Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger is far better than DC’s Black Lightning

So, the first two episodes of Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger have just landed on Amazon Prime – which is odd, cos most other Marvel series like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, The Defenders and Cheesy Iron Fist have appeared on Netflix. Strange that Marvel have changed platform? Well, Netflix had already shown DC’s Black Lightning, you see, so Cloak and Dagger would have been far too similar to what the Netflix audience had already seen.

Which one is better: Black Lightning or Cloak and Dagger? The latter, by quite a margin. Where BL is very hammy, preachy and cumbersome, C&D is nuanced, ambiguous and non-expository. Both series deal with serious issues about what it is like being a person of colour in today’s America, but BL is moralising and about taking individual responsibility, where C&D is about empathising with those who are victims/creations of their circumstances through no fault of their own. Put simply, BL is old-fashioned and stereotypical goodies v baddies fare, whereas C&D is real-world and morally confusing. Where BL’s storyline jumps around illogically in order to permit a big set-piece fight scene (always popular), C&D is about two young people coming of age, fearing the adult world into which they are emerging and seeking to suppress their incipient powers that will make them even more of a target. The two series are almost photonegatives of each other in terms of story-telling approach and plot organisation. They have competing philosophies, fundamentally.

Cloak and Dagger is not only better than Black Lightning as a TV show, but also it is markedly better than its own original comic strip. I grew up reading Cloak and Dagger (from their first appearance in The Spectacular Spider-Man), and they were a simple pair of heroes representing light and dark as superpowers, fighting an array of very silly baddies. There was no actual social context within their stories. Yes, Cloak was a person of colour, but literally only in how he was coloured in – there was nothing about his ordinary travails in the real world – and there was no real attempt to deal with (or discuss) their implicit inter-racial relationship. The TV show on Amazon Prime, by comparison, is fully ‘woke’ (if you’ll forgive the term).

The young pretty blonde who is Dagger is a petty thief. The way she steals from others is quite distressing to watch – and her crimes become less and less justifiable. We do empathise with her, because we’ve seen her upbringing and abusive mother (and she is as pretty as she is well acted by Olivia Holt), but at the same time we are increasingly horrified by what she does. Then there is Cloak, who is a young black guy who is morally upstanding but still ends up getting into no end of trouble (in part because of his colour). Dagger rides her luck and uses her colour to her immoral advantage, whereas Cloak (as buff as he is well played by Aubrey Joseph) does the right thing but always has his colour as a disadvantage. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition and complementarity. Their lives are a mess – and, we ironically suspect, things will only get better when they embrace their opposite. Roll on episode 3! So far, it’s an 8.5/10 from me (not more yet cos of the incipient evil-corportation cliche).

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Deadpool misunderstood by critics? #deadpool2

Most of the reviews I read in the British press for the Deadpool 2 movie gave it three stars. And yet, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is currently scoring 86% with audiences. There’s a bit of a mismatch there. I saw the film last night and, pondering some of the accusations levelled at the film by the critics, have to say I think the critics are just plain wrong, misinformed or critically unsophisticated enough to ‘get’ what the film is doing. Deadpool 2 is a brave film that is deceptively simple. In fact, a lazy, unthinking viewer (one who doesn’t engage brain or critical faculty) will probably consider the movie to be by-the-numbers or even straightout bad. This is a perfect example of ‘you get out what you put in’.

I saw several reviewers complain that the movie, for all its representation of minority groups, was still centred around two white guys (Deadpool and Cable) proving who was the toughest. These reviewers claimed that the female characters and minority groups were reduced to canon fodder or background filler (with very few lines of dialogue). Such complaints and claims are a fundamental misrepresentation of the movie. At the end of the day, the movie is about the Deadpool character (who, admittedly, is white and male), but throughout he challenges what a white male hero is all about in today’s society – that’s the point of his character! And Cable (who uses the c-word) is only there as the inverse – to show us what a macho asshole Deadpool would be if he was reduced to the traditional white hero – the Deadpool/Cable dynamic is actually a bipolar debate about the nature of male identity. To then say the female characters and minority groups are done a disservice (in ‘service’ to the patriarchy) is hogwash. The Domino character (a woman of colour) proves Deadpool wrong, has plenty of central moments and survives where loads of white males (X-force) get chewed up. Then, when the Deadpool/Cable narrative falls away, it is the narrative concerning the young, large-bodied, Maori Firefist that completely takes over. Yes, the female character of Negasonic Teenage Warhead remains largely surly and monosyllablic throughout, but that’s the whole point – since, if you remember the first movie, she hates adult authority, is too cool for school and absolutely doesn’t want to succumb to Deadpool so-annoying dad-jokes (and her manga-cutesy Japanese girlfriend, who gets on so well with Deadpool, only adds to the tightly-wound interplay). No, the Japanese girlfriend isn’t a tacitly racist stereotype – because she is given telling lines at the end to make it clear that her ‘geekdom’ character was just that – all an act, and one that she used to her own benefit (even if it does play upon our own lazy thinking or cultural bias). There might be a stronger argument that the weedy Asian taxi-driving male character gets shorter shrift (when Deadpool quips that he’s ‘Brown Panther’), but I would argue just as strongly that he’s an aspect of the male identity debate (an aspect which is even more complex when competing cultural expectations are involved).

Another accusation of Deadpool 2 from the critics is that this movie is far less ‘meta’ than the first. It simply doesn’t break the fourth wall as interestingly as the first. There’s only one line from Deadpool like ‘big CGI fight coming up’ to keep things self-aware. Once again, the critics are talking nonsense. The whole point of the ham-fisted X-force team that Deadpool assembles (and promptly gets killed) is that they spoof the X-Men motif. There are geek references to the John Wick movie, lines like ‘that’s some lazy writing right there’, ‘he’s young enough to keep the franchise going for another ten years’, apologies from Ryan Renolds about how poor the Green Lantern movie was, intertextual mention of Thanos (Josh Brolin plays both Cable and Thanos) and a whole host of ‘Easter eggs’ that I just know I didn’t even spot. I am definitely inclined to watch again, as I know I’ll see so much more.

So where does that leave us? The easy assessment is that Deadpool 2 is a far better movie than you may have heard or read. And then there’s a tougher question about what the hell the critics are up to with their relatively poor reviews. I’m not sure I have all the answers to that. Clearly, you can’t trust the media critics to guide you properly. Media critics still don’t properly understand geek culture or current social debates concerning identity (debates that are significantly informed by the (often angry) voices of young people), it would seem. For me, Deadpool 2 is an 8.5 out of 10. Up your bum, critics!

 

The Alienist – a new gothic classic #alienist #netflix

The Alienist is set in the New York of 1896 – a Victorian, very Jack-the-Ripper sort of place. There has been a spate of child murders. The police are unable to make any progress in tracking down the killer… and some may actually be protecting him, as the suspicion is that he is the son of a powerful family. In desperation, the police commissioner (who is the historical character of Theodore Roosevelt) tasks his psychiatrist/alienist friend (Laszlo Kreizler) with assembling a team to find the killer.

Psychiatry is still in its early stages, as are the sciences of police forensics and profiling. Kreizler has to fight misconceptions, his own preconceptions and a corrupt society. All the while, the clock is ticking… and children are dying. He is frustrated and panicked by his inability to make immediate progress and lashes out at his companions, who are fighting their own demons. Indeed, it is the telling character interactions and growing self-awareness of his team (the feminist, the indolent dandy and the Jewish anatomists) which really make this compelling viewing (along with brilliant acting by the likes of Luke Evans, Daniel Bruhl, Dakota Fanning, and others). The series refuses to indulge in excessive exposition – instead, we pick up clues about the protagonists’ past lives and associations by how they react to their various situations. Each of them has a hang-up, each of them has their own moral code, each of them has skeletons in the closet. The audience is effectively one of the team in having to read the clues and make sense of the narrative. It’s utterly immersive.

And we are immersed in some very psychologically-dark deeds that would only make sense to a dreaming or otherwise altered mind – a mindscape, if you will. It’s the definition of the gothic. The show is gory, in a surrealist way. It is full of disjuncture, false starts, misgivings, bizarre clues and circularity. But it’s thrilling, exciting and daring.

If you can imagine a mix of Mindhunter and Penny Dreadful, then you know what’s in store. If you can imagine a mix of historical fact and fiction, of romance and horror, of depravity and tenderness, of revulsion and compulsion, and if that intrigues and inspires you, then you will enjoy this show immensely.

It’s right up my murky, dangerous alley, this series. I score it 9 out of 10.

Infinity War not a bore #InfinityWar

In the last dozen years or so, there have been 19 Marvel (MCU) movies. More than one a year on average. The pattern seems to be that the second movie in each mini-sequence is a dud – Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 very much spring to mind (although I really wish they didn’t). The good, of course, is that MCU movies have in the main been far far better than the DC superhero (DCU) movies. Thor Ragnarok (Thor 3) was undeniably entertaining and Black Pather was a triumph. There again, MCU movies are very formulaic, relying almost entirely on ‘male bantz’ (macho heroes boasting about their prowess – even Black Panther is ultimately phallocentric) and then a big special FX scrap. It really has to be asked, then: do we need a movie like Avengers Infinity War in which all the different mini-franchises collide and there are more superheroes than minutes in the movie’s actually running time (2hrs40mins!) ? Really? Isn’t it just going to be a horrendous mess without time for genuine characterisation?

Well, Infinity War just about pulls it off, to be honest. The trick, you see, is that the movie follows the baddie’s (Thanos’s) story rather than the story of any do-gooder. We get to understand the baddie’s rationale for his extreme actions and engage with him intellectually even if we cannot identify with his cosmic ambitions. We expect him to lose out ultimately, but that is not necessarily the case in this movie. He is a being of devastating power who actually brings proper jeopardy to the ‘good guys’. Indeed, a host of major heroes end up dead (not gonna spoil who, but it’s a bit shocking).

So, as the audience, we are caught between following Thanos’s quest (almost empathising with him as he makes terrible personal sacrifices) and rooting for the likes of the annoying Iron Man, the overly square Thor and the ridiculously immature Spiderman. At the end of the movie, the audience I was with sat in stunned silence – with no certainty about how to react to what they had just seen. They all hung on to see if there’d be an extra scene after the credits to make everything ‘feel better’. I ain’t gonna tell ya.

So how would I rate the movie? Well, I do rate it. Just not with a score. It’s a movie that is there on its own terms. Very much worth a look… but I’m a Marvel fanboy who knows a lot of the MCU mythos. If you’re not up-to-date, you might end up entirely bewildered by it all.

 

The Satanic in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Did you know that the word ‘satan’ appears 27 times in the Old Testament, but never as a name? It’s just a general noun in Hebrew. Satan does not appear as a character until 500 years later, when the New Testament was written, at a time when Christians were being persecuted by the Romans. Indeed, in the city of Pergamon (‘where Satan ha[d] his throne’), the Christian bishop was boiled in his own skin within a hollowed out metal statue of a bull. Yikes.

So, chapter 1 (of 4) of the new book now complete. Oof. Hard work, this shizzle. Gotta have it finished by Xmas. Still, chapter two will be quicker, cos I can borrow from ‘The Sub-Genres of British Fantasy Literature’, ain’t it. Shh. Don’t tell anyone.

In other news, I’ve applied for the position of Lecturer in Fantasy at Glasgow University. Who would have thought such a job existed? Onwards!

Another bite of the Santa Clarita Diet

The second season of this American comedy-horror show has just landed on Netflix. It’s another ten half-hour episodes: the tempo is just as helter-skelter, the plot is just as madcap and the jokes are just as rapid-fire as the first season. In this new season, our zombie-mum is still trying to keep her ‘condition’ a secret from friends and others, while still ‘procuring’ dead bodies to eat – this time round, Sheila (played excellently by Drew Barrymore) decides that it’s ethically okay to eat a group of local nazis (although she’s not so sure about the one in a wheelchair). As before, she is aided by her emotionally-wraught but loving husband (the inspired Timothy Olyphant – who knew he could do comedy too?) and her vaguely-disgusted but strangely-fascinated daughter.

Yet what’s so good about this show is that the second season isn’t just a retread of the first. It builds the characters even more, there are revelations aplenty and the ‘format’ is thrown all up in the air.

None of it is brainless (no pun intended) or throwaway stuff either. There is an abundance of social comment (often about the ironies, tragedies and hypocrisies of life in modern suburbia) and thought-provoking (while still hilarious) subversions of institutions like the police and religion.

This show has teeth… and legs. Most body parts in fact. Although they are sometimes put together differently from the norm. Like a zombie that’s had its limbs fall off and reattached imperfectly. It is scary, funny and very very dark. I love it. It’s a 9 out of 10 from me!

Jessica Jones, The Return!

As a massive fan of the first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones, I’d really been looking forward to the second season. JJ2 was always going to struggle to be as refreshingly adult and ground-breaking as JJ1, I knew that. What I hadn’t been prepared for, however, was just how far short JJ2 would fall of the high standards set by JJ1. The second season is disappointingly brattish and so, so tired.

There are a whole host of problems with JJ2. Where to begin? At the beginning, I guess. Okay, we are immediately hit with a lack of continuity, with plot inconsistencies and with massive plot holes. A nerdy and nervous superhero (called The Whizzer) comes to Jessica saying someone is trying to kill him. It’s not clear why anyone would want to kill him. He ends up dead anyway. Jessica tracks down someone who might be the killer (I won’t spoil it for you), but it’s never actually explained and the show promptly gives up on that entire plotline. Then a rival private detective turns up, accuses Jessica of stealing his clients (although we’ve just been told in the previous scene that Jessica has no proper clients to speak of) and tries to buy her out. She tells him to get lost and – apart from a later break-in – he pretty much does. Then Jessica’s side-kick Malcolm is emotionally blackmailed by Trish to ‘fall off the wagon’ and start taking drugs again – he does, freaks out, runs into the night saying he never wants to see her again – and then appears with her in the next episode as if nothing’s happened. It’s all really random, frustrating and, basically put, rubbish.

Unlike in JJ1, there’s no major baddie in JJ2. This means JJ2 lacks a consistent focus, is often aimless and is frequently pointless. There is a lack of true moral dilemma, a lack of mystery, a lack of consequences to actions and a complete lack of moral compass. Many episodes are simple soap operas, full of angst and whining. Where is the sass and humour of the first season? We eventually get some wit in a couple of later episodes because David Tennant turns up as the ghost of Kilgrave from season one. It was as if the writers of season two suddenly realised/accepted things just weren’t working and decided to reboot… except Jessica then declares to Kilgrave that she is stronger than him… and he promptly disappears (as if Tennant suddenly decided he was really needed on far better productions than this one). And that’s that. We return to the self-indulgent flip-flopping of Jessica’s dull origin story. Argggh!

Look, it could be that the writers of JJ2 were trying to do something brave with the traditional superhero format. In refusing to have a big threatening male as baddie, and in populating the show with strong female characters, perhaps they were trying to pull off something very advanced and experimental. Unfortunately, in devoting so much of their energy to this new style of things, they neglected to put enough into getting the basics right.  Like a basic plot. Like basic character development (rather than the repetition and restating of things we already know). There is a lot of posing and pouting attempted by Jessica, but without any decent dialogue or depth to things, she just looks like a sulky child. In one episode, she says, ‘When you have dreams, but they don’t come true, they become nightmares.’ Eh? Does that make sense? Not really, cos she’s simply having a car ride with her mum. And Trish’s constant tantrums make her seem like nothing more than a spoilt child. Sheesh. The whole thing is a mess from start to finish.

It’s such a shame. Such a wasted opportunity. And to think I’ll never get those thirteen hours back. A score out of 10? Probably a 5 is fair.