Wicked Witch variations part 3: Elphaba the disillusioned fangirl (Wicked the musical and films)

I believe that I've somewhere described Wicked as a good musical, but not great as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Now that I've actually read the book and reacquainted myself with the movie version, I stand by that. My heart sinks when I see YouTube videos called things like "10 disturbing facts we notice in The Wizard of Oz after seeing Wicked". Please, don't judge the charming classic movie characters by what their alter egos get up to in the musical. Wicked is decidedly not canon – but my, those songs are good.

When I watched the musical in London many years ago now, I didn't have high hopes for it, but I was bowled over when the hit tunes kept coming. Not only were the songs hummable, the lyrics were witty and – towards the end – moving too. Also, the settings were suitably colourful (a far cry from Maguire's dour take on Oz) and, most importantly, the characters were engaging. Well, some of them.

Of the good/redeemable versions of the Wicked Witch I've been discussing, I prefer the stage musical's Elphaba to both Maguire's book version and the rather too goody-two-shoesy Wicked film version. Whereas Maguire's Elphaba was a rebel from the start, and only too glad to have her poor opinion of the Wizard confirmed, the musical's Elphaba is as taken in by the Wizard's glittering reputation as everyone else (and here he actually has a glittering reputation). She may be an outsider, but she wants to belong, and the sweetly optimistic "The Wizard and I", which she sings after having found out that her magic talents might actually make her his right-hand woman in time, is very relatable if you've ever been a fangirl.

She's also impressed by the seductive trappings of Emerald City, which she visits with her by-then best friend Glinda, and at first the meeting with the Wizard goes exactly as she'd dreamed it would. When realisation dawns that he's behind the persecution of talking animals (why is never quite made clear, except with the "everyone needs a common enemy" cliché), it really costs her to give up her dreams (and her friendship with Glinda) to turn against him. It's a compelling character arc, and though it feels rushed when Elphaba turns bad for about five minutes towards the end in order to explain the Dorothy business, it's worth it as it brings us my favourite Wicked song "No Good Deed".

Musical Elphaba, then, is a success. As I mentioned in my previous post, I also like how they handled the Wizard, as someone with enough charm to almost lure Elphaba back to the dark side with his unfeigned enthusiasm over being fêted and openness about not deserving it ("Hey look who's wonderful/some corn-fed hick/who said it might be keen/to build a town of green/and a wonderful road of yellow brick"). Glinda's an enjoyable character too (when she's not annoying). But oh, the rest!

Whereas Maguire at least had the courtesy to read L. Frank Baum's book, I'm pretty sure the creators of Wicked only know the movie version of the Wizard of Oz. It's as if they saw it and said to themselves: "Hey, I wonder what the back stories of the Tinman, and the Scarecrow, and the Lion, and the flying monkeys are?" To which one could reply: "Well, if you read the book, you'd find out most of them." Instead the musical chooses its own path, ignoring not only Baum's novel but to a great extent Maguire's too. Little of what the musical claims about the beloved Oz characters clashes factually with what we're told in the movie version, but psychologically it's all wrong. As any musical producer ought to know, you shouldn't mess with the friends of Dorothy.

The films Wicked and Wicked for Good aren't different enough from the stage musical to merit a separate post. In brief, I found them far too long and padded, but visually appealing, and Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are a joy to listen to as Elphaba and Glinda (it's not always you get top-notch singing in film versions of musicals). The Chinese Whispers effect continues, though. Whereas the creators of Wicked the stage musical don't seem to have read The Wizard of Oz, the creators of the films don't seem to have much knowledge of the musical's supposed inspiration, Maguire's novel. When scenes are added in order to flesh out the story and maybe fix a plot hole or two, the plot moves further and further away from the book Wicked. 

What's more, the films forget to make Elphaba the least bit wicked, even towards the end. The fact that "No Good Deed" is actually a villain song is ignored. The shadowy Dorothy is referred to merely as a nuisance. This version of Elphaba is never that many steps away from Joan of Arc status, and it gets wearying. At least the love interests are marginally less drippy than in the stage version, and Jeff Goldblum, even when he's phoning it in, is inspired casting for the Wizard.

You may wonder why I haven't yet brought up Zelena, Once Upon A Time's version of the Wicked Witch. Actually, although I think Zelena is a fun character and I like her more than I should considering what she occasionally puts Rumple through, I don't think the Once writers dug very deeply into Oz lore when creating her. It's all very much "something something green skin flying monkeys broom cackling something". But I can definitely imagine her singing "The Wizard and I".

"What if fairy tales are real?" – now with cops

There is a quote from the animated series Phineas and Ferb which is often paraphrased like this: "If I had a nickel for every time [X happened] I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice." I understand why this quote is so popular, because it's genius. I for my part often imagine I can see certain trends in contemporary life, but when I have to come up with examples I can only think of two. Which is too little to positively point at a trend, and yet...

The TV series Grimm, airing 2011-2017 and currently on Amazon Prime where I'm catching up with it, is a typical two-nickel-phenomenon. What's even weirder than that there should be two American TV series airing in the 2010s with a "What if fairy tales are real?" premise, and specifically referencing the Grimm fairy tales before later branching out to all kinds of fantastical stories, is that Grimm and Once Upon A Time should be so different. 

They're both good, though. I actually started watching Grimm when it was on Netflix, but only an episode now and again, as it suffered somewhat from my ongoing Once obsession. However, the solid craft that has gone into making Grimm eventually won me over. It will never cater to my unhealthy fairy-tale villain crushes (well, when I say "crushes" I mean... mostly one) the way Once does, but that doesn't stop it from being extremely watchable. Once I realised this, Grimm had disappeared from Netflix, and I had to buy the DVDs to carry on my watching. Whereupon, shortly afterwards, it appeared again on Amazon.

So if Grimm isn't like Once, what is it about? The premise is almost as crazy in its way as Once's. Nick Burkhardt, a handsome, dedicated homicide cop in Portland, Oregon, is told by his dying aunt that he belongs to a family who has hunted different kinds of dangerous creatures, Wesen, for centuries. He's a "Grimm" (yep, in this reality the peaceful story-collecting brothers were monster hunters). Wesen mostly look like normal humans, but a Grimm can see what they are underneath when they are under stress and can't hide their true selves from a trained eye. Nick would probably assume that his aunt had gone barmy, only he has been seeing the oddest things lately... and then someone tries to kill his aunt.

Most of what follows are murder cases with a wesen (I'll go lower-case from now on) component, although there are also overarching story arcs. Nick swiftly learns that his ancestors were way too harsh with their wesen-slashing. In fact, wesens aren't unlike humans: some are good eggs, some are definitely bad news. Nick is lucky enough to early on come across super-good egg Monroe, a clock-mender who also happens to be a wolf-like wesen called Blutbad (yeah... I'll come back to the use of German terms later). 

They strike up a friendship, and Nick learns to use his talents for the good of wesen and non-wesen alike. Only, he has to come up with ways of solving crimes without letting anyone know the clues he gets from seeing suspects and witnesses turn into different kinds of creatures (from cute to downright scary) before his eyes.

It goes without saying that a concept where fairy tales are (partly) explained by the existence of "creatures" isn't as satisfying for a fairy-tale fan as the premise that actual characters such as the Evil Queen exist. Some of the earlier Grimm cases do take their cue from some particular fairy tale, and there's a fairy-tale- or folklore-related quote preceding every episode, which is classy. The show's real strength, though, lies elsewhere. 

While I was still grumbling over the somewhat haphazard way German phrases were used in order to explain various wesen (always pronounced with a short "e" in the series, for some reason) phenomena, I couldn't help appreciating the fun cop banter between Nick, his partner (in the professional sense!) Hank and the cynical Wu, who always brings the sass. The light-hearted police procedural part of the plot has remained strong throughout the seasons I've watched (I'm now at the beginning of season five). It's impressive how many variations the show manages on the wesen theme – sometimes they're perps, sometimes victims, and the dangerous monster isn't always who you think it is. There are plenty of amusing mini-whodunnits along the way.

The overarching storylines are more varied in quality, but are carried along by a cast of likeable protagonists. Nick is a bit of a clean slate at times, but has the core of decency a hero needs. Hank is a great mate, and Wu somewhat of a personal favourite of mine. But the big friendship prize goes to Monroe, who is there for Nick time and time again, through tough cases as well as personal hardships. It's a good thing that Nick saves his life once or twice, because he owes Monroe big time. Also, Monroe and his later girlfriend Rosalee (a Fuchsbau, that is, fox-like wesen) are unbelievably cute together, plus she is also extremely helpful to Nick. Monroe and Rosalee may be the most shippable couple on telly – perhaps even beating Snow and Charming in Once.

When it comes to girlfriends, though, Nick has a harder time of it, which leads me to a storyline the show handles less well. Nick's girlfriend Juliette has to put up with a lot and is actually often very supportive in trying circumstances. Nevertheless, I never really warmed to this particular romance, and judging from various IMDB reviews I wasn't the only one. Perhaps there is a certain imbalance – Nick seems to need Juliette more than she needs him, and although she stands by him through various surreal trials that would have most girls running for the hills she never accepts his marriage proposal. Maybe a certain coolness from the fans led to poor old Juliette being completely shafted in season four, which I still think is unfair. 

If Nick ends up with someone else than Juliette in the end, though, there will honestly be no complaints from me. But the script writers had better not come between Monroe and Rosalee – that would be a shootable-by-crossbow-arrows offence.

The guilty pleasure of Riverdale

Imagine, if you can, a TV series called Duckburg, where the characters are not quite as you remember them from Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comics. To start with, naturally, they're all human. Flintheart Glomgold is married to Magica de Spell, and the murder of their son Gladstone Gander forms the main mystery to be resolved during the show's first season. Mickey Mouse has made clear to Minnie in the very first episode that he's only interested in her as a friend. That's just as well, as Minnie starts a sweet romance with an unusually broody Goofy, who has plans of becoming a writer but is somewhat too mixed up in a biker gang. Mickey, for his part, is dating the daughter of Peg-Leg Pete – who incidentally has hit the gym big time.

This, you would agree, would be taking a great deal of liberties with the source material. But heck, I'd watch it.

Without actually having read the American comic Archie (except stray pages that the cunning algorithm has started to show in my Facebook feed), I'd say this is a pretty fair analogy to the difference between Archie and the TV series Riverdale. The comic, from what I have been told and can make out from said Facebook snippets, is a light-hearted affair where girl-next-door Betty and rich girl Veronica vie for the attention of the red-headed titular character. In the TV series, on the other hand, the young protagonists' lives and loves are endlessly complicated by dark and twisted mysteries, and the outwardly idyllic small town is full of buried corpses (literally). It's borderland insane – but I am hooked.

So why, considering that the quality does go downhill after a neat first season, and the plot lines get ever more derailed, did I spend the better part of a day (I had and have a cold, so there was an excuse) bingeing the last episodes of season four of Riverdale instead of, say, finally watching The Conclave? My reasons are highly subjective:

It's Once Upon A Time methadone: Small-town intrigue? Check. Cosy diner where everyone goes? Check. Twisted goings-on behind an idyllic front? Check. Powerful mayors and sheriffs who wear an actual star on their police uniform? Check. Lots and lots of relationship drama? Check. Riverdale gives me enough "heightened reality" – or rather total lack of reality – vibes to remind me of my all-time favourite series. 

True, there's no Rumple/Mr Gold for my heart to ache over, but that can be restful. And the villains on offer are entertaining, in their fashion. In the first season, the Blossom family, with their 19th-century Gothic Aesthetic, are an absolute delight, but their importance diminishes as the series goes on. The exception is red-headed bombshell Cheryl, who moves from bitch to wild-card to generally well-disposed towards the heroes. She's always fun with her withering put-downs and quirks, but what can I say? I had hoped that the Blossom family drama would have turned out somewhat differently.

What of Peg-Leg Pete then – or rather Hiram Lodge, father of the enterprising Veronica Lodge? I mean, he's handsome – conventionally so, but they can't all be silver foxes. However, much as my superego appreciates that the series doesn't go the clichéd route of turning a "normal" businessman into a villainous mastermind, and instead opts for making Hiram a straight-out gangster, my id is a bit disappointed. As tired as the Evil Capitalist trope is, it usually leads to more toothsome villains (in my personal opinion) than the Tough Mobster trope. Hiram's fun, with his wide-eyed "what did I do?" reaction to well-founded accusations, but he's a bit too macho for me.

I can catch up on the soap-watching experience: I was too young for the classic soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, and though there were soaps aimed at teenagers around when I myself was one, I wasn't patient enough back then to try them. Any series with more than 100 episodes I wrote off immediately. 

Now, though, I see the appeal of series where you're not going to run out of episodes in a hurry. There's a particular appeal in watching the script writers come up with increasingly far-fetched drama just to keep the story going. Yes, it will lead to arcs you don't care for very much and want wrapped up as soon as possible, but if the writers do their job properly there will be enough plates spinning to keep you interested even through the rough patches. And there's always the hope that they'll hit gold and suddenly introduce a storyline almost as good as in that first season you fondly remember.

The protagonists are really likeable: At the centre of the series are four friends (who are supposed to be high-schoolers but naturally are played by actors in their twenties). They eventually pair up into two couples: Archie and Veronica on the one hand, Betty and Jughead (real name: Forsythe Pendleton III, and no, he's not "old money") on the other. Of course there are plenty of bust-ups, but essentially they stand by each other through thick and thin and are a bunch easy to root for. 

Betty is the stand-out – a good girl with a dark side, who generally manages to keep "Dark Betty" under control and do the right thing, while being well able to counter any bitchy attack with full force. Jughead has his own scruffy charm, and Veronica is an entertaining powerhouse, always dragging the somewhat aimless Archie in her wake with gentle force. 

Archie himself is, in some ways, the weak link, saddled as he is with a certain righteous blandness. His character is also one of the main victims of the soap format: every half-season or so, he's seriously into something new, something he's convinced will be the mainstay of his future: music, boxing, helping disadvantaged youths, you name it. You just want him to pick a lane and stop making hair-raising mistakes. On the other hand, having a hero character in need of support from his more colourful friends isn't such a bad idea. And let's face it: the hero was never going to be the main attraction for me.

Villain redemption and free will: of course I like Loki season two!

Oh joy, Loki stuck the landing! While I'm not quite as invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as in, say, Star Wars – I'm fairly new to it after all – it's always a relief nowadays when an MCU project does well and wins the approval of its far from uncritical fanbase. Not to mention that it's great to be able to enjoy the project in question myself without too many quibbles coming in the way.

On balance, I think I liked season two of Loki even more than season one. I had a good time with season one, but I was still adjusting to the fact that Loki wasn't really able to flex his villainous muscles in his own TV series. Also, the over-complicated set-up of the series bothered me, and I wasn't completely won over either by Loki's love interest and alter ego Sylvie or the TVA setting. In season two, we have the set-up out of the way, and though a lot of the storytelling is still labyrinthine, its complications are more enjoyable.

Now we have Loki's whole character arc, it makes more sense to me and increases my appreciation of season one as well. What we saw in season one was Loki's change from a villain to an anti-hero. What we see in season two is his change from an anti-hero to a hero.

Whoa, you might say. Isn't the whole point of Loki that he's a villain? When the shady TVA Hunter X-05 tells him: "Stop trying to be a hero, man! You're a villain. You're good at it. Do that", I for one thought he had a point. However, when push comes to shove, I'm a sucker for a good villain-redemption story, if only it's done right. Loki, ultimately, pulled it off.

I was irritated in season one by the apparent attempt to cram several films' worth of character development into one episode, as Loki was treated to a whistle-stop tour of how the rest of his life would have played out if he hadn't diverged from the "sacred timeline". But I can live with it now as this was only the start of his long and bumpy road to redemption. He made friends with Mobius, but it didn't end there. He fell in love with Sylvie, but it didn't end there. He realised he cared more about her than about ultimate power, but it didn't end there. Season two started with him working apparently selflessly to save the TVA and potentially all of existence, but we still weren't done with the character development stuff.

While the first episodes of season two reminded me of Doctor Who with its time-jumping quirkiness – the lovable engineer and overall fixer Ouroboros (O.B. for short) is in many ways a typical Doctor Who character – the final episode gave me Once Upon A Time vibes, and from me you can't expect higher praise than that. If you'd explain the plot to an old Viking, you'd get the same head-scratching response as if you'd explain the gist of Once to the Brothers Grimm: "Excuse me, who did you say saved the day again?" 

Loki made his final sacrifice in exactly the right way for a redeemed villain: not proudly or self-righteously as a hero might, but resignedly, after having tried everything else. He had a personal stake, rather than acting for an abstract Good of All Mankind. At the same time, he wanted to save not just Sylvie, but a whole group of friends. In the villain-redemption game, sacrificing yourself for a family member or love interest is all fine and good, but sacrificing yourself for someone you don't have to care for yet still do hits harder.

As a Scandinavian, I appreciated the nod towards mythological Loki too. MCU Loki's fate was a great deal less grim – it's not as if he ended tied up in his son's guts with poison dripping on his head, like his wicked inspiration. Nevertheless, he is stuck, and the day he becomes unstuck the world supposedly faces its Ragnarök. Very neat.

Of course, I had some quibbles too. Making Loki so overpowered adds to the ongoing confusion about MCU "gods": I mean, I like the guy, but a Messiah he ain't. Season two dropped the ball badly when it came to the relationship between Loki and Sylvie. Not only is there no discernible romantic chemistry between them any more: she seems angry with him for some reason, though she was the one who betrayed him at the end of season one, a betrayal he never confronts her about. Still Sylvie serves a function as the uncompromising advocate of free will, and I can't but applaud that her outlook won out in the end. The Multiverse may have turned out to be tricky to integrate into good storytelling, but I'm happy that it's still around.

What's the deal with magic schools?

If House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have one thing in common (besides pacing issues), it's that they take themselves very seriously – one could argue, more seriously than any franchise in which dragons are a thing should. The Netflix film The School for Good and Evil looked like the perfect antidote fantasy-wise. One film reviewer compared its vibe to Barbara Cartland, which made it an appealing prospect when I was looking for fluffy weekend entertainment. The film's length was a bit daunting at approximately two hours twenty minutes, but fairy-tale based fantasy is the part of the genre I enjoy most, so I had to give it a go.

Not long after I started watching I thought to myself: "I forgot fairy tales are usually meant for kids". Even if the film started getting into slightly more adult (or at least teenage) concerns later on, this reminds you more of early than late Harry Potter (I'm talking about the HP films here as I haven't read the books). If you're a grown-up, this is by no means required viewing. Having said that, I wasn't bored. It was light-hearted fun in the same vein as Harry Potter and the Disney Descendants films and had the sense to question its own daft premise.

Is The School for Good and Evil derivative, then? I think it's fair to say it is. It's based on a book series where the first book was published 2013, well after the Harry Potter craze had started – though, it has to be said, two years before the first Descendants movie. Just tell me if the film setup sounds familiar: The School for Good and Evil is a school where future fairy-tale characters are trained for the roles they are to play as good and evil protagonists in various tales. Two girls who feel out of place in a humdrum village read about it and one of them, who imagines herself as a princess, longs to go there. In the end, they are both taken there, but the princess-wannabe is dropped off at the School for Evil, while her no-nonsense friend (believed to be a witch in their home village) is dropped off in the School for Good. Much what-am-I-doing-here-ing ensues.

Yeah, we've seen this before. We've had magic plus school, fairy tales plus school, fictional characters plus school... Without having seen it, I believe the whole training for future roles in fairy tales thing was the premise for the animated series Ever After High which the Descendants films were accused of borrowing from. The critical look at what is considered good and evil in a fairy-tale context we recognise from Once Upon A Time and, I hate to admit it, the Shrek movies. Fervent Oncer that I am, I will always claim that Once tackled the subject matter best by nuancing the picture rather than just flipping the coin and making the good characters bad and vice versa: the villains, though incredibly charismatic, are still villains, and still have to reform to get their happy endings – well, sort of. For all that, I'm not above a bit of simple ragging of vain, empty-headed princes and princesses, but no-one can say that it's original. 

The School for Good and Evil does less simple coin-flipping than the Shrek films or, say, Maleficent, and I liked the way it called out the nasty actions that "good" characters sometimes commit in classic fairy tales. On the other hand, the fairy-tale flavour is pretty generic: most of the school pupils are supposed to be the offspring of existing good and bad characters, but they don't particularly resemble their famous parents. Instead, you pretty much have goth kids versus popular kids. Sophie, the girl who's dropped off at the School for Evil, thinks she belongs in the School for Good because she's pretty, but her selfishness is supposed to make evil the better fit. But plenty of the princesses in the School for Good are equally self-obsessed, so her confusion is understandable. Seeing as the franchises I've mentioned aren't churning out new material, though, I can make do with this kind of fare. It's not the best fairy-tale-based fantasy has to offer, but it's not the worst either.

One thing I find hard to understand, though, is the popularity of the magic school. When Harry Potter rose to fame, I sort of saw it: there was the combination of two popular genres, (children's) fantasy and tales from boarding school à la Malory Towers, and it seemed like a fun enough idea for one book series for kids. But since then, I've come across magic schools time and time again. There's the Blythewood book series by Carol Goodman; the Winx TV series on Netflix that I've quite enjoyed (I know it's for teens, but... Robert James-Collier is in it, and that's my excuse); a book series by Naomi Novik which features a school that, I suppose as a contrast to other fictional magic schools, is sinister and not cosy at all; the list could go on. And here's the thing. Learning magic at school – even a sinister one – is lame. It deglamourises and demystifies magic. Maybe child readers fondly imagine that if they were taught spells and potions at school they'd enjoy it. Well, they'd be wrong. Even the most interesting subject loses its charm when you have to do homework on it.

I vastly prefer fantasy franchises where magic is either self-taught or the subject of one-on-one tutorials with suitably cool mentors. Learning the ropes from a (non-demonic) sorcerer who's at the top of his game: now that's what I call real magic. Being stuck in a school just isn't enchanting enough.

A villain-lover's guide to Marvel, Phase Four – the movies (up to and including Multiverse of Madness)

It's lucky I decided to catch up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe when I did last year, before their content output exploded. Now, it's hard enough to keep up in real time. The TV series on Disney + keep coming in a steady stream, and there have been quite a number of films (or movies – maybe a more fitting word as there's nothing more American than the MCU) as well. When you compare with the relatively modest scope of, say, Phase One, you start to wonder just how long Phase Four will be going on for, and just what will decide which movie goes into which phase now. Earlier, each phase was topped off with a big Avengers team-up movie: now, some of the Avengers are dead and the rest are scattered. Will the end of Phase Four be sealed with a new hero line-up? And what are the new phases building up to exactly? So far movies and TV series seem to be going in all sorts of directions, and if there's a new Big Bad on the horizon after Thanos, we haven't had a glimpse of him (or her) so far.

Generally, I've enjoyed the TV series of Phase Four (which I'll get to in a separate post) more than the movies, which have been a bit hit and miss. Another problem with the movies for me is that I don't have the endurance to watch them in the cinema, without loo breaks: they tend to be really long, and then there are always post-credit scenes which force you to wait around for ages while everyone remotely connected to the movie rolls past. (If it's so important that we watch the credits, how about making them shorter? We really don't need to know who did the accounts.) As a consequence, I wait until the movies are released on streaming, which means I'm still behindhand most of the time and have to look out to avoid spoilers (usually unsuccessfully). After all the wait and all the hype, it's easy to become disappointed. I'm getting this post out now, just before the cinema release of Thor: Love and Thunder, so I have an excuse for not having seen it yet.

Anyway, time to get down to it. I'll not pretend to think Loki might be in every film, because he's not:

Black Widow

Overall impression: I don't know what I was expecting – probably a straightforward origin story for Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow which would explain some references in earlier films, for instance how she and Hawkeye became best buddies. Instead we got this: an underwhelming action adventure awkwardly placed timewise between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Natasha's fake family from an undercover mission way back (she does get a little back-story) are interesting and sometimes fun, especially her "sister" Yelena and "father" Alexei aka The Red Guardian (I found "mother" Melina's motives bewildering). This whole storyline had a lot of potential, but the whole setup of female agents ("widows") who are being mind-controlled by a drug held no interest for me. It would have been much more fascinating if they had been simply brainwashed, and had to be talked down and reasoned with, with remorse (hopefully) following. But no: the mind-control drug acquits the widows of any responsibility for their actions (it was all the fault of the nasty men) while their kick-ass abilities can still be highlighted. Convenient.

Also, I can well imagine Natasha regarding a kid as collateral damage while she was still a widow-agent, but not when she is trying to break free from the network and wipe the slate clean. And are they implying that Hawkeye (who never shows up in the movie, by the way) was in on a bombing which would claim the life of a child? Surely not.

How was the villain, then? Terrible. You'd be hard pressed to find an evil mastermind with less of a menacing presence or charisma than General Dreykov. He was obviously not meant to be interesting in his own right, but merely a symbol for the oppressive patriarchy – hence the obvious parallels to a certain former Hollywood producer. Who thought this was a type we needed to see as an MCU villain?

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Overall impression: So, there's this hot villain, who with the help of magic artefacts gets special powers and immortality. Eventually he falls in love, and decides to put away the magic artefacts and live a normal family life. But then his beloved wife dies, he backslides, and the magic artefacts come back into play. Blinded by the wish to somehow be reunited with his wife, he can't be fully redeemed until he realises that there are others worthy of his consideration, and finally he gives his life for someone else, even at the risk of putting his soul in peril... Wait, don't I know this story?

The probably purely coincidental parallels to Once Upon A Time played a part in my liking of this film, but there are plenty of other things to enjoy as well. It's well-paced and often funny, the hero's sidekick Katy is endearing, and it wasn't always obvious what was going to happen next. I appreciated the reappearance of Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) from Iron Man 3 and the cameo from Wong (who is perhaps a little overused in other MCU movies, but fun here). Shang-Chi himself comes across as a little bland compared with the colourful side cast and his impressive pa, but I imagine he'll have plenty of time to build up more of a presence in coming films. At least he's more of an asset than his sister Xialing, who, feeling neglected by her crimelord father as a girl, trained herself to be a just as good – or even better – fighter than her brother. This was really contrived, and what's worse, Xialing doesn't have much in the way of a personality except being good at fighting and not having any sense of humour. Personality beats kick-ass abilities – how many times do I have to say it? All in all, though, this is my favourite MCU Phase Four movie so far.

I take it by all this gushing that the villain was good? Ooh, yes. Wenwu (played by Tony Leung) is all a villain should be – intelligent, charming, complex, with a believable motive and ruthless when required. And did I mention that he's hot? My only quibble is that he objects to being called "The Mandarin" by ignorant Americans. That he didn't like Trevor's role portrayal is understandable, but there's nothing denigrating in the title The Mandarin – Wenwu wasn't being named after "a fruit", but after the European designation of a high Chinese official, whose orange/yellow robes then gave name to the fruit. It's no more offensive than to have a European criminal mastermind be called The Chancellor (could we make it happen, please?). Don't be a snowflake, hot stuff.

The Eternals

Overall impression: You will by now have heard a great deal about how boring this movie is. And guess what? It's true. A host of new superpowered characters are introduced, who supposedly arrived from space thousands of years ago and have helped humanity on its way ever since – but only when it serves the plot. The large cast of characters and vast time frame proves too much for the movie to bear, especially as the tone is what Germans would call bierernst (the solemnity that comes from drinking too much beer). Also, the MCU mythology that is set up where planets are created by giant celestial robots is just too ridiculous for me to stomach. I can take alien or interdimensional Odins, Zeuses and Osirises, but I can't swallow this. 

Having said that, if you have a severe cold (I watched the movie when I had covid), this is the ideal movie to watch: it goes on forever, makes no demands on your brain, and you can have a chuckle over how seriously everyone takes themselves. Also, I liked Kingo, the Bollywood star Eternal, and there were some nice scenes, like Kingo's and Sprite's conversation about Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.

How are the villains? Don't hold your breath. The CGI critters set up as the Eternals' arch-enemies, the Deviants, are obviously a side show, and the real threat is revealed to come from those giant celestial robots I mentioned. The infighting between the Eternals themselves is more interesting than big robots in the sky, but only just. Bring back Dormammu.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Overall impression: Yes, I watched a Spider-Man movie! And not just one: in preparation for No Way Home, feeling something of a chump, I watched not only the two other MCU Spider-Man films with Tom Holland but also the Spider-Man trilogy directed by Sam Raimi, the two Amazing Spider-Man films and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That's an awful lot of Spideys. 

The homework paid off, though. With characters and callbacks from both the Raimi trilogy and the Amazing Spider-Man films, No Way Home makes a lot more sense and is more emotionally satisfying if you know the back-story not only of Tom Holland's Peter Parker, but Toby Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's versions as well (Into the Spider-Verse isn't really relevant here, but it was fun, so I don't regret watching it). Knowledge of their foes is also useful, as enemies of Peter Parker from other universes gatecrash MCU New York after one of Doctor Strange's spells goes wrong (he blames Peter).

But should you really have to watch a ton of Spider-Man films in order to be able to enjoy a movie like this? That's the question: if you've only watched the previous two Tom Holland movies, I think you'll be able to follow the story fine, but it will be less rewarding, if still entertaining. This movie is one for the fans, and for my part I'm not that keen on Spider-Man yarns, if I'm perfectly honest. Of course I like Peter Parker – he's a sweet boy/man in all the universes. But he also has the most rotten luck in all universes, which can be hard to watch. Plus we have the whole vigilante and secret identity thing, which were two reasons I was sceptical towards the superhero genre in the first place.

But the villains, are they any good? Yep. One of the reasons I made it through so many Spider-Man films is that the villains tend to be first-rate. I'm especially fond of Doc Oc and the Green Goblin from the Raimi films, but I also have a soft spot for the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man (perhaps partly because he's played by Rhys Ifans). With the exception of Electro, who's given a bit of a make-over in No Way Home, the villains tend to be more impressive in their original films than when they're guest-starring here. However, if you haven't watched all the Spidey films yet, the villain cameos can serve as a taster to help make up your mind whether you want to go deeper into the spider's web with non-MCU films.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Overall impression: I was really looking forward to this one. I love the whole concept of parallel universes and what if... scenarios, where sometimes tiny choices can lead to an alternate reality. If you've spent some time with structuralist historical theories, you appreciate world views – even fictional ones – where the power of the individual is given its due. Even so, perhaps it's harder than I imagined to make a good movie out of this promising concept. We end up not seeing a lot of the Multiverse, except in one fast montage. We only spend more time in two parallel universes – one that's already melting away, so we don't learn that much about it, and another which, if you scratch the surface, is not that different from ours.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a boring film. Benedict Cumberbatch gamely impersonates a few different Doctor Strange versions, including a sinister one who's quite fun; Elizabeth Olsen gives an intense and heartfelt performance as the troubled Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch who's searching for family bliss at any cost; the pacing is brisk and you're kept on your toes. But it wasn't the alternate-reality trip I was expecting, and the story, while connecting to the events of the TV series WandaVision, didn't pay any attention to Wanda's character arc in the series. It would appear she learnt nothing from her Westview experiences, and while I felt sorry for her at the end of WandaVision, there were so many other ways her character could go which would have been more satisfying than the one shown here. The side characters are usually used as cannon fodder (the death count is high and some of the death scenes gruesome) and America Chavez, a girl who has the ability to open portals between universes and whom Doctor Strange tries to protect, is more of a plot point than a character.

Any interesting villains? Um... Let's just say that if you're waiting for a new Big Bad to appear, you'll be disappointed. It's someone we already know and, while an interesting character, I'm not convinced by the character's turn to villainy. I'm not sure the villain reveal is really meant to be a twist, but if it is, I've probably given away too much.

The well-structured fantasy world of Netflix's Shadow and Bone

Now this is more like it. A little more than a year ago, I was hate-watching and groaning over the Netflix series Cursed. This year, Netflix provided a much more solid fantasy offering in the shape of Shadow and Bone (a second season has been confirmed, whereas I believe that Cursed has been cancelled). 

This series seems to have benefited hugely from being based on a string of novels written by Leigh Bardugo, which are neither graphic novels nor Young Adult. Without being as dark and brutal as Game of Thrones, the series felt more grown-up than most of the graphic novel- or YA-based stuff I've seen (though it's still fantasy - in terms of grown-up-ness, it'll never be Middlemarch). The characters were more complex and interesting, and the dialogue was funny and sharp, which leads one to believe that the source material must be well written too.

Book adaptations have their own problems, and Shadow and Bone doesn't avoid them altogether. The first season did feel a bit over-stuffed. There's a whole side plot about a girl called Nina which has no bearing on the rest of the story until the second season is set up in the end. I'm sure that in Bardugo's novels, the reader is given plenty of reasons to care what happens to her, but in the series so far, her scenes are more of a distraction. The two main plots - about a girl who is discovered to have magic powers and a gang of doubtful characters who are tasked to abduct her from a heavily guarded castle and bring her to their city for a life-changing amount of cash - don't gel as well as one would have liked. Barely are the protagonists from both story lines united, than they are separated again, and the stories run parallel most of the time instead of becoming fully integrated with each other. Nevertheless, what the series has is promise: you feel that there is a solid foundation in terms of the characters and the world they inhabit which can be further built on in future seasons.

Now, the show's not a new Once Upon A Time. I don't think I'll ever become obsessed by it or care desperately about what happens to anyone in the series. But I didn't care overmuch for the characters in Game of Thrones either, and I still had a good time with it (mostly). If you like fantasy which is fairly light-hearted without being downright daft or ridiculously formulaic (as in Cursed), it's well worth a watch.

What helps to ground the series is that the author of the original books has clearly put some thought and work into the world building. In this world, magic is wielded by the grisha, which consist of different groups with different skill sets. There are those with traditional elemental magic skills like fire magic or wind magic, but there are also other kinds of specialities. There are healers, heart-renders - who can do anything from manipulating your feelings to downright killing you, but it's all connected with the heart - fabricators who have a magic skill for inventions etc. 

Though I have a weakness for fairy-tale-like magic where anything goes, this kind of specialised magic-wielding and the rules and limitations it imposes add some structure and are a safeguard against making any one character too powerful. With shows like Once, magic objects with wonderful properties can suddenly appear and be used to solve a problem (or raise one) in an episode or story arc, but then quickly be forgotten, which leads to plenty of plot holes ("but why didn't they use object X from episode Y?"). Also, if you have extremely powerful characters, new ways must constantly be found to temporarily divest them of their power or limit it so they can get into trouble when the story demands it. Here, the limits of the magic are built in: if you are a grisha who can wield shadows, then that's what you can do, but you can't, say, heal a loved one or control the wind. I was also relieved that the magic-making wasn't merely connected to the four elements (which is so often the case), because frankly, that concept has become a little old. Not only the magic, but the politics of the different countries and regions feels thought through. Here should be plenty of material which can be made use of in the future.

It's true that the central romance between the heroine Alina - who is discovered to have the legendary power of "sun summoning" which many believed to be just a myth - and her childhood friend Malyen (Mal for short) left me pretty cold. They are both orphans who have been friends forever, and when Alina's powers are discovered they are separated and long to be reunited. Their behaviour made me impatient - if they are so crazy about each other, how come they didn't manage to work themselves out of the friend zone long ago? Alina's pining makes her reluctant to embrace her new powers. There's a large, dangerous shadow-realm divide called the Fold dividing her country, which she is supposed to be able to consign to oblivion. Maybe she should focus a little more on that and a little less on Mal, who never had the guts to put their relationship on a less platonic footing? The Crows - the would-be abductors - are more colourful and bring more zest to the proceedings.

What of the villain, then, General Kirigan? (Yeah, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that a shadow wielder called "The Black General" turns out to be the villain.) Well, he's pretty good, though for my part I wasn't blown away. He's built up so well that the first proper meeting the viewer has with him feels like a let-down. Kirigan is played by Ben Barnes, who also played Prince Caspian in the Narnia films. He's conventionally handsome, and for a villain-lover like me it's a disappointment when a villain looks too much like a traditional hero. It turns out his pretty-boy looks has its uses, however, and it has to be said Barnes can glower very convincingly when he needs to be menacing. Not in Rumple's league, then (which could hardly be expected), but preferable to most of the awful bad guys in Game of Thrones, and decidedly better than evil monks.      

How to lose like a villain (and keep your dignity)

So, I finally got to the part in Star Wars Rebels with Grand Admiral Thrawn in it. Thrawn was actually one big reason (though not the only one) why I decided to really get into the two animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. When there was a mention of him in The Mandalorian, the fans were so delighted I realised that here was a Class A Imperial villain waiting to be discovered. I knew he was in Rebels, but I suspected I would get more out of this series if I saw Clone Wars first - a fair assumption. 

I owe Thrawn some gratitude, as I've had a good time with both series - eventually. I didn't think much of the first one-and-a-half season of Clone Wars (which I watched ages ago), and the first season of Rebels was a slog too. But they picked up, and though Clone Wars had some storylines that weren't too thrilling - I'll not be revisiting the "corruption on Mandalore" plot in a hurry - and the more kid-friendly Rebels can be annoyingly "hey wow, look how cool it is to be a rebel" at times (especially trying when you're not-so-secretly on the Empire's side), there's some really good stuff here for a Star Wars nerd to sink their teeth into. For instance, plenty of delightful villains. When I first heard that they brought Darth Maul back, I thought it sounded silly, seeing as he was - you know - cut in half in The Phantom Menace, but boy was it the right call.

But what about Thrawn, then? Did he live up to the hype? Well... he still might. It's only fair to say that Thrawn doesn't only appear in Star Wars Rebels but in a number of novels too, and may have acquired most of his fan base that way. In Rebels, he shows potential: he's clearly cleverer and more complex than your average Imperial officer. But I'm a good way into season three, which is when he first appears, and he hasn't had a substantial win over the rebels yet. His strategic genius is more talked-about than in evidence. Even with a high-ranking spy in his inner circle, how could he let those important new ship designs go?

It made me reflect on the well-known problem of recurring villains in long-running franchises - like, for instance, multi-season TV series. Fans want them and grow attached to them, but how can you as a villain keep losing to the good guys, as the genre demands, and still be seen as a threat to be taken seriously? Plenty of strategies are deployed which are more or less successful. Here are a handful, not all of them to be recommended:

Winning battles but losing the war: One of the very best options. If you want your long-running villain to be respected, give him (or her, but I'll use he/him here because of my personal preferences) some wins! You can still have the heroes triumph at the end when it really matters and the fate of the Earth/galaxy/universe/other is at stake. But showing that they are evenly matched by the villains - maybe even outmatched - adds tension to the final showdowns.

The close shave: This is the standard solution - the heroes defeat the villain, but it's not easy. There are some tense moments when it could all have gone in another direction. Works well once or twice, which is why this narrative device is what you usually see in feature-length films, but in a long-running series, you can't use it too often, or the villain will look incompetent no matter what. A player who keeps hitting the goal post is not a good goal scorer.

The cynical miscalculation: Sooner or later, the villain has to start making mistakes. It helps if these mistakes aren't simply dumb errors, but based on the limits of a villainous outlook. Of course it would be foolish to think a hero would be tempted from the straight and narrow by, say, greed, but there are other failings a hero might be prone to because of their self-righteousness, such as vindictiveness (masquerading as "serving justice") and a certain longing for power (for the greater good, of course). If a villain bases his strategy on an over-reliance on his opponents' weaknesses, then that doesn't come across as too idiotic. It only shows that there is a part of being a hero which a villain simply doesn't "get".

The bigger threat: As used in such different franchises as Doctor Who and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (achingly wholesome, but not too wholesome for some pleasingly twisted villain ships). In summary, the protagonist/s have to put their struggle against the main antagonist aside because even greater trouble is brewing - sometimes they get help from their enemy, sometimes not. The reason why it has become a bit of a cliché that the Doctor and the Master must join forces to defeat some universe-shaking threat is that it works so well. The Master can get something right for a change and prove his genius without it having world-burning consequences, and then once the alliance is done he (or she if it's Missy) can go back to being a total selfish bastard. Neat. A variation of this strategy is "the wild card", where the recurring villain has his own agenda, but is not set up as the heroes' main antagonist. The wild card's function can be summed up by quoting Rumple/Mr Gold and Emma from Once Upon a Time: "Are you suggesting I'm working for Regina or against her?" "I don't know... Maybe diagonally".

The problem is that viewers tend to crave a strong main antagonist. You can't put the main threat elsewhere indefinitely, and you can't get away with always upstaging the main villain with a "wild card". Except in Once.

"Ah, just as I anticipated": This is the opposite of winning the battles but losing the war: the villain takes smaller losses with equanimity, because he has a Master Plan, and even losses teach him something about his opponent, or will help him to win in the long run. Thrawn in Rebels is a good example of this narrative device so far. But much as I love Master Plans, they very rarely work out, and unless you can create some really impactful scenes where the heroes think they're properly screwed because of the villain's master planning, the viewer will catch on to the fact that the supposedly intelligent baddie ended up losing the battles and the war.

Blaming your underlings: Also known as "sitting on a throne and complaining". Unless you're Palpatine, don't do this. Making your minions seem incompetent won't make you seem cleverer. One, the success of a mission is the boss's responsibility. Once or twice, you can keep your master-villain reputation by blaming others: it might even come across as relateable (we've all been there, when we've done everything right, and then it all falls apart because of someone else's mistake). But ultimately you're responsible for your henchmen: if they're not up to scratch, fire them or kill them or something. Better still, do some of the work yourself. Because, two, even if your underlings miss a trick or two, if all you've done is sit on a throne (or similar), then they've probably done more for the villainous cause than you. Fantasy Palpatine - sorry, Galbatorix - in the film Eragon is a good example of how throne-complaining comes across. (If you wonder why I've watched this film when all fans of the book hate it - well, just look at the cast list.) Fantasy Darth Vader (Durza) may not have been able to kill off Fantasy Luke (Eragon), but he did for Fantasy Obi-Wan (Brom) and very nearly Fantasy Leia (Arya) too, plus he knows where the rebel base is. In fact, he's done all of the heavy lifting, while all Galbatorix does is whine about incompetence in the tones of John Malkovich seemingly on valium. Just topple the lazy sod and take over, Durza - I'm rooting for you.                     

Will Cruella get the Maleficent treatment? Probably not - but the film could still be really bad

Depressingly enough, politics tend to seep into our appreciation of culture and popular entertainment a lot more than one would have thought or wished. Therefore, it's heartwarming when there's a meeting of minds across the political divide. The other week, two YouTubers in my feed who are on completely different sides ideologically had just about the same reaction to the trailers for the upcoming (live-action) Disney film Cruella. Which was: have Disney completely lost it? Are they seriously expecting us to root for a woman who wanted to skin puppies to make a fur coat??

The comments beneath the trailers are often in the same vein. What the heck - are they really turning Cruella de Vil into a "girl boss"? Cruella, who is generally considered both irredeemable and unforgivable? There is a musical parody called Twisted, where apparently - in a clear dig at Wicked - Jafar from Aladdin is shown to be a good chap, really, who's only been maligned. I haven't seen it, but I've heard one of the songs from it, where Jafar meets a bunch of other Disney villains who give their - more or less - credible takes on their tales. The sob stories are well under way, when Cruella suddenly appears exclaiming: "I only wished to have a coat made out of puppies!" "You're not helping", Scar growls. "Disregard that". 

Even Once Upon A Time, normally a fictional villain's best friend, went with the "Yeah, no, she's just a psycho" explanation in Cruella's case - evil, in this particular instance, was born, not made. (Cruella shouldn't really be in the Once universe in my opinion, seeing as she's not a fairy-tale character, but she was fun and one of the more bearable things about Problematic Season Four, so I'll not complain too much.) If you can't catch a break in Once, you can't catch a break anywhere. Public opinion is, not unreasonably, fixed: no sympathy for the potential dog-skinner.

While agreeing that it would be a disaster to try and prettify Cruella's misdeeds, I was interested to see that people draw the line here, because I don't remember there being much of an outcry over Maleficent when it appeared. But she's just as bad, surely? I mean, she cursed an innocent baby to die -  not right away, granted, but on her sixteenth birthday! Even if you change the story so that Maleficent herself softens the curse to eternal sleep which can only be lifted by True Love's Kiss, she doesn't come out of it smelling of roses (especially if she doesn't believe there is such a thing as TLK). And yet Disney, disastrously, didn't settle for the Once recipe of adding nuance and complexity to a villain by telling their back story (which I would have been totally on board for): they tried to more or less exonerate Maleficent. Yes, they grudgingly seemed to admit, the baby-cursing was perhaps not the greatest thing she ever did, but couldn't we see her point? (Er... no?) Didn't she make up for it afterwards by protecting Aurora? (Again... no?) Most of the time, good old Mal was just a kick-ass protector of the Moors, and the mean king who stole her wings was the real villain. People seemed pretty much to accept this head-scratching take on the bad fairy, but when it comes to giving Cruella the same treatment, they rebel. So... cursing babies is OK, but killing puppies is not OK?

To be fair, though, I think much of the negative reaction to the Cruella trailers might be a delayed response to what Disney did with Maleficent. The trailers themselves don't really seem to be in an exonerating vein. The Cruella we see appears pretty cracked from the start and not likely to turn out to be someone we will sympathise a whole lot with. So what if she has trouble with her boss? So what if she starts out scrubbing floors? It doesn't follow that we are meant to feel sorry for her. My guess is, she'll be a bad lot from the beginning, and the unfortunate quote "I am woman. Hear me roar" in the trailer is not to be whole-heartedly embraced. Nevertheless, because Disney messed up so badly with the Maleficent back story, commentators are on their guard and prepared for another botched villain make-over. I don't think we need worry that the film will go down the "poor little mistreated Cruella" path, though - I can't see it becoming a thing.

However, even if Disney steer away from a Maleficent disaster, it doesn't mean that the film will be good. The trailers hint at a rags to riches story, but wasn't Cruella rich to begin with? I remember watching a YouTube video on the "which Disney villain are you based on your star sign" theme, as you do. Being a Leo, I was hoping to get Scar, but instead I got Cruella. I was miffed, but when I saw the scene they'd chosen - where she sweeps into her old school friend's house as if she owns the place, drawling "Anita, daaarling", displaying massive condescension towards Anita and contempt for the decent but in worldly terms unsuccessful Roger - I had to admit it was sort of a fair cop. That sense of entitlement struck a chord. A "sharpening of villainy through hardship" back story seems a very poor fit for this fur-wearing diva. It might conceivably work as a prequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians where Glenn Close's Cruella was more of a nut case than anything else - but do we really need an explanation of her? Although I basically never think a villain back story is a bad idea, I may have to concede that in Cruella's case, the less you dig beneath the surface, the better. 

Will I watch the film, though? You can bet on it, darling.

A tale as old as time about... pity and self-sacrifice?

The Beauty and the Beast, as we all know, is the story of a beautiful woman who learns to love an ugly beast, only to discover that he, too, was beautiful all along. Or wait... is it?

Previously, my knowledge of the original story of The Beauty and the Beast came from the fairy-tale series of Illustrated Classics, which were usually pretty accurate, though they sometimes softened the edges of the adapted tales. The Beauty and the Beast edition was, in the Swedish translation I read as a child, called Lena and the Lion. As the Beast was depicted as a lion, and I was a cat-loving kid not too fussed about inter-species relationships, I was dissatisfied with him turning into a prince in the end - wasn't a dashing lion a much better bet than just another run-of-the-mill fairy-tale prince? Some of that childish disappointment with the prince ending, I admit, still lingers. I can see the rationale of the Beast turning into a man - but did it have to be a prince?

From the Illustrated Classic, I learned of some elements of the classic story which didn't make it to the animated Disney film, such as Beauty actually being the daughter of a ruined merchant, the merchant getting into trouble because he picked a rose from the Beast's garden, Beauty's jealous sisters etc. But the story still seemed very much like a romance. Lena, ultimately, loved her lion.

As I set out to finally read the original The Beauty and the Beast, written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, I was therefore shocked to discover how unromantic the central relationship was. The condition for the Beast's curse to be broken is not that a girl should love him (and he her in return) as in the Disney film, but that she should agree to marry him. As Mr Gradgrind would tell you, those are two very different things. Beauty (which is actually a nickname, not a proper name - you can see why adaptations have simplified matters and called her Belle=beauty in the original French) never falls in love with the Beast in the original version. In fact, she loves the prince he will become, who visits her in her dreams, all along, and doesn't twig that her dream lover and the Beast are one and the same. She finally agrees to marry the Beast because she pities him, feels under an obligation to him and appreciates his good nature. When she asks her dream prince whether this is the right step to take and he enthusiastically encourages her, she is most seriously peeved.

Another change compared to modern adaptations of the tale, which maybe bothers me more than many others, is that part of the Beast's curse is to appear not only ugly but stupid. In the course of their acquaintance, he only puts the same questions to Beauty each evening (how her day has been etc.), never showing any wit or superior understanding. It's not a question, then, of Beauty being beguiled by his personality. Like, one suspects, many other girls of her day, Beauty is faced with the prospect of marrying a suitor she doesn't care for because he is kind, and he is rich.

The Villeneuve version of The Beauty and the Beast is a good read in many ways. There are pretty details about the Enchanted Castle (where Beauty and Beast are served by genii in disguise - the cursed servants appear to be a Disney invention), and it's intriguing to see how the prince's gambit of visiting Beauty in her dreams threatens to work against himself as he becomes his own rival. The later part of the story should be of interest to fantasy aficionados, as it contains a great deal of intricate fairy lore. Far from being cursed because he needed to be taught a lesson, the hapless prince got into trouble because he turned down a vindictive fairy who wanted to marry him. A good fairy then tries to help him as best she can, though she can't break the curse directly. The good fairy/bad fairy set-up makes sense of the role of the Enchantress in the Disney films, who always seemed somewhat of a split personality. Anyway, there's a lot of back story involving these fairies and others and rules they have to follow, not all of which come into play in the story. What we see, in a word, is some "world building". Beauty turns out to be the daughter of a king and yet another fairy, and it's all very complicated. Though all this isn't really necessary for the central plot, the fairy shenanigans in themselves are interesting enough.

Nevertheless, the Beauty/Beast relationship being so very different from what I was used to gave me a nasty jolt. How could Lena and the Lion get its source material so very wrong? The answer is that it didn't, but that the source material was not really Villeneuve's tale but a simplified adaption of it written by another 18th-century lady, Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. This is much closer to the story most of us are familiar with. Beauty does care for the Beast in the end, and there is no muddying of the waters with dream visions. The bad fairy and good fairy appear, but their motives aren't gone into, and the whole back story of Beauty being a princess with fairy blood is dropped. Nevertheless, shadows of the problems with the original (problems to me, at least) remain. The Beast is allowed to show plain common sense, but his wit is still hampered by the curse. The moral is that neither beauty nor wit makes for a happy marriage, but a good heart. That's all very well, but how happy would Beauty and Beast's marriage have been in the long run if he hadn't turned back into a prince?

I'll have to admit it: for my money, the animated Disney film - and the story it tells, which has then inspired other adaptations - is better than its source material. Though I'm still not a fan of the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, I can better understand now why it leaned so heavily on the animated version instead of taking a fresh look at the original tales. The re-focusing of the Beauty/Beast relationship from marriage of convenience to love match brings its own problems, but they are much more fun to explore. Modern Beasts (in the Disney films and in Once Upon A Time) are allowed to be interesting and far from foolish, but this development has its own price: the more personality the Beast has, the less inclined he is to mollycoddle Belle or to fall in love with her at first sight just because she's beautiful. We seem to have come full circle, from the dumb sweetie Beast of the original to Beasts who are intelligent but not noticeably sweet-natured (though there is ultimately Good In Them). Both parties have to adapt for the romance to work.

Villeneuve and Beaumont may point out that while you can question the wisdom of telling girls they will be happy with someone they consider ugly and stupid as long as he has a good heart, it is a no less dangerous message to claim that you can transform a beastly man with the strength of your love. I think they'd be particularly horrified, presupposing that they somehow gained non-18th-century knowledge of the Brothers Grimm tales, by the Once Upon A Time crossover. But to me, a spot of Grimm is exactly what this fairy tale needs.

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? 

Why an evil Peter Pan is no great surprise

It may not be very festive to criticise the childhood hero of many a tot. But it's high time I blogged about something book-related, so here goes. I had my eye on Christina Henry's Lost Boy since a while back, especially after having enjoyed her Alice books (even if they didn't have that much to do with Alice in Wonderland), but I held back, as I felt it only fair that I should read the original Peter Pan story before I got to Henry's dark take on it. Though I have seen a good many adaptations of and riffs on Peter Pan, until recently I had neither seen the play by J.M. Barrie nor read his novelisation of it, Peter and Wendy. Now I've read the latter, considered the most important Peter Pan text by those responsible for Penguin Classics. It's easy to see what they mean, as Peter and Wendy offers a more detailed narrative than any play could, but I do still need to catch the play - in unadulterated form - some day. I still can't say for certain whether Skull Rock (not in the book) is a Disney invention or not.

Anyway, having read Peter and Wendy, I thought I could in good conscience move on to Lost Boy. In Lost Boy, Peter Pan is a villain. Strangely, though, this was no great shock to me, nor I suspect to a great many other people. In fact, my own reaction is more or less "Well, duh" or "Tell me something I don't know". I don't think I'm alone in thinking there is something a little off about J.M. Barrie's creation. Youtube videos on "dark stories behind Disney films" like to point out that J.M. Barrie more than hints that Peter killed off lost boys who committed the crime of growing up. As for the Peter Pan-as-villain idea, it has been done before: in Once Upon A Time (still my favourite TV series: how I miss it!), Peter Pan was one of the most memorable "guest villains", being the main threat of the first half of season 3.

So why is it less unlikely that Peter Pan should be a villain than, say, Winnie the Pooh? How similar are the two villain Peters in Once and Lost Boy to the original, and what can be said in defence of J.M. Barrie's version?

I didn't much care for the versions of Peter I came across as a kid, but this wasn't because I thought there was something sinister about him. The explanation was quite simply that I was Team Hook (that was long before Once nearly ruined the Captain for me). It's when you revisit the story as an adult that you start to question the good intentions of the protagonist, and the feeling of unease is only strengthened when you actually read Peter and Wendy. Neverland in the book is a pretty creepy place. Unlike in the Disney film (which, to do it credit, otherwise follows the original story rather faithfully) childen actually both kill and get killed on the island, and Peter is largely responsible for it. When he is away, the Lost Boys and the pirates are content with "biting their thumbs at each other", but that isn't good enough for Peter. Early on, he makes a careless comment about killing pirates, and one must assume that the skirmishes with the Indians were equally lethal until there is a truce. What's more, he isn't a very good leader. No-one is allowed to know more than him, so as he doesn't quite know what a twin is, the Twins live in existential uncertainty. As he's unable to distinguish between when he and his gang have had a real or a make-believe meal, the boys often go hungry. And yes, the Youtube videos are right: "The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according to as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out".

As for his relationship with the Darlings, Peter is actually only interested in getting Wendy to Neverland as she can tell stories: the two boys just come along for the ride. When they keep falling from the sky in their flight to the island, Wendy is constantly afraid that Peter will tire of preventing their fall, as he sees saving them as a game rather than caring one way or another whether they live or not. Once in Neverland, Peter has no intention of ever letting the Darling children go back to their home, and nearly sabotages their attempt to do so, though he is finally reluctantly moved by Mrs Darling's plight. The boy who never grows up is a thoughtless, selfish one, and there is even something off-putting about those supposedly beguiling milk teeth.

However, the reimaginings of him in Once Upon A Time and Lost Boy are pretty harsh. The Once Peter is probably the one who would have upset J.M. Barrie most, not because he's villainous, but because he is really an adult, an irresponsible small-time crook called Malcolm who abandons his son in exchange for (almost) eternal youth. "A child can't have a child", he explains as the crying boy is carried away from the island by the Shadow (a separate, malign entity). Reinvented as Peter Pan, a name taken from his son's lost toy (the little'un having a flair for names), Malcolm lives it up for many, many years. He lures other children to the island to keep him company (doubling as the Pied Piper), until the time comes when he has to prolong his life by getting hold of the heart of his great-grandson. Not a problem for this Peter, who sets about it, until the boy's friends and relatives put a few spanners in the works.

The Peter Pan in Lost Boy is closer to the original, not least because he is a child, though a mad and malicious one. Lost Boy is essentially a back story for Hook, though the protagonist Jamie isn't very Hookish, and could more or less be any intelligent Lost Boy who gets disillusioned by his leader and friend. The trouble starts for real when Peter brings Charlie, a boy who is really too young for the Neverland life, to the island. Jamie starts caring for him which makes Peter jealous. Through the ensuing adventures it becomes more and more apparent that Peter is a monster who has to be the centre of the universe for all of the boys, Jamie especially, and who will try to get rid of anyone who stands in his way.

The dark Neverland of Lost Boy isn't so far removed from the original Neverland as the setting of Henry's Alice books was from Wonderland. J.M. Barrie's Neverland was, as I've mentioned, rather unsettling already, so Henry's interpretation doesn't feel altogether "out there". But while I liked Lost Boy quite a lot, and hugely enjoyed the dastardly Peter Pan in Once (brilliantly played by Robbie Kay, who must be older than he looks), I feel that neither Henry nor the creators of Once have quite grasped J.M. Barrie's intentions. Nor do they have to, obviously, as long as their riffs on the Peter Pan story work as their own thing, which they do. But it would be wrong to judge J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan on the basis of these reinterpretations. Barrie's Peter often behaves questionably to say the least, but that is because he is supposed to be the eternal, typical child: "gay, innocent and heartless" (I don't have to explain that "gay" means "carefree" in this context, do I?). Barrie's view of children is unsentimental, and Peter isn't the only one who acts selfishly. The Darling children, at first, have no intention of coming home to their grieving parents until years in the future, when they blithely envisage getting a hero's welcome. Their parents' distress isn't real to them - even Wendy, who is almost grown-up and should know better, dallies. When the "do you believe in fairies" scene is written into the novel's narrative, Barrie is aware that not every kid would play ball in the circumstances: "Many clapped. Some didn't. A few little beasts hissed."

To sum up, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is selfish not because he is Peter, but because he is a child. To make out that he's much worse than all the other children in Neverland is not completely good form. Then again, I never went to Eton, so I don't complain.

There's something about Alice

So, here are a couple of things you may not know about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass if you've never actually read them but have seen various adaptations of them:

1) The Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland never actually beheads anyone. She does shout "Off with his/her/their head/s!", but the King pardons anyone singled out in this way, and the Gryphon confirms that "they never executes nobody".

2) The Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen are not the same person. The Red Queen appears in Through the Looking Glass and is a typically dotty character who's completely unthreatening.

3) The Red Queen and the White Queen (also dotty) are not enemies.

4) Alice never slays, or indeed meets, a Jabberwock. She reads about it in a poem she finds in Through the Looking Glass.

5) Jabberwock is the monster, Jabberwocky the poem.

6) We never see Alice as a grown-up, and though a bright girl who takes things in her stride, she is no action heroine. She is not romantically linked to the Mad Hatter nor anyone else.

7) The two Alice books are supposed to describe her dreams and both end with Alice waking up.

In short, various works that have been inspired by or even claim to be adaptations of the Alice books take considerable liberties with their source material. The worst offender in my view in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland which has nothing whatsoever to do with the work on which it's based: it's more of a scrappy sort of sequel, but doesn't even work as that. A generic fantasy concept is forced onto Carroll's characters which doesn't fit at all. (I've not seen Alice Through The Looking Glass but I gather that has as little to do with the second Alice book as the first film had with the first.)

Others are more open with their Alice adventures being flights of fancy. In Once Upon A Time we ended up with two different versions of Wonderland - neither very faithful to the original, but enjoyable all the same. Second Wonderland's Alice, whose acquaintance we made in season seven, had an endearing quirkiness about her which in some way reminded one of the original, and there were several references to the books in her conversation which convinced at least me that the writers know them pretty well (I was particularly impressed with their picking up on Alice's penchant for orange marmalade). As for the first version of Wonderland, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts (Cora, also the Evil Queen's mum and the Miller's Daughter) were especially memorable, if a far cry from their "real" Wonderland counterparts.

In all these variations Alice is a grown-up, and in each case her adventures aren't dreams at all but real. The same is true of the heroine of Alice, a novel by Christina Henry who also uses Carroll's books as a starting point for her own fantastic tale.

For a while, I was in two minds about whether I liked this novel or not, and in some ways I still am. It starts in deep gloom, and I nearly gave up there and then, thinking "be so good as not to involve Carroll's poor Alice in your fantasy dystopias". The quality of the writing made me persevere, though, and once Henry's Alice and her fellow asylum inmate Hatcher (it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the connection to the Mad Hatter) have escaped from their prison and have started on their quest to defeat the Jabberwock/Jabberwocky, I enjoyed the story. At the same time the references to Carroll's books continued to rile me, as the dark fantasy setting bears abslutely no resemblance to Wonderland or the Looking-Glass World whatsoever. The characters with names/nicknames relating to the Alice books are usually crime bosses with an extra keen interest in exploiting girls. Even Burton's take on Alice seemed sweetly whimsical and faithful in comparison.

And yet - I can't quite claim that Henry uses the Alice books simply as a way to superficially dress up her own grim world. Alice herself reacts to events and characters with something of the same clear-eyed naïvety as the original, and the various shady people she comes across have something to tie them to their Wonderland counterparts, though it's not much. The Caterpillar is still patronising. The Walrus still has an appetite. And Cheshire smiles. I acknowledge that Henry would have had difficulty in telling the same story while removing all the Wonderland references. It's still a bit of an imposition, though.

The ending of the book was, to my mind, problematic. I disliked the way that Alice and Hatcher went from fantasy questers to avengers, cutting a bloody swathe through the Old City's Underworld. Moral indignation is, for me, one of the least relatable murder motives there is - give me good old lust, greed or personal revenge any time. In the end, there are only so many people that need to die for someone's personal gain: if on the other hand your mission is to rid the world of anyone you deem morally unfit, you can go on forever. It puzzled me how, when it comes to the final showdown between Alice and the Jabberwock, she clearly still thinks of herself as unsullied: "She would never comprehend the need to hurt those who never hurt her, the need to hate for the sake of hating." Er, remember that time you cut a man's throat and watched him slowly bleed to death? That's called hating, girl.

Also, said showdown with the Jabberwock and Alice's confrontation with the Rabbit, the man/beast who once took her prisoner (a not altogether convincing Big Bad - I'd have said the March Hare would have been a better fit), are a bit of an anticlimax after the way these two characters have been built up throughout the novel. The defeat of the Jabberwock isn't particularly clever and in no way more merciful than some straightforward snicker-snacking with a vorpal blade would have been. Yet, with all its faults, the novel has a strong redeeming feature: it's a good read. Plus, Cheshire is great. I've already ordered the sequel.

So, why is it so common for writers, filmmakers etc. to seek inspiration from the Alice books, when to a large extent they are going to do their own thing anyway? The answer is simple, really: the books are just that good. As anyone who has tried to retell an amazing dream which then only seems boring and disjointed knows, pulling off a truly intriguing dream narrative is no mean thing. And although Carroll's Alice never comes across a real antagonist, there is something unsettling about some of the adventures she goes through and the people she encounters (or hears about - like the Walrus and the Carpenter) which does lend itself to "dark" interpretations. For my part, I'm happy to go down a few more Alice-inspired rabbit holes - though I'd be grateful if people could tell their Red Queens from their Queens of Hearts.

Things to look forward to in 2019

It’s time either for a retrospect of or speculations and thoughts about the years to come. Last year at around this time, I promised myself to get more into book reading again. The resolution was, overall, a success, although my Jane Austen Rereading Project stalled when only Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey (my least favourite Austen novel) remained. It’s not that long ago I read Mansfield Park… Anyway, I will get around to them next year. I did try out some fantasy as well and enjoyed Caraval and Legendary hugely, so I will keep experimenting cautiously.

Maybe 2019 will be the year I rediscover my love of costume dramas? What with Once Upon A Time ending and no more Rumple (sob) to gladden my heart, I will need something to console me. Luckily, the year ahead looks like it’s going to be the year when Julian Fellowes delivers on two counts. Here, then, are some of the possible cultural-consumption highlights (from my perspective) of 2019:

Downton Abbey the film/movie: They’re finally doing it! Better late than never, I suppose, though having moved on on the villain-loving front, I’m not as mad with anticipation as I would once have been. The lateness of the project does worry me, as I’m afraid the Downton audience has had too much time to get over their obsession/healthy interest in the Crawley family saga. On the other hand, internet reactions seem enthusiastic enough, and perhaps many other Downton fans are, like me, using the time before September to rewatch the entire series, the better to be able to speculate on what plot lines may be picked up again and finally reach a conclusion. I mean, though they kept us waiting for the film, it’s not as if we’re going to refrain from watching it, are we? Watch this space for the usual hit-and-miss predictions…

The Gilded Age: For supposedly being a project close to Fellowes’s heart, he has taken his own sweet time about this TV series, which will air on American telly this year and is set in the USA in the late 19^th century. The heroine of the drama is described  as a “wide-eyed scion of a conservative family” who will infiltrate a family of noveaux riches (or more correctly, even more nouveaux riches) which includes a “ruthless railway tycoon” and his “rakish and available son”. The son will probably be a zero, but I have some hopes of the tycoon. I wonder who will play him?

Les Misérables: In his usual undiplomatic way, Andrew Davies has been scathing about the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic, which happens to be my favourite musical and what got me interested in the novel in the first place. Nevertheless, Davies will be Davies, and I will not let his bad boy antics cloud my judgement of his own Les Mis project based squarely on the book. Davies is just the guy to trim off all Hugo’s endless diversions and get to the story, and the first trailer seems promising. I’m glad we get to see Fantine’s back story this time around. Also, I’m certain Olivia Colman will be a great Madame Thénardier. Which leads me almost seamlessly to:

The Crown season three: I’ve not been as devoted a fan of this show as many other period drama lovers, but I will admit that it’s an ambitious, high-quality series with superb acting. It certainly knocks spots off, say, Poldark or Victoria. The bad news is that Claire Foy, who was such a spectacular Queen in the first two seasons, won’t be around in this one. The good news is that her replacement is the above-mentioned Olivia Colman, who’s been reliably excellent in every part I’ve seen her in (even as the crusading agent in The Night Manager, who should have been unbearable but somehow wasn’t). Also appearing is Tobias Menzies – whom I rather like, maybe because he’s a little shifty-looking – as Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret. This could be fun, in a high-brow kind of way.

Finally getting to see Doctor Who series 11: Right… Not sure I’ll be wild about this. Doctor Who doesn’t air in Sweden, so I have to wait for the DVDs. I did see one episode of the newest series of Doctor Who in Australia – “Arachnids in the UK” – and hated it. Judging from reviews, though, this was the absolute low point of  the series, and one thing I did not hate was Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor; she put in a likeable performance in the Matt Smith era-Doctor vein. I am looking forward to being able to form my own opinion of what’s happening in Wholand. If I don’t like it, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of being right to have doubts about Chris Chibnall.

Frozen 2, I guess? It’s another sequel instead of an original idea, but at least it’s animated and not a pointless live-action remake, and it is Disney. I will be hoping that there’ll be one or two references to the Frozen arc in Once Upon A Time for us fans to detect. (I didn’t much like the Frozen arc – not surprisingly considering how it ended – but Once is Once.) There won’t be, mind.