Everything in Alignment!
Saturday, November 16th, 2013 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoToday, I had the first real day off in a long, long while, and Yebisu and I had a lovely time seeing two different pieces of entertainment that centered around the same trope, the aligning of the planets/stars. How each version of the story used and abused the trope was an interesting bit of comparison.
First off, there's Thor: The Dark World. My expectations for this were really pretty low. I wanted something fun and relatively light, and even with the ominous title, I hadn't seen or heard anything that indicated it would be dark and serious. It was, perhaps, heavily told at times, but there was nowhere near the awkwardly exhausting constant moral dilemma-posing of The Dark Knight or Watchmen. I suppose the worst things that could be said of this installment of Thor had to with the following:
1) Exposition-heavy: the Dark Elves, despite the screenwriters' attempts to the contrary, didn't seem to be that frightening, and merely sort of unstoppably grouchy. That said, their weapons were pretty dangerous (the entropy grenades=yikes) and their strangely-designed ships were useful, too. I felt sort of sorry for Christopher Eccleston. I could barely recognize him in all that make-up, and he's such a good actor, but there wasn't a lot for him to work with here, other than ancient!Elvish!vengeance!
2) Too much damsel in distress: I like Natalie Portman; I think she can play a scientist reasonably well, and she's made Jane Foster into quite a likable character. I liked the fact that she called Thor on his bullshit about being busy when he'd been in New York with the Avengers, and I really liked that she called Loki on his bullshit, as much as she could in the time she was given. But I hated that for much of the rest of the movie, she was helpless in a coma, or lying down, or possessed by red goo. Dammit, why did she need to be incapacitated so much?
However, there was a lot of stuff I liked:
1) Loki. I feel like there's an emoticon I should use here to sum up my feelings in a concise and clever way, but I can't think of one that really does him justice. Anyway, OF COURSE Thor had to ally with him, and OF COURSE they're brothers and they do love each other despite all the crap that's going on, and OF COURSE Loki's not dead. Duh. He just makes every scene that he's in better!
2) Sif (and Team Thor, the names of the other members are currently escaping me): I feel like there are all these stories that we're not hearing about, that they have had so many adventures together, just never had the time to tell them all. That is a show that I would watch every week, people. I also liked Sif's interactions with Thor during the battle scene; the only thing that I couldn't get my head around was her loose hair.
3) So many gorgeous design aspects! I'd love to see those illuminated manuscripts all over again, and everywhere in Asgard, there are so many knot motifs. Even the jail cells were pretty!
4) Darcy = LOVE. Darcy & Ian = LOVE. Dr. Erik's relief that Loki is "dead" = PRICELESS.
5) Plenty of man candy. :D And the scene of Thor riding the tube to get to Greenwich was hilarious.
6) Idris Elba makes everything awesome, all the time.
Anyway, the aligning of the planets in Thor:TDW lead to some very interesting/amusing chase sequences near the end, and some fun science-y stuff at the beginning, and so that was a plot trope well used! So much fun!
A quick side note: if anyone can explain to me what the hell was going on in the first credits extra scene, with Sif and The Collector, and the Stone of Plot Driving, please do so in the comments. I pride myself on being up on my comic book meta-plot knowledge, but this completely stymied me. (I mean, it's a Guardians of the Galaxy tie-in, but what its significance is was utterly unclear.)
Then, there was the finale of Legend of Korra. This show has had a very uneven season; it's felt rushed in many places, and just when I thought there were too many characters already, the writers decided to add at least five more. Like many fans, I've been getting antsy since the show was moved into the Friday Night Death Slot. I know that Nick wants easily marketable things, and I suppose this is another entry for another time, about gender and capitalism and feminism and so forth. But anyway, in the last five episodes, the show finally regained its footing, and there were cliffhangers galore with stakes so high that I felt sure there'd be a string of dramatic/child-unfriendly deaths.
There is so much I love here that it's hard to quantify it without sputtering all over the place, but I'll just dive in and hope for coherence:
I love Korra. I loved that she grew up and became the Avatar she was supposed to be, and that she persevered in the face of tremendous odds. I love how strong and powerful she was, particularly at the end, during the entire fight with Unalaq/Vaatu, and how prior to that she regained her footing the spirit world, symbolically growing into the young Adult that she's meant to be. Watching this show, I had never wanted to be the Avatar until I saw the end of this season. (After the first series, I wanted to be a water bender, like Katara. After the first season of this show, I wanted to be an earth bender like Lin.) I feel like the writers really connected with the emotional connection between wanting to be good and actually DOING good, in a concrete, real-world way, despite emotional and physical setbacks. Dammit, I just want to give that girl a hug so bad right now!
I love that this season was also an interesting postscript on the fact that Aang was not a perfect father, and that his three children suffered a bit for that. I know that some people found Tenzin to be too paternalistic, but I read his character as someone who'd done things by The Book of Others' Expectations for his whole life, and only now as an adult was he realizing how bad/unhelpful/irrelevant some of that knowledge had been. He's a kind and well meaning man, but he needed his own coming of age story, and he got it in slightly truncated form. Other characters who got interesting postscripts kept popping up, too: General Zhao's ultimate fate was pathetic and somehow quite fitting for a man like him; Iroh's appearances just warmed my heart, although I could not get used to him having a different voice than he'd had before.
I was not so in love with Asami and Lin getting sidelined in this season, but I am completely in love with Korra and Mako breaking up for good. That was the weakest storyline of the entire show, and I am so pleased we don't have to waste any more time on it.
I liked Bolin's chance to be a Real Hero, and not just some guy in a Flash Gordon-esque "mover." (I loved that movie!Unalaq's costume was basically Ming the Merciless.) I also enjoyed him ribbing Mako on more than a few occasions about the annoying platitudes/bad advice Mako had given him. Bolin's "romance" with Eska was just plain weird, and I have no idea what to make of it.
The harmonic convergence plot device sounded hackneyed when it was first introduced, but it ended up being far more interesting than I thought it would be. Although time moved a little too quickly in getting us to the particular day/night when it was supposed to happen, all in all, it paid off in terms of epic setting (that field in the spirit world was an interesting but desolate place) and symbolic meaning.
All in all, it was a good ending that leaves a lot of plot openings for future seasons and I HOPE it doesn't get cancelled. Now, more than ever, I cannot wait to watch this show, and the one that preceded it, with my son. I think I'm almost as excited about this as reading Harry Potter with him. :)
First off, there's Thor: The Dark World. My expectations for this were really pretty low. I wanted something fun and relatively light, and even with the ominous title, I hadn't seen or heard anything that indicated it would be dark and serious. It was, perhaps, heavily told at times, but there was nowhere near the awkwardly exhausting constant moral dilemma-posing of The Dark Knight or Watchmen. I suppose the worst things that could be said of this installment of Thor had to with the following:
1) Exposition-heavy: the Dark Elves, despite the screenwriters' attempts to the contrary, didn't seem to be that frightening, and merely sort of unstoppably grouchy. That said, their weapons were pretty dangerous (the entropy grenades=yikes) and their strangely-designed ships were useful, too. I felt sort of sorry for Christopher Eccleston. I could barely recognize him in all that make-up, and he's such a good actor, but there wasn't a lot for him to work with here, other than ancient!Elvish!vengeance!
2) Too much damsel in distress: I like Natalie Portman; I think she can play a scientist reasonably well, and she's made Jane Foster into quite a likable character. I liked the fact that she called Thor on his bullshit about being busy when he'd been in New York with the Avengers, and I really liked that she called Loki on his bullshit, as much as she could in the time she was given. But I hated that for much of the rest of the movie, she was helpless in a coma, or lying down, or possessed by red goo. Dammit, why did she need to be incapacitated so much?
However, there was a lot of stuff I liked:
1) Loki. I feel like there's an emoticon I should use here to sum up my feelings in a concise and clever way, but I can't think of one that really does him justice. Anyway, OF COURSE Thor had to ally with him, and OF COURSE they're brothers and they do love each other despite all the crap that's going on, and OF COURSE Loki's not dead. Duh. He just makes every scene that he's in better!
2) Sif (and Team Thor, the names of the other members are currently escaping me): I feel like there are all these stories that we're not hearing about, that they have had so many adventures together, just never had the time to tell them all. That is a show that I would watch every week, people. I also liked Sif's interactions with Thor during the battle scene; the only thing that I couldn't get my head around was her loose hair.
3) So many gorgeous design aspects! I'd love to see those illuminated manuscripts all over again, and everywhere in Asgard, there are so many knot motifs. Even the jail cells were pretty!
4) Darcy = LOVE. Darcy & Ian = LOVE. Dr. Erik's relief that Loki is "dead" = PRICELESS.
5) Plenty of man candy. :D And the scene of Thor riding the tube to get to Greenwich was hilarious.
6) Idris Elba makes everything awesome, all the time.
Anyway, the aligning of the planets in Thor:TDW lead to some very interesting/amusing chase sequences near the end, and some fun science-y stuff at the beginning, and so that was a plot trope well used! So much fun!
A quick side note: if anyone can explain to me what the hell was going on in the first credits extra scene, with Sif and The Collector, and the Stone of Plot Driving, please do so in the comments. I pride myself on being up on my comic book meta-plot knowledge, but this completely stymied me. (I mean, it's a Guardians of the Galaxy tie-in, but what its significance is was utterly unclear.)
Then, there was the finale of Legend of Korra. This show has had a very uneven season; it's felt rushed in many places, and just when I thought there were too many characters already, the writers decided to add at least five more. Like many fans, I've been getting antsy since the show was moved into the Friday Night Death Slot. I know that Nick wants easily marketable things, and I suppose this is another entry for another time, about gender and capitalism and feminism and so forth. But anyway, in the last five episodes, the show finally regained its footing, and there were cliffhangers galore with stakes so high that I felt sure there'd be a string of dramatic/child-unfriendly deaths.
There is so much I love here that it's hard to quantify it without sputtering all over the place, but I'll just dive in and hope for coherence:
I love Korra. I loved that she grew up and became the Avatar she was supposed to be, and that she persevered in the face of tremendous odds. I love how strong and powerful she was, particularly at the end, during the entire fight with Unalaq/Vaatu, and how prior to that she regained her footing the spirit world, symbolically growing into the young Adult that she's meant to be. Watching this show, I had never wanted to be the Avatar until I saw the end of this season. (After the first series, I wanted to be a water bender, like Katara. After the first season of this show, I wanted to be an earth bender like Lin.) I feel like the writers really connected with the emotional connection between wanting to be good and actually DOING good, in a concrete, real-world way, despite emotional and physical setbacks. Dammit, I just want to give that girl a hug so bad right now!
I love that this season was also an interesting postscript on the fact that Aang was not a perfect father, and that his three children suffered a bit for that. I know that some people found Tenzin to be too paternalistic, but I read his character as someone who'd done things by The Book of Others' Expectations for his whole life, and only now as an adult was he realizing how bad/unhelpful/irrelevant some of that knowledge had been. He's a kind and well meaning man, but he needed his own coming of age story, and he got it in slightly truncated form. Other characters who got interesting postscripts kept popping up, too: General Zhao's ultimate fate was pathetic and somehow quite fitting for a man like him; Iroh's appearances just warmed my heart, although I could not get used to him having a different voice than he'd had before.
I was not so in love with Asami and Lin getting sidelined in this season, but I am completely in love with Korra and Mako breaking up for good. That was the weakest storyline of the entire show, and I am so pleased we don't have to waste any more time on it.
I liked Bolin's chance to be a Real Hero, and not just some guy in a Flash Gordon-esque "mover." (I loved that movie!Unalaq's costume was basically Ming the Merciless.) I also enjoyed him ribbing Mako on more than a few occasions about the annoying platitudes/bad advice Mako had given him. Bolin's "romance" with Eska was just plain weird, and I have no idea what to make of it.
The harmonic convergence plot device sounded hackneyed when it was first introduced, but it ended up being far more interesting than I thought it would be. Although time moved a little too quickly in getting us to the particular day/night when it was supposed to happen, all in all, it paid off in terms of epic setting (that field in the spirit world was an interesting but desolate place) and symbolic meaning.
All in all, it was a good ending that leaves a lot of plot openings for future seasons and I HOPE it doesn't get cancelled. Now, more than ever, I cannot wait to watch this show, and the one that preceded it, with my son. I think I'm almost as excited about this as reading Harry Potter with him. :)
