Monday Catchup 7/5/2021
There hasn’t been much in the way of big stories but there have been some little ones I haven’t covered yet.
Black Widow is Tracking Badly
From my friends at Bounding Into Comics: “Box Office Pro predicts that Black Widow will have an opening weekend between $65 and $90 million. However, they specifically home in and predict the movie will make $77 million in its opening weekend.
As for its domestic total they believe it will make between $155 and $225 million.
These numbers are abysmal for a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film despite Box Office Pro trying to put a spin on them claiming that the movie “is still the kind of event tentpole with four-quadrant appeal that’s likely to attract more people back to theaters and set new pandemic era benchmarks at the domestic and international box office.”
Every product has a life cycle: Introduction, growth, maturity and finally decline. Disney/Marvel reached maturity with Avengers Infinity War and immediately went into decline. I can’t help but look at this “event tent pole with four quadrant appeal” and think it looks a little dated today. There is just something about it that says, Eighties action movie released in 1995. I think the audience has started to move on.
Regardless, it launches on the 9th so, I’ll try to make time for a Dark Herald Recommends on it.
Loki
Too long, too woke and too late.
We are now past episode four and are moving into the climax. I honestly, thought that this series was going to be the best of the mini-series Marvel/Disney + was streaming before the big return to the theaters with Black Widow. While I’m not a huge fan of WandaVision, it was certainly better than this. I’ve seen no effort to care for Loki as a brand at all. Instead, this has been the usual Woke Wash bait and switch, ‘Here’s Loki the character you want to see. Ha! Ha! Ha! Sucker! Now you get to watch the character we think you need to see.’
They spend most of their time humiliating one of the biggest of the big-bads in the Marvel universe to try and make Lady Loki look good by comparison.
Writing 101, if you want to make the audience like a new character, you have them do some sort of Save the Cat scene. If a new character immediately does something sweet, nice or kind, the audience will like that character. I forget the name of the movie but it stared Al Pacino as a cop. He was part of a sting operation aimed at catching paroled convicts who were breaking their parole. I think it was buying stolen tickets to a baseball game. One of the paroled convicts had brought his son along. Al Pacino looks at the little kid and then quickly flashes the convict his badge. The convict nods in fear and turns around to leave, Al calls after him, “catch you later!”
Great little character introduction. It told you everything you needed to know about the guy to include the fact that he is compassionate. He is rough-boy with a heart of gold.
When Lady Loki is introduced, about 20 minutes are spent showing how she is smarter and better then the guy we know and kind of like. And the next 20 are spent demonstrating her superiority in every facet of her existence to him.
We finally got to see the Time Lizards and you instantly know they are fake. The guys actually pulling the strings appear to be a couple of other variant Lokis plus Black Thor.
I’ll ride this one into the ground but I doubt if it’s getting any better.
Doctor Who
And speaking of things that aren’t getting any better…
Pop singer and professional gay man Olly Alexander finally came forward to shoot down the rumor that he was taking over from Jodie Whitaker. What was really significant here is that it was the big time London media that had been carrying the rumors about Olly Alexander. Up until now they were firmly denying that Jodie Whitaker had located the Tardis’ escape pod and was bailing out of the show.
Nerdrotic is still reporting the rumor that BBC is strongly considering cancelation. However, HBOmax paid big (overpaid in point of fact) for the US streaming rights to Doctor Who. There probably is enough money from this sale to fund a couple more seasons of Who.
Honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t care if the Doctor becomes Trans despite the fact that he/she already is. I’m done with the show. I can’t watch it anymore. It’s dead to me.
Game of Thrones Will Never Be Finished
And speaking of things that are dead.
Martin has finally half admitted that he will probably never finish A Song of Ice and Fire. He recently stated in an interview that the ending would have been different. Not “will be different,” but “would have been.”
Somewhere in his deepest heart he knows he will never finish the series.
George R.R. Martin is surrounded by “allies” not “friends.” Which is why, I suspect, it’s never going to be finished. Martin has ensconced himself in a world where his closest supporters in the world will turn on him if he mispronounces names from some of the most unpronounceable places in the world. He knows there is no pleasing them and it’s only a matter of time before they would turn on him again. It really doesn’t matter what he creates now, if he regurgitates the same abortion that Game of Thrones delivered the fans will flay him. If he delivers anything different the Stans will come after him. Since I’m willing to bet that Martin’s original plan involved Arya dying miserably alone and forsaken of all, instead of being a strong confident young whaman setting off on her ship for a world of adventure.
Because that is the kind of story George R.R. Martin writes. Fine if it works for you but I’ll stick with Arktoons.
Okay, I’m done here.
