Fans of John Wick will like Polar! #JohnWick #Polar #DarkHorseComics #MadsMikkelsen #Netflix #MattLucas

Mads Mikkelsen plays the assassin-with-a-heart Duncan Vizla in this neo-noir movie version of the Dark Horse comic book. Vizla is finally calling it a day and is about to collect his pension pot of $24m… except his unscrupulous employers (played by the wonderfully hammy Matt Lucas) can’t afford for him to collect. Naughty Matt therefore decides to have Vizla bumped off… to which Vizla takes extreme exception! Fancy taking it so personally!

Mikkelsen does a great job, bringing brooding menace, regret for misdeeds and a deep sadness to Vizla in equal measures. His relationship with the damaged young woman living in the chalet-next-door is particularly tender and believable. And believability/credibility is an entirely essential requirement for this movie, given how the rest of it is so cartoonish (unsurprising in a comic book conversion), anarchic, darkly comedic, full of caricature and bullet-raddled. Indeed, were it not for Mikkelsen, the movie would be far too voyeuristic and immoral for the taste of pretty much all audiences.

The body-count is of course ludicrously high, and Vizla has an all but superhuman ability to survive torture, brutality and heavy ordinance. It’s escapist fare, just like the John Wick movies. And there’s going to be a second movie in the series, according to industry insiders! Hopefully, the tonal balance of the next instalment will be better judged. But Polar is a good popcorn movie if you like this sort of thing. Happy days.

DC finally get it right… and then go and pull the plug!: great Swamp Thing series #swampthing #dccomics #horror

When I heard they’d made the horror tv show of the cult comic book Swamp Thing, I set out to watch it as soon as I could. After all, the legendary Alan Moore cut his teeth with Swamp Thing, along with V for Vendetta, and then Watchmen and so on. Then I had that terrible fear: what if DC had ballsed it up? It would be a crime beyond forgiveness. Let’s face it, DC has a very dodgy track record when it comes to comic book conversions e.g. the fun but very silly Green Arrow, the simply awful Batwoman, the earnest but super-hammy Black Lightning, the laughable movies, etc. Let’s not quibble – if they can get Swamp Thing right, then hope is restored.

So I sat down for the opening episode, waiting for it all to go wrong. The visuals are great – so good you can’t see they’re using stage-sets. The town of Marais set on the edge of the creepy gothic swamp is perfectly rendered and brilliantly atmospheric. And the horror-action sequences are suitably redolent of John Carpenter’s genre-defining The Thing (1982). You can absolutely understand why the opening episode cost $20m on its own! The script, characterisation and acting? Well, the script is on point, working through the detective beats that often come with horror… without actually becoming cliched. We are kept guessing but fed tantalising clues – keeping us hooked. The characterisation is organised in a similar manner to the plot – references to individual but interconnected back-stories without any clumsy exposition. And the casting/acting… is sufficiently good.

What is the scenario? Well, Doctor Abby Arcane Holland of the CDC (The Centers of Disease Control) is called back to her hometown to investigate an epidemic that’s broken out. It seems that something in the swamp is making everyone sick. Anything else would be a spoiler, so just go and watch it if you want to know more.

Yippee, I thought to myself. This is excellent. Well done, DC. Finally! Then I thought to check on the number of episodes and series available… only to learn that the DC Universe streaming service had CANCELLED the show ONE WEEK after the episode aired (31 May 2019). WTF?!

I checked the online reviews… the show had been well received by the fanbase and the critics alike. Even more WTF? What are you playing at DC? You’d finally got it right. Don’t do this to me… to us. It made no sense whatsoever.

Thus, I started to read around the industry speculation as to what had gone wrong. There was no clear consensus. One of the early signs of ‘trouble’ emerged before they’d even finished making the first series – the show got cut from its original 13 episodes to just 10. Aha. The production costs had to have been a touch too high… and that first episode cost $20m, remember. Was DC Universe streaming service ever going to get enough commercial subscribers to make the outlay on Swamp Thing back again? Probably not, especially when insiders began to fear that Swamp Thing might turn out to be a dud (just like all those other DC tv shows and movies). So there was a lack of confidence in the show among its own producers. And, between series, producers have to pay millions to store/warehouse expensive stage-sets… so decisions on a second series have to be made very quickly… even before the first series has finished production. The swampy plot thickens. And then the final issue: the DC Universe streaming service was owned by Time Warner… and Time Warner was taken over by AT&T in 2018. When takeovers occur, ‘economies of scale’, product rationalisation and redundancies ALWAYS follow, to recover a lot of the investment required to secure the takeover, and to maximise profits going forward. Apparently, then, Swamp Thing (but more specifically the DC Universe streaming service) was a victim of this new operating context.

Damn it. In summary, Swamp Thing was artistically successful and a proper hit with audiences. The writers and actors had done a good job. But it wasn’t the writers, actors or fans making decisions about the show. It was the money-men. And the decisions made weren’t made based on quality issues: they were made based on quantity (i.e. the numbers and the profitability). And here’s the rub in today’s rabidly impatient capitalist world – high-quality art will never thrive when it’s judged by numbers alone. Look at how they axed the superb and unsurpassed Firefly series by the mighty Joss Whedon. Look at my own inability to get that next book deal from Gollancz (I’ve only sold 20,000 books, which just isn’t enough, I’m told).

What comes next? Cheaper DC shows, of lower quality. Argh! It feels like we’re going backwards. Yup. Maybe it’s two steps forward, one step back? Nope. They didn’t learn from Firefly, did they. It’s a sorry state of affairs.

The fundamental problem of course is that they still haven’t perfected the business model for streaming services. It’s an ugly fight at the mo, with Apple’s new service, BritBox, BBCistream (in development) and the list goes on. It’s not sustainable, and there will be terrible collateral damage along the way. Why did it have to be the anti-establishment work of Alan Moore, though! The irony is sickening. I feel the rage of the Swamp Thing.

Post script. And I’m not alone in my rage. I have now seen the very sizable fan backlash against DC. DC are alienating the fans so much that the fans will now be hugely wary of starting a show till they know FOR SURE that the second series is a go. If fans become wary of even starting shows, then audiences numbers will be even lower… and it’s a vicious circle/spiral downwards. DC are close to BREAKING themselves entirely. Mark these words.

Stylish new scifi show: Ad Vitam #Netflix #sciencefiction #AdVitam

Humankind now regenerates – using stem-cells to renew and refresh the body – to the extent no one dies anymore. The oldest human on the planet is 169 and she looks no more than 30yrsold! Of course, if no one dies anymore, population control becomes a serious problem. Truly young people just can’t get space to live in. They are disenfranchised by those older than them… and then the waves of suicide begin: hopeless young people, guilty old people, the religious, and so on.

Our protagonist is a grizzled cop (he doesn’t regenerate enough because it gives him headaches) aged 119yrsold. He’s been a copy for 100 years – ennui and disillusionment don’t even begin to cover it. When 7 young people turn up dead on a beach, he’s tasked with uncovering a particularly sinister suicidal cult known as Saul. He uses a cult survivor to try and get inside the group based at The Church of Glorification – and outfit that is anti-regeneration and believes in natural ageing and death.

Ad Vitam is actually a French series with subtitles, but you the show is so immersive that you won’t even notice the subtitles. It’s compelling, fascinating in an awful way, and disturbingly credible. Because of that – there are content warnings on the show. I love the show – the ideas are well articulated, philosophically coherent, and entirely accessible. Being French, the whole thing is stylish, ubercool and… sexy in a typically Gallic way.

A couple of nice points. Living so long, people get very bored of their jobs and ‘retrain’ every ten years or so… but not our cop friend. Living so long and always being young, people can have kids no matter their age… but having kids is kinda selfish… and society is about to vote to have a ban on having children!!! What sort of world would it be if we were all immortal but there were no kids? People don’t really understand what death means in an everyday way anymore. So, our cop has to explain to a mother that her daughter has committed suicide, but the mother simply can’t comprehend what it means.

If you like intelligent, moving scifi, then Ad Vitam is for you. It gets 8.5 out of 10 from me. You can find it on Netflix. And it’s FAR BETTER THAN BRAD PITT’S TERRIBLE MOVIE Ad Astra. Go Ad Vitam!

Look behind you! Satan rises anew! #Satanism #Satanic #Satan

Satan, Dracula, Sauron, Lord Foul, Darth Vader. The motif of the Satanic Dark Lord is ever-present in science fiction and fantasy, a malign intelligence seeking to thwart the Chosen One.

In the literature of the 1980s and 90s, the Dark Lord is always defeated. However, post-millennium, there are signs that he has finally begun to get the upper hand, as we witness his change from anti-hero to hero.

Like it? ‘The Satanic in Science Fiction and Fantasy’ is now available for (pre-)ordering on Amazon. Come on, keep the faith and support your struggling writer friend Adam. And the brave publisher Francesca Tristan Barbini! It might just save the entire world, and your soul to boot!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/…/dp/1913387…/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0…

Monster calendar of horror, fantasy, cosplay and science fiction conventions now updated! #cosplay #horror #fantasy #sciencefiction #sff

Here’s the new cosmic calendar: https://metaphysicalfantasy.wordpress.com/events/uk-conventions-and-festivals-scifi-fantasy-and-horror/

A zesty Emma Stone does zombies once more! …in Zombieland: Double Tap #emmastone #zombieland #ZombielandDoubleTap #MovieReview #WoodyHarrelson

The satirical comedy-horror Zombieland is back to feast upon audience brains once more! And it’s as sharply written as its first outing, I’m glad to say. Yes, fans should be more than happy with Zombieland: Double Tap as an ‘evolution’ of the original Zombieland splatterfest. Emma Stone is still an enthusiastic member of the survivalist gang led by the grizzled Woody Harrelson, but an increasingly reluctant girlfriend to the ever-nerdy Jesse Eisenberg, while the zombies have had an upgrade – some of them are now silent ‘ninjas’ while some of them won’t stay down, just like ‘T800s from Terminator’.

Our hardy band of survivors start by ‘setting up home’ in a derelict Whitehouse. There are jokes about various presidents of the past… and there’s an implicit criticism of the most recent president, of course. Yet the politics are never laid on too thick (cos politics don’t really matter once there’s been a zombie apocalypse), the piece appropriately preferring a whimsically-philosophical tone punctuated with scenes of outrageous dismemberment. The two female leads soon get hacked off with the creepy Woody and clingy Jesse, and take to the road, leaving just a badly written note behind them. Yes, the film is actually more interested in exploring the nature and value of both interpersonal and social relationships: you see, manners, class and romance have no real value when you’re running out of bullets and there’s a horde of brain-eaters chasing you.

So, it’s not a brainless film by any means. Far from it. Woody has a side-quest to visit the home of Elvis (Graceland), but the younger characters don’t ‘get’ it cos they have no real memory of the King. This theme of the next generation not really sharing in the values of the previous generation is repeated throughout the movie (e.g. in one funny scene, a hippy guitarist tries to impress the girl by pretending he wrote Bob Dylan songs), without passing any negative judgement. As a result, the film has a surreal out-of-body feel throughout. It’s refreshing to see everything from this different perspective, to re-evaluate our pre-conceptions, etc.

Woody and Jesse manage to track the female leads down to a hippy commune called Babylon (named after the David Gray song, cos no one remembers back before that!). Everyone entering has to give up their guns, the weapons melted down to make peace necklaces. Woody and Jesse join the party, wondering if they’ve finally found the home they’d always dreamed of. With strong enough walls, maybe there’s no need for killing anymore. (Yup, another debate for contemporary America.)

Better leave the plot there, before people weep about spoilers. Honestly, though, the plot is pretty much the only throwaway thing about this movie. It’s all about character interactions and dreams – dreams of our youth, dreams of finding home again, nightmares about monsters, and so on. Here’s hoping there will soon be a third instalment to the Zombieland franchise. Double Tap scores 7.4 out of 10 on IMDb, and I think that’s about right. Hurrah!

[A J Dalton is the author of the zombie trilogy Necromancer’s Gambit, Necromancer’s Betrayal and Necromancer’s Fall, so he knows a thing or two about zombies.]

The new Batwoman series is… well, a bit batty #BatwomanCW #Batman #DC #superhero #lesbian

With Ruby Rose cast in the lead role, the new Batwoman series was always going to be a tad controversial. Perhaps the makers thought that controversy would garner wide attention and therefore a bigger audience. If so, it’s a pity that they didn’t also think to work harder on the quality of script and production in order to keep a loyal fanbase (more on that later). Suffice it to say, Ruby Rose (model and TV celeb, with a notable performance in the second John Wick movie) plays ‘the first openly lesbian lead superhero in television’ but the actor themselves only identifies as ‘genderfluid’: and hence the controversy(?). Yes, already you can perhaps start to see issues with the makers getting the nuance, tone and wokeness right for certain (inter)sections of audience. It’s a shame, because such issues completely overshadow what should be most important here – turning Batwoman into an accessible and successful lead character.

So let’s talk about the tone of the new Batwoman series. This Batwoman series actually smacks of the original, extremely camp Adam West Batman series. The fight scenes involve lots of rolling around and cartoonish punches. You almost expect to see ‘Zap’ and ‘Kapow’ flashing up on the screen. All well and good (‘homage’, you might be thinking)… except where the ‘camp’ Adam West series is knowing, arch and ironic, this Batwoman series is all earnest, angsty and ‘STRAIGHT’, so the tone is contradictory. And that gives us the second issue. There is zero irony in the Batwoman series. Everything is black-and-white. There are no shades of grey. There is absolutely no moral ambiguity. I’m sorry, but such a view of the world is utterly childish, ignorant… and (socio-politically) dangerous. And this lack of both irony and shades of darkness entirely misses the ‘spirit’ of the current depictions of the DC-verse, Gotham city and Batman (not to mention the fabulous Joker movie, just reviewed on this site).

What’s left? Sigh. The lack of moral ambiguity means there’s no central moral dilemma for our lead character. And without a moral dilemma for the lead to struggle with, that lead character also doesn’t have a chance to show much… character. Instead, they are just a ’cause’ and little more. We are told to feel sorry for the lead time and again (with multiple repeated uninteresting uninflected flash backs) – but feeling sorry for someone isn’t the same as liking them and rooting for them (and it’s these last two things an audience needs if it’s going to care enough to keep watching a character’s story). And I really did want to like the show, because I’m a feminist and a fan of the Batverse – but Ruby Rose in the Batwoman suit just seemed a feeble version of Batman, and the villain (‘Mad Alice’) is a super diluted version of the Joker.

Sorry, but there are just a few more issues I should mention. Continuity and credibility. There are none. Ruby Rose (playing Kate Kane) is hit in the face with a cricket bat. Really hit. Hard. Next scene? Not even a bruise, let alone a broken nose or caved-in skull. And that next scene doesn’t explain how Kate is suddenly out of the clutches of the baddies (except for ‘oh, my men picked you up’). And then we have Kate rescuing her ex but falling with her four or five floors, through a roof and onto a bed, where they hold each other as lovers and fingers touch mouths, etc.

Bringing me to the final issue of… coherence. What a shame that overall the opening episode is a shambles. Some messages are so shouty and dogmatic that they are insulting, if not alienating. More subtle messages (if there even are any) are lost amid the cacophony. I fear that audiences will not get to episode 2. They will be switching off for good. I can absolutely see now why IMDb scores it 3 out of 10. That said, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 73%. Perhaps that latter statistic should give me/us pause. Hmm. Clearly some people like it. I hope so. I’d love to see the series improve and get it ‘right’. And do you know what? Ruby Rose has charisma. Let’s hope it’s enough to see Batwoman become the icon she/they always should have been. Amen.

[A J Dalton is the writer of the lead essay in ‘Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction‘.]