Reviews of Cartoons and Comics by Jacob Mattingly (32, he/him, bisexual). Reviews Use a lot of Language. Comissions avaliable via ask direct message or email patreon.com/popculturebuffet . email [email protected]
Supergirl 2026 Review: Truth, Justice and Immense Grief
Supergirl has become one of my faviorite comics characters, a beacon of hope who when given the time to becomes every bit the hero her cousin is... but also someone often tinged by loss. Clark has no memory of Krypton and can treat it with reverence, indiffrence or even fear depending on the version. For Kara, Argo City was her home: She lived there, grew up there, had friends, loved ones.. and had to watch them all die, sent away in the hopes she could at least protect her cousion or be found by someone like her. If that wasn't enoughs he's often buffted around by fate: She's been dumped in an orphanage by her cousin because he can't be bothered, had her heart broken numerous times from various schmmoes in this time to star crossed romances with boys from the future and under the sea down where it's wetter down where it's better take it from me, bounced from job to job trying to find herself, died, was reintroduced only to be targeted and brainwashed by darkseid, gaslit, has had one or both of her parents turn out alive oonly to betray her, been slandered by the media, and that's just her. Her replacements have dealt with being gaslit and domestic abused by lex luthor, a past with a satanic cult and being erased from existance. Supergirl is admirable because despite enough trauma to understandably break anyone let alone a superhero, she keeps going with kindness, empathy and steel. She won't suffer assholes, she will set boundries.. but she's utlimamtely defined no matter the version by a deep empathy, a drive to help.
So being a big fan I was excited for this one: Supergirl's last solo film was a bonkers delight , but I can't cal it a good movie or a good character, piece, just a coke fuled mess that's a joy to watch that ccaptures the pure unhinged wonder of the silver age for better and for worse.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Supermay, my annual celebration of all things superman!
And this year that extends to one of the best chara
Kara deserved a more modern movie to really examine her as a person. Who she is, what she can be. She hasnt hurt for rep with her own arrowverse show I need to check out, a fantastic outing in the DCAU that helped her return to comics, a solid more rowdy take in DC Superhero Girls and most recently being added to the main cast of the excellent My Adventures with Superman, going from an indocrinated child solider unknowingy bodyjacked by her AI Dad to kill entire planets, to a kind but proud warrior who protects the world while also wanting to pet the elephant in the roomm, win Jimmy Oleson in the pissing contest he started, and inspires others to be great. She's also a precious bean who I will protect at all costs. Just look at her.
She's the best.
Still even with that high bar it was long overdue for Kara to return to the big screen. The DCEU was a bit too
To build a superman family. They tried late in the game with flash adding her, but it was jammming her into a film thats the comic book movie version ofa mummy's curse. It was never going to work out and I genuinely feel for Sasha Allie for being promised a future only to have it ripped from her. Hope she gets another roll in the new DCU.
IN contrast Supergirl was one of James Gunn's first announced projects to the DCU and unlike the bulk of them had a fairly smooth time getting made and greenlit. This means a lot: the DCU has had a veil of secrecy around momst projeccts and after the big gods and monsters presentation has wisely opted out of announcing a project till it's ready to start pre production. There's been a TON of rumored projects some with confirmation: Wonder Woman, Teen Titans, Deathstroke and Bane, but only a selet few are in the pipeline and out of the presentation only Superman, Supergirl, Lanterns and Creature Commandos have made it to the finish line.
This isn't to say the DCU is a shit show, it's just more seletive, not wanting a film to be out till it's ready and greenlighting other projets like American Villany, a DCU version of Netflix's american crime starring Superman''s Pal Jimmy Oleson I cannot wait for or a recently announced Mr Terrific series, taking characters people already like from movies already out and spinning them off. It's a slow approach that probably hash some suits and real life Skeletor David Ellison nervous, but I prefer it. If something dosent work out it dosen't, but nothing gets shoved out the door. I'll say the MCU IS getting better.. but only because it's verys lowly starting to shake this need to HAVE to plan out every damn film in advance and HAVE to check this box. In contrast the DCU is both young enough and loosey goosey enough it can just adapt to what people liked or pivot if needed.
So it says a lot that not only has SUpergirl persisted but she's considered one of the four most important characters for the foundation of this universe, alongside the usual DC trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. James and Peter have THAT much faith in this character and it's faith not unwaranted and had that much faith this film got fastracked.
I'm happy to say that faith wasn't misplaced: Quality wise Supergirl is a fantastic film, not quite up to the bar superman set with a few wonkier pieces here and there, but still a tremndous character piece that has a unique and engaging take on the Woman of Steel that perfectly nails her, i'ts own unique spin on one of her best stories, and an impressive performance from Milly Alcock, whose easily won my respect both for her talent and for not giving a shit what incels think of her. The latter's just.. sadly necessary for any woman in a big nerd franchise these days, but stilll appreciated regardless.
It's also one of the more divsiive recent superhero films, with most other critics feeling at best meh about it and at worst a waste of their time, the only constant being that Alcock is a national treasure. I've gotten FAR too many articles waxing on the film being a finacial failure, how it's not likely going to make it's money back, what does this mean for the DCU
I haven't even been reading these articles and it's been exausting to see just about everyone dooming.. about the second film in a franchise. While things are a tad precarious given teh possible, and god willing stopped by the upcoming lawsuit, merger, it is not an instant loss if one film dosen't do well, especially in an era where a lot of films that tank in the box office get a second life on stremaing. They Will Kill You didn't get nearly the box office it deserve, a truly excellent action horror comedy, but topped the charts the second it streamed. I have faith mmore people might check out supergirl there and like Superman before it, the second wave will only help it's rep. While films DO need tot ry harder to make back their money, we live in a time where that can be done overtime or where making it back may not even be the point. Even if it sadly memans we DON'T get a second solo film for Kara this film is not the end.
So I was happy I made space and found a sponsor for this one, as Supergirl is a facinating film , being mostly excellent but having a few bumps that have me get why many are eh on it, yet still keen to point out why I love it so much. IT's a film with high highs, eh lows and Lobo hastily glued onto it. Full spoilers under the cut and if you enjoy this review please consider joining my patreon. Just one buck a month gets you access to all the patreon exclusives thus far, any future ones and my gratitude as times are very rough. Paying more is very mucha ppreciated but just one more buck a month would be really neat.
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Who Is Supergirl?
Supergirl as a charcter is this weird paradox; She's fairly reocgnizable as while not every version of superman's used her, most have: Superman the Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Smallville, Dc Superheroes Girls (Both of them), the Tommorowverse, several of the other dc animated original films, The Arrow Verse, Super Best Friends Forever, and Justice League Action. She hasn't gotten as many apperances as she deserves, but she's far from forgotten.
Yet despite this she's easily one of the most mailable: while her genuine heart is almost always there, how an adaptation can appraoch her can very willdly: She can be a naive but skilled warrior, a seasoned heroine who wants to make her mark on the world, a rowdy fight happy lass, a determined teen wanting to find her own way, whatever smallville did. It can vary a lot.
The comics have been even less consitent. At first her personality mostly was, a tad feister than her cousin but no less good with her initial status quo being superman what dumped her at an orphanage because he had to go marry Jimmy to an ape then fake marry Lois to batman. She eventually got adoptd by the danvers, found her groove and found her people becoming a member of Clark's old superhero team when he was a boy , the Legion of Superheroes, cool teens from the future, getting a cat, a horse that was in love with her, her own rogues.
Eventually though Kara was allowed to become a grown woman and exxperinced hero and had to suffer the constant weird status quo shifts a character goes through when they don't get a monthly book or backup for a while. As lampshaded in a backup story helping bridge her silver age history with her modern one from the recent Summer of Supergirl Special, a special well worth picking up with a main story about Supergirl taking care of Lobo's dog after getting him sentenced to much needed therapy whie Lobo's daughter goes on a date with a thiccc shark that happens to be supergirls friend after Kara freed her from a sea hag's curse. This run is the best and I love it dearly. Didn''t even get to mention it's very gay and Kara is in some very sapphic friendships with Lex Luthor's daughter and a former nemisis turned roomate/her ward. Now I have and your welcome.
Anyways the special points out via everyone's faviorite fuckboy of the 90's COner Kent and Superman's aged up son Jon just how much of a non sequinter her adult life was
DC struggled just a smidge to figure out what the hell to do with her, each new writer trying a new idea till DC flat out gave up on the character in the run up to Crisis on Inifinite Earth's, one of the first comic book crossovers and one of Kara's most famous moments... and her last
Yeah Crisis was also DC"s first reboot, and Supergirl was one of many things they were phasing out, deiding to let her go out in a tragic blaze of glory and a headband that I think is dope but apparently it's just me. Seriously I love that 80's as hell look. Needs to make a comeback.
After Crisis Kara's rich history was erased as was most of Superman's in favor of a more grounded reboot. The Reboot wasn't all bad, giving us Lois' history as an army brat that heped redefine her, fellow reporter and brief clark love intrest Kat Grant, bringing the Kent's back from the dead and letting them actively guide thier son and most importantly redefining Luthor from just a mad scienst to a buisness ghoul who used his genius to glorify himself and put his boots to the common man.
The reboot helped streamline superman.. but also ripped out a lot of the weird wonderful stuff that made him special, with Krypton reduced to a sterile craphole to make him more "american', whatever the xenophobic fuck that means, most of his foes made more grounded and his enitre extended hero family gone. No other Kryptonians were allowed and his rich history with the LEgion fo superheroes was fucked so horribly they eventually had to reboot them after ediotiral said nope to every attempt to streamline things.. and every attempt to bring Kara back somehow.
Instead a new supergirl who looked just like her was created Matrix. Matrix is a fantastic character and will be getting a new take on her in the current supergirl run, if an inherenlty weird one, a shapeshifting being from a pocket universe who came into ours, not understanding a lot and having had a relationship with her creator Lex Luthor, a goodie, that lead to our Lex, at the time pretending to be his own son after cloning himself a younger hairier austrlaian body to beat cancer, seducing her and gaslighting her. Luckily this tragic relationship did end in her beating the piss out of his degenerating clone body.
Matrix had a tone of potetial but it's clear DC had no idea what to do with her, never splashing her into any other teams or trying to really define her and eventually fusing her with Linda Danvers, a teen satanist who'd been through some stuff to try a new take on the character by my boy of boys Peter David, RIP. David's take is fucking weird and one I haven't read in full, with Linda eventualy getting fire wings and angelic powers. For some reason this never quite caught on.
So instead DC unfairly dumped Linda and brought back Kara.. as a cool teen, refitting her origin for the modern DCU. Her reinroduction, the Superman/Batman arcc supergirl is pretty damn good and a nice update of her original silver age origin. It was also sadly the last good story she got for a while as the writers on her solo.. had no idea what to do with her. Havne't read it but it involves evil clones, a lot of uncomfortable underage fanservice, and some domestic abuse. None of the runs for a whiel did anything and it took Mark Waid, who wrote the backup I mentioned before and about 15% of the dc universe as a whole, to fix her in the second Legion reboot, giving her a more defined, kind personality while keeping some fo the edge. Sterling Gates would follow this with a truly excellent run, one of Kara's best and unquesitonably the best till the recent run by Sophie Campbell, it's equal.
Redefined as a bastion of peace but one struggling to fit into this world Kara seemingly finally found herself again.. only for the new 52, dc's second and dumbest reboot, to happen making her angrier. I still want to read this run to give it a fair shot but it was far from a hit with fans, taking a full arc to have her get back to where Gates had her personality wise. Rebirth, dc's course corret for this nonsense, would have her closer to the tv show, but while a great run in my eyes, it didnt realy hit with anyone and once again DC spent a while struggling to figure out what to do with kara: She got possesed, went on a revenge quest, joined the superman family proper again, had beef with power girl, had a solo adventure.. but nothing really landed till Sophie Campbell's run started last year, bringing back a lot of her silver age shine while also reinveting a lot of her old rogues that had been lost time, specicially Lesla Larr who went from some random person who happened to look like Kara to a sad young woman whose parents were dicks from Kandor who tried to steel Kara's life and parents because they were objectively better and then tried a genuine heel face turn after Kara, despite having EVERY reason not to, agreed to take her in as her wardern and help rehabiltate her. Most of that wasn't really relevant, i'll cop to it, but the more of you who read this excellent series the better.
All this is to say DC has often had no idea what the fuck to do with Kara so who she is can change at the drop of a hat. It's stayed SOMEWHAT consitent, but you cacn never fully count on that. while some of that's just writers in comics never being agreed on anything, it's left her pretty open to interpritation.
It also meant it was easy to boil this down a bit for a mini series as Tom King did with the excellent basis for this film, Supergirl: Woman of Tommow, an 8 issue mini where Kara, drinking to forget her pain on her 21st birthday under a red sun, finds a child who just lost her father to the barberous and cruel Krem of the Yellow HIlls, and ends up trying to steer her from vengance. It's a beautifully drawn comic, Bilquis is amazing on the art, with vibrant colors that wonderfully gets the character and while Tom King can often be punchable as a writer.. this comic is objectively great and I can see why, with how jangly Kara's history is this comic that nicely sidesteps most of it and was so good it became canon, this was picked as the basis.
All this jangly canon also meant the DCU was free to make it's own Kara; take the best parts of the past, and make something fresh with it. Director Craig Gillspie and writer Ann Noguia craft a Kara who has the edge and snark of her early DCAU and second DC Superhero Girls versions, but still has the deep heart we expect of her. Yet they take the idea of a sassier Kara in a diffrent direcction than before: DCAU Kara was sassy because she's younger and Clark tried to prevent her from being a hero, projecting his need for normalcy onto her before accepting it, and DC Superhero Girls is just a straight up hellion, if delightfully so.
This Kara has a hint of that... but takes it in a far sadder direction using that Woman of Tommorow Blueprint. Instead of her being drunk at the start but still mosty fine, this is a Kara whose pain is obvious and is only drowned out by distraction: Music, booze, never going anywhere she'd have to stop and thinnk about what she's lost: how her entire city slowly died of radiation, her father sent her off as their last hope and how she found herself on a strange world with a well meaning DOrk who could never understand what she'd lost, who dosen't even speak Kryptonian, with only her fluffy hellacious goodboy to remind her of home. Clark tries , David Cornsweet continues to be one of the best superman ever and is as adorable and kind as ever... but he just can't understand and while given how weird this universe is there are defintely therapists who could help Kara with this issue, sepcially ins pace, she chooses to run. Shes on a constant not give a shit mode, ready to let loose and only seeming to genuinely enjoy herself in combat. Otherwise she's weary, surly and only doingn things because circumstances demand it and the alternative is a dead chid or dog.
This is a Kara that works well: She's not her usual optimitstic self.. but it's for good reason, for a ton of Trauma she can't let go of because letting go feels like truly acceting her parents, her world, and her past are gone instead of realizing that she needs to move on and build something new. She never has to forget.. but she can't live here forever. It makes sense narratively: while having her like Clark is fine in the comics, she's a tad snarkier but in momst of those upheaves above like him, with circusmtance being enough, it makes sense to do like the DCAU and My Adventures, make her an inhrent contrast. Kara has Clark's drive to do good and unlike his parents, who are still evil as this film confirms yes the message was real, Kara's genuinely rejected that facist eugenics bullshit and just wanted her to "Be good". To be a symbol.
What's most intresting and waht keeps this Kara is that despite her pain, grief and determination to stay out of shit.. she can't. She may want to just ignore the world.. but her heart is simply too good to. Kara may roll her eyes when retreiving a child's sword from a dickhead who stoe it, may be incredibly drunk.. but she still rightly kicks the man's ass because stealing a sword from a child who just lost everything is a dick move and letting him keep making that momve is just.. not right. In a cold universe where said child, Ruthye, watches her father, mother and brother all get murdered by the sadistic jackass that is Krem of the Yellow hills, he of the wacky facial expressions, weird bead things and absent personalit, she can't just let this kid loose more.
Ruthye, played to perfection by Eve Ridley, is a transparent mirror to Kara's own pain, a chid who badly wants to stab a grown man to death for vengance. And while Kara can't get revenge for her own planet as it's own people caused it's downfaul, she recognizes vengance wont' fill the void in this child's life. She'll complain about Rutheye being along, annoyed she has to taker or she'll die as Kara has to save Krypto after Krem shoots the best boy and her only friend giving our heroine only three days to get the antidote, but she does every time. She may be annoyed with her companion.. but it's only because deep down she knows it means she has to care.. and can't help caring. It's an old arc sure, the surly worn out hero gets saved by a child they meet, but it works fine here as you feel WHY Kara's so worn out.. yet despite this there's no change in having to care. Kara may try to act like she dosent... but the second she meets Rutheye she has a baby sister to protect. Krypto may be her main motive... but Rutheye is just as important. She will not let Rutheye become her.
Admitely the comic does do a little better on that, each stop showing by why Kara is so great and helping slowly chip away at the need for blood. The film just takes the barest bones of the comic and it's first chapter, and even then it switches it from a barbarian world with no space trave to one with a dingy cantina and bucnehs of aliens. I get why, it's way cooler to look at those changes aren't bad.
I also get why cahnge the narrative; The original bones are great.. but while it's one big story woman of tommorow is also fairy episodic. It makes sense to create a more dynamic hunt for Krem while keeping a few choice scenes: The first issue in almost it's entreity, just streamlined with Krem now being a brigand, space pirate asshole, from the start and Rutheye loosing her whole family, the space bus trip, and Rutheye caring for Kara. The story is vastly diffrent for better and worse.
The worse... is the colors. While the film isn't as brown as reported or feared, it's still fairly dingy and unpledsant compared to the vibrant, even in dark settings, poppy colors of the comic, a far more distinct and engaging look. It helped contrast the dark nature of the story and is something they badly shoudl've dkept. The fim dosent' look horrible.. it's not Snyder levels of disaturation, but it looks a tad more generic outside of the aliens, who largely disappear for human aliens with weird stuff on their head for act 2. I get it's trying to ground the story, but it instead just saps it of it's vibrance and visual identity for something i've seen a ot and found eh then.
The story itself isn't bad mostly relying on character focus; Kara slowly opens up just a little and Rutheye gets more and more frustrated wtih not getting ot Krem. They have a falling out as you'd expect.. but it's a gutting one that challenges things: Our dynamic duo end up on a planet where the brigands reguarlly kidnap children to make into brides. Yup this film decided to tackle sex trafficing and MOSTLY handles it well, but it defintely feels like it could've been cut out and replaced the child brides with generic prisoners. I mean.. Sex Trafficing is fucking horendous , but it feels kinda tacked on here, like we needed to make the bgrigands TRULY irredemible.. when we've already seen the main one slaughter a whole family AFTEr they already gave him what he asked for just because he could.
Still it leads to one of the best moments of the film: Kara so dtermined to save Ruthye from herself stops her from killing Krem.. but doing so leaves Krem free to ill a family they'd met including the recently freed child. All blood on Kara's hands. And while not letting Ruthye kill him WAS the right thing.. Kara still focused on that over tackling krem, doing both. She's so determined to save Ruthye,.. but can't save herself. It's only on a desdoate planet with a green sun alone the two reconcile, Rutheye realising Kar'as strength and Kara realizing Rutheye.. wasn't wrong, suting up and going to save her from herself.
The end of the revenge quest is better in the comic, a whole issue of Rutheye forced to spend time with Krem, a hrose blocking her from killing him and her decision not to kill him being entirely hers and how she's change.d Here it's compressed. After a big ole space battle featuring Lobo, more on him in a moment, and a needledrop i'll also get to, Rutheye has him and Kara gives a speech to talk her down. It's similar to what happened.. but has a tad less impact. I do get the change though: Kara opening up here carries more weight as she's TRIED not to... but here she's honest, wanting this child not to kill not because moral good.. but because she needs to live. Ruthye isn't incredibly fleshed out, shes' resourceful, she wants revenge, she dosen't get the narraition from the comic... but like the comic she's more a way to explore Kara as a person and in this case hep her momve on, help her accept her own grief to stop someone else from going down the same path.
Granted... Kara isn't soft and when Krem starts bragging about how he's going to go kill Rutheye and once she's sure her young ward isn't looking.. Kara stabs the shit out of him for what he's put this child through and so he wont do this shit to anyone else. While it is marred a bit by Lobo likely sporting 3/8's of an inch partial and going YEAH during it, it's a nice scene and dosen't feel hyprocitical or unearned. Kara was stopping a child from commiting a murder she coudln't live with and from becoming a worn out husk of a person from never truly greviing for what they've lost like she has.... but Krem was just gonna keep doing this otherwise.
It's been shown nicely all film that Kara isn't her cousin when it comes to superheroing: Kara only dons the uniform when necessary, to both inspire ruthye and to throw her enemies off. She's only happy in battle, being downright giddy every time, throwing out jokes and enjoying how much power she has. She revels in how outmatcched her enemies are.. but isn't stupid. When she spots Lobo she begs Ruthye not to talk to him then quickly improvises when ineveitbly the naive child dosen't listen. Kara knows when to not engage and when to strike, and when poisoned by the couple mentioned, trying to get their daughter back, she quickly finds milk and drinks it to oat her stomach. It's clear she HAS heroed more than just saving some cats in trees, as reported on, can handle herself.. it just dosen't mean she has to be stoic about it or in her cousins case goofy but compasionate. Clark holds back, tries to talk and won't punch until it's necessary. Kara... has no such issues: She isn't a brutal monster, but she will HURT her opponent... she just won't put them through walls or laser them to death because she's not a monster. SHes just not nice. And her opponents are grungier and in the last acct pedophiles which nicely makes it worse: these aren't foes to go easy on, so we don't care she dosen't, and it gives another subtle reason she likely prefers space to earth: ON earth Clark would give her an earful: here she can just cut loose get in bar fights and easily clear a group.
Kara in Combat is a joy to behold, mostly seen off screen or out of focus... but it really helps it feel like it's from Ruthye's view as we see just how screwed momst opponenets are. Krem is the only one genuinely on Kara's level.. and even he has to cheat with Kryptonite arrows. Lobo is.. but the two never fight on diffrent sides. At worst the main main is fully on board with a child getting a revenge murder and Kara isn't. We see Kara in danger plenty, but while it isn't to the extrmee degrees of the comicm, we see in awe just what a super person can do.. and it makes the facct she kills Krem unsuprising. The fact she only stabbed him could be mercy.. but it isn't. She's not sadistic enough to kill him fully nice and slow... but she's not going to give an opponenet mercy theyd on't deserve. Its great contrast.
By the end of her space Odessy Kara and her slightly less defined pal go to celebrate her birthday for a few days, Kara finally accepting other people in... and finally going to the closest thing she has to home, with Clark showing up the second she shows up at his planted. I like to think that Clark... genuinely kept an ear out for her returnning home and does so every time. It's why he wasn't at all suprised at her drunken pickup of Krypto last time. I mean it happens a lot clearly, she has a serious problem and Clark was probably one more drunken bender away from hosting a one superman interventino for her, but I think he genuinely worried about her as her big brother figure and her coming home meant for a second she's sake.. and you can tell in Corensweet's face he's holding back best he can.. but is so happy she's home. Less so Krypto, but it's so sweet seeing him hold back knowing the big hug and "good for you" he's probably wanting to say might spook her. Also that he prevents Krypto from eating choclate even though come on cark, the poision probably can't hurt him. He's a super dog. Then again he could eat a super amount of choclate.. fair point clark. Also not remotely suprised Clark keeps a bunch of choclate. It could be baking choclate but given he's a big kid he probably has a costco size bag of hershy's or something, what i'd have if I had decent money. Living the dream there clark living the dream.
Supergirl's arc.. is fantastic, nice and subtle but still good to follow. There's no big gotcha no big aha just someone slowly chipping away at their own cynisim and reaizling someone needing them.. may not be a bad thing. And that she needs to listen to herself and like Ruthye just.. live. Ruthye plans to make swords like her dad and Kara... plans to try and be a better cousin, a better friend.. and maybe just hang around a bit. Find her people
The Main Man
So starting the rest of the film with one of it's most advertised, hyped up aspects; Jason Mamoa, who becamem a movie super star off the DCEU and making Aquaman as badass as he deserved gladly double dips and enters this univverse as the main man, a part he's wanted to play for years, lobbied for and said he'd be up for the second the unvierse rebooted. It's no suprised he showed up this fast and even less he's great at it.
For those less familiar with my faviorite rock n roll party cowboy, Lobo was originally a pretty generic bounty hunter, who was retooled into a leather jacket wearing, cigar chomping boisterous bruiser, liable to hit on any lady and take on any job no matter how greasy as long as he gets paid. As the 90's dawned his creator saw an opportunity to take the piss out of 90's anti heroes and Lobo became a bonafied star, a hit with both fans tired of this bullshit delighting in the piss take and genuine fans of this sort of thing not getting the joke. Lobo became such a staple in the DCU he joined superman the animated series for a two parter, with Brad Garret owning the role and being how I met the Main Man. His justice league return was even funnier; With superman presumed dead he just kinda... crowbars his way into the justice league and they don't know how to make him leave. He's great.
Mamoa perfectly nails him: While the first scene is a tad awkward playing him up, his second with Ruthye is hilarous, with him not wanting the child to die.. because he's trying to nap and annoyed she won't let him sleep, but genuinely agreeing to help when he finds her revenge vow awesome and calling her a little shit when she escapes without him while stil somehow genuinely proud. The DCU nails lobo and I hope Mamoa gets that R Rated Solo Fiml he wants. Unlike Disney I do think the DCU could float an r rated blockbuster without getting squemish and taking several years. ITs how we got here with the Suicide Squad.
While I do wnat that spinoff... I question why they didn't wait till man of tommorow. I get it a little; Jason Mamoa's a big name, Milly Alcock isn't yet, they wanted someone marketable to splash in there to promote... but Lobo just.. does not fit this film. He works at first as the first half's a bit more spacey, star warsy and fun despite the dark family murder... but as the film goes on the weight of everything sets in, the stakes increase as child slaves need liberating and revenge is in sight. So plopping in a space biker who blew up his own home planet for a school science project and is riding around on a bike blowing up pedophiles, while fun, takes you out of it. And it bears repearting; we did not need him going YEAH YEAH with his face while Kara murders the main villian of the film.
I like Lobo as a character. He's always a good time. I want to see him more and see Superman have to deal with this prick. But he did not need to be in this film. If their confident enough to just launch a clayface film out of the blue, I dont' understand why a lobo film in a univverse with creature commandos and peacemaker was such a tall ask that he needed to be crowbared into another film or couldn't wait one year for a superman sequel. I know Man of Tommorow wasn't in prodcuction yet, but he just fits so much better with Superman which can get serious but is weird enough. Supergirl just.. wasn't.
Other Stuff:
So.. Krem of the Yellow Hills sucks ass as a villian. While I can forgive most changes from the comic , they somehow drop the ball on a really easy concept: Krem is just a bad person, simple as that. No complexity, no reason why he's just a dickish barbarian who likes hurting people.
The problem really speaks to the films bigger issues; the tone. The film tries to do what James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Trilogy did, ballance some wacky stuff with some really dark themes. The proble is Guardians knew when to cut the schtick for the most part. I mean we didn't need the whole scene of Drax gagging at teh idea of mantis being into him. But when we're getting the depths of Ego's depravity or the High Evolutionary's "perfection", the true monsterosity on display... there's no bits. Here.. they again kinda just throw lobo in there and their pedophile famimly murdering villian mugging for the camera.
Supergirl never really meshes being both a dark gritty space adventure about revenge with being a lighter one also about revenge but with wacky set pieces. It tries to do both but really just cuts itself in half. Neither half is bad, the road trippy first half is full of great set pieces and cool alien designs and the second has some excellent character work and action, but it dosen't feel ike a choesive film at times. It's enjoyable and has enough of an emotoinla core to be good in my eyes, it has a great arc and Alcock is amazing.. but I can see why some hated this. This film is good.. but it's far messier than superman, which while messy was more intetional with it. It was a fun overstuffed burito. This is more an overcooked steak: still delicous but you can tell wehre the potetial was.
Supergirl.. is a fun film and one I genuinely love. Alcock is amazing, Ridley is incredible and deserves more praise and amoa is fun if out of place. The fight scenes are a wonderful spectacle and yes that includes that the Middle Needle Drop. The Lyrics perfectly synch up with Kara and Ruthye's arcs, it's goofy enough to fit the fim but slowed down enough to work. Ya'll are over reacting to it. If you can't embrace it , that's fine but don't pretend this is the dumbest musical moment in a film or that superhero films haven't been so much worse.
Supergirl is a decent time.. but really coudlv'e been so much more. It needed more time in the oven and more faith from the studio as you can feel unlike superman where they tried toa dd in momre marketable fun stuff. Gillspie makes it mostly work... but if this isn't your thing I get it. As someone who loves this character and is happy to see such a unique version that still nails her compassion down perfect... I enjoyed the hell out of it. It's a messy , fun momvie like the 80's one, but not nearly as much of a trainwreck.
From here i'd love to see a sequel.. but fialing that i'd love to see a Titans or Legion movie with kara. More the latter, the Legion fo Superheroes, a bunch of space teens and 20 somethings from the future, is a great franchise.. but I get James Gunn isn't a huge fan of time travel stuff, so odds are if it does happen theyll be in the present.. but I could live with that both to let them interact with this uninverse more, and to let us get bouncing boy or matter eater lad in live action. MEL ate a whole dennys once , he has some shit to explain to both the rest of the legion and Peacemaker. But given Kara's never had a fair shot with the titans in the comics, i'd be just as fine seeing her join an older version fo the team along the lines of the new teen titans, play with the roster a bit. Gunn's already throughly proved you don't need tog o 1:1 with a team's roster to get the spirit down multiple times.
Wherever she goes after man of tommorow, I genuinely hope Kara's story continues, that she gets to heal and Alcock continues to shine. Pesimstic as they were those other reviews had a point: She really is the glue for this flim and James was absotluely right to maek her one of the most important parts of this franchise. Let's just hope it stays and that Kara's next major advneture is a bit more coherent but no less kick ass. Thanks for reading.
Twin High Maintence Machines: A Helluva Boss Stolitz Retrospective And Belated Pride Special Part 1
Hello all you happy people and welcome to Twin High Matntence Machines, my look at one of the best and sloppiest queer couples in animation and one of it's most visable.
For as gay as animation, like any form of represintation it isn't immune to blind spots : We haven't got a ton of ace rep (Todd Chavez being the major exception), Trans rep tends to be kept to supporting (Barney Guttman being the Major Exception though Sorry about the Mess looks promising), and in the case of today when it comes to men loving men , they haven't really gotten a ton of focus. There have been fantastic gay male couples in animation: Ham and Crispin, Gus and Wally, Marshall Lee and Gary, but while all these get decent screentime it's rare they get to be the defacto main character. Marshall Lee and Gary are some of the rare exceptions of gettin ga generous amount of development and focus.. but there's really only one couple I know of that are the stars of their story, one couple that thorugh thier toxic boning provides the backbone for their series. You can see them making out in the image, you know who we're here for, let's talk about the boys.
Despite being a huge helluva boss fan, until I got the comission for this retrospective I never realized just how unique and important this pairting was, how no other major animated series had put the love story of two men at it's center the way modern classics like Owl House and She Ra had for women. I liked the story enough.
LIke those stories it also sidesteps portraying either man as perfect, letting both be the hot messes they are: Blitz is inhernetly selfish, pushes away anyone who cares about him before they can hurt him, kills for a living, harasses his employees and is transparently using Stolas. At the same time while more sympathetic due to his awful loveless marriage he had no say in, Stolas still choose to cheat on his wife in the messiest way possible, neglects his beloved daughter to the point he barely knows her by the start of the series, and takes no real steps to actually empathize with Blitz, wanting a romantic relationship but not really communicating that BLitz iz more than a play thing. Neither man at the start of the series is remotely ready for this, yet both plunge in head first because they need it: Blitz needs the grimoire to create a decent job for himself and his newfound work family, Stolas badly needs an escape from his guilded cage. It's the story of two people who used each other till it got all complciated and neither can commuincate for shit so it's only going to get worse before it gets better and even better leaves Stolas powerless, alone and hated by his daughter.
But we have a ways to go to get there, so for part one we're looking at season one, and all the growing pains the series had in going from Stolas being the main villian to everyone's faviorite messy twink and slowly realizing these two douchebags were very much the heart of the show
The Pilot:
Before we can dive into the full canon version of the relatoinship.. we have to talk about what we all saw first: the pilot.
The Helluva Boss Pilot is still deeply entertaining having a ton of quotable lines ("WHy ar eyou in our fridge?!" "Are you FUCKING filming us?!" "Sorry it was spiders" "Sorry I fucked your husband" and "You What") and a fantasticly dark punchline to the episode. As a pilot it does a solid job seling the basics of the series: A group of enterprising imps (and one hellhound) in hell consiting of needy attention starved extra horned up asshole Blitzo (the o is slient and shall remain tha tway for the rest of the review since umlauts are hard), approval desperate yet haughty Moxxie, his bloodthirsty wife Miliie and Blitz adopted 20 something daughter Loona who coudl give less of a shit about anything running an assaination buisness, targeting humans on earth for the sinners trapped in hell with the help of Stolas, a royal from hell Blitz iz dicking down in exchange for his fucking heavy book to get up there.
The basics are in tact, it's hella funny, the series got greenlit for good reason.. but it also changed a bit between pilot and series: Vivian Nixon took over for Erica Lindbeck as Millie, the humor kept it's wacky over the top energy but became more grounded in character stories, both changes for the better that helped define it.
The biggun though was stolas. The original Stolas, Brock Baker, was replaced by Bryce Pinkham and in the process the character shifted entirely from what he was in the pilot.
Baker's Stolas is out and predatory with Blitz, his sexual demands of his impish plaything being far more agressive and far more dominant and his requests of Blitz being far more sinister, wanting IMP to kill a climate change activist to keep climate change going so he dosen't get so lonely. He sounds sinister, a villian who uses our heroes for his own ends and uses Blitz in ways we'd rather shit off a freeway than comptemplate.
It's easy to see why this Pilot was later declared canon and why it left a bad taste in fans mouth that didn't quite wash out for some time, as it was hard to forget Stolas was this and not everyone closely pays attention to what's canon or not. THe pilot being made non canon... was simply necessary was both Stolas and Loona, whose way angrier and more hostile versus her passive agression in the proper series, were assholes and making the pilot non canon makes them just the right amount intended by the series.. but when you have so little material to start it's easy to see why fans didn't let that shit go right away.
The story easily could've gone that way but didn't as Vivian has admitted she let co writer brandon rogers pick if both Stolas and Blitz' relationship would be played less for comedy and if Stolas would be more sympathetic or the big bad... with him wisely choosing to go a bit deepre and make him less evil respectively. Yet for years with teh pilot as pretty much the best way to start the series, Murder Family isn't all bad but it's a rougher episode, this left fans starting with a version of one of the main cast that didn't remotely match what he'd become.
So unlike Hazbin, where the pilot voices aside still serves as a perfect starting point, they decided to do something drastic: Replace it
Mission Zero:
The more I think about Mission Zero the more I realize just what it had to took: you needed the budget for a full episode, to take time out of making season 3 and the shorts to make said full episode, and to release it and hope people were cool with finally defintevely replacing the pilot in canon. This was going out on a limb to do something I don't think any show HAS done. Many a show remade their pilots but few do so mid series and mid hiatus. Yet I get why wait till now: Before they didn't have the time or budget.
You have to remember despite this show's now white hot popularity and amazon pickup... making an indie cartoon is fucking hard. Most other creators get maybe one episode or pilot made then have to hope they get enough for a few more and that once the shows out the Merch Sales are good enough to fund more. Even GLITCH which has mroe than proven itsel fas THE biggest company in indie animation still has to make sure a show's merch sales are strong enough and views hold enough to greenlight a series no matter how instantly popular the pilot is. Amazing Digital Circus, Gaslight District and Knights of Guinivere were all huge hits on launch, but all still had to wait and Gameoverse, despite being a huge breakout this year, is STILL waiting a month later. Indies are great, they allow more freedom and have helped animation florish in one of it's darkest times and AMDC's big theatrical win opens the door for bigger money sources to come knocking to indies while letting the creators keep the rights in case they get fucked over instead of the fuckery we have now of
Being many a CEO's mantra. Indies are a net good but it is a hard space to break into and a harder place to stay in. So most indies have to have the pilot be the first episode, as you just cannot afford to spend an episode hoping for a pilot. It's why some shows are even just flat out doing animatics first instead: to get a foot in the door.
So my guess is part of why this happened was finally truly having security: by the time season 2 ended Hazbin had been picked up, the shorts were there as a buffer. Even if the Amazon Deal didn't work out, and I suspect it was on the table just waiting for the many layers of corprate to confirm Hazbin was profitable, there was space to do this and with Hazbin bringing in a new audience once again, it was time to clean things up. Viv had security , a very rare thing in animation at all these days and the rare opportunity why not take it. It would also have the bonus that probably wasn't intended at the time but certainly worked out of being a fresh episode for Amazon during the hiatus. When Amazon reran the show last year, it could still launch with a brand NEW episode that still served a purpose while giving Spindlehorse time to finish season 3 this time and release it weekly instead of months apart, making the giant space between episodes no longer an issue. There'd be a gap between seasons, sure, but all other shows already had that. It's a win win.
Mission Zero is the intro the series needed as from the start it sets up something the series proper just kinda ..vaugely hints at in season one and only gets into in season 2: the sucky position of imps in hell , how their the bottom of the pecking order far behind popos stool. Their lower middle class if their lucky.
The problem is the series only really gets into class differences on really big scales: Stolas is rich , Ozzie and Bee are deadly sins. When it comes to class divides in relationships it's such a big swing we assume it's just goetias and sins then everyone else. There's no real friction between succubi, fish people or others and the only clear divide is that hellhounds are bellow imps.
I'm not saying the whole series needs to be a treatise on class inequality but it just needed a few more hints at how hard it is for imps to build their own businesses. We're just told it's rare.
MZ helps with that but has to point blank laynit out. The series needs to genuinely try harder at world building. I get its charcter focused but just saying imps face descrimination dosent solve things. It clarifies things but you don't need blitz or Satan himself to say it.
While it can only do so much to fix the series issues there it is a far smoother intro: IMP tries to plan out their first assassination, firmly establishing how new the group is and how half assed they are at anything that isn't the actual killing part: blitz wants to charge in and be all badass neglecting self or worries about being caught , Millie just wants to kill em all and let Satan sort it out and maybe get a catchphrase despite blitz's protests and Moxxie prefers the boring but practical method if sniping then which is the correct one for the job.. just not the crew he has. Loona suggesting to just wing that mother
Ultimately winning. Along the way theirs leer pressure to kill children , pasgetti, pda and of course blitz telling everyone not to curse when as Moxxie points out his daughter is 22 and the f word is half his vocab. It gets across everything necessary: blitz is kind of a mess, clingy to his daughter and employees and also films his employees having sex though this time it's in public so it's a step down from ARE YOU FUCKING FILMING US dialing back the staking and dialing back loona to just being passive aggressive.
The biggest switch is stolas...charcter wise , he's a bottom 4 life. With the series knowing what he's doing we now meet him as he is: a love starved royal whose blind to both the reality of his one night stand with blitz and the massive power imballance. When blitz realizes stolas knows he took his fucking heavy book his reaction is to prepare to run. Stolas..just thinks it's a very horny game and can't understand why aggressively asking to fuck on a work day us an inconvenience and has fuck me blitzy baloons set up before blitz can understandably hang up..
So Stolas assumes okay I'll just come over for some afternoon delight. It better sets up his nature: that he doesn't really think about blitzes wants or needs and just assume blitz fucks him and wants to hold onto the grimoire out of genuine interest. He doesn't get a) this book is the only way blitz can be free financially and b) even consider this is a transaction fucking. The latter is on blitz to a degree who blurs lines for his own benefit and plays into stolas delusions but these two don't really know how to talk. But damn they know how to fucckkk which gets blitz his book but traps him in arrangement he hates. It helps set up the relationship as two people who want opposite things but neither is honest blitz out of fear and stolas because he's that naive believing romcoms are real and thus blitz will love him the same way eventually right? Right ?. It's a messy as fuck situation that tilted the sympathy towards blitz but this helps tilt it more evenly going into the rest of season 1.
Murder Family:
Murder Family certainly tried to establish the relationship but while I don't feel the stolitz scene here is bad it wasn't a great way to restablish it as it's very easy to misinterpret it.
Stolas is having some tubby time and sitting in blitz saying he needs the grimoire back after blitz borrowed/stole it. So wanting an excuse to see his sidepiece again makes an arrangement: once a month stolas gets the grimoire back to do his job and blitz fucks his lights out. Blitz is being shot so he hastily agrees. This sets the relationship up as a more permanent thing and does nicely show stolas obliviousness. Not able to see the full situation he dosent register blitz is in danger, putting him on a massive pedestal and never once thinking shit he's in danger. It's heavily implied by truth seekers he scrys/stalks blitz regularly but we see his view is limited. He gets turned on by the danger but never fully grasps blitz is in any.
Now is staking blitz okay? No. But many took this as Stolas taking advantage when really he's just an idiot
He doesn't grasp how creepy his actions come off in contrast to blitz who does he just doesn't care and is trying to push you away. It doesn't make his actions fine the series is clear on that, but it keeps him sympathetic. Stolas has never been in real danger in his whole life. He can't understand he's putting blitz in it or the concept of a bad time to ask. He's been surrounded by either servants, asshole royals or his daughter he dosent know how to relate and blitz is both too scared of loosing his company and took convinced stolas is a selfish prick to actually set boundaries. And this gets fully codified with the series best episode and it's first real masterpiece
Loo Loo Land
Loo Loo Land is where both the series and stolitz really snap into focus making it clear this is less about the job and more of a charcter focused series while still looping in IMP..
It also thoroughly defines Stolas after a pilot where he's not the same charcter and a transitional first episode. Loo Loo Land defines him as a person.
Stolas loves and loves hard. When his baby child baby has a nightmare, he sings her a whole musical number while showing her the end of a moon all assuring her shell be okay and is loved. Octavia is one of only two people in Stolas very sad lonely life he loves. Hes a gay man stuck with a screeching bully for a wife.. but he suffers it out for his baby girl baby.
The problem is while Stolas loves hard his love is selfish.. he adores Blitz and Octavia but dosent engage with them as people. He sees blitz as his knight, his roughish imp, his escape from his life and Octavia as his small baby and the only other good thing in it. He doesn't engage either on their interests or lives. With blitz he thinks sex is as good as talking so he's fine and with Octavia he's desperate to shield her from the truth. He prefers the two as fantasies on his pedestal because his reality is so miserable..
Stolas doesn't ...talk about his issues he internalizes. He drowned his awful marriage with booze and pills and fucking blitz is just another escape. You can't blame him for the marriage, that's jafars fault .but you can blame him for choosing numb complacency then avoidance. Octavia is almost an adult. He's had a few years to get the divorce but even after sorryifuckedyourhusbandgate, the one gag that made it to mission zero, he's still here.
He can say it's for his daughter...but the crumbling marriage is hurting her more than an earlier divorce would. Octavia , my adopted precious emo child, wakes up to her mom screaming about her dad's affair and given it had to have started at least a week ago, long enough for two missions and an I'll advised billboard, she's been doing this EVERY DAMN DAY screaming, breaking shit and not even noticing her daughter exists.
Many fans thought the show was trying to woobify Stolas with his backstory, demonize Stella...but really she was always horrible. The series does fumble the bag with her another way well get to next time but she's introduced tossing her servant around like a prop , emphasizing the imp part and calling Stolas getting a hotel plebian. She's established as a shrill classist bully who rather than just leave Stolas ass would prefer to scream every day. She was never good and never intended as such and unlike Stolas her intro makes that VERY clear..
So Stolas decides to run, to escape into the past by taking Octavia to loo loo land, a tacky rundown ripoff theme park in greed. What's telling is she says she's not interested, she's very clear about it ...and he just ignores it. Stolas is so used to blocking things out he tunes out his own daughter in favor of a version of her that no longer exists.
Now this would be bad enough ...but then he decides to throw Blitz in the middle of this. Stolas wants to have his cake and fuck it too and somehow, somehow sees this as remotely okay and not waving his affairbin his child's face. Then he does exactly that calling blitz the only man who can fuck me and my big dicked blitzy in rapid succession to a predictable and glorious response
He then just ignores that and offers to pay blitz. Pay him what? MONEYYY sonits enough for Blitz to ignore the red flags. His announcement after perfectly sums up imo. Blitz and Millie's exuberance, moxxies confusion and loona asking them to shut the fuck up.
So Stolas takes his daughter, his transactional fuck buddy, and his fuckbuddys two employees and it goes horribly on both ends. Blitz understandably wants professional distance , Octavia wants to leave and Stolas wants to flirt with what he thinks is his boyfriend and spend a family day with his daughter. No one is happy and it's all because rather than talk Stolas chooses action. Instead of actually introducing blitz to his daughter he tries to hang with both and force a memory.
The funniest thing to me in all this is that blitz and Octavia...are fairly similar. I mean blitz is hypersexual and Octavia ace but personality wise their both tempremental, push people away and hate fizz for very different reasons. Blitz is genuinely sweet to her the one time they interact and treats her like his own. Had Stolas just waited this might if gone ..okay.
Instead Octavia runs off in tears and blitz torches the entire park trying to reinact happy Gilmore.
The ensuing talk is heartbreaking: Barret does a really fantastic job selling how scared sad Octavia is that underneath the grimace and snark...is a scared child worried her dad will leave her for his dickhead boyfriend. She's terrified he'll leave when he dosent want to....he just wants to leave her mom but can't find the words. And for now their okay m..for the first time Stolas asks what someone else wants...what Octavia wants and while baffled by her love of taxidermy is willing to try. So for now their good....for ...now. sorry I'm tearing up next one please
The Harvest Moon Festival
Harvest Moon festival is an important step for these two as it hammers in just how little Stolas realizes their is a power imbalance. To him teasing about blitz' job being on hold while Stolas does his harvest moon duties,mcing a festival in Wrath and cursing the harvest and inviting blitz to visit so he can shamelessly flirt with him, it comes off to blitz as several days of pay lost and having to beat off a thirsty owl with a stick. Joke's on him, Stolas is into that shit.
Harvest Moon fleshes out how blitz feels about the arrangement. We knew he was uncomfortable, he was never happy dealing with Stolas but Blitz is, how do I put this.... A dick. An asshole. A selfish prick. Abrasive as a box of porcupines. Self destructive as an Ultimate Warrior. Like a coked up chiuaha with daddy issues. He's not pleasant you see.
On first watch I wrote off his treatment of stolas as just... How Blitz generally treats people who aren't Loona or a Horse. The man's very first still likely very canon apperance was checking out the princess of hell's ass on live TV, his first non canon apperance was blaming Moxxie for their finacial issues just cause... I could go on but this man is just a casual shit head to anyone he doesn't see as a child in his care, it's easy to write it off as just a normal day.
The Harvest Moon helps flesh that shit out by showing this really bothers him. It shows in the normal ways of course: Stolas calling him Blitzy in public gets a very irate "Say my fucking name" and Millie describing Stolas to her parents as "My boss' BOYYYYFRRRRIIIIIEND" has him ready to hit her in front of her daddy. Half jokingly but given how he rarely targets Millie with his bullshit, it stands out.
It's Striker that tears things wide open: With someone he's actually trying to impress and mildly crushing on.. Blitz stammers to explain ,embarrassed that his business relies on a transactional fucking and only recovering when Striker plays to his ego, framing it how Blitz WANTS to see it:as a manipulation and not as something he's trapped in. It's the first time the mask he puts up for well.... Everyone slips on this issue. It's no wonder he's immdietly trying hard to impress striker: the man is a sexy cowboy with a horse who validates him without remotely judging his bullshit or going way too far with it.
What's neat is that while Striker IS deceiving Blitz he does clearly respect him. His reaction to getting caught trying to put a bullet in where the money comes from is to offer blitz a more exciting life burning it all down. I do think Striker genuinely respects Blitz... But he doesn't understand him. He sees Moxxie and Millie as weak and disposable and working for Stella as a means to an end.
Where Striker fucked up... was not UNDERSTANDING blitz. For all Striker's kill your masters rhetoric, for all he's correct about Blitz being insecure about stolas, for all he blusters about moxxie being weak... He's made no less concessions than blitz with far less of an actual plan. Striker is selfish, only carring about himself and lashing out at other imps more than his actual opressors and targeting one of the most harmless Goetia he could possibly pick. Granted Stolas is still no pushover, we get proof of that next episode,but he's still not really a threat to anyone or opressing anyone on puprpose. He talks about killing overlords... but doesn't take a contract for them despite The Vees alone being a net loss for hell. Striker is a coward who uses this rhetoric as a shield for being the same kind of contract killer hell has dozens of and being one of far too many imps having to work for someone else.
For all his carnival of flaws, Blitz actually... Does shit. Sure he fucked stolas and continues to for the book... But he uses that to help others. He gave two other imps a better job, started a buisness for them, adopted a child who needed him. Blitz is working to improve imps station. It's slow and rickety...but it's actually something. And in turn he's not alone.Moxxie backs him up and together they almost beat striker. Blitz has a lot of underlying issues...but at least he has integrity. Speaking of underlying issues.
Truth Seekers
Truth Seekers dives deep into Blitz' insecurties to give us a better picture of why he's like this, and of course he's only forced to face this with the magic of drugs. Usually the people around him either don't care enough to ask (Loona), enable him within reason (Millie), poke at him till he gets defensive (Moxxie), antagonize him enough despite having legit beef to cross a line (Verosika), or are just plain assholes (2/3 of CHERUBS). Stolas of course is too wrapped up in his own shit so no one realy.. thinks that Blitz iz more than just a dickhead.
And while he is indeed a dickhead he's a very.. sad .. insecure one. He pushes people away because he assumes sooner or later they'll leave him like everyone has and by pushing them till they get upset, he's proving their point. That he hates himsemlf so much and considers himself so inhrently gross and unloveable he decides to manifest it. It takes him from someone trying to be a loveable scamp and failing.. to someone who just badly wants to be loved but simuletainously thinks he dosen't deserve it. Who despite always getting compative with anyone he's wronged.. gets deep down he has and will never stop beating himself up over it. It dosen't make up for his behavior, it explains it. Helps make him a very sad but far more fleshed out person. We also seee how he feels about Stolas above but we've been over all that and why that is. The truly revealing part is some small part of him despite understandably feeling trapped.. wants Stolas. He just can't admit it because he understandably fears it means nothing to Stolas and he has too much to loose. He wont' risk getting hurt on a good day.
Blitz does take his first of MANY steps to being better as a person. While Moxxie after his own drug trip to reveal his insecurties and why he gets it up the butt, lucky boy, Moxxie is honest about just wanting a little more praise, while BLitz admit he's fucking bad at it but respects Moxxie. While he usually takes being called Sir easily the "You know my name fucking use it".. feels like the biggest bone he could throw. How he GENUINELY wants Moxxie as a friend. He even crashes out over the fact Moxxie is ALWAYS with Millie and won't make time for him which.. fair. Blitz shouldn't stock them, but the couple don't have to do EVERY single thing together.
The end does give us the most positive interaction Stolitz has ever had as Stolas rescues Blitz and while he gets genuinely angry with him for the first time, and understandbly for making a shit show of stealth and getting noticed so much the goverment is after them, it leads to some mild flirting. It's sexual as usual, but maybe it's a sign things are about to get better.
Things Sure Do Get So Much Worse
Ozzie's is a gut punch to end all gut punches. The drama bomb at the end of the fuse thats been going all season. Till this article, and having to write this section twice because Tumblr ate my ending, I didn't realize just how perfectly we're set up for this: We slowly go from Blitz sleeping with Stolas being a bit... to seeing just how much this isn't working for him and wondering does Stolas actually care. With the power of HINNNNDSIIIIGHHHT... yup a whole bunch, but like Blitz the audience ccouldn't really know that. There were hints in the character instagram, a nice thing we aren't allowed to have due to a combination of some asshole spamming the Octavia account with porn of her, a minor, and the sheer work it likely took for the crew to draw up new posts, but it dosen't seem like enough to fully nullify things and show wise it does a good job making it ambigious: does Stolas care or does he just want that tounge in his holes. We have this episode and a whole ass season to go yep now, but props to the show for making it ambigious.
So long story short Blitz, not having ever met a boundry he coudln't fuck with, decides to crash Moxxie and Milie's anniversary date despite Moxxie, now having learned to set boundries FIRMLY telling him he's not invited and please, please don't stalk us. He says suggestion noted and stalks them to swanky sex club Ozzie's and gets thrown in the garabge as it took Moxxxie MONTHS of planning in advance to pull this off and Blitz is an inherently bad listener who just heard BLAH BLAH BLAH I'M NOT INVITED BLAH BLAH BLAH OKAY THAT'S WHERE TO STALK THEM TO BLAH BLAH THEY'LL BE AT THE RING STATION BLAH BLAH WAIT TILL THEY SHOW UP BLAH BLAH STALKITY STALK.
So Blitz decideds to drag Stolas into his bullshit and ask him on "a daaatttttteeee"... and dosen't remotely realize how much this means to Stolas who like Blitz has nothing else going on and is drwoning his sorrows in cereal and tellnovela. "That's a mood Gabriella" might be Bryce's best delivery show wide. Stella took Octavia just to hurt him, he has nothing, and suddenly OH SHIT MMY CRUSH IS ASKING ME ON A REAL DATE.
It's a clusterfuck of awkward as blitz can hardly be assed to care while Stolas is doing nothing but, genuinely excited by the setting in part due to mistaking sex for romance and in part because it's likely the first date he's ever been on. He can actually try and be romantic.. but is too nervous to really try beyond dressing up a bunch and Blitz is checked out.. till both get a reality check as Blitz realises the MC is his one who got away who very much wants to sue his ass for destruction of property and the clubs owner.. is Asmodeus.
I talked about these two loveable hypocrites a previous pride, and while they start bullying MOxxie for singing a love song, like Blitz making their underlying issues the poor imps problem, their happy to change targets. Couples gotta have hobbies and theirs is roasting people in the audience. Though weirdly not the guy with like.. 6 Fizz sex dolls.
So when Blitz tries to well meaningly save MOxxie from the consequences of his own actions, he makes himsemlf a target, Fizzy calling im a looser and verosika calling him selfish in bed... which I genuienly thought for the longest time was just her bullshitting but "Moxxie i'm a top" proves no... he really is that bad Stolas just dosen't know any better. And no i'm a top isn't an excuse Blitz, Millie is clearly also good at things. Your just a dick. Though props to Verosika for making even a song telling her ex he sucked in bed fucking hot.
What's damming though is for all he simps for Blitz... stolas does nothing. The one time Blitz actually wanted him to step in.. and he won't. Blitz stepped in for Moxxie despite blowing his own cover, possibly blowing up his friendships in the process to help one of his ony friends. I do wish he at least got a talk with the M's over this bullshit, he needs to stop... but I get on some level as pissed as Moxxie understandably was at the stalking.. Blitz at least was willing to drop it to help a friend. Stolas meanwhile is on a daaaattteeee with Blitz... and tries to hide behind his menu to save face, proving to Blitz he genuinely DOES not care, and showing on some level Stolas still cares about society and shit.
And OZZIE being unafraid to throw stones from his glass house.. rubs it in that he destroyed his marriage all for the nookie. Which.. not the burn his hotness thinks it is, given he knows Stolas i'm shocked he's never met Stella as that's the only excuse anyone could have for thinking this relationship was remomtely funcctional enough to razz someone over it failing. Not thinking about his daughter, fair, that's a recurring issue. But the ony person in universe who actually think's STella is attractive .. is her brother. I mean i'm sure there are other royals who MIGHT be just as shitty but come on man. If your going to mentally destroy someone do it right.
It still works and the two end up leaving even with Stolas willing to stay and try and tough it out. We then get probably the most gutting scene in the entire series, somehow even moreso this read as i've realizzed just how uncomfortable blitz is... and how HARD it is for him to say no, that he knows if he sets boundries he might fuck everyone's lives up... but he HAS to because he's just too emotionally spent to put up his usual walls. Having his childhood crush and one succesful till it wasn't relationship he ruined really fucked up him up and he just can't put on the pretense anymore even when Stolas is just asking to cuddle and drink wine.
"Stolas, don't act like what we have is anything but you wanting me to fuck you. Okay? You make that really clear all the time. But I just... I-I can't do it tonight. Okay? I'm sorry."
It's a crushing momment, one of only two timmes all season Blitz is actually emotoinally honest, and you can see Stolas face just fall as his mind likely repays every single momment they were together.. and sees just how many times he belittled Blitz, called him a nickhame Blitz was very clear he hated , toyed with him.. all waht he thought was flirting.. was instead to blitz rubbing it in what this was and how little he cared. All both can do is collapse, Stoas sitting on his stoop destroyed and Blitz going home to mull over his past.. before breaking down sobbing at seeing his mother.
Thanfully once Dr Luke's Label Provided Lawyers were thrown back in the styigan pit from wence they came, we got a followup that softens the blow for Blitz very slightly. To make a ong story short: Loona went to a party with her crush and made the mistake we all have of thinking "Oh I can beat whoever their dating" instead of finding someone else.. only to find he's dating a goddess in every sense of the word and taht she's also really nice and sweet and maybe wants a three way but Loona isn't mentally prepared for that so she bolts. Someday, somehow, she'll get in that godly pussy but not right now.
So Loona calls Blitz who drunk drives over to save her, both deciding to stay after Loona realizes some of these people knnow blitz and thus she has what any introvert needs at a party, a social buffer. Blitz has a great time at first outdrinking a good and getting her genuine friendship and respect. I was so focused on shipping the wolves and the spectacle in general that is somehow sexier fox Ke$ha that I never noticed just how sweet this is. How Bee lacks any of the classim of her peers. Even Ozzie, while slowly weeding out that bullshit, was willing to razz stolas for dating an imp to save his own ass. Bee befriends the biggest douche that's ever douched in an instant and has nothing but respecct.
She also has nothing but concern as Blitz is drinking and tounging his way through his depression and has to convince Loona to stop fronting and take care of her dad, even going god ode for it.. but soley because Loona like her dad isnt great at eotoinal stuff. But seeing Blitz ready to fuck a dennis mmakes it clear "Oh shit she was right" and has Loona leave her new friends to drag her dad home.. and assure him when he worries about dying alone that she has him. It's the moment that bulldozes teh wall she put up between them.. and finally asssures BLitz he's not alone and never was. He just needs to work on himself
Will he? well yes but it's going to take a lot. So join us later this month for flashbacks, more Octavia, more drama, Stolas evil counterparts, emotiona catharsiis, john waters, a fucking trial episode and the moment Broto is comissing an entire second part just to get to. Thanks for reading.
So we can pretty much call the all new seekers "occtis anime harem and also his second mom and cuck chair bolarie" right? Also thimble and him are apparently the same age
Junteenth Special: Sinners Is Now and Forever The Definition of a Masterpiece
Happy Juneteenth and welcome to my annual Juneteenth special looking at black horror.
Sinners is a film geninely like no other. Every time I watch it it's direction, color, and atmosphere truly send me away. It is like nothing else and held strong as my faviorite film of 2025. It still does. Nothing rattled it, nothing could impeach it, it was the best from the moment I saw it. One of my faviorites and every rewatch, last year on fourth of july and just a few days ago for this review, only adds more to it. There's layers of history and character moments that build each time, that are baked into each performance, and moments that were always good and are just a joy to watch again and again and again.
Sinners was a film Coogler put his soul into: After the death of his older uncle James, Coogler reconnected with his love of the blues, the music they loved.
“I would listen to it and find myself reminiscing about him. It really interrogated the art form of music. Becoming obsessed with that led to this movie,”
This idea eventually crossed with horror: Coogler, as per the wrap article I got my information, was a big fan of the film and novel Salem's Lot and specifically the antecdote that king has always told about the film, his wife saying if Dracula wer ein modern day he'd get squished by a cab. That idea of the old meeting the new and these people in an isolated setting dealing with something sudden and otherworldly.
“Something ancient and knowledgeable and powerful and from another world and another time coming to this foundational year in terms of the Delta blues music and walking right into [the movie’s fictional town of] Clarksdale, into this room full of almost mythical characters who think they’ve seen it all, until they met this guy. That was where it came from. You know, it’s basically merging my artistic proclivities with the story I wanted to make about my uncle,”
This story was personal and powerful enough that Coogler cut a unique deal. You've heard about this I have but in 24 years from now he will own the film wholly. It's a mild shock he could pull this off given how hollywood treats horror: Their willing to soak in the money sure , studios know , but when it comes to awards season no matter how good it is it's often ignored. Treated as disposable. This thankfully may be changing: i'm not counting on the academy being smart just yet, but last year Sinners and Frankenstien both got nomianted for best picture, while Sinners, Frankenstien and Weapon all took home awards with Micheal B Jordan rightly winning best actor, and the film itself winning awards for Screenplay, Cinematography and Score, all RICHLY deserved. I"m still salty as fuck it didn't win best picture and Del Roy Lindo didn't win best supporting actor, but the wins are far from nothing. This film is far from nothing.. it's everything.
If you already have seen this masterpice, strap in to here a white dumbass talk about how good it is. If you haven't, please do as this review is going to be soaked in as much spoilers as the film is blood. The film is best gone into with the bare minimum of the setup and the fact their be vampires in it. The trailers do do a good job of MOSTLY hiding what shots are the most spoilertastic. But if your a bit gunshy about horror or just want to hear about it all over again, come on in under the cut.
Something For Us
Sinners is the story of the Smokestack Twins, both played in the best dual roll of all time by Micheal B Jordan, a staple of Coogler's films. It isn't just easy it's damn near impossible not to forget at some point that these men aren't the same actor. While each has a unique style, both liking finely tailored suits but Smoke preferring classier understated outfits with a blue sheen and Stack preferring reds, big hats and flash, it's really in the posturing, Smoke always being calm in a scene almost always standing tall, imposing and commanding presecnse while Stack is more relaxed, no less filling the room but far more cocky and at ease. Just from their first shot in the film, you can tell who these are in seconds
Both share a cigarette, a feat in itself, both are on the same page... but Smoke is standing up tall and ready for the racist piece of shit their about to deal with, while Stack is no less ready but relaxed on the car. One is professoinal, the other is blunt but neither is incompitent. It's something I really like: a lot of the time when you have a hot head sibling and a responsible one, one has to be stern and authrotative and the reckless one is more prone to stupid mistakes. Here their both utterly compitent dangerous professionals, former gangsters and WWI vets hoping to make something for their people after Chicago only proved to have the same racist bullshit just in a city setting. They'd rather face the devil they know.
The rest of the scene shows it off as the two confidently deal with Hogwood, a greasy southren landowner played by David Maldonado who their buying a factory from. The two instantly cock him as a racist, probably KKK, and a piece of shit, with Hogwood not beating the allegations by calling them boy repeadtly assuming like most black people he's probably encountered the Twins would be too scared of him or the lynch mob he could bring to not just take his racisim.
Gloriously he's so fucking wrong. Stack calls him out on the boy thing after one too many and when Hogwood tries to just pull out his gun to scare them as he likely is wont to do.... the boys show their not only packing but Stack smartly started flanking him, showing in an instant that the two were not stupid, knew who they were dealing with and were only polite as they needed to be to not have to hide a racist southren corpse just outside their new Juke Joint.
The goal of Club Juke is to create a space for the community, for the tired sharecroppers who pick cotton all day, get paid in company scrip often, and need a fucking break. A place away from pieces of shit like hogwood or even just the casual forced politness of interacting with white people at a time when just saying the wrong thing or just looking at a woman the wrong way could get you killed. I'd like to say that's completely passed... I really would. Can't though.
The first half of the film is the twins rounding up staff for the club, reconnecting with old friends and lovers and making it very clear their back while drumming up buisness.
Their first stop is SAMMMMMIEEEEEE, our third main character who we meet in the film's striking opening covered in blood , clutching his guitar and having to deal with his preacher dad being more concerned with a come to jesus moment than figuring otu why his son is caked in blood, half alive and shellshocked.
Before all that though Sammie played by Miles Canton who despite being a fresher face holds his own well with Jordan. Both of him. Sammie is an aspiring blues musician and son of a preacher man. Said Preacher Man is a jackass: While Sammie confirms he dosen't lay hands on him and even with the corpral punishment of the time, lets Sammie's mom handle that, the film dosen't paint him as any less abusive. He's trying to force Sammie onto his path despite Sammie's clear disintrest.
He's a judgmental prick and it's no wonder Sammie instead looks up to the twins. While Smoke can also be distant and somewhat blunt, his love for his cousin is clear while Stack in paticular takes to mentoring Sammie, gladly hanging out with him all morning when the twins need to split up gang to cover more ground. The scenes with Sammie and Stack hanging out are some of the sweetest, from Stack's plesant suprise at how good Sammi'es gotten, to teaching his cousin how to find the clitoris with way less fanfare than south park, to the two just driving on a very sunny day.
The cinematrography is the best i've seen in a film. That's not hyerbole: from the cool soft colors of the sky to the darkness of night to the cool oranges of sunset and sunrise the film has an eye for color and every frame absolutely pops while still feeling entirely lived in. Everything is real but instead of trying to project that with dark grey over everything, it lets the color of life pop and accent things.
Stack's journey with Sammie brings them to the train station to recurit local legend and town drunk Delta Slim, played by Delroy Lindo in his best role in his long career. Slim is reluctant at first because he has a steady saturday gig and has an inkling Club Juke may not last, but is easily bribed with 40 bucks and all the irish whiskey he can drink. The cut from him thinking it over to him happily playing with Sammie to advertise is my faviorite joke in the film. The film isn't stuffed with them, but what few it has pop up are really great.
Trouble seemingly comes up as Sammie spots a white woman walking up to them.. before they both recognize her. Mary is played by Hailee Steinfield who does a fantastic job here as Mary who hasn't met a sex term she can't use and is more than happy to put Stack on the spot for up and abandoing her years ago. Mary is biracial but passes for white, and Stack's distance is him TRYING to keep her in her comfortable life.
Mary however dosen't really want that, pissed Stack basically shoved her into a life she didn't want, abandoned her when she wanted him despite the hell of a risk and knowing damn well what they were, and most damingly that the twins didn't visit for the funeral, something neither seem to be that arsed about despite Mary's Mother having helped raised them. We never get a clear why: Maybe Stack was avoiding mary, maybe they just couldn't make it, we never really know.
The final pickup for this half of the team is Cornbread, a sharecropper who just wants to make his quota. Stack's plan for getting him to coperate is to say fuck his wife.. while she's standing right their prengant and talk about how they fuck. Predictably this nearly gets his ass kicked but this being america his wife is willing to hear HOW much money Cornbread will make and now Club Juke has a bouncer.
So now i'ts time for Smoke's side of the story. Smoke goes to Bo and Grace Chow, played by Yao and Li Jun Li chinese store owners who taught me something: Asian Storeowners were common complete with the setup the Chows have here with a white store and a black store across the street. You CAN faintly make out the other side of the street has white people on it but it's not something you really notice till the film makes a point of it which is just good filmaking saving it for the reveal and the nice shot of Grace walking over
Before she does though, Smoke gets a really excellent scene outside the Chow's general store. Part of the reason the team split up is that someone needs to watch the massive stash of booze they brought with them. While it's part responsiblity Smoke's stops are both with trusted friends while Stack and Sammie are going to both a train station that has a decent amount of white people nearbye and a cotton field, and even pass a chain gang, a bit too many white people who could make up whatever to steal what they have, something Delta Slim knows all too well as he lost a friend who saved his money for their high days while Delta drank is.. but made the mistake of withdrawing it all at once and was lynched by the klan so they could steal it.
So to guard it Smoke enlists a girl outside the store to sit in the truck. What I love about this scene is it shows Smoke's gentler side: he's firm and stoic as usual, but makes it clear he's not going to hurt her, and teaches her how to haggle for pay giving her more than he offered her intitally. While Smoke is a gangster the desire to give back to their community is genuine.
That said he's not a soft touch and when talking to Bo, two guys outside try to rob the truck despite being warned it was his. This gets them both shot but noticably Smoke shows mercy: He does shoot both of them, one in the leg, shot him in his left leg, the other in the hip, but it's areas they can recover from and he pays Bo to patch em up after. He can't show he's soft on people trying to take his shit, but he also dosne't kill two people needlessly for good reasons: the pramgatic one of not leaving dead bodies lying around and the empathetic one of "their not really far from where me and my brother used to be, they just need to know not to punch above their weight class".
His friendship with Bo and Grace is nice and genuine, a tad snarky but their clearly glad to see him and while Smoke haggles on the sign for the club he's resonable and also hires the two to help run it.
The bigger ask thoug his his wife, Annie played by Wumni Mosuku who was also tragically lost, though at the very least unlike Delroy, she lost to a worthy opponent in Amy Madigan for Weapons. Why anyone thought Sean Penn playing the most cardboard cutout of a white suprmiacist was't better than Delroy Lindo I do not know.
Annie is one of the films highlights, a voodoo practicioner who Smoke left after the death of their baby showing part of why he ran. While Stack likely did it simply because "Why not?" , Smoke was in clear pain and couldn't face it. This scene with them is powerful as you can feel the sheer sexual tension.. but also the pain of loss... and the longing as they never stopped loving each other. Annie cast spells and gave Smoke a charm to make sure he survived... but sadly coudln't save their baby. Yet the longing is real.. as is the fucking.
This movie is unashamidly and wonderfully horny: from this tender scene to Sammie fliting with a married womm to Mary just loudly announcing how Smoke fucked her to a large crowd and not for the last time either, this film is unabashed in it's sexuality.. and tha'ts very much the point. That ther'es geninely nothing wrong with it, contrasting Sammie's Dad's narrow minded bullshit with the reality these are people. Pearline, the woman Sammie flirts with is married as is Mary but given the tims and how hard it would've been to be unmarried for too long, it's more of convience than because their happy. People make mistakes, they fuck up, or they end up in bad situations. Some people are just generally fucked, see Hogwood, but a large point of the film's first hal fis no one is morally perfec tor pure, it's about being sure of who you are. What you want.
So with all this set up we get a truly awesome sequence as everyone drives up to the club and gets ready for the night.
It's then the genre starts to shift: it hasn't fully YET but it's the first hint at it as Remmick, played by Josh O'Conner in a once in a lifetime performance, drops out of the sky steaming. He is VERY lucky to find two white supremiacists, Bert and Joan who do just point a shotgun at him but spins a tale of some Chocktaw hunters hurting him because he's white and you know not beacuse he's a monster. Their racisim costs them as the Choctaw can't really hunt at night. Not because their not badass enough their just not stupid enough to fight a master vampire for the sake of two racist shit sacks and didn't consider Remmick might branch out. Remmick dosen't even seem aware of the club at first or have a plan beyond survive and feast.
In a truly chilling scene Joan returns from telling the choctaw to fuck off to find remmick having fed on Bert
And also.. next to an empty crib meaning he.... probably had some baby back ribs. And that i'm scared for life, not the most a review has
But still a decent amount. I'd say about a quarter this.
Either way Remmick is omnius setup for later. For now CLUB JUKE IS OPEN and the joint is jumpin. Pearline shows up, everyone's partying and Mary also shows up which pisses off both brothers. On Smoke's end it's pragmatic: Mary looks white and the wrong thing gets back it could lead a clan down. Stack on the other hand
It shows off the brother's.. less savory side. Not the killing men part, their criminals sure but given their dad was an abusive monster, they got their dad's terrible rep , crime was the easy out and not something Smoke wants to see repeat in Sammie.
The problem is both try to solve their problems in very paternalistic ways: For Mary and Stack Stack assumed telling her he loved her then abandoning her was the best way to shield her, when really it just forced her into a life she didn't want and while life with him may of not been long either due to the crimes or the lynch mobs, it was her choice and she's understandabliy pissed. It's also noticable no one else , including the guests, geninely minds her prescene, likely also knowing her and in the case of the main group are all old friends: Annie and Grace warmly welcome her and while Sammie TRIES to shoe her off he utterly fails at it being just too good a boy.
On Smoke's end not only does he threaten "you hadnle it or I will", but with Sammie he ends up trying the same tactics as his dad saying this life isn't for him.. and like his brother making a chocie for someone that is THEIRS, getting to the ponit he pulls out a fucking gun on Sammie.
Something I noticed more on this watch is that Sammie.. is a really fine character. He's young, naive, a tad cocky.. but he's steadfast in what he wants, rejecting that his options are stay in the chruch or go down just a ways. That rowdy clubs aren't for him. He's told the risks, he knows and accepts them, and not carring about them, much like with mary, isn't the same as not understanding them, something neither brother ever understands.You can't, for better or worse, take someone's choice from them no matter how good your intetnions are.
Sammie does show why this is for him perfomring his heart out with the film's standout sequence: "I Lied to You' A truly dimension shaking number that literally breaks time nad space. As the narration at the start outlines Sammy isn't just good. .he's magic, so damn talented his music tracendes time and space and as his heartfelt jam about his daddy issues plays and echoes thorugh every bone we get visotrs from the past and future: tribal dancers, chinese fan dancers, and from the future funk guitarists and b boy dancers and dj's. It's a sequence that could've been seen as too much but instead perfectly incapulates how connected black culture is and how much blues has fed into all music and how connected everyone feels in the moment ending in the juke seemingly burning as everything.. and Remmick seeing SAMMMIIIIEEEE.
It's here the tone firmly ships: Before this was a period drama about two brothers whose Juke Joint , their dream is on the cusp of failure as most of the patrons are paying in company scrip and while they can run it for now they got two months max, not to mention, as Mary figures out, they stole all the booze from their former bosses who are bound to come looking.
So at the worst possible time Remmick shows up with his two new thralls, just wanting to dance.. and it's here yet another theme, this film has themes upon themes upon themes, and one of the most powerful and relevant: White Encroachment.
Remmick just offers to have a goood time, ignoring all the issues his presence brings; Mary was already possible trouble, but was stubborn enough to not go and is known enough by the people here they aren't going to tell she was here. But three white strangers just invites one person letting it get out they were there and one racist hearing and deciding to nix this co mingling in the bud, never mind the threat that remmick might get offended the wrong way and bring back the clan. Remmick wants in, but it isn't his space.
This wasn't built for him. He points to his skin saying i'ts a non issue.. but him being here is one. It's the embodiment of how sometimes white people can just.. forget that maybe not everything is directly FOR them or should be targteted FOR them. White Culture has a nasty of habit of rather than allowing black culture to exist on it's own ends and simply let black creators showcase it, to try and absorb it to claim "we're all the same". It's the kind of post racial nonsense I grew up with. What's the truth is that our diffrences and truths make us stronger, and some experinces are simply not unviersal. I have no personal one on one context for the sheer bigotry Black People deal with every damn day, how it is living in a system with everything stacked against you, where racists can't just let you be because your very existance bothers them and they want to mamke it your problem. I've seen videos, i've seen one or two of the police killings various essays ranging from black creators like FD Signifier to the very white but very often correct John Oliver, but that only gets you so far. You can only know so much. You can be an ally, try your best to be suppportive and back up those who are being pushed down, but you can never truly understand what it's like to be a black person in america unless you are one. Same with any color, any sexuality.
I like seeing othe rhperspectives, getting a glimpse of that, it's why the diversity we're getting in media is a net good.. .but i'ma lso self aware that you can't just absorb another culture. You can learn,, you can observe, you can know things.. but your not part of it. And if you try ot take it for yourself your just another colonzier, anothe rperson trying to take things you want without regards to the context or what it means to the people who made it.
Tha'ts what Remmick is: He's not intentionally raccist, being an irishman who saw the british ravage and destroy his country an went through his own pain but can't see he can't just take and destroy someone else's community to replace his own. He needs to build, to find others and slowly rebuild instead of leeching and forcing everyone to be what he wants, absorbing them instead of coexisting. He claims to want fellowship but he really just wants to eat them all alive.
Still he can't get through the door but dosen't leave and waits.. and sadly he ends up waiting for Mary who wants to get a read on him to see if she can get his money with Stack reluctantly agreeing as they are in the hole. Him finally recognizing her autonomy is nice... but is sadly too late it seems. Remmick is also an empathy, able to read others emotoins and thus learn about Mary's mom's passing and her pain.. and while she treis to leave it's too late. Mary is the first infected and is sent inside. She easily seduces Stack and as Sammie plays again, Stack is killed adn the film fully turns. Smoke goes to get him , not carring he's seemingly fucking.. and Mary turns covered in blood Stack gutted.. and when shot down gleefully gets up cooing "We're gonna kill every last one of you"
These Ain't Haits, Their Vampires
With that the film shifts, with the patrons of club juke sent out and leaving us with our core group of survivors: Smoke, SAMMMAAAAAEEEE, Annie, Pearline, Delta Slim and Grace. Bo was sadly sent out ot get the car and As for Cornbread he went to take a leak, always certain death in a horror film. We get a hell of a scene when Stack wakes up an d agreat door shot that was used in the trailers: bit of a spoiler to reveal stack gets turned but boy is it a great shot as he begs to be let in.
Smoke is of course reluctant at first but I like that he dosen't take too long to be convinced: he dosen't quite buy Annie's explination, but DID see Mary win a game of count the bullets and isn't stubborn enough to deny what he just saw.
What finally clinches it, as well as tells Annie what their really dealing with, is Cornbread in one of the film's lowkey best scenes. He reutrns wanting in.. but Annie understandably refuses and Delta Slim and Smoke both clock something is REALLY wrong with this setup: Smoke may not fully belivie these are zombies, what Annie thinks they are at first, but he can smell just how fucking suspcious it is that Cornbread suddenlyc an't just walk in and is also caked in blood. He does offer Cornbread his pay but smartly has his gun ready and shoots him. It can't kill them, but it DOES slow them down as the force still knocks them on their ass.
So with the jig up our survivors prepare and Grace in paticular is not doing so good since her husband's out there and probably dead, but the others do stop her from going after him. I like that despite this being LONG before a lot of horror tropes were clear.. the characters still act intellgently: They gear up, annie knows vampires by rep if not having met one having splashed Stack with garlic when he awakens, getting stakes, do tests on each other to make sure no one's a vampire, all resonable shit. Sure some of it is done with Smoke pointing a gun at people but given Mary and Cornbread roll aroun dat the speed of sound, he can't afford to make mistakes. Our heroes stay close and outside of Grace, who slowly breaks down but still tries her best, ther'es no real distruption. Some natural tension but no obviously evil bastard sabotaging the group. I'm not knocking those scenarios but it works better here.
So Remmick drops by with Stack and Mary, who are weirdly cute together, and asks to just hug it out. He then drops SOME of the pretense and reveals who he's after. SAMMMMIEEEEE. Sammie's music pierces the veil between worlds and having lost his family, wants to bring them back. Sammie being a good kid, immidelty prepares to walk out and take the offer... while both Smoke and Slim make sure he dosen't. Smoke is a pragmatic son of a bitch.. but this is his line. He's not sacrifcing Sammie and is also smart enough to know evne if he was callous enough to sacrifice his own cousin it dosen't put Remmick down or truly mean he'll hold up his end of the bargin. I suspect he MIGHT'VE , but it's not worth it. So Remmick whips out two trump cars> the first is beau and in a truly sicking moment Remmick reveals thanks to the vampires hivemind he knows "Where she likes to be licked" saying so in chinese, just.. ewww and showing truly he's a colonizer: he claims to be better.. but he just takes and is willing to threaten Grace and Bo's daughter if it means winning.
The other chestnut hits slightly harder: Hogwood was never just going to let them be. As Slim's tragic backstory earlier outlined, white supremacists will NEVER be happy to just let you exist and if your a group they don't like, i.e. everyone who isn't the kind of white they approve, straight, and does what they say, they will hound you as long as they possibly fucking can. So to no one's suprise Hogwood was Klan and was planning a massacre. As we can see form later this wouldn't of ended well from him but would've ended in a lot of innocent peopl ebeing slayed first probably. Hogwood is a pure and simple racist and pure and simply wanted to exterminate those he feels lesser, never convicing that they were trained soldiers who may of stashed some ordinance just in case this exact thing happened or that even if most of these are civlians they do VASTLY outnumber them. And judging by the fact they have some guns stashed inside club juke, even before they could get to the good stuff Smoke and Stack likley woudl've cleared them out. It dosen't make what the Klan was trying to do any less horrific or ghoulish, it still woudl've likely ended the club, but it does show the sheer arrogance of not carring to knwo their target.
Remmick tries to use this as a "I'm not as bad really guys".. but as we see soona fter when he's understandably rejected, whlie he's not AS bad.. he's not much BETTER than hogwood, ahving turned every last person who left Club Juke in a truly chilling sequence where the hive sings rocky road to dublin, one of the films best and one that made my jaw drop in the theater as I realized just how outnumbered our heroes were and how fucked they likely were. We know Sammie survives from the opening.. but no one else's odds looked good.
Tragiclaly they aren't.. Grace eventually gets fed up enough to invite them in and everyon'es forced to scramble. Grace dies but does manage to freee Bo in a mutual kill.. but it's quickly a tragedy. Despite being kind, patient and savy... Annie dies horribly, her throat eaten by Stack with Smoke finally, seemingly accepting his brother is too far gone and putting Annie down at her own request despite his grief and rage. Jordan REALLY plays Smoke well here, letting his emotion out and his raw grief.
Delta Slim then pulls a hell of a move after a great action sequence tha tshows our heroes ar ecapable.. but their simply outnumbered: he has everyone else run upstairs to escape shouts LAST CALL FOR DELTA SLIM then opens a fucking veign. This film is bloody as fuck and I apprecaite that.
Unfortunately , if cleverly, our heroes only find
When they try to escape. God I love how he delivers that. I also like the red color on the eyes: just the sharp contrast it gives and the faint glow it has in the dark. Relaly creepy, really effective. Pearline sadly dies and Sammie barely escapes while Smoke and Stack have a fight that goes how you'd expect with Smoke kick his brothe'rs ass. Or his own ass.. depends on how you view it.
This leaves SAMMIEEEEEE!!!!! to flee Remmeck who in a cool as hell moment either leaps or glides right after him. Sammie tries oto use releigoius protection but it does nothing wtih Remmick ranting about how the religious cracked down on his people and etc... not getting that he's just doing the same thing. he's trying to force people into his own culture to replace it.
While the power of christ can't save Sammie, he's not nightcrawler after all
His guitar can and he El Kabongs remmick.. which works because the center is silver, a chekovs gun that I swear should've been ovbious but is so well hidden. You just never think about taking the guitar apart or using the plate on him as how would that even go. Turns out it'd go thorugh his head and weakens him enough for Smoke to bring in the calvary and for
With that and with some great John Carpenter Synth, Coogler is a huge fan, Remmick and his followers go boom and the day is saved.
The problem is the sheer weight of it. Our heroes DID live... but lost everything. By the end of this the only named characters seemingly left are Smoke, Sammie, Asshole Preacher Dad Man Express, An Orphan and Hogwood, whose still planning a massacre that already hapepned.
So having nothing left to live for, Smoke tells Sammie bi and in amoving sequence using scenes we didn't see but did happen, we see just how.. happy everyone was getting the club ready, uniting, how specail this was: all these people, this family of choice gathered for one night to make something truly nicea nd specail for their community.. and Remmick destroyed it all.
So in a hell of a sequence that shows off Micheal B Jordan's massive guns and also his weapons, Smoke gloriously dispatches the racist in one of the most deligthfully one sided fights in film. The Klan was expecting this to be easy and to be fighting mostly drunks.. instead their facing a trained soldier with a full arsenal who knows the land better than they do. I get the sense the twins genuinely studied the layout: it's why Smoke knew to escape and why Stack and thus Remmick knew where to cut the survviors off. So he easily mops the floor with them and while he DOES get shot and prepare to bleed out, it seems like had he not wanted to die, he could've probablyg one and got the wound treated or patched it up. But Smoke.. is done and after a glorious final conforntation with HOgoowd where the fucker calls him the n word.. and naturally gets shot, gets his cigs taken and we get a truly awesome pov. I cannot tell you how cathartic it is to watch white supramicists get shot in the hellscape we live in. Or just in general.
The other half is cutting back to the opening where Sammie holds shis guitar as his dad.. just neglects his well being even telling his mother to sit down, choosing trying to control SAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMIIIIIIIEEEEEEE over actually helping him.. and in a glorious bit of payback.. Sammie just leaves. He takes the twins now abandoned car and drives off into the sunrise, finally truly free and making his own path. He lost everything.. but gained himself.
So that was Sinners and.... oh it's still going. Yup we're now in 1992, just a year after I was born with blues legend Buddy Guy now playing a very aged Sammie who sings us out. Oh that's nice and... oh it's still not done.
Sinners is a movie I dearly love and for most of the runtime have no complaints.. but while I do feel the various ending sequences are necessary, it is defintely a film where you feel how long it's going on: we get the end of remmick, which feels like it could end there but with the intro really can't. Then we get the beautiful intercut and Smoke reuniting with his family in the afterlife in a beautiful sequences and Sammy escaping.. but then we get this. I do geninely love this sequence, but it definetly feels more like a post credits sc4ene than part of the narrative, a needed and necessary epilogue but one that defintely has you a tad exaustd as you've just been through the shit.
Still it's a good un and I get not cutting it: Sammie gets some visitors and I do appreciate the twist; Stack and Mary are STILL alive and looking fine so fine in their early 90's outfits. This did get my tension up as I assumed they were up to something.. but no. Turns out with Remmick dead their themselves agani and being vampires meant they could finally, truly be free. Cleverly we never actually see Mary die at any point during the final battle or with the crowd that dies with Remmick and it's revealed Smoke couldn't kill Stack, at most just asking they leave Sammie alone.
Stack agreed and has only come back to offer Sammie eternal life now he's lived a long one. He got all of Sammie's albums and it's actually really sweet. It shows that Stack is once again really him.. that he got to live with Mary at last, the two are happy. They've DEFINTELY killed al ot of people to survive, but the film leaves it nicely ambigious on how many and given how many less toothy monsters exist in the world there is PLENTY of people the world would be better off about. I know tha'ts a slippery slope but when it's that or die of hunger, I can live with a few less rapists, racists and billionares couldn't you?
Wether their ethical vampires or still kiling innocents but have honor the truth is.. their free. They offer to turn Sammie but take his polite refusal and it turns out that while that night hautns Sammie he reitartes that day, till the sun went down was the best day of his life.. and Stacks too as it was the last time he saw the sun and his brother. While again pacing wise this sequece is mildly exuasting... I still wouldn't and really can't dump it. it's a touching coda that shows both that Sammie truly got to live his life.. and so did Stack. That they both got to be free in their own way.
So Sinners is the best. Said it up front, saying it again, a gorgeous masterpice that you just cannot stop paying attention to for the whole runtime les your like me and your bladder won't let you and even then I was eager to get back even on my third watch. The film is tense, beautifully scored, and rich with themes of freedom, the harsh racist core of america and community and the segue into horror is perfectly pulled, never feeling out of place and putting the characters just out of sorts that stuff suddenly shifted. If you STILL haven't stopped to watch it and haven't seen it before please go do this film is fantatic, one of my faviorites and a good watch any day. Thanks for reading.
Jacob Mattingly | creating Animation And Comic Reviews | Patreon
Did I learn how to make GIFs just because their hug at the end of 4.08 fixed the regret I had at the end of 3.12 that their hug then was played for laughs? Yes I did! 💜🩶✨
Happy World Cup all you happy people! While I usually don't watch World Football/Soccer/Kickstuffballthing I am excited for this event from the food tie ins to the fact one of the stage is the nearbye city of Kansas City Missouri, having passed through a ton of world cup stuff on the way there. I may only know the game from Ted Lasso but this is a truly special event.
And since i've covered all of Wallace and Gromit and Aardman's unsung masterpiece Pirates: In An Adventure with Scientests I was happy to revisit Aaardman with a film i'd never seen but really wanted to I just tend to put things off till I can't no more. And Kev paying me good money to cover this for the world cup qualifies as "can't put this off any longer".
Early Man was orignally conceived as part of Aardman's deal with Dreamworks, which to make a long story short was like living in a living nightmare and did not last long as the two clashed constantly due to a combo of Dreamworks wanting to cut costs (hence why Flushed Away ended up being their first of two CG Films), and not understanding what they had wanting to americanize Wallace and Gromit.
While it was still technically functioning Dreamworks and Aardman thought up a film together: Crood Awakening, a film that with some tightening up by John Cleese of Monty Python fame and Kirk DiMicco of Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken fame, became about an inventor and a luddite in the stone age forced to cooperate.
With the Dreamworks deal ending in flames, no small amount of bloodshed and two films early, Dreamworks took the idea and socked it away for later, eventually leading to 2013's the Croods, which kept the inventor clashing with a luddite, but made the real focus the Luddite's Daughter and her issues with her controlling NIcholas Cage dad.
Aardman clearly still had some stone age ideas though, and five years after the croods and after Sean the Sheep Movie Film For Theaters had some success, felt in the right place to try it.
The result was Early Man, a film that likes pirates before it didn't really score at the box office, making, according to wikipedia, 54.6 million.. on a budget of 50 million. It didn't help over here that for whatever reason, Lionsgate put up a quirky very british film .. up against
Yes the biggest winter release of all time at the time, one of the most influental and important superhero films ever, and my personal faviorite mcu film... went up against Early Man. And if you think it got it any easier in the UK
Yeah one of Pixar's biggest hits and one I regretfully still need to get to... easily washed it aside.
There was no need for this to happen and the failure is entirely on distribution for deciding to basically throw the film away. This is the kind of scheduling that tells me neither Lions Gate nor international distributor Studio Canal gave a prestoric poop about this film, that they were obligated to put it out, dumped it wherever was convient and moved on. It's still a minor miracle aardman has lived this long as every company as even their most enduring partnership with Studio Canal still lead to shit like this while over here it feels like every company has had a turn at treating one of the best animation studios in existance like garbage. I can see why Netflix has become their main distributor as while Neflix can be shitty itself, it's not so stupid as to realize "hey wait having Aardman is a net win for us". Which you would THINK wouldn't take three other companies failing to get to that point, but here we are.
As a result of , no matter the country, going up against something making a far bigger more impactful splash Early Man has kinda fallen through the cracks of Aardman's filmography. It's the one film I see people just.. never even mention or talk about and that had my curosity peak. Was the film bad or was it just a victim of bad timing? Why don't people talk about it as much as the others?
My honest answer and one that pains me a bit: Early Man is, out of the Aardman Films i've seen (Excluding the Shawn the Sheep Films, Arthur Christmas and Chicken Run 2)... the most mid film Aardman has ever made.
Early Man is not a terrible film: The premise is pretty inspired and the opening one of aardman's best. Long ago a Meteor arrived on a prehistoric mostly uninhabital earth. Instead of killing the dinsoaurs, this meteor was left in the shape of a football and after dtermining they couldn't carry it and kicking it around a bit, the greatest game in the world was born. Besides debunking Hank Hill's own theroies on how Football came to be
This opening is the highlight of the film, a truly hilaroius little mini movie that sets up the premise well: Cavemen invented soccer, it's inherently funny.
The problem is it dosen't really.. use that premise. Instead it pivots to one that's equally promising and equally underutlized: The Bronze Age versus the Stone Age.
In the film's present but still prehistoic times, Dug , played by Eddie Redmayne is an optimistic young caveman with big ideas like maybe hunting mammoths that his world weary tired old chief of only 32....... 2.. years younger than me... liking this joke less the more I think about the implications, played by Timothy Spall, who lives by the motto of
If you don't try, you can't fail and we really can't succeed can we? While the bright eyed teen destined for more is one of the most deadest of dead horses in animatoin it does work for me here do that wrinkle. The Chief isn't mean to Dug or dismissive to be a dick, he just assumes if they did try his people might get hurt or Dug's spirit might get crushed. That it's better to take the path of least resitatnce. He's wrong, people doign that is why the world feels like a basket of turds these days, but it's something young people are bound to encounter.
Things change when a nearbye bronze age empire decides to mine in the Valley and forces the cavemen out lead by the agresively french Lord Nooth, played to comedic perfection by Tom Hiddleston who has far more comedic range than I realized. I knew he had plenty as loki but my god does he ham it up here.
Dug ends up swept to the Broonze empire and finds out Football has evolved, becoming the premire league of the empire with their team Real Bronzo being the reinging champs of all of Football. So when Dug is naturally outed as a caveman, he challenges them the same way the oposing team did for high stakes; They win they get the valley, Bronzo wins, they become slaves int he mines.
So Dug is forced to rally his bunch of ragtag misfits getting help from Gloona, a bronze ager who not only takes a shine to our young hero, and vice versa, but is more than happy to join the team as both their coach, as no one has the faintest idea what their doing or how footballw orks, and one of their members as undsuprisngly the bronze age is very he man woman haters when it comes to women in sports. Sadly something society hasn't really evolved on enough for my taste.
So our two young heroes and pig sidekick have to figure out how to train these misifits using the unorthadox methods of trainign in the volcanic hellscape they had to run to and the fact they like each other more than the more individualistc and egotsitical Real Bronzo.
Naturally the stakes rise ofr the villiana s the Queen isn't happy Nooth made the wager without him and while like him she considers the Cavemen savages, unlike Nooth she recognizes both how humilating the lost will be.. and how you know they have something to fight for so they'll actually put in the work to get good. Nooth has to try and demoralize Dug by revelaing his ancestors, while inventing football, eventually gave up on it after sharing it with other tribes who constintely beat them and invoated the game.
Dug almost sacrifices himself, but the chief, realizing he was a dick, gets the team there in time and convinces him it's about the heart and all that. The team despite stronger opposition and Nooth blatantly cheating win while Nooth is consigned to the mines and the Bronze and Stone Ages make peace and Goona moves in with the tribe because why not.
If all this sounds familiar, your spotting Early Man's biggest issue: it has nothing really.. new or interesting to do despite having had several chances at a fun setup: seeing how cavemen play football wether it be in the distant past or against the broonze, pitting a colonalist empire against cavemen to show the "Savages" they dismise and force out of their rightful land arne't as uncultured or helpless as they appear. The cast would have ot be 80% less white to really make the latter idea work, but it's still one worht exploring.
Instead Early Man just goes where 80 dozen films have before: There's no real character to it. Looking at Aardman's other leads off the top of my head they have more character, more humor to them and more of an arc. Wallace is a hapless idiot who just so happens to be a genius who can't see the forest for the trees because his tree o matic plucked them all out of the ground so he could see the lake better but means well, Gromit is his silent loyal dog who often has to reign in his nonsense, Ginger a defiant rebel against an unfair regime who simply makes the mistake of betting her hopes on Mel Gibson, and Pirate Captain is a swaggering moron who geninely loves his crew and cares about them but struggles iwth his own ego and inferority complex.
In contrast Dug is just a good kid who has big ideas and more faith in his people than Chief does. That's it. It's the START of something but he dosen't really get more to play jokes off: we get some great jokes in the Bronze City as he has no idea how to operate in it, but otherwise he's just a pretty bland paragon. And as superman shows us a paragon can still be funny and adorable while also being funny. Goona has a bit more to her being a lover of a game that rejects her and the Chief having just given up only to realize "Hey maybe don't" but they just never fully sculpt those into an arc. Dug is optimistic the whole time and was always right, the Chief was always wrong and just needs genine hope and effort and Goona is never wrong. They don't have to be wrong but htere's really nothing to them and nothing comedic to compesate.
A character can be thin arc wise and still have a lot of comedic laters but aside from Lord Nooth, whose snootyneeds, nove of bathing in gold and general ego make him funny, it dosen't work. The Cavemen don't relaly get invidvidual jokes and never coalse enough into one big unit. The film banks on you loving them as a family on them being funny enough but it dosen't work.
And aardman has made what's fucntioanlly one character spread across many with a few notable traits work: I can't tell you the names of more than four of the Pirates from Pirates, but they do a lot better job up front selling why we like these guys with one scene: Ham Night. The weekly gathering where they all clink plates and have ham selling both the pirates obession with ham glorious ham, and their togetherness as well as why they love PIrate Captain: he provides the ham while hamming it up. He provides adventure. With Dug we get they like him and the chief and they like their lives, but we don't get much of a sense of community and the film banks on it too hard to get away with failing at it just as hard. I still root for them, but it's hard not to root against rich assholes wanting to enslave them. It's like Space Jam if it didn't make you care about the Looney Tunes but withou decades of already carring about them as a cushion.
The jokes could save the film but they don't relaly make the cast distinct or funny enough and don't provide them frequently enough to matter. There are enough good ones to make the film still decent from Nooth's dealings with the queen's messag ebird which mimics her, the queen herslef bringing her own commentary team, the commentary team having puppets and saying "puppets dont' lie', Dug falling down a bunch of stairs, or just general puns like one of the commentators calling them Early Man United. I'm sure if I was more familiar with Football in Britian, Ted Lasso only gets you so far, i'd probably laugh at more, but as it is it relies on that a bit too much to be funny if you don't watch the great game. Which tbf is less likely anywhere lese in thew orld, but still an entry for me and even beyond that the rest of the stone age jokes just dont' land. They get pretty basic with the training the only one making me laugh when they play a combo of hexgon heat and bumper balls that also makes them focus. There's good scattered jokes that work enough to make it watchable but they really coudl've done more to both sell their progress and the jokes. Instead ther'es just nothing to relaly care about till the next joke floats you by. There are a bunch of great visual gags like Tooth's minon getting a foam finger stuck on his head and having to point with it or making their shoes out of local catipllars, just not enough to be as joke a minute as pirates or either of the wallace and gromit films with not enough heart to compensate.
The films one ace in the hole and the one thing it gets absoltuely right is the animation. Early Man is easily the most gorgeous Aardman film i've seen and Pirates was damn impressive visually. The backdrops are haunting beautiful each setting, the valley, the bronze city and the badlands are wonderfully animated and a lot of the weaker jokes are elevated simply by having such expressive gorgeous animation. It's not enough to make the film great, but it is enough to deserve a watch. The detail on the costumes from the cavemen's togas to their eventual uniforms to the bronze age togas and their own uniforms are great, you can see the fine detail on the hair.. it's all so damn good. I had high expectations but boy oh boy is this film just pretty to look at. Any time I paused it the frame was great.. till the amazon ad came in.
Early Man is far from Aardman's best films, not having the heart or joke denseity to really stand out. I can see why it's mostly forgotten. That said.. it's still charmingly british and gorgeous to look at enough to merit a watch, it just dosen't merit multiple like the rest and for a studio that for the most part has delivered banger after banger, it is a bit disapointing. It's Aardman's Equivlent of the Boxtrolls: not necesiarlly horrible, but not nearly good as everything else this stuidos done. Thanks for reading and if you liked this review please consider following for more and joining my patreon
Jacob Mattingly | creating Animation And Comic Reviews | Patreon
The Wonderful Year of Mickey Mouse: Quack Quack Bicker Bicker: A Donald and Daisy Shortstacular
Hello all you happy people and welcome back to the wonderful year of mickey mouse.
This .. is the one i've been most excited for all retrospective. As we hit halfway, it's finally time to talk about he of the sweetest dispostion and all the luck. Who else would we talk about for his birthday week but Donald Duck?
Donald is my faviorite Disney character. I've covered tons of his work from his time with the cabs to grabbing on to some ducktales to his excellent shorts. He can be a loving father, an angry asshole, a down on his luck everyman, a subpar boyfriend, an abused boyfriend, an ostrich owner, a duck pointing a rifle at a baby penguin, a citzen of nazi germany (Covered that earlier this month), a sailor, a beloved brother, a bickering brother, an uncle, an abusive uncle, a superhero, a victim of wage abuse and of course he of the sweetest dispoistion. He's been everything everywhere all at once and The Mickey Mouse SHorts capture that well: he's often Mickey's grumpy friend, sometimes daisy's grumpy boyfriend, sometimes her entirely resonable and loving boyfriend, and sometimes he just struggles to get a fucking bag open. These shorts do my boy well and as an added Bonus do Daisy well, letting her get in on the fun. It's why I gave the special to both of them as most of Donald's stories are daisycentric. Even when she dosen't technically appear we still get Hallucination Daisy to fill in. She's a good friend, a put upon at times partner, a bad sport, and a hell of a driver.
So we're honoring our faviorite duck couple with 6 stellear shorts. Let's roll.
The Adorable Couple
The Adorable Couple might've been my faviorite Mickey mouse short and while tha'ts no longer the case, the final one fucking punches my heart too good for that, it's still damn fine in large part thanks to one musical moment. One perfect distlation of the more angry and pissy moments of Donald and Daisy's relationship
Look the entire rest of the short could've been mickey mouse's rap album and it still would've been in the top ten of these shorts. It's catchy, it's perfectly performed by the two of them, and it's greatly animated and using Daisy's dismissive nail filing to give it some base was genius.
The rest of the short is still genius though as the whole concept is Mickey and Minnie, who are so cute it can and will give you a heart attack, can't fathom someone else's can be entirely passive agression and active shouting and still be a functional relationship. I mean a lot of the time it isn't but I love the idea of the short that these two trying to get them to just be happy.. only pisses them off, that they LIKE fighting. We don't see THEM be affectionate because Disney is afraid to show full on graphic hate sex between two ducks on the Disney channel. Don Rosa barely got away with implying it
You just can't have Donald's angry cum noises as the lead in to the Suite Life On Deck reruns i'm sad to say.
So Mickey and Minnie just can't undrestand. Their lovemaking is slow, sweet, and other ajdective si'm sure but unlike Donald i'm not as willing to speculate on Mickey's sex life. All my mind can conjur is he goes OH BOY when he cums and tha'ts enough to make me question my thought processes.
So it makes sense they just try too hard and have to right it by getting their rain cloud back. I also love just how over the top wholesome they are: it's a common trait in these shorts, if stripped away when it'd be funnier, but here Mickey nearly passes out just from seeing his friends fight and needs gumdrops and can't imagine fighting Minnie and Donald is right to get the popcorn to watch them try to fight to bring it back, which is enough foreplay for Daisy and Donald to get back to buisness and all to be right with the world. Top notch short, the better the more I think about it.
Captain Donald
Captain Donald is really a perfect setup for a Donald Duck story: Turns out Donald dosen't really know how to sail and has been lying to daisy and because he sucks at lying she's tired of his web of lies and if she finds out he's doing it again, she's going to dump him. She's also VERY turned on by him being a sailor. She has a thing for men in uniform.
Look I could lie to you and say this isn't going to be a weirdly horny blog about Donald Duck but that ship has sailed. You made it through the last one your stuck now. And since your stuck now please consider joining my patreon for exclusive reviews and voting maybe.
Jacob Mattingly | creating Animation And Comic Reviews | Patreon
I need the money. Talking abotu Donald Duck's sex life shockingly does not pay for itself.
Seriouslyt hough times have been very tight and I could use the extra money to if nothing else play for netflix. So please consider throwing in a buck a month or more if you can. Thank you. Now back to Donald Duck's web of horny lies already in progress.
So Donald has to fake it with Mickey's help as Mickey invited himself, Minnie and Daisy for a day out on a boat as Donald didn't loop him in on the lie. In fairness Mickey has a poker face that says "please rob me", so I get not trusting him with secrets.
The rest of the short is just fun slapstick as donald climbs the sail, get sstuck and then gets stuck in a typhoon manging to impress daisy and get his outfit shreded. So now he's a pilot. Bad news he still has no idea what he's doing. Good news he knows a pilot. Bad news...
I mean his sister is also a pilot and has defintely gotten herself into shenanigans trying to get laid, but you know Donald isn't going to ask Della for help unless he's about to be strangled by a mummy and even then we'll see.
Split Decision
This one's just pure fun, with a great high concept: Mickey wants to help cure donald of his rage as Daisy is about to dump him. He does raise the valid point that she always says that but given he literally gets fussy at the drop of a hat (a gag I love as is Mickey's knowing look as he drops the hat), so they try to see if Ludvig von Drake has a thing that can make him not mad.
Given this is the same man who made the entire universe Donald's Ass before someone reset it
This goes about as well as you'd expect with donald instead of being calmed down being split into two versions of himself: Drunk Donald who loves everyone and everything and Angry Donald, a monstroisty of pure rage who levels about half a city block. Donald is so reliant on his rage stripping it out leaves really nothing left and distilling it kickstarts the end of days. This is just an excuse to have fun iwth both with Drunk Donald hugging someone's wife and Angry Donald rampaging. We also get Hallucination Daisy as Mickey's guilt over causing this leads to him hallucinating her. The hallucination slaps him for his hurbis as it should and can because it's daisy.
He realizes Daisy is the key and gets angry donald to beat up drunk donald by getting them both horned up which somehow recombines them
So Donald's back to normal... if with a very angry ass. That's not me his ass would like to rage. This short is hilaroius and the idea donald is nothing without his anger as it's that key to him and he's just a dlerious wreck hugging everyone is great. I also like how drunk drunk donald sounds. The art on both is great paticuarlly rage donald all super deformed and murdery. I'd have a beeer with him before he splits me in half.
Two Can't Play
Look the second Kev pitched this there were a few shorts I knew I had to do and while some like Our Floating Dreams and Potatoland we've seen, a LOT of them are concentrated in this special. Two Can't Play is one of the top ones.
The setup is simple: Donald and Daisy play tennis with who you'd expect
But since he and Tina are on a break they had to call Mickey and Minnie who just once want to win while Donald and Daisy are about as obonxious about winning as yo'ud expect. It is geninely cute to see them bonding and at peace for once even if that peace involves being just
The hypercolor outfits, the anime hair on donald, the fucking gloating, ti's so damn amazing. I would wager this short exists soley because someone drew these outfits and then they wrote a short as an excuse to use them. It's so damn majestic and so them to just be.. garbage people. just the worst. But still so damn cute.
So when the unambigously adorable duo find a cheating device over by the vending machine, they think about it for one minute, see Donald and daisy have got out the air horns which can only mean we're minutes from the live sex celebration, and decide to cheat just to serve it to them.
I love the animation on the tennis, on Donald and Daisy getting clobbered and how poorly they naturally take being beaten and their reactoins are satisfying. As is the twist: their also cheating and whlie they try to claim victory their gear shorts out leading to one last tennis and everyone involved's clothes reparing, which is a shame donald's tron vest is the tron best, and of course the underdogs win and gloat as they deserve. I love you donald and daisy but you desrved that.
Supermarket Scramble
Look did I put this one here because I relate to Donald struggling to open one of those godforsaken supermarket produce bags?
I also put it here because it might be my faviorite mickey mouse short and defintelyf rom the Wonderful World of mickey Mouse sequel series.
Mickey and Co are having an adorably swell day, love the cycled but still cute animation of them making .. I guess grass angles? grangles? their doing snow angles in a field let's just say that and move on.
So wanting to cap such a perfect day that he's glad he spent with you, Mickey decides on a barbeque and to team up: He goes for the fixins, donald goes for fruit because he's bi as fuck like yours truly, Minnie meats
And Daisy will drive because.. they needed something for Daisy to do. Goofy's on lobster.
This short is really 5 smaller concepts stacked and cut between each other and it's beautiful. It's the greatest grocery disaster since Dethklok tried to go to the food library
Almost every one of these is gold. Goofy's dive into the lobster tank is bronze, but the brick joke of him getting left behind and taken home by some lady is gold. We will not ruminate on Goofy's sex life as he's already told the world and his son in detail
The rest are all just pure gold: Mickey gets roped into being the manager as it's really just as easy as giving someone a sweater and saying I'M FRE I'M FREE, Minnie has to go fucking feral to get some sausage from pete, Daisy has to deal with parking on the curb and everyone being mad at her, and Donald.. well donald struggles just to get a bag open. It's all ncie character stuff: Mickey is a natural people pleaser, Minnie is hilarous seeing someone this nice go apeshita s she deals with a crowd of assholes, Daisy gives not one iota of a shit and her rolling up the window on a cop telling her not to park there who just.. walks off defeatd is gold. And life hates donald so of course trying to open one of those accursed motherfucking bags would lead to static and him gaining electric powers a big unruly mob. And OF COURSE Daisy would be the one to fix it wondering what the fucks going on and reminding Mickey, HEY YOU DON'T WORK HERE. It's a fun, breezy short and a nice one that works in the whole gang.
Just the Four of Us
And we end on another Wonderful World episode and my second favorite, a donald and Daisy focused episode.. but what I like is unlike the rest it's not about them fighting or being assholes or implying rough sex. The two of them just want a fucking break after a string of disasterious double dates with Minnie and Mickey, cumilating in trying to rocket to the moon.
It's a great premise as, like the Adorable Couple, it nicely plays on the contrast between the sugary over the top Mickey and Minnie and the more groudned and conflict ridden Donald and Daisy. Donald and Daisy would just be happy with a movie or a nice sandwich or just to fucking stop for a week, while Mickey and Minnie are convinced they have to try the hardest and give their friends THE BESTTTTTT instead of just letting them be tired and are so emotoinally fragile their afraid to just tell them what htey need to hear: No. We need a break, we love you guys but please stop.
So Donald decides to default to what he's worst at: Lying. It's a sweet gesture just get out of it by telling them they can't go.. but Donald makes a crucial error: He tells them their sick, and so the rest of the episode is a slasher movie where Mickey and Minnie try to take care of Donald and Daisy. It's geninely nice ot see Donald and Daisy as a team, and while Donald understandably feels bad he fucked up, in a shocking show of restraint Daisy dosen't pile on him.. even when warning him her yells are less "YOU DONE FUCKED UP BOY" and more "THEIR COMING FOR US". She's not mad at him just understandably terrified at her friends overperforming. It's relatable: while i've never had couple friends like this because i've never coupled long enough for that, we al lhave friends or aquantinces we geninely love but who are just.. a lot and feel bad when we set boundries even though that's healthy.
And necessary as Mickey asking for a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down or Daisy singing creepy nursery rhymes is just great. It's geninely hilaroius the whole time.. sepcailly as the coule get an actual cold and go into the rain just to avoid them. Also Goofy questions his reality. As you do.
The ending is the only part of this short I really don't like: the two end up in the hopstial.. and end up stranded with mickey and minnie when.. they did nothing bad enough to deserve this outcome. Donald and Daisy I mean. They SHOULD have set boundries sure, but we've seen that just seeing Donald and Daisy fight nearly made Mickey pass out and having a fight with his girlfriend was geninely taxing. It would've been hard to actually tell Mickey no without him sobbing for a week straight. But tha'ts also his problem, but being dishonest dosen't mean "oh well the thing we wnated to avoid should happen". Mickey and Minnie aren't bad people.. but neither are Donald and Daisy for just wanting a second. This short is still great but really needed a second draft for that ending as it's the most predictable and eh direction for it to go with.
Next Time: Summer continues as it's the wonderful SUMMER of mickey mouse and the worst scrooge voice you've ever heard. Thanks for reading, later days
Critical Role Episode 4-29: Opening NIght Thoughts
After expermenting with liveblogging last night, and finding it fun though i'll defintely need a sideblog for it, I decided to write down any extra thoughts as i'm a wordy bastard and while I have a full review full of ducks to get out today, I just wanted to geninely.. engage with the rest of this fandom. I was brought in by the cartoons and it took me a long time to mount up and watch campaign 4 constiently. Still gotta catch up but I knew enough from tv tropes, recaps and the like to keep up. So i'm excited to be here, took me a few weeks to actually do this, let's go.
Breaking this up by section as since we have three distinct groups and since i'ts the biggest and meatest this session, let's talk about
THE GATHERING OF THE SUNDERED HOUSES
First off Wic and Tyranny have been my easy faviorites out o the soldiers even before I properly got to meet them , everything I read from Dr Jizzabell Finger to Wic being a sad boy dealing with the fact his entire life's a lie (Critical Roll's version of Hunter from the Owl House), made me excited to. The fact said meeting involved them noisly pulling up to the archenade and Wic having the disguise skills of an excited toddler ready to play dress up and Tyranny wanting to eat a corpse only met my expectations.
That said i'm still not sold that his whole party's going to make it out of this alive. While Wic was right to stand up for himself and while his punch was deeserved (And gave me the shiptastic wiccany or whatever it's properly called moment I deserved, same with him calling her pretty this episode, seriously man realize the affect you have on this woman) his return punch was equally satisfying as while Julian is a hoot to watch and a beast in any party he's in.. he's still a dick and still deserved it. Frankly he deserved a busted nose too but Wic has the physical strength of a newborn baby, the fact he hurt him at all was a miracle.
Anyways I do think Wic was right this was a gamble needed to take and that they need to stop treating him like the tagalong kid no one likes. He's certainly not an equal to many of them but he has a seat at the table for a reason. Where I worry is how the fuck they get out of this. They do have Glyphs and Bolaire as a trump card, but as Wick himself as said Yanessa will kill "Kill them so fast" and the more he stays the more he's becomming engrained back in his house.
Brennan being both a kind resonable dm who warns his players before they fuck up but also a complete and utter baastard is not making it easy, hammering in that Iris and Wic II (He has a name but frankly given how he's treated and how he's the finished Asmir she wanted) really missed him and SEEMINGLY have nothing to do with all this. Seemingly. He can't rescue them too as they don't want it.
His sister on the other hand is the fucking worst and I do think she geninely killed Aramis. While it could be an empty threat, given Yanessa was ready to slit her faviorite pawn and propoganda tool's throat if he lied I doubt she'd be that arsed to keep around a commoner who was geninely making things difficult just by existing and who Wic was both too sweet and too naive to give up on. I completely buy Wic's sister volunteering just to have somethihng to hurt him with later and get some small satisfaction every time he brought his lost love up knowing she'd put that poor girl in the ground.
The whole masking scene was funny after the deep uncomfort of "Oh Tyranny's just going to casually pick someone who may not be able to say no to try and fuck wic so they die". The "not prettier than me" was hilarious and Bolarie REALLY needs to set these down too, get them some tea and say, for both their sakes
So Wic can either reject her and they both can move on as she is down bad and it's starting to affect the team and he is too damn oblivoius to pick up the neon signs. I do like he's now stuck in the middle of this as the adult in the room as not only is he my faviorite (Talisen's characters were instant faviorites in the cartoons and Bolaire's reveal cemented him as one here), but he frankly is the only one with a brain cell consitently.
Either way the reveal she's actually a weird dick riding zealot who wants to be with him for always and rejects the reading mask was fantastic as was poor Bolaire getting her horny. Horny transfers. I also like the way Talisen played it, implying that this isn't the first time he's taken someone just after they got super triple horned up. I mean I get it, seducing someone is probably an easy way to do this, I also get why he probably only saves it for if he has to. It's awkward enough having someone's risdual horny for what is now by this point his young ward. Granted he had to feel a ton of that coming from tyranny. Also love Whitney's pantomining when he's puppeteering tyranny's body. That was amazing. She's the best.
So with all that drama out of the way we have the meeting itself, which was tense as fuck as expected. It also got a hilarious crash in as the Aspirants continue to be comedy gold. I haven't seen their first bungled fight, though I have read the quote "YOU SHOULD BE LUCKY TO HAVE HIS COMPANY", but one of them (Haven't fully memorized whose who yet) writhing with no yous while they dick themselves under a carriage and the other asking thier nemisis to "Please, be cool", was glorious.
This was no less so as I swear to the everlight I heard the bulk and skull theme music when they emerged carrying two bodies. I also like that none of the other houses seemed to genuinely care Yanessa had done a kidnapping. Kattigan being in the bag reminded me of that episode of star vs where tom's trapped in a bag but way more dramatic.
So speaking of Kattigan I really did'nt know him well: Iknew he had some mysterious tragic past but he seemed like just the swaggering rogue of his group, your han solo type. I should've knonw better aas that opening was fucking gutting. While I did'nt guess Primus himself being the culprit I defintely called it being a Tachonis: While i'm sure some people Kattigan went to were just.. classist dicks who assumed she abandoned him as Brennan narraited, I was just as certain given the Tachonisses aren't exactly subtle in their apperances and primus is more than willing to murder someone just because he feels they didn't "Know their place" , that anyone who DID realize who Kattigan was talking about clammed the fuck up and simply played it off as "are you sure she didn't run" for both their sakes. Let's face it, Kattigan ENTIRELY would've tried to get a party and go murder that mother fucker immeditely had he known all this time and that would not have ended well. The man is a tragic figure and I feel deeply for him but he is not remotely smart enough for subterfuge. It's why he got sacked and then dragged away as he found his wife and child's killer ni the first place. Hope he gets to save their souls from whatever the fuck Primus did with them.
Back to the meeting, Otto geninely impressed me , as did Brenan having not only set things up in case they ran into any of the other houses plans, but for how their actions paid off. I assumed, and have the posts to back this up, Otto was going to die for darring to speak up to Primus.. but instead is powerful enough that he GENINELY scared the man. Which worries me as that means Otto is just as powerful as any of them and while he has a sense of honor he IS a maid killing bastard. I don't completely trust him, I just trust him more than the two big bads.
Still seeing this horrible monster who tried to have his own son killed and slaughtered Jullian's entire family , all while being utterly unashamed of murdering the royces and bragging about how they all WANTED to do it: he just did it cowed, even if it was sadly temproary was great.
Primus did have a fucking whopper of a villian speech though, explaning just how much he hates the poor, how he's aware rebellion is on the horizon, and in a dark echo of wic's actions last episode that while not planned given how much that floored brenan, defintely synch up well... getting out of certain death or war by simply speaking the truth. Admitting that "Yeah I was trying to become emperor, yup I did all this... and it's not like any of you haven't been doing the same", also VERY aware of what the aspirants really are and that the ressurection was bullshit. I am shocke dit does seem the hallovars and tachonises aren't working as closesly as I thought but it suprises me less and less that they were ALL planning some trump card. It also makes me fucking happy that the person most crucial to stopping his plan.. was a commner he dismissed and nearly casually murdered earlier that day. Still nothing good can come from any of this except maybe if Tyranny can loosely convince her sisters to rebel. Which is a tall order given they all hate her and she hates them but we'll see.
Almost forgot to mention Bolaire's sister, which was fucking excellent from the head break to the fact hse really does not understand things have changed... and that instead we now have a VERY dangerous wild card about. That said I did fullly expect her to leave the box at some point and while I COMPLETELY get why the Schemers didn't check it sooner, it still might of behooved them to have Murray scan it if she could.
The Play: The Dead Speak
I have less on the Play sequence but only that it was truly stunning. Some of Brennan and Liam's best work: you can tell they worked out teh whole damn play together, Liam being the one whose character wrote it and is directing it and Brennan having to play everyone in it. It was truly beautiful.. as was Valeus bit of ship tease, get it girl. The faire showing up to deal with the creed was also fantastic, just a truly awesome moment of payoff for their racist bullshit.
The big event was of course.. Thaisha being a proud stage mom to Shadia and showing how much she loves her baby. While i gave Brenan a pass if it happened this week the offer still stands: one punch to th back of the head or drawing of it for legal reasons and because I like him if this baby girl baby dies.
The real event of course was the ritual.. and the suprise of it.... the ghosts of the dead returend... and got to actaully pass on. Thazi's plan to turn this around was not beocming a god, as many understandably theorized, at least not yet.. but to simply free his people and let them see where they are NOW. That's all. To show orc kind free and use that with his brothe'rs art to show the people what it means to be free. This could still be something way darker... but I doubt it. The plan , even if it was turning around something from the houses, was always something beauitful and trascnednat. It raises a lot of question about what's the next step of it, but it is beautiful that at least for one act, Hals' show did what he set out to do: inspire, to show people why art matters and to strike back against the monsters plotting at the same time.
The Spooky Murder Mansion of Regret
Okay one more and less character stuff here as it was mostly sneaking around a mansion and then playing brenan's faviorite dnd mini game "TRY NOT TO DIE BITCHES!". LIke the players i just.. did not question that maybe going into a spooky death mansion with only a 20 year old's decade expired knowledge of the place , two gloriously meatheaded furies, a vengance man and thimble (who was actually a good choice), was a good idea. I saw all the danger flags for the theater (a mystery ritual that was heavily built up as being something truly horrifying, making brenan's swerve all the cooler), and the Vila Aurora (A party of only three stuck behind enemy lines with only a flimsy possibly blockable way out), I didn't think "Hey maybe the guy who massacred an entire house in one night and nearly massacred the party that same night just a week and two levels ago in universe probably left some pretty dangerous shit". Like the mansion conflict itself, I genuinely wasn't sure ANYONE would make it out alive till the very end.
Travis being utterly terrified was funny, but it underlied the fact they were all one bad roll or two away from certain death, especially Cyd who got no main character bonuses becaue Brenan can REALLY be a cruel bastard. If a fair one in this case as he scaled the dungeon for a much bigger party figuring they wouldn't visit till the end game of hte campaign if that. But this being the campaign it is he can't really warn them and his philosphy for armian and campaign 4 as a whole geninely seems to be
He's fair about it including warning players if their out matched.. but this is not making it easy for them and the fact they all nearly died.
On the bright side Occtis made a friend/possible love intrest. Also got me to look up whose corpse they've been lugging around but i get it now. She geninely bound herself to him as his his protector and now can get her revenge on his family. Plus a party as small as the seekers (not by normal standards but by critical role and "this campaign is a fucking death world standards", yes), could use another npc member. Granted I don't think ANY of the parties will be the same coming out of this, but I could easily be proven wrong.
Anwyays that was all great, thanks for reading. Stick around for reviews and more simpsons gifs. later days.
Realized I never sent my theater post.. too late for that now.
Otto to Primus:
God I fucking love you Otto. I thought just a minute ago, check the posts, this man would die horrribly.
"It was never my intention to slaughter anybody who sits at this table"
"It was not meant to slaughter you , it was meant to make you kneel"
So this wasn't one concetrated plot all along: it was all of them seperatley doing game of thrones shit. That.. generally throws me.
And we're finally to the speech from the trailer... in full context.
"They will bury you in their dirt and call it freedom"
Fuck this is a good villian speech. And it genuiely worries me. I was hoping they'd break.. but expecting they woudln't.
"We have laid a feast for you as a token of our apologies"
Wic's Words: Yay go team
Wic Internally: WHAT WHAT DO I DO HOW WORDS WHAT
BROTHER! I'M HAVING SUCH A GOOD TIME
You tried bolaire .. you tried.
