Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 21

When the Sparrow Falls now available on Net Galley!

Hey you! Do you live in North America? Are you functionally literate?

Then we have much to discuss…

My debut novel is now available for review at Net Galley and you can request an Advance Review Copy HERE. Why not request one and give it a review? Give me one good reason. Exactly, you can’t.

 

A poem.

Former President Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump (former)

Donald Trump, former president.

The ex-president, DJ Trump.

Donald Trump, 45th of 46 US Presidents, thus far.

The last guy.

The previous occupant.

Donald Trump, who was president, and is no more.

And is no more.

“Well, at least we can all agree the third one’s always the worst.”

“2021! We made it, people! We beat the hell year!”

“Everything’s going to be great now, and we don’t have to worry about that awful coronavirus anymore because it just magically vanished at the stroke of midnight like a Fairy Godmother’s pumpkin coach!”

“Uh, Mouse?”

“Who dares interrupt my hubris?”

“Sorry, but it looks like the virus heard we’d created a vaccine and took it…kinda…personally…”

“YAAAAAAAAAAARGGHHHH!!”

“Oh please. So this “mutant strain” is a touch more virulent, how bad can it really be?”

“Oh crap.”

***

Hi. Welcome to the blog. Make yourselves at home. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS AND DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING IT MAY BE TRANSMITTABLE THROUGH THE INTERNET BY THIS POINT WHO KNOWS YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT CAN DO.

Ahem. So, here in Ireland we’re back in full lockdown as the virus runs rampant through the streets, overturning cars and making lewd comments at our gentle lady folk. As a result, we’re keeping Mini and Micro Mouse at home which means I’ve been full time Dadding it for the last few weeks. Which is my weasely way of saying that this review is going to be very short as I’ve been spending every waking hour minding my awful time sucking monsters sweet, darling little angels.

“Can I watch five solid hours of Avatar the Last Airbender again?”

“Does Daddy have the strength or will to stop you?”

“No.”

“Then. Why. Ask?”

Oh and it’s a shame too, such a gosh darned shame that I won’t be able to spend much time on X-Men Apocalypse. Such a layered work. So brimming with craft and ideas and actors clearly giving it their all and happy to be there. So obviously not directed by a man giving instructions from his trailer as the chickens of his past behaviour come home to roost. So…I can’t maintain this level of sarcasm, I’m not as young as I used to be, I HATE THIS MOVIE.

Not fun hatred either. Not the kind of hate that gets you pumped and excited to tear this thing a new critic hole. Just weary, dispassionate disgust at the whole bloated mess.

But I was going to give it a full length review, honest. Just couldn’t because of the mutant corona virus. Which, shockingly, is only the second worst thing involving mutation I’ve had to contend with recently.

I’m pretty sure by this point Final Draft comes with an “X-men Movie” template that loads up with a Charles Xavier monologue beginning with the word “mutants” so that’s what we get. What’s that? You want me to actually remember what he says? Stones on you, buster.

We begin in Ancient Egypt, where Pharoah En Sabah Nur is about to transfer his consciousness into the body of a young mutant with the power of immortality, thus allowing him to rule forever. En Sabah Nur is better known as Apocalypse, and he will be our villain for this evening. And that’s a problem.

So this might cause some consternation, but the X-Men don’t have a particularly deep bench of good villains. I mean, obviously, they have Magneto and Magneto will take you a long ways because he is legitimately one of the four or five greatest comic book villains ever created. Great powers, great look, tragic backstory, layered, deep characterisation and the way in which his radicalism forms a perfect and dramatically rich counterpoint to the goals and worldview of Xavier and the X-Men. All great.

But after Magneto, the pickings get noticeably slimmer. Put it this way: there have been seven main X-Men movies and Magneto has appeared in every single one (plus a cameo in The Wolverine).  That doesn’t happen if you’ve got a rich and varied rogues gallery to draw on. I mean, the Joker is the greatest comic book villain of all time, but he doesn’t appear in every single Batman movie, you feel me? But there are no other X-Men villains that can match the near perfection of Magneto. That said, I would argue that Apocalypse probably comes closest. Like Thanos, he’s essentially a Darkseid-clone, a villain meant to menace the heroes on multiple levels. He’s diabolically brilliant and cunning while also having the raw power to fight a full team of mutants single-handed. And, like Magneto, he has a philosophy that gives an added intellectual depth to his battles with the X-Men, namely extreme Social Darwinism (or should I say X-Treme Social Darwinism?). He first appeared as a shadowy figure manipulating events behind the scenes in X-Factor (although it was actually originally intended that he’d be revealed to be The Owl).

AKA “The Character we use when we want to dupe people into thinking Wolverine’s in the book.”

At his best, Apocalypse exudes sheer, implacable menace and instantly raises the stakes of any story he appears in.

So why the heck did they cast Oscar Isaacs in this part? Nothing against the actor, in fact I’d rank him as one of my favourite leading men. But for this? For this part? For Apocalypse? Are you kidding me? He comes up to my knee! You cast a Vincent D’Onofrio for this shit. Or better yet, a Dave Bautista. The only way Isaacs works as Apocalypse is if you’re doing a radically different take on the character. Something like casting James Spader as Ultron (which, whatever else I think of that film, really worked). That kind of deal. But that’s not what they do. This Apocalypse is pretty faithful to the comic book version, but fatally lacking in the presence and menace that it would take to make that work. It’s just poor Isaacs shuffling around under a ton of makeup and prosthetics, unable to use his wonderfully expressive face and clearly just longing for death.

So in a nutshell, here’s what happens in this movie.

Apocalypse is betrayed by his people and ends up buried alive. He’s resurrected by a cult of his followers in Cairo in 1983. Moira McTaggart, who is still a field agent despite this being 21 years after the last movie and now being in her early fifties.

Bull and also shit.

But Apocalypse escapes and roams the streets of Cairo like a lost blue fridge in a poncho until he uses his fantastically well defined and consistent powers to suck all relevant information that he needs out of a TV set.  Having binged on 1983’s television output, he decides that the world must be destroyed.

That’s fair. That’s fair.

He also recruits a young pickpocket named Ororo Monroe with weather powers who he just runs into as you do.

Meanwhile, the movie doubles down on the absolute dumbest part of Days of Future Past where Magneto and Mystique dropped a stadium on the White House and almost assassinated the President and the entire cabinet and humanity reacted by saying “wait, maybe we’re the assholes?”. So anyway, Mystique is now viewed as a hero and an inspiration to both humans and mutants to the point where she’s started using her non-blue form to stop her being recognised. Of course, that decision to just assimilate into the rest of humanity and forgo everything that makes her a unique individual runs counter to the entire character. But on the other hand; if Jennifer Lawrence has to spend any more time in the make-up chair she will straight up cut a bitch.

She’s keeping busy though, and rescues a young Kurt Wagner from an underground mutant fighting ring in East Berlin where he was being forced to battle Warren Worthington III aka The Angel because if there was a Fox X-Men movie without a character named “Angel” the universe would implode. See, when Logan changed the past in Days of Future Past, he apparently caused Warren Worthington II’s sperm to travel back in time and cause his son to be born thirty years earlier. Or something. Anyway, Mystique spring Nightcrawler and gets him smuggled safely to the US. Apocalypse, who can teleport because why not? Also arrives in East Berlin and recruits Angel and Psyloche to his cause, leaving him just one horseman short.

Meanwhile, in the States, Alex Summers returns to Xavier’s School with his younger brother Scott to enroll him because he’s started shooting death rays out of his eyes. And the franchise continues its long proud tradition of shitting on Scott Summers by making him a whiny jackass. Fortunately, that’s Jean Grey’s fetish and she and Scott form a tentative attraction.

Ah young love. Before she inevitably murders him offscreen.

Apocalypse sets off an earthquake that’s felt all around the world and Charles decides to pay a visit to that chick he telepathically roofied in the sixties and goes to see Moira in the CIA. Oh, and he brings Alex, hoping that his boyish good looks will make her more persuadable.

42. He’s supposed to be 42. This movie lies like a goddamned sociopath.

Moira finds Charles vaguely familiar and decides to share with him everything she knows about Apocalypse.

Meanwhile, in communist Poland, Erik Lensherr is living a quiet anonymous life and is married with a young daughter. You remember Erik Lensherr? Almost blew up two naval fleets belonging to the world’s two superpowers? Suspected of killing JFK? Dropped a stadium on the White House? Ah you do, you remember him. Almost killed Nixon and the entire cabinet? That Erik Lensherr. Yeah. He’s just living quietly and not bothering anyone and it seems everyone’s just given up on looking for him.

Well, you know. Bygones. Oh, Erik even mentions to his wife (who might as well be wearing a T-Shirt saying “fridge-bait”) that he told her who he was the first day he met her and, my, but he is a trusting soul. Anyway, during the global Apocalypse-quake, Erik uses his powers to save a coworker and everyone is all like “wait a minute, that mysterious guy who looks exactly like the most wanted terrorist on Earth has magnet powers you don’t think…”

So they put two and two together and the police come and arrest him. Little detail that I do like: they come armed with bows and arrows. I mean, it’s kind of stupid that the Polish police have a dedicated archery unit but at the same time I like that they’re not stupid enough to come at him with guns. It’s a little thing, but I appreciate it. Anyway, we need to re-set Erik’s character so his wife and daughter are disposed of. Erik naturally goes on a roaring rampage of revenge and gets recruited by Apocalypse who takes him to Auschwitz in probably the most stunningly tasteless and misjudged scene in a superhero movie prior to Wonder Woman raping that dude.

Yes. Let’s take the big purple Power Rangers villain to Auschwitz. Great idea.

Xavier checks in with Erik telepathically and Apocalypse is able to invade his mind and force him to take over key people in the US and Soviet militaries and make them nut their entire nuclear arsenal into space so that they can’t interfere with his plans. He then attacks the mansion, kidnaps Xavier and sets off an explosion that destroys the mansion. Alex Summers dies offscreen, as is the way of his people, but fortunately most of the important mutants were at the movies watching Return of the Jedi just so Bryan Singer could make a real fucking petty jab at The Last Stand. Everyone else in the mansion was saved by Quicksilver, who arrives just in time to give us the only legitimately good scene in the movie. Of course, it’s basically the exact same scene from Days of Future Past with a different song but small mercies. Cyclops, Jean and Nightcrawler arrive back at the mansion and are all “what the hell?” when who should show up but William Fucking Stryker. He kidnaps Hank, Mystique, Quicksilver and Moira and brings them to Weapon X so Bryan Singer can throw some shade at Wolverine: Origin, too. And look, that movie deserves all the shade that is fit to throw, but it’s a little tough to take from the man in the middle of making the worst X-Men movie bar none.

Haven’t seen this one yet but I have a good feeling about it.

Fortunately, Jean, Scott and Nightcrawler tagged along and Scooby-Doo their way around the facility until they find and release Wolverine. We get a pointless Hugh Jackman cameo and get to see him break out of the facility wearing the helmet from the original Weapon X comic which was literally the only purpose of this entire sequence.

Time well spent.

At Apocalypse’s behest, Erik unleashes his full powers and basically magnet-nukes the planet. Like, you know how badly Metropolis was fucked up at the end of Man of Steel? That’s every city on Earth. There is no way Erik is not now the biggest mass murderer in human history. But he’s still a little snuggle bunny deep down and Mystique is able to talk him out of doing anything else by reminding him that he still has a family. You know, the one led by the guy he crippled who spend most of their time trying to kill him. Honestly, that describes a lot of families.

Angel dies, Psyloche runs away, Storm realises that she had no motivation to side with Apocalypse in the first place and switches sides. Xavier convinces Jean to unleash her full potential and she releases the Phoenix force, burning Apocalypse to a crisp.

Later, Erik says his goodbyes to Charles and goes on his merry way. You know, Erik Lensherr? The most powerful mutant on the planet who now has a kill count higher than Genghis Khan and Mao Zedong combined? Yeah, they’re gonna let him walk. I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.

And the movie ends with the most fucking hilarious scene, I swear to God.

The new class of young impressionable X-Men are standing in the Danger Room, listening to Mystique give the following speech:

“Forget everything you think you know. Whatever lessons you learned in school, whatever your parents taught you, none of that matters! You’re not kids anymore. You’re not students. You’re X-Men!”

And then the kids watch in horror as an army of Sentinels stride into the Danger Room and Professor X closes the door on them.

I mean, you see that scene out of context and there’s no doubt in your mind that these kids have been indoctrinated into a cult and are now going to be massacred for the perverse enjoyment of the creepy bald guy in the wheelchair.

***

God DAMN this movie is a slog. There’s no story here. No themes. No real arcs. The whole thing is just a pointless, dull box-ticking exercise that manages to squander the goodwill I had towards the previous two movies with impressive ease.

The Stinger

Some shady men in suits tidy up Weapon X. One of them takes a vial of Wolverine’s blood and stashes it in a suitcase labelled “Essex Corp”.

And the audience went

Movie. Buddy. Pal. I am one of, like, five people who doesn’t think that Mr. Sinister sucks because I was introduced to the character through the animated show and in that he was a fucking boss. But I cannot, will not, categorically refuse to get excited over being granted the privilege OF SEEING HIS FUCKING BRIEFCASE.

Hey, was that Stan Lee?

Yeah. Yeah that was Stan Lee. In a close up. Watching nuclear missile launching into the stratosphere and holding his wife close as he prepares to watch the world immolated in atomic fire.

Fox.

You are doing these wrong.

Department of Duplication Department

We gotta new Cyclops, Tye Sheridan. We gotta new Jean Grey, Sophie Turner. Oliva Munn is yer New Psylocke (I totally did not forget that Psylocke already appeared in The Last Stand how very dare you). We also have a new Blob, Nightcrawler, Jubilee and Alexandra Shipp taking over as the new Storm. Most bizarrely, we now have Ben Hardy as Angel, a character who is now in his twenties in 1983 despite being a teenager in The Last Stand because Bryan Singer is apparently the only person who hates The Last Stand more than I do.

How worried is Guinan right now?

Guinan is screaming into the void at this gnarled, monstrous python of a timeline.

Wait, Magneto is how old?

This movie is set in 1983, which makes Magneto is 53.

In dog years, maybe. Fuck’s sake.

Mutant Heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors.

Apocalypse resurrects once, that’s it.

Today, mutants are…

I have no goddamned idea. The obvious choice for an X-Men story set in the eighties would be to do the Legacy virus as an AIDS allegory. But that would presume some actual thought went into choosing this period of time. As it is, mutants are mutants. If you want deeper symbolism, look elsewhere.

This movie is…

 

X-CELSIOR!!!

X-traordinary 

X-cellent

X-pected standard

Un X-ceptional

Un X-cceptable

X-crement

NEXT UPDATE: 11 February 2021. Sorry guys, back to a monthly schedule. Creches and schools are closed and I’ve got a book to write in the two or three free minutes I get everyday. Thanks for understanding.

NEXT TIME: 

“Hmmm, probably should tackle another reader’s request. But what?”

“Fascist coup going on in the States if anyone cares.”

“Well, that settles that.”

Peace on Earth, good will to all…

I’ve been doing end of year recaps on this blog for a few years now and I’m always a little torn when I sit down to write one. On the one hand, it’s satisfying to just take stock of everything that I managed to get through/accomplish/survive in the past 12 months. But it also feels a little self-involved.

Not this year though. This year it feels incredibly narcissistic.

Like, here’s what I did on my little blog during one of the most significant years of the post war era that will surely go down as a major inflection point in human history.

Even as the first vaccines are being rolled out, the pandemic’s impact will be felt in every sphere of human existence for years to come; be they political, economic, social or enviromental. I think (God, I hope) it’s the closest that any of us under the age of 75 will come to living through a world war. There is this massive, impossibly huge, impossibly terrible thing looming over all aspects of our lives and everything from planning a wedding to going to the shops for milk has been warped by it.

And yet, despite the horrendous loss of life worldwide, I find that I’m far more optimistic about the future at the end of 2020 than I was at the start, and not just because of America’s half-throated rejection of Trumpism, the resilience of our social fabric to the disease and the borderline miraculous scientific achievement of creating a safe vaccine in less than a year.

I hope and pray that things are starting to turn a corner.

Anyway, here’s what I did on my little blog this year.

In 2020 I reviewed 1 Canon Disney movie, 3 MCU movies, 1 X-Men movie, 3 animé, 4 live action movies (not counting 1 review where my brother very kindly stepped in), 4 non-Disney animated features and 1 animated series.

Also, we had two instalments of Bats Versus Bolts, covering the silent era and the 2010s.

Oh, and I reviewed a newly discovered episode of The Rimini Riddle and lived to tell of it.

It was definitely a year when I stepped outside of my comfort zone and thanks to reader requests I discovered plenty of films that I might not have otherwise had a chance to enjoy, including the best film I reviewed this year and now one of my all time favourites; Night of the Hunter. Of course, reader requests also dragged the soggy carcass of Mars Needs Moms, to my door, so it was a mixed bag. All in all though, I felt this year I reviewed a stronger crop of movies than any year since I reached the end of the Disney Canon.

While I ended up posting a lot less this year what with the new baby and taking on a lot of new writing work, I hope you enjoyed what I did manage to post this year and hopefully I’l be able to devote more time to the blog in 2021 (hah!).

I hope, despite the incredible and often heart-breaking turmoil of last year you were able to find your own moments of joy and triumph. If not, I hope 2021 is your year.

Thanks so much to all of you for reading and commenting and letting me know you’re all out there.

Have a wonderful, safe and happy Christmas.

Nollaig shona daoibh go léir,

Mouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’ll see Peter. People need to believe. And nowadays, they’ll believe anything.”

Christmas is almost upon us and so, in the spirit of the season, I will challenge the existing status quo and speak truth to power.

Mysterio sucks. Always has. Always will.

And I think I’m somewhat in the minority on this, since fans have been clamouring to see him in a Spider-Man movie since pretty early on in the Raimi films. Some people even seem to genuinely believe that Mysterio is a good villain, which in my opinion is akin to Climate Change denial or saying “Kingdom Hearts has a good story”. Not simply incorrect, but morally reprehensible. Hell, IGN even named him the 85th Greatest Comic Book Villain of all time, proof if proof were needed that the once noble art of ranking things on the internet has become a sorry, corrupt burlesque.

And, yes, he is a creation of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and therefore is deserving of respect if you believe that pampered scions of privilege deserve a free ride just because of who their daddies are.

Fine, the visual design is so ridiculous that it shoots the moon and becomes kind of magnificent.

True, the cape. Is. FABULOUS.

But the whole concept of Mysterio is just a one-way train ticket to disappointment. His schtick is that he’s a special effects wizard who uses tricks and illusions to seem like he’s an actual wizard. In other words, he’s a villain who’s no real threat and uses smoke and mirrors to make you think he actually is a threat. But he’s not. He’s not a threat at all. Hit him with a crowbar, you’ll probably kill him. Doesn’t know karate or anything. Completely normal dude.  His first appearence in the Amazing Spider-Man #15 was one long game of “Got Yer Nose” and once Spider-Man realised that he did not, in truth, have his nose, I don’t really think we needed to see the character again. Once Spidey has seen through his bullshit, the only way you can bring him back is to have him secretly messing with Spider-Man from the shadows. And, once Spider-Man has figured out who’s really behind these shenanigans, it will always be anticlimactic:

Oh no! The Daily Bugle is being menaced by a gigantic red snake!
Huh?! The snake was just a red sock on a stick and the use of forced perspective.
Oh, Mysterio was behind it all. Everyone relax, he can’t actually do anything, his powers are just lies and bullshit.

And that’s Mysterio. Disappointment in a cape and a fishbowl.

All that said, he’s not the worst choice as a villain for Far From Home. After the sturm and drang of Avengers Endgame this movie was intended to close out Phase 4 with a light little comedic palette cleanser and Mysterio is probably a better fit for that than…say, Carnage. Which, I suppose, is as good a point as any to bring up the fact that we have for the moment reached the end of our journey. This is, at the time of writing, the last released MCU film what with Black Widow‘s release having been pushed back and Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings being delayed due to the world going viral in the bad way. This also means that I have to make some tricky decisions. Like; do I actually need to review Wandavision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier? I haven’t reviewed any of the TV shows thus far but all indications are that the Disney Plus shows are going to be FAR more impactful on the overall narrative than, say, Cloak and Dagger or Runaways.

“We exist!”

 Or maybe I should just accept that the film and television production and consumption landscape is almost unrecognisable from what it was when I started reviewing these movies way back in 2015 and that by this point the MCU is just too damn large for one blogger to cover and get on with it.

Okay so it’s eight months after half of all life on Earth re-appeared after having suddenly vanished five years prior. And, rather than going through the total social, economic, political and ecological collapse that you’d expect, the entire human race has quite sensibly decided to just pretend it all never happened and move on with their lives.

Peter Parker is preparing to go on a class trip to Europe along with Ned and MJ who were also conveniently blipped so we don’t have to worry about casting new older actors. Peter lays out his plan to Ned:

Hang out with MJ, watching movies with her on the flight over.
Buy her a Black Dahlia themed piece of jewellery in Venice because of her love of the Black Dahlia murder.
Give her the gift and confess his feelings to her on the top the Eiffel Tower.

And…holy shit. Guys, I think we finally have a Peter Parker who’s not a complete idiot when it comes to romance. That’s a really solid plan. Spending time with her, bonding over shared interests, getting her a gift that is thoughtful and personally tailored to her and then sharing his feelings in one of the most romantic locations on Earth (little basic, but c’mon, they’re teenagers). That’s…yeah. Bravo Mr. Parker.

Ned, the fool, says that Peter should ditch that plan as he’s going to be an American bachelor in Europe and they should play the field. And Ned, he’s a skinny kid from Queens who’s somehow in with a shot with frickin’ Zendaya. What, he should hold out for Beyoncé? Get the fuck outta here.

Later, Peter is helping Aunt May with a fundraiser to help the billions upon billions of people that have been left homeless by the Blip.

Happy Hogan shows up to give a donation from Pepper Potts and there’s a little something between him and Aunt May, you feel me? A little kinda, you know, a little frisson? A little flutter of romantic tension? A little…they’re fucking. They are totally fucking. They are the mayor and mayoress of fucktown.

I doubt this is what Stan Lee envisioned for these characters back in 1963, but who can say?

Peter, who doesn’t need spider-sense to grok that something is going on here, is about to ask Happy what his intentions are towards his aunt but Happy tells him to expect a call from Nick Fury. Sure enough, he gets an anonymous call but Peter decides that he’s actually a private citizen and doesn’t work for Nick Fury and he’s going on vacation thank you very much.

He goes out as Spider-Man to take questions from journalists and he gets asked if he’s taking over as the new Iron Man. Which, of course, is a perfectly reasonable question. I mean who better to take over from globe-trotting superman Tony Stark than this one kid from New York who’s been a superhero for like five minutes? Who better to step into the mantle of Iron Man? Who else has the expertise, the training, the deep connection to the Iron Man legacy?

That is some racist bullshit, my friends.

Anyway, the question causes Peter to have a panic attack and suddenly vamoose (okay, I see why people think he’s Iron Man material now). He gets another call from Nick Fury but refuses to answer it and instead heads home to back for his trip to Europe.

Peter’s plans hit an early bump when he can’t get get a seat next to MJ and instead she spends the entire nine hour flight with Brad Davis who didn’t blip and spent the intervening five years getting hella swol. And can I just say that I really appreciate that when it comes to creating a love rival for Peter the screenwriters didn’t just create a new character but actually went to the trouble of finding that one vanishingly obscure dude who dated MJ in the comics for a few weeks in the seventies? That’s impressive nerdery and I wholeheartedly approve.

Ned, meanwhile, ends up sitting next to Betty Brant and by the time they arrive in Venice they’ve become an item (ah, young love).

So…lemme just put my cards on the table. As a gentle little romantic comedy about American teens touring Europe and falling in love I think this movie is sweet and charming and I love it. And as a Spider-Man movie it…kinda…sucks. I don’t know if the world is ready for a superhero movie that just completely eschews the whole superhero business and just focuses on the main character’s love life but honestly I would have been there for it. Holland and Zendaya have crazy good chemistry, Ned Land and Betty made for an adorable B-Couple. Add in some rivalry with Brad Davis and those wacky teachers and you have all the elements for a great rom-com. But instead, we gotta take time away from all that to focus on the stuff that makes it a pretty bland superhero movie.

Case in point:

So Venice is suddenly attacked by a gigantic water monster and I just…can’t…this…guh. This sucks.

Yeah, I know, the Water Elemental is a nod to Hydro Man, who sucked in the comics too (man, I am just slaying sacred cows today, amn’t I?). But I find all the elemental sequences to be pretty darn tedious. Sure, the CGI is impressive enough, but the four elements gimmick is lazy, the designs are completely lacklustre and the entire concept is utterly misguided if your goal is to give Spider-Man interesting antagonists to fight. Spider-Man is a tactile hero. He doesn’t do heat beams or lightning blasts, he needs to punch shit to be effective. Giving him big intangible foes like these results in scenes that are just Spider-Man impotently swinging around four big CGI blobs and not accomplishing much. It’s like pitting Wolverine against a ghost. It’s a waste of your Wolverine (and, honestly, a waste of your ghost).

Anyway, while Peter tries to help by stop people who are running away and telling them to run away, a new, decidedly mysterious hero appears on the scene and defeats the water monster. And I gotta say, he looks pretty fucking rad.

Back at the hotel, the kids name the new hero “Mysterio” after hearing the word on the Italian news (“mysterio” is Italian for “massively overrated character”). Peter goes back to his room and finds Nick Fury waiting for him. Fury is not happy that Peter’s been ghosting him and tells him that there have already been similar attacks by giant CGI blobs in Mexico and Morocco. He then takes him on a boat ride and gives him a pair of the tech-douchiest glasses that you’ve ever seen. This is E.D.I.T.H. which stands for Every Damn Idiotic Thing I Hate. Okay, slight exageration, but damn, so many of my issues with this movie come back to those damn specs.

Now, I’m consciously trying to move away from the nit-picky, Cinema Sins-esque style of movie criticism but as a matter of simple logic this doesn’t make sense. Nick says that Tony gave him E.D.I.T.H. to give to Peter in the event of his death. Couple of problems with that.

Firstly, when?

I mean, logically this is something he set aside for Peter before going on the final mission to undo the Snap, right? His final bequest? So he left it with Nick Fury…who was also dead at the time? But fine, maybe this was long before the snap, maybe he had left instructions for EDITH to be given to Nick Fury to give to Peter years ago except:

No, he didn’t.
Seriously, just no.
There is just no way in hell Tony Stark would leave cutting edge military tech in the hands of Nick Fury.
Not a chance in hell.

Happy? Sure. Rhodey? Yup. Pepper? Most def. But not Fury. Not in a million years. Not least because Fury might decide that giving a teenage boy the power to order drone strikes might be a tad irresponsible.

What a nark.

Fury takes Peter to a secret underground base and introduces him to Maria Hill and Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jack Gyllenhall). Beck tells Peter that he did good against the Water Elemental and says “we could have used you on my world”. Peter asks what he means by that and Fury says that Beck is from Earth just not “your Earth”. Not “our Earth” oddly enough.

“Hmmmmmm.”

Beck explains that he’s from an alternate Earth that was destroyed by four elemental monsters and now they’ve arrived on this Earth (which he calls Earth 616) to do the same thing. The first three elementals have already been dealt with which just leaves Tungstun Fire, the most element powerful of them all which is coming to Prague to enjoy one of Europe’s most beautiful and underrated cities and then burn it to a crisp. Fury tells Peter that he needs his help to defeat the last elemental and Peter, rather sensibly, points out that’s really not in the wheelhouse of a guy who spends his days covering uncouth men in sticky fluid in seedy back allies.

You know what I meant and it is not my fault you all have dirty, dirty minds.

Peter even lists off some heroes who would be a better fit for this kind of mission, like Thor, Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel who Fury dismisses as being, respectively, off-world, incommunicado and dead to him. Fair enough, but I still think Fury should be doing a deeper dig through his Rolodex. For God’s sake, ASEBESTOS MAN would be a better dude to bring along on this one.

“Oh I wonder if Mouse is just making a joke or if that’s a real character?”
Of COURSE he’s a real character. OF COURSE HE IS.

Peter says he can’t go along on this mission and Fury says that’s fine, no doubt while making plans to have someone Peter loves killed and frame the Fire Elemental for the murder. Fortunately, he changes his mind and just gets Peter’s tour re-routed to Prague.

On the bus journey, Peter tries on the glasses that Tony left him and learns that EDITH is actually an insanely sophisticated AI with access to Stark Industries entire arsenal. We get a good demonstration of how good an idea that was when, within around five minutes of activating EDITH, Peter’s has accidentally ordered a drone strike on Brad Davis.

Humanity’s savior, everybody.

In Prague, Fury chews Peter out over that, telling him that he isn’t ready to have EDITH right now (I mean, I would argue that no ONE should have her, like ever) but despite that he still insists on drafting Peter into the coming battle against the Fire Elemental and I am actually half-convinced that the final twist about Fury in this movie was shoe-horned in at the last minute because they realised how dirty they done the character. Peter does a Batman by brooding on a rooftop between some gargoyles and Beck joins him and gives him a pep talk.

And here’s where I do a swerve so sudden it’ll make your head spin. I love Mysterio. Okay, scratch that. I think Jack Gyllenhaal is great as Quentin Beck. I still don’t have much time for Mysterio as any kind of compelling threat. But the relationship stuff between Peter and Beck is actually really good (again and again I like this movie when it’s just doing small character stuff and tune out when it’s all superheroes and explosions and I think I may be getting old and terminally boring). Seriously though, Donnie Darko is really good in this; charming and funny and warm when he’s ingratiating himself to Peter. You can almost buy it when Peter does something incredibly stupid later on because Beck genuinely does seem like this wonderful surrogate father for Peter. He even has a beard like Tony Stark, to drive home the void that he’s stepping into for Peter, except like, y’know, a Tony Stark who actually listens to him and seems like he cares about his problems.

Peter gets EDITH to book the school trip into an opera performance so they’ll be safe indoors for the next three weeks or so. This, unfortunately, means abandoning MJ who’s saved a seat for him and the sweetly awkward teen romance vibes of both Holland and Zendaya are God-tier level I shit you not. Anyway, Peter runs off to fight a fire monster, MJ follows him secretly, Betty follows MJ and Ned follows Betty.

And lastly came Alexander Beetle, the smallest of Rabbit’s friends-and-relations.

The Fire Elemental appears in the middle of the carnival and Peter (dressed in a nifty black costume provided by SHIELD) has to rescue Ned and Betty while Beck battles the monster. During the battle, Ned convinces Betty that this isn’t Spider-Man, but his non-union Mittel-European equivalent Night Monkey. This, of course, is a reference to the classic Golden Age character…I’m joking, there isn’t actually a comics character called Night Monkey. I’m serious. There isn’t. No, there actually isn’t it. Don’t Google it, you’re just wasting your time…there. I told you. You happy now? We wasted enough time? Okay, moving on.

Just when things look at their bleakest, Beck starts storing up all his energy. Peter asks him what he’s doing and Beck says “what I should have done last time” and ploughs into the Elemental, releasing all his energy and seemingly destroying it and saving the world.

Gosh. He really SHOULD have done that last time.

Beck survives and Nick Fury gives him the thanks of a grateful planet and then gives Peter a dressing down for…not really having his heart in it. No, for real. The kid shows up, saves some people, fights the monster despite it being way out of his weight class but Fury just doesn’t like his attitude.

“Would it kill you to smile? Would it?”

He tells Peter to figure out if he wants to be an Avenger or not and Beck takes him for a drink in a local bar.

His confidence shattered, Peter decides that Beck is the new hotness and gives him EDITH to use as he sees fit. And here, I can only re-use a line from another review of this movie I did in a different life and on a different corner of the internet: this is the first movie where Peter Parker has the proportional brain of a spider.

Anyway, he transfers one of the most powerful pieces of military hardware on the planet to the nice man he’s known for three days and heads out to find a way to kiss Zendaya which…okay, I take it back, that’s a brilliant plan. Shouldn’t have doubted ya, Pete. And after he’s gone, the movie pulls its big reveal: Mysterio is the bad guy!

Okay, obviously Mysterio is the bad guy and to be perfectly honest I was a little disappointed. Introducing a multiverse to the MCU is such a cool idea that I was hoping against hope that Mysterio was telling the truth about that, if nothing else. But I do like the fact that Mysterio’s entire support crew are just disgruntled Stark employees. Hell, they even got the “Box Of Scraps” guy!

Beck himself is actually the guy who developed the holographic tech we saw Tony model in Civil War.  Turns out that Beck objected to Tony naming his life’s work “BARF” and using it to work out his Daddy issues and when he complained, Tony said he was unstable and shitcanned him. Now, obviously, we’re only getting Beck’s side of the story. I mean, does that sound like something a Stark would do? What do you think, Anton Vanko dying in a tiny, freezing Moscow hovel?

These fucking Starks, man.

Anyway, Beck gives a toast where he congratulates all the former Stark people on their hard work and says that they all have great ideas but that no one listens to them because all people are interested in these days are superheroes and I see you Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, sneaking a little dig at the current state of the movie industry in there, you wee scamps. Beck reveals that all the Elementals and explosions and massive property damage was achieved with holograms and drones and…ugh. See this is why I hate Mysterio. He pretends to be magic, and then he reveals that it was all an illusion done with practical effects but the effects all work so seamlessly and perfectly that they might as well be magic. Anyway, Beck tells them that by making Mysterio the biggest superhero on the planet they will all become rich…somehow. Honestly I don’t get that, are they planning merch? Otherwise, someone needs to tell them that the reason so many superheroes are millionaires is because that’s the only way they can afford to be superheroes, it’s not that being a superhero pays well. It’s kinda like Instragram.

Anyway, back at the hotel Peter finds that the vacation has been cancelled because Europe is full of rampaging elemental monsters (oh, like the US is perfect?) and they’re all going home in the morning. Bummed that he’ll never get to confess his love for MJ on the Eiffel Tower he invites her to go for a walk. She says yes, and he tells her that he’ll meet her outside in ten and she says make it five and when this movie is just a teenage rom-com it is the sweetest fluffiest thing.

They go to a bridge and he’s about to tell her his big secret but she assumes that he just wants to tell her that he’s Spider-Man which she’s already figured out because she watches him obsessively because…reasons. When he denies it, she shows him a machine with his webbing that she found at the scene of the Fire Elemental attack which turns out to be a a holographic projector. Peter realises that Mysterio is a big fake and that he’s made a huge clanger by giving him EDITH and tells MJ they have to get back to the hotel.

Meanwhile, Beck is rehearsing for his big global coming out party which will involve him staging a massive, extremely lethal Elemental attack on London. He notices that one of the drones is missing its projector, tracks it to MJ and sees her giving it to Peter which means that Peter’s got to die now.

Peter tells Ned and MJ to keep schtum about the projector and to get Aunt May to call their teachers to say that Peter is staying with relatives in Berlin until this all blows over. And then because he thinks that Mysterio has bugged his phone…for some reason…Peter decides to web-sling. To Berlin. To tell Nick Fury. About Mysterio. In person.

Like, forget suddenly thinking that Mysterio has bugged his phone for some reason. JUST USE ANOTHER PHONE. EMAIL HIM FROM A HOTEL COMPUTER. SEND A TELEGRAM. GAWD.

But no, he rides on top of a train from Prague to Berlin (six hours on top of a train in skin-tight lycra, his balls were never seen again). He arrives in Berlin and Fury picks him up at the station. He takes him to Europol and spills the beans to Fury and Hill. But Hill suddenly vanishes and Fury gets shot and Peter realises that Mysterio has caught. Mysterio plays Got Yer Nose with Peter for a while with some incredibly convincing holograms perfectly tailored to destroy Peter Parker psychologically that he was able to whip up in a few hours as you do. Beck then gets shot by Fury who’s not dead and Fury demands that Peter tell him who else knows about Mysterio. Peter tells Fury that he only told Ned and MJ and then Fury starts laughing because of course he’s actually Mysterio, whose bullshit is bottomless.

He then tricks Peter into walking in front of an oncoming train because really that’s the level Peter is operating at today. And so Peter leaves the city after what was, amazingly, a trip to Berlin that went even worse than the last one when he got beaten up by a Brooklyn tough.

Crawling inside the train (having at last learned that that’s how they’re used) Peter ends up in the Netherlands and puts in a call to Happy Hogan to come rescue him.

Tearfully, Peter tells Happy that he messed up and that he can’t live up to Tony’s legacy. Happy tells him that not even Tony could live up to Tony saying: “Tony was my best friend. And he was a mess. He second guessed everything he did. He was all over the place. The only thing he did that he didn’t second guess was picking you.”

OUCH.

Reaffirmed with the knowledge that Tony Stark valued him even more than his wife and daughter, Peter tells Happy to take him to London where Beck is making his final big attack with a huge elemental combining elements of all the previous ones like in Power Rangers.

“THEY DID IT IN BOTH SHOWS!”

While Happy gets the kids to safety, Peter successfully destroys Beck’s illusion and fights Mysterio, finally defeating him by using his spider-sense to beat his illusions. He takes back EDITH and when she asks him if he wants to execute the cancellation protocols he says “execute them all”.

Oh, and last nitpick. If Peter transferred control to Beck, he shouldn’t be able to use EDITH.  Whatever.

After having shot himself with a drone meant for Peter, Beck lies dying on the ground. Peter asks Beck why he did all this and before he dies Beck says “You’ll see Peter. People need to believe. And nowadays, they’ll believe anything.”

The devil, you say.

  Peter and MJ reunite on a burning Tower Bridge and Peter finally gives MJ the Black Dahlia jewellery he bought her in Venice. They kiss. It is adorbs.

That Tobey Maguire/Kirsten Dunst upside down bullshit can suck it, this is where it’s at.

***

Again, Marvel make a great Peter Parker movie and a so so Spider-Man movie.

Scoring

Adaptation: 15/25

If you thought Tony’s death would allow Peter to get out from under Iron Man’s influence and become closer to his scrappy underdog roots…you just keep dreaming. This is the movie where Spider-Man has a jet with a 3D printer to make costumes and orders drone-strikes with his billion dollar AR glasses.

Our Heroic Hero: 15/25

Peter Parker, sweet teenager in love? Adorable. Spider-Man, idiot tech bro? Not so much.

Our Nefarious Villain: 19/25

Jake Gyllenhaal does the seemingly impossible and actually makes me give a shit about Mysterio.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 20/25

The kids, teachers, Aunt May and even Happy Goddamned Hogan all work as a richly funny supporting cast.

The Stinger

Spider-Man watches in horror as a news broadcast tells the world that footage has leaked of him seeming to kill Beck and then ordering his drones to attack London. The newscaster then reveals that the footage was first broadcast by a controversial news site called…the Daily Bugle.

And then we see J. Jonah Jameson.

And he’s played by JK Simmons.

And he reveals that Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker.

And the audience went…

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!

The second stinger

Fury and Hill are driving along when they reveal that they are actually Talos and Soren, the two Skrulls we first met in Captain Marvel and who have apparently been filling in for Fury while he’s on space vacation, or spacay. Talls calls Fury, who ghosts him, and then we see that Fury is in some kind of massive space facility crewed by both humans and Skrulls…

And the audience went…

Like I said, I kinda suspect this scene was added when they realised that Nick Fury acts like a colossal dumbass throughout the film and they needed an explanation to save his character. Actually, if they could retcon it so that the Nick Fury in Winter Soldier whose plan to fake his own death included interrupting his own life saving surgery was also a Skrull, that’d be swell. Also, I’ll lay good money that the space facility we see Fury in at the end is S.W.O.R.D., the division of S.H.I.E.L.D. that deals with extraterrestrial threats as apparently they’re being introduced in WandaVision (aw hell, I’m going to have to cover it, aren’t I?). Fun little bit of trivia, as well as S.H.I.E.LD. and S.W.O.R.D. the Marvel universe also has A.R.M.O.R. that handles alternate realities, C.R.A.D.L.E which seeks to stop underage children engaging in superheroics and the F.B.I. who are just not getting into the spirit of things.

Hey, was that Stan Lee?

And so, with a heavy heart, I must retire this category…

Are there X-Men yet?

…and introduce a new one. There are currently no X-Men in the MCU.

FINAL SCORE: 69%

NEXT UPDATE: I’ll be putting up an end-of-year round up before the year is out but the next review will be 07 January 2021

NEXT TIME: Has it really been a year since we last checked in on those crazy mutants?

My book, When the Sparrow falls, is now available for preorder! Links here.

Perfect Blue (1997)

Half a decade ago I reviewed a charming little animé named  Tokyo Godfathers from legendary director Satoshi Kon and about as representative of his oeuvre as Interdimensional Cable 2 is of the career of Werner Herzog.  True, Kon only directed four films in his tragically short life, but Tokyo Godfathers is definitely the outlier of those four. Perfect Blue, conversely, was Kon’s breakthrough first feature and is probably the film that he is best known for.

In the wake of Akira  in 1988, the nineties saw a tsunami of animé arriving in the West. There had been Japanese animation on Western screens long before that of course, but those had been shows that either fit into the Western preconception of animation as being for children (Astro Boy, Speed Racer) or could be made to fit with judicious editing and a wacky robot sidekick (Voltron).
By contrast, in the nineties, animé was out and proud in all its violent, cool, mothers-lock-up-your-daughters-Mr. Octopus-is-single-and-ready-to-mingle weirdness and was starting to bump hard against the deeply ingrained preconceptions of animation in the West. There were a lot of concerned thinkpieces being published, a lot of ominous local news segments beginning with the words “They call it “AH-NEE-MAY”. My first exposure to Perfect Blue was in my local video rental place where they used to publish a weekly magazine advertising the upcoming releases.

“Then, I’d ride the trolley for tuppence.”

In this magazine they had a whole dedicated section for the new animé releases, and I remember Perfect Blue being advertised with the usual breathless ad copy but also a disclaimer at the end saying “please note this movie is not for children”. Back then “animation=harmless fun for my innocent little angels” was still a pretty hard-wired instinct in your typical Western parent and Xtra-vision were obviously trying to head off any complaints from people who’d inadvertantly subjected their kids to the kind of childhood trauma that usually results in a Batman villain.  Point is, Perfect Blue was kind of the poster child for why animé was an entirely different beast than Western animation, not simply for its content but also for its sophistication, gritty adult storytelling and reputation as the “scariest animé ever made”.

Only if you’ve never seen “Cardcaptor Sakura”.

Now, as any comics fan will tell you, anything from the nineties that claimed to be “gritty and mature” at the time should be sealed in an airlock until all the scans have been completed because there is a damn good chance that it’s held up about as well as the general public’s trust in the polling industry. Plus, “shocking” films tend to look increasingly tame as time goes by. So let’s take a look at Perfect Blue and see if it still deserves either of those descriptions.

So our main character is Mima Kirigoe, a young Japanese singer and lead vocalist in the girl group CHAM! (that’s how they spell the name, I’m not just randomly yelling the word “cham”). CHAM! are doing…fine. They’re bringing in decent enough crowds but they’ve never had a top 100 hit. So, bigger than Spinal Tap in America, but nowhere close to Spinal Tap in Japan. Their fans are gathered at a small outdoor venue to watch them perform, as there are rumours that Mima is leaving the band.

Animation-wise, Perfect Blue is a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the animation involving Mima and the other main characters is good to excellent, with some sequences that are flat out masterful. But there are definitely places where you can see corners being cut.

You want faces? In this economy?!

For example, some of these early scenes where Mima’s fans are talking to each other; the animation is so limited and jerky that I’m not convinced Satoshi wasn’t just puppeting the cels by hand.

Anyway, as the concert starts we see flashbacks to Mima sitting silently in a meeting between her manager, a former pop-idol named Rumi, and her manager Tadokoro. Tadokoro tells them that Mima’s been offered an ongoing part in a drama series but only if she can commit to it full time, which means leaving CHAM!. Rumi argues that Mima is happier as a singer, but Tadokoro says that the offer is too good to pass up and Mima silently acquiesces.

Back in the present, Mima haltingly announces onstange that she’s leaving CHAM! This causes a mini-riot when a bunch of uncouth louts start flinging cans at the stage until they’re attacked by some kind of Japanese fish man.

This is Mamoru Uchida. He’s obsessed with Mima and he’s got a face only a mother could love, and even then only a mother with pretty eclectic taste in faces.

After leaving CHAM! she returns to her apartment and starts reading through her fan mail. Mima’s apartment is the most important location in the movie and a wonderful piece of design.

It feels cosy and intimate and safe, which adds to the sense of unease and violation when Mima’s world starts crashing in on her. Every little detail contributes to the story, whether its the stuffed animals showing that she’s still a very young woman, or the fish that she talks to and lovingly cares for. But just as important is its size. This place is tiny, and cramped. And that shows something very important. Mima is famous, but she is not rich. Not close. And being in the public eye but not having the wealth to protect yourself from the less desirable attention that inevitably comes with fame (particularly for young, attractive women)…that’s not a fun place to be.

She reads her fanmail and one of the letters tells her that the sender has “set up a link to Mima’s Room” but Mima doesn’t know what that means. She also gets a threatening phone call of someone breathing down the line and a fax calling her a traitor.

Ha! Remember faxes? What’s that? No one does? I’m literally the last person on Earth old enough to remember them? I see.

The next day, Mima and Rumi, her manager, are on the set of Double Bind, the TV show that Mima has a small recurring role in. Mima asks Rumi what “Mima’s Room” is and Rumi tells her that it is a “web site” on the “inter-net” and Mima innocently replies “Oh yes, that’s really popular these days”.

“Of course, it does seem like an interconnected data network would be the perfect vector for malicious information spread by bad actors in order to polarise and destabalise civil society thus paving the way for a new era of violent authoritarianism but what do I know, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Mima goes and does her scene which consists of a single line and is clearly feeling lost and out of place on the TV set. Double Bind is kind of like “Japanese Silence of the Lambs: The Series” where a female and male detective track a serial killer who’s killing women because he wants to be one. In the show, Mima plays the sister of one of the victims.

The set is visited by Takao Shibuya, the screenwriter, and Tejima, the producer. Tadokoro and Rumi corner them both and Tadokoro pleads with them to expand Mima’s part, while Rumi looks on in silence, clearly thrilled.

The writer isn’t really happy with the idea, as he has a low opinion of pop idols but agrees to think about it. The four watch Mima do her scene and Tadokoro is given a letter which explodes when he opens it, badly injuring him.

This is how we used to cyber-bully back in the day, kids.

Later, back in Mima’s apartment, Rumi helps her set up a Macintosh Performa so that she can surf the world wide web like a real leet hacker. Mima asks Rumi if she doesn’t think maybe they should have called the police over the letter bomb but Rumi says that Tadokoro doesn’t want to make a fuss because in Japan I think that actually carries higher legal penalties than terrorism.

After Rumi goes, Mima spends the night tooling around the internet and find “Mima’s Room”, a fansite dedicated to her. At first she’s amused, but starts to get seriously freaked out as she begins to read “Mima’s Diary”, a blog supposedly written by her and which is disturbingly accurate and specific. This happens more often than you’d think, actually. Around a third of the reviews on this blog are written by a stalker pretending to be me who got access to my log in details. But hell, they work for free and it lets me take a week off now and then so why complain?

“And then I, Mouse, professed my love for Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe and we had sex in the butt. The End?”

Mima starts becoming increasingly paranoid that someone is watching her on her journey home. She finds a newspaper clipping pinned to the wall of her elevator stating that one of the yobs who caused a riot at her last concert is in a critical condition after a hit and run. She looks around, and sees Uchida watching her from the end of the hallway.

At the agency, Mima learns that CHAM! have just made the Top 100 for the first time and they did it without her. Also, Tadokoro gives her some good news; her part in Double Bind is being greatly expanded. But Rumi is horrified when she learns that the script calls for Mima’s character to be violently gang-raped in a strip club. Rumi tells Mima that they’ll tell the production company that there’s no way in Hell she’s going to do that, but Mima doesn’t want to rock the boat and agrees to do the scene. Tadokoro congratulates her and tells her it’ll be great for her career. On the train ride home, Mima briefly sees her own reflection dressed in her CHAM! outfit, angrily saying that she’ll never do the scene.

The next day, Rumi and Tadokoro watch in mortified silence as Mima films the rape scene. Tadokoro is clearly very uncomfortable, but Rumi breaks down in tears and flees the set. As for Mima herself, she gives a chillingly convincing performance but afterwards she seems fine. Ashamed and abashed, Tadokoro takes her out for a meal and leaves her back in her apartment.

Entering her apartment, Mima goes to feed her fish and sees…

Seeing her fish dead, Mima breaks down in tears, trashing her apartment before collapsing on her bed sobbing “Of course I didn’t want to do it!” She hears a voice mocking her and looks up to see herself on the screen of the Mac. This is a hallucination, obviously, as the image is appearing on a Macintosh Performa and doesn’t look like complete ass.

Uh, bullSHIT she’s getting that kind of resolution.

This apparition, believe it or not, is a fairly major character so I’m just going to call her Real Mima as that’s what she calls herself, not to be confused with the real Mima, who we’ll just call Mima.

“So Real Mima isn’t real and the real Mima isn’t Real Mima?”

“See? Easy.”

Mima throws a pillow at the screen and Real Mima vanishes.

Meanwhile, Uchida is reading Mima’s Room where “Mima” has posted that she desperately wants to get out of this drama series because the screenwriter is a total pervert and oh my wouldn’t it be just swell if somebody would take care of him so that Mima could go back to dancing in front of her adoring fans?

This will be fine.

The next day, Tadokoro drives Mima to a photo shoot and she learns that Shibuya, the screenwriter, was brutally murdered the night before. She asks Tadokoro if he thinks there’s any connection between the murder and the letter bomb he received before and he tells her she watches too many TV shows because apparently that leads to making logical connections. She has another vision of Real Mima in a car across from her who mouths the words “Serves You Right” to her.

Mima has her photo shoot and the photographer starts taking liberties and before you know it there are full frontal nude photos of her in every magazine in Japan. Shocked and appalled by what “his” Mima has been doing, Momoru buys up as many of the magazines as he can stop other men looking at her (suuuuuuuure) and starts emailing Mima’s Room. He gets an email back telling him that the Mima who appeared in those photos is in an imposter. Momoru promises that he’ll get rid of the imposter Mima.

This will be fine.

Real Mima appears by his side and thanks him, telling him that once the imposter is gone they can be together.

Mima is filming a scene for Double Bind with her co-star, a much more experienced actor named Eri Ochiai who plays Dr Toukou, the lead female detective/psychiatrist trying to solve the case. Mima sees Uchida watching from the crowd which causes her to mess up the take, ruining the day’s shooting as it immediately starts to rain.

Later, Tadokoro takes Mima to a radio station where CHAM! are doing a show to catch up with her old bandmates. She looks into the studio and is shocked to see:

She chases Real Mima through the station and out into the street where she runs in front of a van being driven by Uchida and suddenly wakes up in her apartment.

Okay, so it’s at this point that the movie enters what I like to call The 10 Solid Minutes of Bullshit and it’s really here that the movie loses me in a big way.

The 10 SMoB proceed thusly:

Mima wakes up in her apartment.
Rumi visits her and warns against looking at Mima’s Room.
SUDDENLY she’s back filming Double Bind with no idea how she got there. She sees Uchida and then he vanishes.
She wakes up in her apartment, AGAIN.
Rumi visits her and Mima asks if the last time she visited was real.
Mima spends her nights reading Mima’s Room.
We cut to a scene from Double Bind where the two detectives discuss Mima’s character. Toukou says that Mima’s character has created the mental illusion of a serial killer. The male says that illusions can’t kill people but Toukou counters…

 We THEN see that this episode is being watched by the photographer who took the nude photos of Mima. A pizza guy whose face we can’t see knocks at his door and then murders him with a screwdriver it is really fucking graphic and disturbing thanks for asking. And then we see that the murderer is…

OH SHIT IT’S MIMA!

10. But THEN Mima wakes up in her room AGAIN so phew, that’s a relief right?

11. But oh no! Mima gets a call from Tadokoro telling her that the photographer really was murdered and when she goes to look in her closet she finds BLOODSTAINED CLOTHES!

12. Then she’s on the set of Double Bind with Rumi (sure, why not?) and she’s asked to do a scene where she’s just murdered a guy with a screwdriver (which was the same murder weapon that was used on the screenwriter and the photographer) but suddenly the actor playing the corpse gets up and its the eyeless photographer OH SHIT and Mima passes out.

13. She wakes up in her room. A-fucking-GAIN.

14. And then suddenly she’s being interviewed by Dr. Toukou who asks her who she is. She tells her she’s Mima Kiragoe and that she’s an actress and former pop idol. Eri then goes and talks to two other detectives and tells them that Mima is just a personality created by a girl named Yoko Takakura who suffers from Disassociative Identity Disorder and committed multiple crimes in the Mima persona after she was raped in a strip club.

15. Then that scene gets re-wound and we see it again, but THIS time Mima gives her name as Rika Takakura and Toukou says that she created this persona to become her sister after killing her (guys, I’m trying I swear to God, I’m trying).

16. And THEN we see that scene being filmed and everyone congratulating Mima on the successful completion of Double Bind.

This is that special kind of frustrating you get from playing a game with someone who’s blatantly cheating. You can’t win, and it’s no fun to even try when you know the game is rigged. When the movie is blatantly revealing itself as an unreliable narrator and telling me that nothing it says can be trusted…why should I pay attention to any of it? What is the point of my continued engagement? For any story, but especially a mystery, this repeated yanking of the carpet just destroys any sense that the mystery is something that can be fairly solved by paying attention. So why bother?

I dunno, maybe it’s just me. I used to watch a lot of Star Trek in the nineties and they pulled this kind of plot a lot, and it usually meant they had twenty minutes of plot for an hour long episode.

Anyway, Double Bind is in the can and everyone is getting ready to go to the wrap party. Tadokoro and Rumi congratulate Mima on a job well done. Mima goes to get changed and bumps into Eri, who she calls “Doctor Touko”. Eri laughs and tells her that the show’s over now and then quotes a line of dialogue to her.

She watches Eri go and sees a figure walking towards her up the corridor.

Outside, Tadokoro and Rumi wait for Mima and wonder what’s taking her so long. Tadokoro says that he’s heading on. Rumi asks him what’s next for Mima, and he says that he’s got her a role in a straight to video feature. He says its got a few sketchy scenes, but whatyagonna do?

Rumi smiles.

In the studio, Mima has been cornered by Uchida who attacks her with a knife and possibly the worst-cast vocal performance in animé history. Seriously, both the Japanese AND American vocal performances are impossible to take seriously. Japanese Uchida sounds like the Squeaky Voiced Teen from the Simpsons and American Uchida sounds like…I don’t even know. He sounds like one of the asshole gym leaders in Pokémon. Menacing he is not.

He tries to rape her but she seemingly manages to kill him with a hammer she finds on set.

Rumi finds Mima staggering around the set half-naked and asks her what happened. Mima takes her back to the set but Uchida’s body is gone. Rumi tells her it was probably a dream (you know, one of those waking, tear your own clothes off dreams?) and says she’ll drive Mima home to “Mima’s Room”. Not “your room”, but whatever, I’m sure it’s nothing.

Back in her apartment, while Rumi fixes them something in the kitchen, Mima decides to call Tadokoro to let him know she’s okay. There’s no answer however, and we see why. In the studio, Tadokoro’s phone rings unanswered. Tadokoro is dead, his eyes gouged out, and his body stashed in a hiding place along with Uchida’s corpse.

Looking around the apartment, Mima notices that her fish are still alive. And the CHAM! poster that she took down is still on her wall. And that there’s apparently a train line running much closer to her window than before.

And that’s when she realises that Rumi has painstakingly turned her apartment into a perfect replica of Mima’s room. And then Rumi comes back in…

So it turns out that Rumi has gone cray cray and now thinks that she is the Real Mima and chases Mima with a screwdriver, trying to kill her. And Mima actually sees her as Real Mima and not Rumi…

Yes, yes, we’ll discuss why that makes no sense in a minute, let me wrap up. Rumi chases Mima into the street and Mima finally fights back, managing to impale Rumi on some broken glass from a shattered window. Rumi staggers out into the street in front of an oncoming van and Mima pushes her out of the way, saving her life.

Some time later, Mima visits Rumi in a psychiatric hospital. One of the doctors tells her that occasionally Rumi’s personality surfaces but that for the most part she still thinks that she’s Mima Kiragoe. Mima says that she knows she’ll never see Rumi again, but she owes her everything. As she leaves the hospital, two nurses whisper to each other than they can’t believe that the REAL Mima Kiragoe is visiting the hospital and say that she must be a lookalike.

Mima gets into her fancy car, looks right at the audience and says “No. I’m real!”

***

 

Okay first things first.

Perfect Blue is very good at a great many things.

As a critique of Japanese culture’s commodification of female purity and toxic fandom it is still depressingly relevant.

As a warning on how our online personas can take on lives of their own outside of our control it is shockingly prescient.

As a piece of animation it is excellent.

As a mood piece and and an example of how to use an evocative score and colour to create an atmosphere of sustained, almost unbearable menace it is fantastic.

And as a mystery thriller it…kinda…sucks.

If you take the plot at face value, it relies on a pretty stunning coincidence. In this movie Mima Kiragoe undergoes a serious psychological breakdown complete with lost time and incredibly vivid, complex hallucinations where she manifests a new personality, Real Mima, who torments her for giving up her life as a pop idol.

Likewise, Rumi undergoes a serious psychological breakdown where she believes that she is Mima Kiragoe and must kill Mima to punish her for giving up her life as a pop idol.

And both these women have these incredibly ornate, complimentary hallucinatory episodes at the exact same time. That’s like me experiencing hallucinations of Jason Voorhees trying to kill me, while some person in my life coincidentally starts believing that they’re Jason Voorhees and start trying to kill me. To quote Lady Bracknell; one Jason Voorhees may be regarded as a misfortune; two looks like incredibly contrived writing.

Now, I’ve seen and read plenty of reviews of this movie that make the point that it’s a beautiful work of art that is meant to be meditated on, not some tawdry puzzle meant to be solved.

Which is a really nice sentiment. For QUITTERS.

See, I think there IS an explanation for the plot of Perfect Blue, it just requires correctly identifying its genre. This is not, as it’s usually classified, a psychological thriller.

Perfect Blue is a horror movie. Why do I say that? Because while a thriller can have horrific elements, they all have a real world explanation. Horror traffics in the unknown and the supernatural.

Follow me closely. What if Rumi is psychic?

I know, I know. A woman with supernatural powers? In ANIMÉ?! The very idea is ridiculous. But what if Rumi has psychic powers that allowed her to create an alternate personality that could exist independently of her? What if her obsession with her lost pop idol days and fixation on Mima created Real Mima, and Real Mima was not simply a hallucination? What if Real Mima was, well, real? What if she was then able to haunt Mima, and possess Rumi, making her an unwitting puppet in her attempts to kill those responsible for tarnishing Mima’s image? And I know what you’re going to say.

Mouse, that’s insane.

There is not a shred of evidence for anything supernatural in this film. There is not a hint of anything like that…

Yup. I think this is our smoking gun. I think this is where Kon laid out what is actually happening here. Now, about that ending.

In every synopsis of this movie I’ve come across, it states that Mima visits Rumi in the hospital after becoming a famous actress. But here’s the thing, she’s clearly become successful, but no one ever actually mentions her being an actress.  What if, say, she’s actually famous for being a singer? What if she jacked acting in and went back to doing what she loved? Well, what difference would that make?

Here’s a weird little suggestion. When Mima collided with Rumi to knock her out of the way of the oncoming van, they swapped bodies. Real Mina possessed Mima’s body, and Mima ended up in Rumi’s. So the Mima personality that Rumi is manifesting in the psychiatric hospital is actually our Mima, the Mima that we’ve been following since the beginning.

And the Mima who leaves the hospital?

Well, here’s an interesting little factoid.

The English language dub is overall pretty faithful to the original but the dubbing did make one small, crucial error. In the English dub, where Mima looks at the camera and says “No, I’m real!” she’s voiced by Mima’s voice actor.

But in the Japanese dub? She’s voiced by Rumi’s voice actor.

So that’s it. I have solved Perfect Blue and there are no more questions to be answered.

“So why is it called “Perfect Blue”?

“…”

“SMOWE, I love you. I always have. Let’s have sex in the butt.”

THE END?

NEXT UPDATE: 17 December 2020

NEXT TIME: We join Peter Parker as he tours the post-apocalyptic hell-scape of a post-snap Europe.

Over the Garden Wall: The Unknown

Wha’ Happen’?:

Beatrice flies through a blizzard, desperately searching for Greg. She sees him ahead, standing in a snowy clearing with the Beast. Suddenly, she is blown away by a mighty wind.

The Beast asks Greg to bring him a spool of silver thread and a golden comb. Greg brings him a cobweb and a honeycomb, demonstrating the kind of lateral thinking that’ll probably get him a job in Google down the line. For his final trial, the Beast tells him to lower the sun into a teacup. So Greg simply puts the teacup on a tree stump and waits for the sun to set so that it looks like its going into the cup from the right perspective.

The Beast is apparently satisfied by this transparent con job and tells Greg to wait in the cold until everything starts feeling real warm and comfortable.

Beatrice gets blown into the path of Wirt and the frog who are also looking for Greg. And it’s the frog I feel sorry for. Like, Wirt could have left him with the bluebirds to get warmed up but instead he’s getting dragged around a blizzard without any clothes or the ability to regulate his own body temperature. I mean, why even bring the frog along? Is he hoping to lamp his frozen little carcass at the Beast’s head? Anyway, Beatrice tells Wirt that she’s seen Greg and they head off together into the storm to find him.

Meanwhile, back at the Old Mill, the Woodsman is desperately searching for a few last twigs of that precious, precious Edelwood because the lantern is down its last few bars. He hears the Beast singing opera out in the woods and goods out to see if he can hit him up for a little EW. The Beast shows him Greg, who’s now been partway turned into an Edelwood tree and tells him that he’ll burn brightly in the lantern. The Woodsman is horrified and says he can’t do it and the Beast asks him why he’s getting squeamish now, as he’s been grinding lost souls for the lantern for years. Grief stricken, the Woodsman says that he didn’t know despite the fact that the Edelwood trees bled and were weirdly people shaped.

At last, confronted with the horror of what he has been apart of, the Woodsman tries to free Greg but the Beast mocks him by saying that he must no longer love his daughter and the Woodsman chases the Beast into the forest with his axe. Wirt and Beatrice find Greg and Wirt tries desperately to free his brother but it looks like he’s too late.

The Beast returns, dragging the unconscious Woodsman who he’s beaten like a rented mule. The Beast tells Wirt that Greg will become part of the forest and is now too weak to return home. He offers Wirt a deal, the Beast will put Greg’s soul in the lantern, and Wirt can become the new Woodsman, grinding up Edelwood trees to keep Greg’s flame lit.

Wirt is about to agree but then realises something:

“That’s dumb.”

And okay, here’s where I retract my complaint about The Ringing of the Bell. In that review I carped about Auntie Whispers not using the bell to just exorcise Lorna’s demon. And some of you in the comments pointed out that it’s supposed to be a fairy-tale world running on a specific kind of fairy-tale logic. And…yeah, they were right and I was, what’s the word I want? It’s not coming to me. Anyway. The reason Wirt is a hero in this world is that he brings a new perspective to the rules and mores that govern life in the Unknown, basically that it’s all dumber that a doorknob sandwich.

The Beast snarls that he’s trying to help Wirt and Wirt’s all “Oh yeah, you’re Mother Frickin’ Teresa over here” and deduces that the Beast doesn’t realy care about Greg at all. He just wants to keep the lantern lit at all costs. Almost as if the soul that’s actually in the lantern…

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Wirt calls the Beast’s bluff and almost blows the lantern out and the Beast freaks out so that answers that. Wirt gives the Woodsman back the lantern and says “do what you gotta do buddy, no judgement” and he cuts Greg out of the tree and carries him away.

He asks Beatrice to come with them but she says she has to stay and tell her family that they’ve got to give up their dreams of ever owning a cat and Wirt gives her the scissors that he stole from Adelaide.

 

The Beast goads the Woodsman into chasing after Wirt and Greg and straight up axe murdering them so they’ll turn into Edelwood trees but the Woodsman has had about as much of the Beast’s bullshit as a body can take and blows out the lantern. We don’t see exactly what that does to the Beast but given the screaming and rending I’m going to guess it smarts a bit.

Wirt says goodbye to Beatrice and wakes up in the real world, underwater. He sees Greg’s unconscious body and pulls his brother from the water before collapsing. Sara and her friends find the boys by the side of the river and they call an ambulance.

I don’t know which I love more: the fact that they let the frog in the ambulance or that they gave him his own little blanket.

Wirt wakes up in hospital with Sara watching over him. She shows him the cassette he left for her and says that she doesn’t have a tape player, and asks if she can come over to listen to it at his place.

And Wirt, for once, gets out of his own damn way and says yes.

How was it?: As one of the most consistently excellent cartoon series ever made it’s no surprise that Over the Garden Wall sticks the landing. It hits the sweet spot of everything that Over the Garden Wall is but rarely managed to be all at once. It’s atmospheric, scary, funny and finally very, very sweet and heartfelt. And I find it wonderful how satisfying the resolution is despite the fact that we don’t really get all that much resolution. We never find out exactly what the Unknown is, or how the boys ended up there. And at the end we’re no closer to knowing just what the Beast is, despite the Over the Garden Wall wiki making some pretty darn brazen claims.

Getting a little over your skis there, wiki. Little over your damn skis, I reckon.

Anyway. It’s one of those rare Gravity Falls-esque endings that’s damn near perfection.

Holy Crap, that sounds like…: Nothing new to report.

Can I see some references?: For this episode we go really old school. The Beast’s three trials are an ancient staple of world folklore, where a hero is given three impossible tasks and uses his cunning to find unexpected solutions.

This frog’s name is: Jason Funderburker, spelt with a “u” to differentiate him from Jason Funderberker.

NEXT UPDATE: Okay, so, I realise I’ve been a little all over the place schedule-wise recently. Sorry. Writing assignments, baby with an earache, election anxiety, election euphoria, coup anxiety, it has been a TRIP. I’m going to aim for one more review the end of this month so let’s saaaaaaay 27 November 2020.

NEXT TIME: Hmmm, how do I feel about animé today?

Over the Garden Wall: Into the Unknown

Wha’ Happen’?:

We begin our episode in a strange and mysterious wonderland full of great music and childlike whimsy and wonder.

The Nineties.

Wirt is pacing his bedroom nervously, having just created a mix-tape for Sara in the hope that she will immediately consent to be his wife and tend his farm (as was the custom in the nineties) After chickening out and unravelling the tape, he finally mans up and repairs the tape. He then makes a Halloween costume out of a re-purposed Santa Claus hat and a repurposed Civil War era jacket.

Finally resolving the mystery of why he’s dressed like an idiot.

Of course, this doesn’t actually answer the question of what exactly he was dress as for Halloween. My guess is that he’s going as General Gandalf Ulysses Mayberry, commander of the 11th Ohio Wizards.

Known to his men as “Ol’ Spellface”, he was eaten by a dragon at Gettysburg.

Wirt heads over to the school football field and watches Sara through the fence. Sara is currently dressed as a giant bee as she is the school mascot.

I don’t think this is why Wirt’s into her, but no judgement either way.

Greg, who’s apparently been out trick-or-treating alone (ah, the days before 9/11) and we finally learn what he was dressed as: an elephant.

Ohhhhhhh…

Greg, little agent of chaos that he is, takes the tape and gives it to some of Sara’s friends to give to her: Kathleen, who’s dressed as a rabbit and Rhondie who’s dressed as…I have no idea.

Some kind of…weird..eyeball thing? Rover from the Prisoner? Help me out here.

Wirt freaks out when he hears from Sara’s friends that Jason Funderberker is planning on asking Sara out the Halloween party. He tells Greg that there’s clarinet and poetry on that tape and that if Sara finds it she’ll listen to it with Jason Funderberker and they’ll laugh at him mercilessly.

So, here’s a fun little game to play when watching this episode. Listen for every time Greg gives Wirt advice, because he is always right. When he tells Wirt he should just ask Sara out first, or join the marching band because he’d be able to hang out with Sara and play clarinet…he’s on the money every single time. It’s just that Wirt insists on sabotaging himself and believing that he has no chance with a girl who, as we’ll see, is actually really into him.

Wirt and Greg hurry to the Halloween party and Sara invites him to the graveyard to tell scary stories and drink age appropriate drinks. But suddenly they are interrupted by…Jason Funderberker.

Ladies, please. Control yourselves.

This whole scene is where we finally realise just how much Wirt is his own worst enemy. He doesn’t want to go into the party because he hasn’t been invited, but as soon as he does everyone’s really welcoming. The first thing Sara says when she sees him is that she asking where he was and that she’s really glad to see him. And then we finally see Jason Funderberker, who Wirt’s been building up as “The Whole Package” and he’s not even half the package. Like the rest of the package got chewed up by a mail-sorting machine in Cleveland. And it becomes clear pretty early on that Sara is just hanging out with him out of pity. I really love Sara, incidentally, a character who very easily could have been a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but who manages to be really sweet in an understated, unselfconscious way.

Scared off by Jason’s sheer, animal magnetism, Wirt turns down the offer to go to the graveyard (dude) but follows behind them to try and get the tape back. Wirt and Greg watch from behind tombstones as Jason Funderberker tells a scary story and tries to hold Sara’s hand, only to be politely rebuffed. Also, shout out to the girl in the bird costume who immediately chimes in with “You can hold my hand Funderberker, I don’t care”.

Play on, playa.

Suddenly, a cop car pulls up and tells the kids that they’re all under arrest for witchcraft (which of course was not legalised in the United States until 2003) and all the kids book it. The cops try to explain that they were just joking but the kids know that they don’t have a lawyer present so they just keep running. Wirt and Greg climb a wall and the last thing Wirt sees before he jumps down the other side is Sara finding the tape and Jason saying they should go home and listen to it. Now convinced that his life is over, Wirt yells at Greg for “ruining everything” even though, as we’ve seen, Greg has been nothing but wise and honest is his counsel. Greg is delighted, because he has found a frog.

Suddenly, a black steam engine appears as if from nowhere and the boys jump to safety and fall into a freezing cold river.

Back in the Unknown, Wirt wakes up in a tree surrounded by bluebirds. These are Beatrice’s family, and Mother Bluebird explains that Wirt and the Frog were left outside their tree. Wirt thanks the birds for caring for him, and he heads out into the snowstorm to find Greg.

“At least wait until the storm dies down a bit!” Mother Bluebird calls “You’ll be no good to your brother dead!”

“I was never any good to him alive, either” Wirt replies.

How was it: Into the Unknown (Whoah-oh-oh-oh) serves as a great prequel to the series thus far, filling in details and answering questions about Wirt and Greg in ways that never feel like an infodump. It’s also a welcome relief after the grimness of the last episode to spend time in Wirt and Greg’s home town because everyone is just really nice.

Holy Crap, that sounds like…: I could have sworn that was the legendary Tress MacNeille as Old Lady Daniels but it seems my ears deceived me.

Can I see some references?: In this episode the series sort of loops around and, instead of taking references from elsewhere, we see the references that Wirt and Greg experienced in their own hometown which coloured their shared…dream? vision? hallucination? of the Unknown.

This frog’s name is: With Greg gone, it falls to Wirt to think up a new name for the frog. He calls him “Guy”. Big hand for Wirt, everybody.

My book, When the Sparrow falls, is now available for preorder! Links here.

Over the Garden Wall: Babes in the Wood

Wha’ Happen’?:

While Beatrice searches for the boys, Wirt, Greg and the Frog sail down a river in an outhouse. Things are looking pretty grim. The Unknown has gone from Summer Autumnal to Winter Autumnal, Wirt has slipped into a deep depression and worst of all they can hear the Beast singing opera some ways behind them. Or, as Wirt puts it; “The obsidian cricket of our inevitable twilight, singing our requiem.”

Sidenote: Despite blogging for eight years, I still thought it was a good idea to look for this gif by googling “Wanking Gif”. I got everything I deserved.

Wirt says that it’s Greg’s fault that they’re trapped here and that he’s given up all hope that they’ll ever make it home. Greg asks if that means he’s the leader now and Wirt says “Whatevs” and Greg promises Wirt that he’ll be a good leader and won’t let him down because the kid’s a little champ.

They go to sleep under a tree and Greg dreams of being taken by cherubs up to a magical kingdom in the clouds full of talking animals and children called Cloud City.

He is greeted in turn by the first, second and third Cloud City Reception Committees AND ONLY THOSE THREE BECAUSE THERE IS NOT AND NEVER HAS BEEN A FOURTH CLOUD CITY RECEPTION COMMITTEE.

Greg tells the cherubs and animals that he’s worried that he doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader, so they suggest he leads them in song. It goes great until Greg accidentally frees the Old North Wind, a big sentient storm cloud who menaces cloud city until Greg figures out a way to trap him in a bottle (this show went from “Gravity Falls” weird to “Adventure Time” weird so gradually I didn’t even notice.)

Having saved Cloud City, Greg is thanked by the Queen of the Clouds, who offers to grant him one wish. Greg wishes for he and Wirt to return home, but the Queen tells him that Wirt is too lost and that the Beast has already claimed him as his own. She then shows him a vision of Wirt, covered in vines from an Edelwood Tree. Saying that it’s all his fault for goofing off, Greg makes a fateful decision and tells the Queen his wish.

Back in the real world, it’s started snowing. Greg tells the still sleeping Wirt that he has to go and asks him to look after the frog. As he wanders off into the wood, he asks “And then you’ll show us the way back, right?”

“Of course” the Beast replies. “We made a promise, didn’t we?”

Suddenly, Wirt wakes up and realises his brother is gone. He races off into the forest looking for Greg, trying to follow the Beast’s singing. Suddenly, he slips and falls through some ice.

He almost drowns but is pulled onto a boat by a fishing net. The last thing he hears before he blacks out is Beatrice calling his name and asking where Greg has been taken…

How was it?: Babes in the Wood might be the most interesting episode of the bunch even if it’s not one of my favourites. Whereas other episodes could be dark (Ringing of the Bell and Tales of the Dark Lantern particularly), Babes in the Wood is the only one that I’d characterise as grim. Wirt has finally succumbed to despair, and the Beast has almost won. This, coupled with the grey, wintery atmosphere, makes it a lot less of a fun time than the other episodes, and the bright sugary Cloud City sequences don’t undercut that as much as you might think. Still, there’s plenty to enjoy. The songs (particularly That Old North Wind) are really catchy and it’s about time that Greg got an episode as the primary focus. And it’s definitely an episode that benefits from a rewatch, full of callbacks to previous episodes and tantalising little mysteries. Like, just what is the Fourth Cloud Cit…

  

Sorry. Lost my train of thought. What was I talking about.

Weird.

Anyway, moving on.

Holy Crap, that sounds like…: If you’re an opera fan, you might be interested to know that that’s renowned opera singer Deborah Voigt as the Queen of the Clouds.

Can I see some references?: Babes in the Wood has some of the most overt references of any episode, with the Cloud City sequence practically being a remake of the old Disney/Iwerks short Alice’s Wonderland. 

Oh, and the Old North Wind is based on Old Man Winter from the 1936 Happy Harmonies short To Spring.

This frog’s name is: Ronald and Skipper. Man. “Skipper the Frog” just sounds like a kids TV show from the seventies about a frog who constantly croaks at people until they realise that a little boy has become trapped down a well.

My book, When the Sparrow falls, is now available for preorder! Links here.

A reminder.