So I did say a few blog posts back that I was longing to rubbish something and was hoping His Dark Materials (as adapted by the BBC) would be it. When it comes down to it, though, I've not been looking forward to writing about this series, even though it makes a pretty good subject for rubbishing. The problem is that it wasn't bad in a way that's entertaining to pick apart - it was just very, very boring.
The fantasy world wasn't original enough to be interesting. The dialogue was leaden and slow-moving. Most of the characters were so paper thin they were hardly there. Consequently, the actors didn't have much to work with, and it felt like most of them didn't even try. The plot was a pretty standard "brave child goes on an adventure in order to save her world" story, and wouldn't you know it - Lyra, the child, is a Chosen One. To be fair, I believe His Dark Materials predates Harry Potter and a few other instances where this plot has been used, but even so - a story where the protagonist stumbles into an adventure and becomes a hero or heroine based on their own actions is a lot more satisfying than one where the hero/heroine is somehow preordained to be great. And still, the Chosen One plot is everywhere, not least in a fantasy context. What often connects these stories is that the side characters are far more fascinating than the main one, because they don't have a prophecy or what have you backing up a claim to be special: they have to earn the readers'/audience's interest. The mulish Lyra isn't the worst Chosen One protagonist on offer - she has too much character to be bland - but she's not the best either. The overall impression is of a run-of-the-mill fantasy plot rather poorly executed, and interwoven with scenes from "our world" which - far from having that eerie, "what's wrong with this picture" feel when reality meets the fantastical which you ideally get from a meet-the-companion episode in Doctor Who - are the most mind-numbingly dull in the whole series.
The one consistently excellent thing about this series is Ruth Wilson's magnetic performance as Mrs Coulter. She can make you engaged in even the most cumbersome lines and lifts every scene she is in. Apparently, she's supposed to be blonde in the novels, which does make me wonder whether it would have killed them to put a blonde wig on her to please book fans, but apart from that there is nothing to criticise here. Lin-Manuel Miranda as the aeronaut Lee and his long-suffering daemon, the hare Hester, are fun but not in any way central to the plot. The boy who played Lyra's best friend Roger did a pretty good job of not being annoying, I thought. The daemons (described as the souls of the characters which follow them around in the shape of an animal, and from which the humans in this world cannot be separated without dire consequences) are cute. But as positives go, that is pretty much it.
Now, I admit I didn't want to like this series. From what I've heard of Philip Pullman, he is a man with whom I would have little in common by way of opinions and beliefs, and far from keeping his private, he seems fond of professing them both in his fiction and outside of it. However, the ideas expressed in the BBC series are too confusing to be very provoking. I was expecting to want to shout at the screen, not to yawn my way through episode after episode.
Let's look at, for instance, the much-talked-about anti-Christianity which is supposedly all over the book series of His Dark Materials. So the bad guys in charge of Lyra's world are called the Magisterium, which is obviously some sort of church. Within the framework of the TV series, though, they're no different from any other sort of Fantasy Dictatorship. They might as well be called the Government (and be evil politicians), the Corporation (and be evil businessmen), the People's Representatives (and be evil revolutionaries), the Nobility (self-explanatory)... take your pick. Aside from being called "Father" and "Cardinal", what do they do that is specifically churchy? Well, I mentioned the cute soul animal creatures called daemons, right? Now, the Magisterium is running a terrifying experiment where they kidnap children in order to remove them from their daemons, which is supposed to make the children better beings eventually but has so far only made them catatonic. Oh, I see, because removing people from their souls is definitely something Christianity is about. No, wait...
Mrs Coulter later explains to Lyra what exactly the Magisterium has against the daemons. It appears that they are considered to be excellent playmates when kids are young, but once the children hit puberty their daemons - in the eyes of the Magisterium - start to lead them astray and towards sinfulness. Right... so not that soulful then, are they? Or are we ditching the soul-body split altogether, and is Pullman's point that for example sex drive is as much a thing of the soul as of the body and should not be frowned upon? That's pretty interesting, but if your argument is that the body and soul are one, why introduce a soul concept in the shape of cute daemons in the first place?
It gets more confusing when taking into account the discussions on Dust. Dust is an invisible substance that settles on the people of Lyra's world, but only the adults. The children are free of it. The Magisterium sees it as a harbinger of original sin. Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, sees it as something good and wants to use it to move between different worlds. He talks lyrically of a world without the shame and guilt induced by the ideas of the Magisterium. OK. I can see where he's coming from. Except: 1) Inducing shame and guilt isn't something specifically tied to religion. Sadly, it seems to be part of human nature to want to castigate oneself for being unworthy, while also pointing a finger at others for being even more unworthy so you can feel virtuous by comparison. I could mention some very secular shaming campaigns of late. 2) Needless shame and guilt is a bitch. I couldn't agree more. But there is such a thing as warranted feelings of guilt, which are a result of having a conscience. You know, the thing that tells us that abducting kids and performing experiments on them is A Bad Thing. The series ends with Asriel performing a daemon-child split of his own for his greater good, which sort of proves the point that his morality is no better than the Magisterium's. 3) Weren't the daemons the ones who were supposed to bring on adolescence and the naughty shenanigans the Magisterium wants to get rid of? So which is it, Dust, or daemons?
Maybe Pullman's ideas are better explained in the novels, and maybe they will be made clearer in subsequent series of His Dark Materials. I don't think I'll be watching any more, however. I can be grateful for the BBC His Dark Materials for one thing: I no longer feel guilty for not giving the novels a try. No needless shame and guilt, then.
onsdag 29 januari 2020
onsdag 15 januari 2020
Frozen 2 and the lack of new Disney villains
The start of the year has been busy, which means I'm late with my blogging. At least I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to subject matter, having watched both Frozen 2 and The Rise Of Skywalker at the cinema. I'll stick mainly with Frozen 2 for this post, though touching briefly on Rise Of Skywalker towards the end.
I realise that Frozen 2 could have been a great deal worse, and it didn't annoy me the way Wreck It Ralph 2 did. It was visually stunning, the songs were good and the characters still likeable. However, the story was a mess. Story elements were thrown in and then not expanded upon or made intelligible, new characters were introduced who then had very little to do, and the end of the film - though happy - is somehow unsatisfying. To be more precise, I'll have to go into spoilers, though there is precious little to spoil, as there are no big twists in the story.
So, firstly, the whole idea of magic in this universe being tied to the four elements and Elsa being the "fifth element" which ties the other four together is very confusing. Elsa's powers include creating snow and ice. That should make her magic part of the water element, no? Why on earth should her undefined fifth element status require her to take up residence in an enchanted forest (not the Enchanted Forest, regrettably) while Anna is made Queen? Who thought separating these devoted sisters (though it's made clear that they meet often) was a good idea? Frozen was partly about Elsa being able to connect with the world around her by coming to terms with her magic powers. At the end of Frozen 2, she is on her own again, though she does have the company of the pretty anonymous Northuldra tribe and a fire salamander. She might almost as well have stayed in her "ice palace for one".
When it comes to the characters, I was pretty relieved we didn't see more of the leader of the Northuldra tribe, as she seemed to be the kind of "nature good, civilisation bad" character that tends to irritate me. But Lieutenant Mattias had wasted potential - his reactions when hearing the girls' history as retold by Olaf, mirroring as they did the audience's reactions when first seeing Frozen (Olaf as Hans: "You're not worth it! Guess what, I'm the bad guy" Mattias: "What?!") were sweet and funny, and I liked his exchange with Anna about his old flame back in Arendelle. When told that she never married, he sighs "Now, why doesn't that make me feel happier?". But his impact on the story? Practically zero. And what happened to the Northuldra guy who talks to reindeer in the same way as Kristoff does? You think that this is the start of a beautiful friendship, but it's never followed through. Not to mention Honeymaren, a Northuldra girl who's introduced by name but not given any character or anything to do at all. Some of the regular characters are marking time as well: Kristoff's story arc is about trying to propose to Anna, while events keep getting in the way. But this is years after the first Frozen: surely Kristoff and Anna should have been married ages ago!
Somewhat perversely, seeing as I didn't much approve of the Frozen arc in Once Upon a Time, I was bummed that Once's version of what happened after (and before) Frozen was not only ignored but actively negated in Frozen 2. My beef with the Frozen arc in Once is that it was poorly integrated in the main story, and Anna and Elsa were strangely one-dimensional in their interactions with the Storybrooke/Enchanted Forest crowd. The story itself actually functioned well if seen merely as a sequel to Frozen, and contained cool elements such as a villainous Snow Queen more in keeping with H C Andersen's than Elsa and a magic mirror (similar to the one mentioned in Andersen's story) which makes people turn against their nearest and dearest. I know Once isn't Disney canon, but that's because it usually takes great liberties with its source material. In the case of Frozen, it primly toed the line and didn't go against anything described in the film, which had a curtailing effect on the script-writers' creative freedom - and it all turns out to have been for nothing. Ah well.
What's a great deal worse is that yet again, Disney fails to deliver on the villain front. Elsa sees what you could call ice flashbacks of her grandfather, King Runeard, behaving badly, which sparks a conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra and isolates the Northuldra's forest in a magic mist for thirty odd years (whatever the point of that was - care to explain, magic elements?). However, as well as coming as no surprise whatsoever - what, you didn't think the oh-so-wise-and-close-to-nature Northuldra started the quarrel, did you? - these brief flashbacks give us no insight into Runeard's reasons or character. We can only assume that it was the Northuldra's use of magic that spooked him, as he must otherwise have been a pretty tolerant king with a generous immigration policy (Mattias is from immigrant stock). An ice statue grandfather does not count as a villain, and so, after Wreck It Ralph 2 and Toy Story 4, we have another Disney/Pixar villain no-show.
It may be that Disney is trying to be "mature" and show that life can be complicated enough without colourful antagonists. But who wants an animated Disney film to be true to life to the detriment of the story? It's as if the Disney people have twigged that people have grown tired of the twist villains but don't have a clue what to replace them with. It's been so long since they had an upfront baddie in the Jafar mould that they've somehow lost the knack of creating them. There are several trends when it comes to Disney's output that leave me concerned, but this is perhaps the most worrying. Can it be that the company's unending quest for worthiness has made them forget just how satisfying a really good villain can be?
The Rise Of Skywalker seems to point in the direction of a company struggling to come up with something new villain-wise. Snoke having been unceremoniously killed off in The Last Jedi, the powers that be felt obliged to reintroduce Emperor Palpatine as the Big Bad, in spite of him being very, very dead at the end of The Return Of The Jedi. Now, I don't object to a spot of Palps - I admit I'm one of the fans who squeed delightedly when hearing his trademark cackle in the trailer, instead of going: "Oh no! Doesn't this make the heroes' victory in The Return Of The Jedi worthless?" (though I understand that argument). But reintroducing a tried-and-tested baddie in this way doesn't exactly show a lot of imagination.
As it happens, they wouldn't even have had to come up with anything new for Frozen 2. I can't be the only one who hoped for the reintroduction of and a redemption arc for Hans, can I?
I realise that Frozen 2 could have been a great deal worse, and it didn't annoy me the way Wreck It Ralph 2 did. It was visually stunning, the songs were good and the characters still likeable. However, the story was a mess. Story elements were thrown in and then not expanded upon or made intelligible, new characters were introduced who then had very little to do, and the end of the film - though happy - is somehow unsatisfying. To be more precise, I'll have to go into spoilers, though there is precious little to spoil, as there are no big twists in the story.
So, firstly, the whole idea of magic in this universe being tied to the four elements and Elsa being the "fifth element" which ties the other four together is very confusing. Elsa's powers include creating snow and ice. That should make her magic part of the water element, no? Why on earth should her undefined fifth element status require her to take up residence in an enchanted forest (not the Enchanted Forest, regrettably) while Anna is made Queen? Who thought separating these devoted sisters (though it's made clear that they meet often) was a good idea? Frozen was partly about Elsa being able to connect with the world around her by coming to terms with her magic powers. At the end of Frozen 2, she is on her own again, though she does have the company of the pretty anonymous Northuldra tribe and a fire salamander. She might almost as well have stayed in her "ice palace for one".
When it comes to the characters, I was pretty relieved we didn't see more of the leader of the Northuldra tribe, as she seemed to be the kind of "nature good, civilisation bad" character that tends to irritate me. But Lieutenant Mattias had wasted potential - his reactions when hearing the girls' history as retold by Olaf, mirroring as they did the audience's reactions when first seeing Frozen (Olaf as Hans: "You're not worth it! Guess what, I'm the bad guy" Mattias: "What?!") were sweet and funny, and I liked his exchange with Anna about his old flame back in Arendelle. When told that she never married, he sighs "Now, why doesn't that make me feel happier?". But his impact on the story? Practically zero. And what happened to the Northuldra guy who talks to reindeer in the same way as Kristoff does? You think that this is the start of a beautiful friendship, but it's never followed through. Not to mention Honeymaren, a Northuldra girl who's introduced by name but not given any character or anything to do at all. Some of the regular characters are marking time as well: Kristoff's story arc is about trying to propose to Anna, while events keep getting in the way. But this is years after the first Frozen: surely Kristoff and Anna should have been married ages ago!
Somewhat perversely, seeing as I didn't much approve of the Frozen arc in Once Upon a Time, I was bummed that Once's version of what happened after (and before) Frozen was not only ignored but actively negated in Frozen 2. My beef with the Frozen arc in Once is that it was poorly integrated in the main story, and Anna and Elsa were strangely one-dimensional in their interactions with the Storybrooke/Enchanted Forest crowd. The story itself actually functioned well if seen merely as a sequel to Frozen, and contained cool elements such as a villainous Snow Queen more in keeping with H C Andersen's than Elsa and a magic mirror (similar to the one mentioned in Andersen's story) which makes people turn against their nearest and dearest. I know Once isn't Disney canon, but that's because it usually takes great liberties with its source material. In the case of Frozen, it primly toed the line and didn't go against anything described in the film, which had a curtailing effect on the script-writers' creative freedom - and it all turns out to have been for nothing. Ah well.
What's a great deal worse is that yet again, Disney fails to deliver on the villain front. Elsa sees what you could call ice flashbacks of her grandfather, King Runeard, behaving badly, which sparks a conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra and isolates the Northuldra's forest in a magic mist for thirty odd years (whatever the point of that was - care to explain, magic elements?). However, as well as coming as no surprise whatsoever - what, you didn't think the oh-so-wise-and-close-to-nature Northuldra started the quarrel, did you? - these brief flashbacks give us no insight into Runeard's reasons or character. We can only assume that it was the Northuldra's use of magic that spooked him, as he must otherwise have been a pretty tolerant king with a generous immigration policy (Mattias is from immigrant stock). An ice statue grandfather does not count as a villain, and so, after Wreck It Ralph 2 and Toy Story 4, we have another Disney/Pixar villain no-show.
It may be that Disney is trying to be "mature" and show that life can be complicated enough without colourful antagonists. But who wants an animated Disney film to be true to life to the detriment of the story? It's as if the Disney people have twigged that people have grown tired of the twist villains but don't have a clue what to replace them with. It's been so long since they had an upfront baddie in the Jafar mould that they've somehow lost the knack of creating them. There are several trends when it comes to Disney's output that leave me concerned, but this is perhaps the most worrying. Can it be that the company's unending quest for worthiness has made them forget just how satisfying a really good villain can be?
The Rise Of Skywalker seems to point in the direction of a company struggling to come up with something new villain-wise. Snoke having been unceremoniously killed off in The Last Jedi, the powers that be felt obliged to reintroduce Emperor Palpatine as the Big Bad, in spite of him being very, very dead at the end of The Return Of The Jedi. Now, I don't object to a spot of Palps - I admit I'm one of the fans who squeed delightedly when hearing his trademark cackle in the trailer, instead of going: "Oh no! Doesn't this make the heroes' victory in The Return Of The Jedi worthless?" (though I understand that argument). But reintroducing a tried-and-tested baddie in this way doesn't exactly show a lot of imagination.
As it happens, they wouldn't even have had to come up with anything new for Frozen 2. I can't be the only one who hoped for the reintroduction of and a redemption arc for Hans, can I?
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