurturing she received on Earth, in America, there would not have BEEN a Carol Danvers. She is, after all, SUPPOSED to be human.

Superman, (D.C. but we’re talking creative writing and what works, not affiliation with a particular franchise), has endured (despite some admitted egregious mistakes) and is easy to like, in part because he has shown tremendous gratitude and affection to the species into which he was adopted. He’s not even FROM here and he protects Earth as owning a special place in his heart.

Dr. Who (again irrelevant to franchise or universe but only to the creation of character) has declared dozens of times that Earth is under his special protection – not just because he finds traits in humans that are noteworthy – our capability for great good, our resilience – but because we sheltered him in a time of need during the third doctor’s series.

In Star Trek (TOS) an empath described humans: “Your will to survive, your love of life, your passion to know … Everything that is truest and best in all species of beings has been revealed to you. Those are the qualities that make a civilization worthy to survive.” Lai the Vian, “The Empath”.

But there was NONE of that respect and affection for the human race reflected anywhere in the Captain Marvel movie or in her character in other movies, as it written by four women – Anna Boden, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve –  and one man – Ryan Fleck. (Reminds me of the aphorism self-describing the flaws in an unchecked raw “democracy”: that it is four wolves and one lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Poor Ryan.)

I have a tough time imagining Marvel throwing herself between danger and a small child – rather she’d weigh the importance of the child against what she perceives as her own value and – well, good bye kid.

Apparently it was far more important to these writers to bow to a politically correct: “I am woman, hear me mewl”, than create a fully compelling story and hero. It is her lack of gratitude, absence of humility and vacuum of appreciation for her home planet that makes Captain Marvel the least of the Marvel heroes (or even anti-heroes) despite her amazing “powers”. As a result I find Groot, a talking tree with a rather limited English vocabulary, far more admirable and far more relatable, not to mention lovable, than li’l Miss C. Marvel.

JANE BOND? POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN AMOK

AUDIO PODCAST FOR “JANE BOND? POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN AMOK”

At first I thought it was a joke. But now — if it is, then include me in the list with those who believe “gullible” is not in the dictionary – as having fallen for the prank Hook Line & Sinker.

SPOILERS FOR SOME PAST BOND MOVIES

I thought Judi Dench was the best M the Bond franchise ever had. And I think that a flighty science-enamored character like Elizabeth Henstridge’s Jemma Simmons from Season 1 of Agents of Shield, or Letitita Wright’s hip teen prodigy, Shuri, from Black Panther would be absolutely adorable as a new Q.

But a female James Bond? What are they going to call her? Jamie Bond? Jane Bond? Janet? June? Jill? Jasmine? Jenny? Joan? Jessica? Josephine?

The actress they have in mind, Lashana Lynch, (last seen in Captain Marvel as Danvers’ best friend Maria Rambeau), seems a perfectly good candidate for an action adventure movie, having acquitted herself with satisfaction in the Marvel Universe so far. It would be interesting to see her in an Atomic Blonde-type movie, for example.

BUT!!! When the vast majority of the attraction of the Bond movies, for the vast majority of the demographic audience, is the bevy of beauties who follow, surround, bed and attempt to kill 007, if you have a female Bond, how is that going to work?

If she’s a lesbian, that’s going to attract an entirely different primary demographic than has been following the Bond franchise for 70 years. In short, the Bond franchise would be starting all over from Square One. And given the money invested in this franchise, I don’t know that that’s a risk they’re willing to take. So assuming she is presented as either hetero or asexual, what will be the excuse for all the women who are an integral, if not in some cases, the sole reason some people have for going to see the movie?

I was willing to seriously consider a female Doctor Who (Jodie Whittaker) and I’d hoped for better, though I do not think it has worked out very well.

I am on record as having doubted the viability of a female-superhero-led movie, but was delighted to be wrong when Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) came along and have guarded optimism about the idea of a Black Widow  (Scarlett Johansson) origin story. But those two succeeded, and promise to succeed, primarily on the strength of the actresses involved in the respective films. Both female protagonists are/were heroes who happened to be females, not females onto which they shoehorned the mantle of superhero (as they did with Captain Marvel). Neither Wonder Woman nor Black Widow have chips on their shoulder against men and both work with easy camaraderie with their male counterparts, (UNlike Captain Marvel.)

My point being is, that while I have an educated and experienced bias against the viability of females in traditionally male iconic roles, I am delighted when I am wrong and I’m happy to admit it. However, it is frankly inconceivable to me what on Earth they going to do with a female Bond, given almost 70 years of set formula,  (Casino Royale, published in 1953 was the first novel by Ian Fleming and 1962 opened Dr. No, the first Bond film), which would operate strongly against it.

I suppose one possibility is if this young woman was the fruit of one of the previous male 007’s innumerable liaisons.

But even then I think it would be a gimmick that would only be viable for one movie – much like the smart, competent bride of James Bond in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. As amazing as the Emma Peel/Diana Rigg’s Tracy was, she would not have fit within the Bond franchise long-term and was an outlying one trick pony. Tracy had to die for the Bond character to live. And I don’t think it was a coincidence that this movie, the outlier, was the one and only Bond with George Lazenby. Bond in love and married was a construct against the tried and true formula which just did not work. Grafting a female child of James Bond would alter the chemistry and shape of the decades-successful pattern into something unrecognizable as a Bond movie.

Another possibility is her partnering with a male Bond or perhaps even a junior male Bond-in-training. But then we’re moving into the equivalent of the Marvel Universe’s Ragnarok or Guardians of the Galaxy territory, wherein they plant their tongue far more obviously and firmly in their cheek than they did with Roger Moore’s unfortunately titled — well let’s say it would be another way to describe an eight-armed cat.

Honestly, I can view this with a certain objectivity as I have never been able to sit through an entire Bond movie, (or Wagner opera for that matter), without dozing off at least once. Suffice it to say, I’m not a huge Bond fan, though I find them fun to spectate in groups with male relatives and friends who — for one reason or another —seem to enjoy them a lot more than I do.

I wish this young lady all the luck. But I am afraid that in their heightened enthusiasm for political correctness they may have a James BOMB on their hands and have given themselves a License to Fail.

P.S. If they want my vote it would be – hands down – IDRIS ELBA!!!!!!

A SECOND LOOK AT THE NEW DR. WHO, A LOOK BACK AT AN OLD STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION AND THE PRO-LIFE MESSAGE

SHORT TAKE:

The recent Dr. Who shows have been FAR better than the pilot and rely on puzzles, history, and most importantly, in The Tsuranga Conundrum, features — a pro-life message.

WHO SHOULD WATCH:

Anyone.

AND IF YOU LIKE THESE REVIEWS PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! THEN YOU'LL GET     EVERY NEW REVIEW SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR E-MAIL!!

GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LEFT HAND SIDE AND TYPE YOUR E-MAIL IN – IT (SHOULD BE) THAT EASY. ANY PROBLEMS PLEASE SEND ME A COMMENT AND I'LL DO MY BEST TO RESOLVE YOUR ISSUE.

LONG TAKE:

I was not wrong. The first of the new Doctor Who's was terrible. Click HERE to see why. However, the stories immediately began improving and I had already intended to write a revised blog. But episode 5, The Tsuranga Conundrum, put me over the top and inspired me to get it done.

Let me first say a little bit about the other improved episodes. Rosa, much like TOS Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever", where one person's decision changes the course of history, revolves around whether or not Rosa Parks will refuse to stand for a white person on a bus in the 60s. Her act of civil disobedience, striking a blow for the dignity of every human, sparked the Civil Rights Movement. The antagonist for the show was a fellow time traveler who wished to interrupt this key event. The Doctor and company were there to protect the time line. Rosa was a lovely story and the theme harkened back to Doctor Who's original 1963 intent of being a time-traveling historian and scientist.

The other shows highlighted the female Doctor Who's natural strengths of intellect and puzzle-solving. As a woman, she does not have the upper body strength to physically handle altercations. The other doctors, aside from Christopher Eccleston, though of  "academic" builds, were still far stronger physically than this one could be. So her strength lies in her being, as David Tennant put it often, "clever". And this comes off very well again in this story.

While her companions are still not especially noteworthy, you kind of get used to them, and they have the virtues of neither being bossy nor abrasive as previous companions have been. Neither is there some long game arc with them as the linchpin to the mysteries of the universe, which is pretty refreshing. So the shows have definitely improved.

But the most recent Dr. Who episode was the icing on the cake and deserves special commendation. Doctor Who has always been pretty pro-life, much like Star Trek was pro-life. The value of sentient life was recognized,  regardless of how they looked. And there was respect for life and Creation in general, (even though there was only rarely a reference to a Creator). And Doctor Who is very much in the same vein. Enemies' lives are respected, valued and protected with as much alacrity as friends' lives. Character arcs are often about redemption, and rarely does the concept of revenge in any form rear its head.

Acknowledgement of life's importance in all forms is an understood thread that weaves itself though both shows. But only once before this most recent Dr Who show have I seen the pro-life position so clearly and plainly stated as it was in "The Child," from Star Trek the Next Generation.  In "The Child" Deanna Troi finds herself pregnant from an unknown entity. The consensus from the rest of the command crew was extreme caution and Worf, the Klingon security officer, even recommended abortion of the "fetus". But Deanna, not even knowing how she got pregnant, not knowing what was the intent of the entity who, frankly, raped her, flatly stated to her captain: "Do whatever you feel is necesssary to protect the ship and the crew, but know this, I'm going to have this baby". Not fetus, not product of conception, but "baby".  The only issue to Deanna was protection of the child that she carried and an acknowledgement that it was indeed a baby.

DR WHO SPOILERS

I am so very pleased to commend this new Doctor Who, and obviously the writer, Chris Chibnall, for making the same clear pro-life statement. In episode 5, "The Tsuranga Conundrum", the premise is that The Doctor and her companions are trapped on a hospital ship without her TARDIS. Their literal deus ex machina is temporarily out of reach on a planet several days travel away. The main storyline revolves around an attack on the hospital ship by a new mysterious alien, the Pting. But that is not really relevant to the point of this blog, so I will let you enjoy that part on your own. 

Their subplot, partially intended for comedy, is really the most important part of the story. Yoss is a young unmarried man, in the last stages of pregnancy. Now bear with me. Though the young man looks human, he is a different species and this IS a science fiction show. When asked how he knows the child will be a boy, he responds matter-of-factly: "Boys give birth to boys and girls give birth to girls. That's how it is." So – yeah – alien. Somehow this struck me as especially funny, as I am sure the writer intended. When two of The Doctor's companions, understandably confused, ask him how this could have happened, meaning – how could he, a man, become pregnant?!!! the scared new dad misunderstands and explains that it was the result of an ill-thought out one night stand.

Here is where the pro-life begins. There was never any mention of Yoss considering abortion even though he makes clear that pregnancy was the LAST thng he wanted at this time in his life and that he feels woefully underprepared to be a parent. In addition, the writer, through Yoss, goes out of his way to show the companions what his unborn baby looks like in a series of 3D ultrasound images. There was no plot purpose to this slide show, but it made a brilliant point and, I thought was the highlight of the episode. His species' gestation takes only 5 days, therefore the pictures he shows are a succession of developmental shots only a few hours after conception, then after the first day, the second day, third, and fourth, all of which show dramatic gestation of a species that looks just like a normal human child. The last picture of his unborn baby, taken three hours earlier, shows a full-term, perfectly beautiful,  baby boy to the awe and delight of the attending companions.

I thought this masterfully done. Whether the writer intended to or not, he makes it clear, even to the most uninitiated, that it takes no time at all to get from "conception" to "baby".  And giving this species a five day gestation brings that thought home in a very condensed way.

There are some predictable but still funny moments of two squeamish human men in a delivery room assisting with the C-section birth of a baby. But all the concepts are treated tactfully, so not to worry. The rest of the subplot is cute as well and involves his decision whether or not to keep his baby or give him up for adoption.

And there's a bit of lagniappe. Usually Doctor Who, and even my own beloved Star Trek, avoid religion at best and take sly jabs at it at worst. But in this Doctor Who, during the funeral for one of the guest characters, prayers are requested from saints! While, unfortunately, no mention of God was there, reference to saints, a distinctly Catholic spiritual concept, was a delightful and blessed breath of fresh air.

As I have not been shy of doing in the past, I have re-evaluated the show. I hereby backtrack on my previous overall negative impression of the new female Doctor Who. While I continue to maintain that the first was poorly done, it did not put her best foot forward. The steep incline of improvement has been quite a pleasant surprise.

So, I recommend for all of you Doctor Who fans who have not tuned in yet, to give Miss Whitaker's Doctor Who a try. Based upon shows 2 through 5 she deserves another chance.

And bravo to our new MISS Doctor Who for her profoundly pro-life message. I will be tuning in again.

DR. WHO: THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH – SHAVE AND A HAIR CUT…………….???

 

SHORT TAKE:

Disappointing, lackluster reboot of Dr. Who into the first female incarnation of the main character, in a plot that is a routine set up without any real payoff.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Anyone CAN go see this DR. WHO, but…(to use a different interrogative pronoun)…WHY?

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LONG TAKE:

I went with an open mind, I really did. After all, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that, contrary to my long held opinion, a good superhero could be made featuring a woman when Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot knocked the socks off me with her powerful but feminine portrait of a righteously heroic super woman.

So it was with high hopes that I went to go see the premiere of the very first show featuring the very first woman Dr Who – that is with the exception of The Curse of Fatal Death, the parody filmed for the charity Comic Relief with Rowen Atkinson who ultimately morphs into Joanne Lumley in 1999.

If you like the cheap waxy chocolate in your Easter basket; if you make your milkshakes out of fat free ice milk; if you prefer plain unsweetened rice cakes for breakfast; if your refreshment of choice is a clear sugar free diet soda (why don't you just drink water?); if your musical taste runs to the elevator music version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" — then this is the Dr Who for you. All promise and little delivery.

SPOILERS

To start with, the pronouns present a challenge, but let’s do this – if I’m referring to Jody Whittaker’s Dr Who it seems fair to use the feminine. BUT if I refer to any previous incarnation, then the masculine grammatical reference should apply.

For those of you NOT familiar with Dr Who, please refer to my previous blog on Dr Who: Twice Upon a Time, which gives a quick "cheat sheet" introduction to the Whovian Universe.

For those of you already familiar with Dr Who, the premise of The Woman Who Fell to Earth, is that the first female Doctor (literally) falls to Earth – and physically – through a train roof, just as the passengers are being terrorized by an energy ball of tentacles. Companions happen upon her and follow like dust motes in the wake of a guppy and they decide to figure out what it is and its connection to another alien with teeth imbedded in its face. Meanwhile, an entire more interesting and better acted subplot involving a missing girl and her murdered brother are brushed aside like so much flotsam and the story drags to a conclusion with manufactured tension and a lead who can not even smile convincingly.

None of this is remotely quality Who.

Even the beginning flies in the face of the basic mechanics of the Who-verse. Everyone knows or suspects strongly that Dr. Who’s TARDIS gets him/her to where they are most needed. From the get go, as explained by Whittaker's Who, the TARDIS was wounded and dematerialized leaving the new Who to the tender ministrations of gravity. So Who's propitious appearance at the train to save the passengers seems more like coincidence than it should.

Next, while the Doctor has shown himself to be physically resilient, and crashing bodily into Earth like a thrown bowling ball is not necessarily the most injurious event he has ever survived, to fall to Earth from near outer space and crash THROUGH a train roof without so much as mussed hair is a bit much for even my considerable suspension of disbelief. 

Tennant, having burst through a skylight in The End of Time Part II looks like he's been on the wrong side of a blender.

And her adaptability to her new body misses SO much. Tennant noticed new teeth immediately before collapsing from the regeneration effort. Matt Smith examined his whole body in a humorous frenzy even as the TARDIS was exploding around him: "Legs! I've still got legs! Good. Arms. Hands. Oo! Fingers. Lots of fingers. Ears. Yes. Eyes two. Nose. I've had worse. Chin. [Noting its size]  Blimey. Hair. [presciently] I’m a girl. [feels Adam’s apple] No no. I’m not a girl. [Pulling a lock of hair forward to look at it, grumps] And still not ginger." When River Song morphed from young black teen to middle aged but shapely white woman we got more brilliant acting with Alex Kingston as she admires her own new hair then hollars from the bathroom: "Oh, that’s magnificent! I’m gonna wear lots of jodhpurs!" 

Jody Whittaker's Dr. Who's only comment is "Brilliant" and we're not even sure she's reacting to her new gender. Granted this is a flaw in the writing, but there's no indication from her acting or movements that she is: awed, amazed, dismayed, confused, curious, intrigued, or turned on by the fact that for the first time she is whole new GENDER! When in the past your previous selves have been surprised and dazzled by hair color and teeth size, and another Time Lord by the size of her own booty, you'd THINK a change in your entire sex would merit SOME attention. Even the spoof skit showed Lumley impressed with her new found…upgrades. In The Woman Who Fell to Earth her responses COULD have been tastefully done and REALLY funny. But it was like "Shave and a hair cut…………….." WHERE was the overwhelm? Where was the curiosity?

And her acting is – to put it kindly – bland. To NOT be so kind, she demonstrates all the emoting variations of an indulgent second grade school teacher.

Don't believe me? Let's take a trip down memory lane:

Tennant:

Smith:

Eccleston:  

Hurt:

Capaldi:

Now here's the new Dr Who: Her busy face,  her studious face  her surprised face. Is she afraid to move her eyebrows? Or show any genuine enthusiasm? Or risk looking silly?

Where is the humor? Where is the childlike enthusiasm to which we can all relate? And while, again, this is largely the fault of the script, it's not even that the show takes itself too seriously. I've often told our kids – it's not necessarily WHAT you say, but HOW you say it that makes all the difference. And I can't help but nostalgically wonder how a previous doctor (pick one – ANY one) would have done the reading on these same fairly uninspired lines and what desperately needed, resuscitating life they might have given them.

The writing is mundane and pedestrian. The trailer even features a good example: "I'm The Doctor. When people need help I never refuse." This is not only lazy writing but it is said with all the conviction of a PSA.

There's a scene where she jumps dramatically and dangerously (in Capaldi's slippery ill-fitting dress shoes) from one crane to another about 15 stories off the ground, then simply talks and tosses something to the bad guy to win the day. It would have been far more interesting if she had realized she did not have the upper body strength in the female body she now has, admitted that and worked around it. Realistically she could have done exactly what she ended up doing – talking and tossing – only without the death defying leap. This is just manufactured suspense.

Even the title is not particularly creative, merely a take on an old David Bowie sci fi vehicle The MAN Who Fell to Earth. There's no connection except the paraphrase.

Her companions are ginned up from what looks like the politically correct pool of the week: an elderly white man, married to a caricature of the pushy black woman, with a black teen grandson and a young woman whose last name is Khan who used to be a classmate of the grandson. They are all intimately related to each other yet we are to believe it is all coincidence. It was so unlikely a group of connections that I thought, surely the links must be part of the plot twist. But no, again just lazy writing to avoid having to introduce these characters to each other and endure the arduous task of creatively writing ways and events for them to get to know each other. Yet none of them has any real chemistry with either each other or the Doctor. And when one of them dies…..

SORRY – SPOILER – BUT HONESTLY, "WHO" CARES?

…….I wanted to feel badly about it but the show gave us little emotional investment to spend.

The direction was unremarkable but adequate – sort of like a high end shampoo commercial.

There is no vision. There was no rhyme or reason. Dr. Who started out over a half century ago as Britain's answer to Mr. Wizard – a science show which presented interesting facts in an entertaining way. It has – up to now – held to the tradition of teaching …. something: how to treat your fellow sentient creature, clever ways to solve puzzles, return evil with kindness, self sacrifice to protect the innocent, theories on effects of time travel, how other creatures from entirely different perspectives might react to the human culture, simply – thou shalt not kill. But I got the impression Mr. Chibnall, the show's new writer, has not yet gotten the memo on this one. He wrote a couple of the mini-shorts "The Power of Three" and "Pond Life" as well as some pretty decent other shows: 42, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Cold Blood/Hungry Earth. But being able to pick up a basket of pecans does not mean you have the strength to carry the entire TREE. And carrying a FOREST is what shouldering the work of creatively moving forward with this formerly imaginative show, with more than 50 years of history and backstory demands from WHOever thinks they can captain this ship. Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat or Russell T. Davies, Chibnall is not.

There IS a lot of running, some red herring puzzles and a so-so denoument with forced tension and nothing to learn in the end. We don't even really find out what happens to the person she set out to save. And when the survivor moves in self-defense she chides him: "You shouldn't have done that." We go to an awkward visual cut to somewhere else on the soundstage and that's the last we ever see of him. Huh?

She preposterously builds a new sonic screwdriver out of dust, gizmos and a bag of metal coffee spoons lying around a cluttered human workshop. It might have been vaguely believable if she had used the tech that WAS potentially available from a discarded space "eggshell" but even that McGuffin wasn't utilized. If they are THAT easy to make why doesn't she make LOTS of them? Hand them out like party favors to her companions?

And to top everything else off they went out of their way to dis Christianity. Mostly, Dr Who, like Star Trek, leaves religion alone. But when one of their crew dies, the funeral is held in a church, but the cross beam of the cross behind the altar area is deliberately covered by carefully placed…balloons! Balloons? At a FUNERAL? And why HAVE the funeral in a Christian church if you are going to cover up the primary symbol of that institution unless you: A. Want to go out of your way to thumb your nose at the Christian faith, or B. You don't want to be bothered to think of any place else and you're too cheap to actually take the cross down. So disrespectful or indolent, take your pick.

And the death was stupid ANYway. The character threw themself into a dangerous situation unnecessarily then died clumsily. The death served no real purpose other than to cut the number of companions from four to three. "Thrift, Horatio, thrift." Fewer paychecks I suppose.

There are a zillion other dumb plot decisions: did she really wear that manky suit to the funeral? She doesn't even TRY to negotiate for the captured sister that one of the subplot characters died horribly trying to find. Since when does a Time Lord stick their finger up their nose to determine when they are going to faint? Did Chibnall think this was funny? Why on Earth would someone touch a glowing grid that appears out of nowhere? How DID he get his bike out of the tree? Did she not even CONSIDER her "friends" might be sucked into space with her using her jury rigged spit and bailing wire transporter? Why would she run on a wet crane in slippery dress shoes a couple sizes too big when she could have at least taken them off? What are the chances ALL the companions, randomly found, knew each other already without that fact being a plot point?

It all felt  – as though you were given Peter Davison's celery stalk with no dressing as your entire dinner or you were expected to warm yourself with only a bit of fringe off of Tom Baker's scarf – underdone, incomplete, ill-thought out, unfulfilling and unfinished (kind of like the way we all felt about the actor Christopher Eccleston's career as Dr. Who after he refused to be in the 50th Anniversary Special for no particularly good reason). So watching this Dr. Who I now know how Roger Rabbit felt when Judge Doom knocked on the wall and "inquired": "Shave and a hair cut," and he wasn't allowed to yell "TWO-BITS!"

So finally we are left with yet another interrogative pronoun and a burning question: WHERE is the real Dr. Who?! And will SOMEONE please say "TWO-BITS!"

DARKEST MINDS – DERIVATIVE TEEN ROMANCE DRESSED UP AS WEAK DEPRESSING SCI FI

SHORT TAKE:

Paint-by-numbers teen-romance/sci-fi full of plot holes and borrowed ideas.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Mid to older teens only, for language, X-Men style violence and a couple of aggressive advances by pervy bad guys.

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LONG TAKE:

Combine Divergent with the new/retro X-Men then flavor with a teaspoon of Children of Men and you have Darkest Minds.

Based on a series of books by Alexandra Reagan, the premise is that a virus infects all children. Most die but the survivors are left with superpowers. The government is afraid of them so, on the pretext of looking for a cure, rounds them up into prison-like camps, where they are overseen by abusive soldiers, given menial tasks to do and occasionally euthanized. One of the internees, Ruby, (Amandla Stenberg from Hunger Games) gifted with mind control, escapes with the help of a sympathetic doctor, Cate (Mandy Moore) and seeks sanctuary with other runaways.

There are so many weak, illogical and unappealing features to this movie that I will only hit upon the highlights.

The two favorite whipping boys of the lazy liberal screenwriters are corporate CEOs and the military. Our military are the scapegoats in this one. All are seen as cruel and abusive to the last remaining children on the planet. Not only is this stupid, but would be an enormous waste of incredible powers displayed by the children. For example, heightened intelligence children are sent to polish shoes. Why? Why are they not put to work creating super gizmos?

Set ups are never paid off. In one scene, our protagonist is cornered by a pervy-acting soldier and another girl deliberately makes him angry to distract him. She is taken away, presumably for punishment, but we never see her again.

Ruby sends a bounty hunter off into the woods to walk herself to death. Then the kids walk off into the same woods without ever mentioning her again. Also, this is almost exactly the punishment Wolverine's dying girlfriend, Kayla, metes out to Stryker at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Along with enhanced intelligence, powers of other children in the camp include telekinesis and the ability to control electricity.

Children who demonstrate more powerful abilities such as mind control or fire breathing are euthanized.

If a corrupt military had access to this kind of firepower, the idea that these children would be either killed or corralled and simply housed is ludicrous. Why would they not at least weaponize them?

There is no reveal as to what was going on in the rest of the world. If it was only in the United States, we would have a significant advantage with a race of super children. Was the virus a pandemic? Where did the virus come from? Was it manufactured ? of alien origin? Was it supposed to be a natural part of humans' development? The writers seem more interested in making the military look inherently evil and jumping right to the teen drama than writing a solid coherent story.

The performances of the children are adequate but fairly banal and what you might expect in a teen romance film dressed up as a Sci-Fi.

It's a shame because they had the skeleton ideas for a really good movie. One thread they could have followed was when the runaways come upon an abandoned farm and one of the older kids mentions simply but insightfully: no children, no economy.

This is common sense the global warming cultists and the abortion mentality fanatics fail to grasp. Putting aside the Holocaust level atrocity of the philosophy that there are too many of us and that children, thereby, are at best an inconvenience and at worst a plague to be minimized or eliminated, it is a basic fundamental of economics that a population does not grow also does not thrive.  This is a concept that the far superior Children of Mendid not just glance at but understood and embraced.

The devastated and abandoned areas in Darkest Minds the children come across are one of the few accurate portrayals of the outcome of the loss of our next generation. To do a crossover moment, this is the landscape that Thanos and those others who believe in overpopulation, would create. Darkest Minds could have been a kind of Children of Men spinoff but this point was never followed up.

Another really good idea which was little utilized was Watership Down, a brilliant story by Richard Adams seen from the point of view of a group of adventuring rabbits. The idea of a group of intrepid outcasts, wandering from one dysfunctional society to another in the wake of a massive catastrophe, rejecting them all, seeking sanctuary and finding it in family would have been a real upgrade to this plot. Instead, Ruby, the main protagonist, finds this book to read to the youngest child in their group. The blessing that God gives to rabbits is quoted: "All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you.But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning." Ruby applies it to her love interest, Liam (Harris Dickinsen), but this is unearned. "The Prince with A Thousand Enemies" is a clever trickster leader who brings his family through a series of dangerous adventures. Liam, while a nice young man, is merely one of a group of kids trying to survive. He's not an especially strong leader, nor shown to be particularly adept at thinking outside the box. If they wanted to make this Watership Down analogy work they should have set it up properly, instead of just throwing it in hoping it would stick by virtue of having been mentioned. This tactic does not work.

Ruby kills somewhat randomly, though not without reason.  She forces soldiers to shoot into an opposing group, gets a helicopter pilot to do a suicide dive, and makes the pervy soldier shoot himself in the head. I only bring this up because elsewhere in the movie the group she is with objects to the idea of joining an anti-government group call the Children's League. They are afraid the League would train them to be soldiers and kill people. Seems a bit inconsistent without at least some espoused rationalization. The screenwriters need to pick a side and stick to it. Is it okay to use these powers lethally or not?

Essentially, this is a so-so forgettable teen romance with about as much originality as Eragon, set against a background of sci-fi which plays out like a first treatment idea instead of a fully fleshed-out screenplay.

Finally, I must wonder why screenwriters almost always see the future as dystopian. Granted a conflict is useful in the creation of an interesting story, but there's no reason a functioning healthy society couldn't be challenged, instead of starting from the assumption that life sucks. Star Trek, Dr. Who and the Avengers – three of the most profitable and long lasting frachises in all of cinematic history – all celebrate more often than not, the advances, achievements, creativity and essential goodness of humanity – and that sentient life is the most valuable thing in the material Universe. You'd think the writers of such depressing movies as Hunger Games, Divergent, Ready Player One, The Road, Book of Eli, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange, and Brazil would start from a more optimistic threshold. After all, what is the point of fighting for a world which will not get any better? Not that these are all bad  movies – on the contrary many on the list are classics. It's just you'd think the truly creative might come up with a more positive outlook on life and our future. As Trek and Who, in particular, have shown, it is possible to have conflict and even make intelligent social commentary and still have a more optimistic view of life. Just sayin'.

WARNING: A little bit of language, some X-Men style violence of gunshots, fire breathing, explosions and people being thrown around, along with the pervy antagonist scenes, makes this suitable really for older teens and up only. If you were comfortable with your kids seeing X-Men, this would likely be fine.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT – IF YOU LOVED ANY OF THEM YOU’LL LOVE THIS ONE TOO

SHORT TAKE:

If you liked ANY of the other Mission Impossible movies, or were a fan of the old TV show, you will love this one.

YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THE MUSIC ON: THIS YOUTUBE WHILE YOU READ THIS BLOG!!!

WHO SHOULD GO:

Middle teens and up for the suspense and violence. No naughty behavior. While the language is mostly mild for an adult movie, they just HAD to put in ONE profound profanity which sticks out like a sore thumb.

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LONG TAKE:

I wonder how many of the audience members in the latest Mission Impossible: Fallout movie know that the entire Cruise franchise was built on the shoulders of a show which debuted in 1966 – precisely 30 years prior to the first Tom Cruise MI vehicle and 52 years before today’s release?

The TV sculpted the inception of this story concept, which features a group of spies, each with unique skills, who infiltrate, uncover, and disassemble the maniacal schemes of megalomaniacs, terrorist countries, and other super villains using disguises, staged events, clever dialogue, magic tricks, seduction, faked deaths, and intricately devious plot devices. Often irony is involved wherein the bad guys are caught in the webs of their own spiderian constructs.

The founding company included Peter Graves (most notable to the current generation as the ill fated pilot with poor judgement in food choices featured in Airplane), Martin Landau (Bela Legosi in Ed Wood) with his real life wife Barbara Bain, Peter Lupus as Willie whose singular talent was to be real real strong, Greg Morris who had a long career in TV appearances, and Steven Hill – a staple character actor in everything from Yentl to The Firm. Hill started out as the leader of the pack but turned the baton over to Graves when filming interfered incompatibly with his devout Orthodox Jewish practices of not working on the Jewish Sabboth, a decision for which I will always admire him.

There were also a string of TV and supporting film actors who studded the MI set for its seven year run, like: Lesley Ann Warren, William Windom, Robert Conrad and Sam Elliott. But, saving the best for last was the regular appearance of our own Leonard Nimoy – the one, the first, the original Spock. Interestingly, Mark Leonard who played his father Sarek, and William Shatner, Captain Kirk, of course, were also veterans of the Star Trek universe and made guest appearances on the TV show Mission Impossible. So MI has a long and illustrious history of establishing the world in which Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible gang exists.

And the MI movies are no piker when it comes to history either.

It has been 22 years between today’s Mission Impossible: Fallout and the first Mission Impossible movie, the latter which debuted with an opening scene sporting Tom Cruise in prosthetics so campy it could have been mistaken for a Saturday Night Live skit – or the original TV show. The opening of the 1996 Tom Cruise hit, complete with fuse burn and the iconic rhythmic theme song, was the same year as Jerry MacGuire and only 2 years after the embarrassing Interview with a Vampire.

Poetically, 22 years (the same period of time betweem the first MI movie and Fallout) before the first Mission Impossible movie opened, we saw the end of the seven-year run of the Mission Impossible television show. There have been six MI movies and I have seen all but Mission Impossible III. No particular reason, except that I haven’t gotten around to it. They are all both very similar and completely distinct from each other at the same time. All six relate to each other but stand alone, like siblings in a close knit family. So I can, with some personal assurance, say, that if you liked any of the Mission Impossible movies you will like this one, and if you have not seen them all you won’t feel like you missed anything.

I HAVE made it my business to see all of the Mission Impossible movie intros. While they all do fitting and respectful homages to the Mission Impossible TV show none encapsulates quite so completely the traditional and iconic opening sequence format of the original Mission Impossible TV show as does this Mission Impossible movie Fallout. The retro style sets the tone for the entire movie. Not to say that it in anyway is a throwback, but squarely, firmly and proudly stands on the TV show grandfather’s shoulders.

On that note – BE AWARE – in keeping with the TV show format, the intro-credits throw in "spoiler-y" clips from the entire movie you are about to but have not yet seen. These clips are shown very quickly and out of context. If you watch hard you might recognize some of the scenes later when they happen in the movie. However, if you watch that carefully and are thinking that much during a movie like this then … you’re working too hard and not enjoying yourself enough. But, honestly, the scenes shown are not likely to give too much away.

The premise of Fallout, around which I must delicately dance to avoid spoiling the spider web threads of plot which are beautifully characteristic of the entire Mission Impossible concept, revolves around the search for three balls of plutonium.

MILD SPOILERS BUT WOULD ONLY BE GIVEAWAYS TO THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE TRAILERS OR HEARD ANY OF THE MOST NOTABLE SCUTTLEBUTT ABOUT THE FILMING

Without giving away too much, I can promise you will find all of the delightful Tom Cruise reboot Mission Impossible features that we have come to expect and love, including: spectacular stunts performed by Mr. Cruise, which I am fairly certain raise the blood pressures of the Essential Element Cast Insurance agents to dangerously high levels. And it’s not much of a spoiler, given the amount of P.R. it has received, to mention that Cruise snapped his ankle during one gig. And, I did not know this until doing the research for this blog but, Cruise did his own flying during the helicopter scenes. He not only has a license to fly the birds but has a masters which allows him to fly the very dangerous stunts as well —- which he did. I’m glad I’m not his mom.

The cast includes, of course, Tom Cruise who plays Ethan Hunt, the leader of the IMF team, our heroes. Alec Baldwin reprises his role as their Superior, Simon Pegg appears again as Benji, the techie who wants field work. Benji has a line I can't help but laugh at based on my own interpretation of the meaning. In the trailer, Benji and Ilsa watch as Ethan is getting set to do yet another crazy death defying stunt. Ilsa asks: "What is he doing?" To which Benji quips: "I find it best not to watch." I couldn't help wonder if that line was really an ad lib by actor Simon Pegg as he watched his fellow actor Cruise prepare to do — yet another crazy death defying stunt —- for real.  Henry Cavill (Superman) makes his debut in the franchise as August, the blunt instrument representative of the CIA. Cavill and Cruise created fight scenes I haven't enjoyed so much since I watched Dave Bautista beat the living snot out of Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Spectre.

It's kind of a hoot in Fallout to see Superman and Hunt go toe-to-toe in a bathroom-wall shattering, finesse-less, jackhammer fisticuffs confrontation with an extremely capable martial arts opponent. That is, if someone likes that kind of thing … which I confess I really do. The scene is featured in the trailer and it's even more fun to watch on the big screen as Cavill outshines even Tom Cruise who, in his turn, graciously allowed the scene to demonstrate that after 22 years of this, he is slowing down just a little bitty tad bit. No big surprise as Henry Cavill is half a foot taller, 30 pounds heavier, and 21 years younger than Tom Cruise. Despite Cruise’s apparent eternal youthfulness, boundless energy and teenage-style recklessness, he is old enough to easily be his co-star's father. And yet, though Cavill is bigger and faster, Cruise still believably keeps up with him in every scene.

Angela Bassett (Black Panther) plays Erica Sloan, head of the CIA and August’s boss. Ving Rhames is back as Luther, Hunt’s Jiminy Cricket. Rebecca Ferguson reappear as Ilsa. In a surprise but delightful cameo is Vanessa Kirby as White Witch, a character of gray area motives. Kirby most recently appeared as Elizabeth II's younger and scandal loving sister, Princess Margaret, in The Crown. And Christopher McQuarrie does double duty in Fallout as the screenplay writer and the director, a dual position he also held for MI: Rogue Nation AND Jack Reacher. In addition, McQuarrie wrote Edge of Tomorrow/Life, Die, Repeat, Valkyrie and The Usual Suspects. To say McQuarrie already has an astonishing resume, not to mention a long standing, obviously successful professional relationship with Cruise, would be redundant.

No evaluation of any Mission Impossible movie would be complete without mention of the classic theme written by Lalo Schifrin from the original TV show (which I hope you are listening to as you read this): bum, bum, BUM BUM, bum, bum, bum bum. Doodle ooooo doodle oooo doodle ooooo – do do………is planted and threaded whimsically and delightfully throughout the entire musical score.

The special effects and action sequences are as amazing as you might like to ever see, the dialogue quick, snappy and classic. The acting solid, and shows the actors comfortable in their character’s shoes. And the plot is as contrived, complex and convoluted as you can possibly want in a Mission Impossible movie. The only issue I really have is in an annoying subplot.

However I'm not going to say anything about that unless you plow through my…

ONE REAL SPOILER ALERT. FEEL FREE TO JUMP TO "END OF SPOILER" FOR THE REST OF THE REVIEW.

So, if you made it this far – my big problem with the movie is with the appearance of Ethan Hunt's wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). To the best of my knowledge they were never divorced, she just faked her death, as Lois Lane might have done to avoid the clutches of the superheroes evil villainous nemeses. So when Julia introduced her new "husband" to Ethan, two simultaneous thoughts occurred: Julia is committing adultery and bigamy, and Julia is putting this poor schmuck at the same risk she was avoiding by faking her own death…….!?!

My husband pointed out that it would have been so much more fun, noble, in keeping with their initially selfless characters, and just plain old more romantic, for Julia and Ethan to continue the charade of her being dead, but clandestinely having intermittent rendezvous. Like other star crossed lovers: River Song and the various guises her husband, Dr Who, takes on, married and meeting over the centuries as they move through time in opposite directions from each other, but find each other when they can. Or Bobby and Lance Hunter in Agents of Shield who have a turbulent marriage but stick with it, meeting to get "reacquainted" from time to time. Or The Time Traveler's Wife, wherein the couple are separated often and for long periods of time because of his affliction of being "unstuck" in time? Or, how about your average married and deployed military man or police officer? They take great risks and endure long separations all the time but still managed to stay faithful for decades.

Instead, Ethan and Julia get to shallowly have their cake and eat it too. She gets to play dead but have a second functioning regular playmate she can call a husband and he gets to continue thinking of her as his and yet still pursue, tease and nurture a new relationship with Ilsa. I almost half expected there to be a planned menage a quatra. Thankfully, not.

END OF SPOILER

So, using the usual parental discretion, go see Mission Impossible: Fallout, bring your mid and older teens. Then, if you are like me, a fan of the original show, go home and introduce all your kids to the granddaddy TV show. BUM, BUM, BUM, BUM – TA DAHHHHHHH!