Michael Offutt's Blog, page 81

Warner Brothers is making a streaming service and a live action Teen Titans series is on the slate

I know I've railed against everything having its own streaming service, and Warner Brothers starting their own just added one more rock to the pile. It would be tempting to say that there's nothing that Warner Brothers has right now that would make me want to subscribe to their streaming service. However, at some point in 2018 it has been announced that there is going to be a live-action Teen Titans. The only actress I know who has been cast is for the role of Starfire, and that goes to Anna Diop.

Starfire was never my favorite character. However, she was pretty dang cool with orange skin, an asymmetrical costume (a lot of artists get this wrong), and the ability to channel really powerful blasts of energy through her hands. We're talking Cyclops (from the X-Men) level energy blasts...enough to level buildings or destroy other such landmarks. She also could fly, and the way she was drawn, her jet stream just kind of emitted from her hair (it sounds silly now but it actually looked pretty cool in the comic book panels). For most of the comics that I read, she was in love with Dick Grayson, a.k.a., Nightwing, a.k.a. the first Robin from the dynamic duo of Batman and Robin. She was also known as Princess Koriander, which I thought was a really nice-sounding name.

My favorite character of the Teen Titans has always been Raven. The daughter of Trigon the Terrible, she is a follower of Azar's teachings (a goddess that was killed by Trigon). Azar was basically a comic-book version of Buddha and Raven was always trying to suppress the evil that was inside her (and was of course inexplicably linked to Trigon the Terrible). Raven had some very unique powers. For one, she had a soul self that was black that she could use to carry people and things in (like a massive handbag to an alternate dimension). Anything inside that soul self was subject to her full mind control powers. In one comic book, she even had Starfire inside waiting to surprise a villain that Raven captured (and they ended up fighting in the expanse of Raven's soul). Raven could also teleport around and she (of course?) had mind control similar to Jean Grey.

With that said and out of the way, yes I'm very excited. However, I want to rant about streaming services yet one more time. This is yet another streaming service that I will have to pay for to get a single TV show. I sincerely hope that everyone trying to manage their own streaming teat is going to have negative results, forcing them to realize that it's easier and more cost-efficient to just let Netflix or Hulu handle it. I don't love paying subscriptions to a billion different streaming services (and I think there are some people who are also in my same basket of thought about this).

If anything is to blame, it's because too many people bitched about cutting the cable and wanting everything a la carte. So yeah...that's what we're getting stuck with. I think some people will figure out that when you want everything that the a la carte menu offers, it ends up costing the same as just buying it whole, but without all the hassle. In the meantime, I guess I'll just plan on going broke trying to manage streaming services.

Let's talk about all the ways Viserion and the Night King and the army of the dead can meet their end.

Viserion.
After Viserion's death from a magic ice javelin thrown by the Night King in the episode "Beyond the Wall," I think everyone knew that this was a game-changing moment. The shocking death aside, the fact that Viserion could make the wall crumble in upon itself with such efficiency was both beautiful and terrifying. Dragons are incredibly powerful, and I gotta say...highly unappreciated by the army of the dead. At least a living army would have experienced awe. The dead? Not so much. Anyway...I've been talking with friends (naturally) about the season finale, and here's what we came up with on the ways that Viserion might die.

1) Qyburn's scorpion (obvious).
Assuming that Gendry (the blacksmith that so conveniently showed up to run a marathon in "Beyond the Wall") can craft javelins/arrows/spears with dragon glass tips, and engineers can make one of Qyburn's scorpions...I think this is an obvious solution.

2) Melisandra of Ashai (less obvious, but really cool).
In the third episode of the seventh season, Jon Snow arrived at Dragonstone and Varys walked out to speak with Melisandre who was standing on the island's cliffs. She revealed to him that she was heading to Volantis (which is a free city in Essos that is the location of a prominent Red Temple), and she made an ominous declaration to him, "I will return, dear Spider, one last time," she said in reference to Westeros. "I have to die in this strange country, just like you." So it makes me ask, "What is so important that Melisandre would need to come back to Westeros to do that ultimately leads to her death?"

So here's the thing...and please bear with me on this...it doesn't look like to me that Viseryon was turned into an ice dragon. He's not a "different" species, although his fiery breath weapon is now blue instead of fire-colored. But if Viseryon is in fact a dead dragon brought to life through the Night King's power, there is nothing to stop Melisandre from bringing a dead dragon back to life through the power of the Red God.

Perhaps this is the part Melisandre has yet to play in this story. I'm thinking that she comes back to the Great War at a very dire point, and that she uses the power of R'hllor to bring Viserion back to life, snapping him out of the Night King's control and allowing the dragon to turn on its former master at the last second. And this is probably how Melisandre dies too.

Priests of the Red God R'hllor revered the dragons as "fire made flesh." I can see no greater insult to the red god than to have a dragon be enslaved to serve the Great Other (in the beliefs of Melisandre's faith there are only two gods...one of ice and one of fire. The one of Ice is referred to as 'The Great Other'). Anyway, it makes sense to me that R'hllor could use his priest to wrest control of the dragon from the power of the Night King.

The Night King.
1. Arya Stark. 
I like to believe that there are reasons for everything in a well-scripted show like Game of Thrones. So why does she have a dagger made of Valyrian steel? Hmm. Was it so that she could cut Littlefinger's throat in the season finale? Or is this some profound foreshadowing? In other words...we know that White Walkers are vulnerable to Valyrian steel. The dagger also has significance in that it was promised a death (Brandon Stark) but that his mother stopped the assassination in season one. Could this also be foreshadowing? Either way you look at it, the event of arming Arya with the dagger is probably significant...more so than just using it to cut Littlefinger's throat. There are a couple of ways she might possibly be able to do this.

She might be able to use her face changing powers to get close to the Night King, although it seems unlikely she would be able to actually get a face from one of the White Walkers as they burst (inconveniently) into shards of ice upon death. But I'm not exactly sure how her powers work, so I'm going to say that it may be in the realm of possibility that this happen.

The second way Arya may kill the Night King comes from a rumor that Brandon Stark is actually the Night King (which seems to be hinted at strongly in the show). Here are two clues that this may be true.

They wear the same style of clothes.

The season finale showed the army of the dead in an aerial view that looked a lot like the Dire Wolf sigil of House Stark (as they walked past the shattered wall).

Here's how the theory goes: Bran uses time-travel abilities to go back to the moment that the Night King was created by the Children of the Forest in order to intervene, but gets trapped within the body of the zombie lord instead. So, once people figure this out (namely Arya) it seems killing Bran will kill the Night King as the two are linked somehow. In which case, Arya fulfills the death that was promised to the dagger (and thereby satisfies the god of death whom she worships).

2. A dragon kills the Night King.
Either a resurrected Viseryon brought back by Melisandre (as stated above) or one ridden by either Daenerys or by Tyrion Lannister.

3) Jon Snow kills the Night King (obvious). This showdown has been brewing from season one. The White Walkers were always Jon Snow's storyline. Now that the White Walkers are an apocalyptic force bent on destroying all of humanity...what better way to take out there king by none other than Jon Snow himself.

The Army of the Dead.
1) Dragon Fire.
Daenerys still has two dragons. If she can teach them how to dodge ice spears, they could decimate a hundred thousand soldiers pretty quickly with dragon fire (especially given that wights are flammable). The problem (of course) is keeping the Night King from shooting them down with ice javelins.

2) Thousands of arrows tipped with dragon glass arrow heads.
This is what I'd do. I'd make so many dragon glass arrow heads and train people to just shoot high in the sky and have the rain of arrows come down on the army. Fill the sky with so many that it blots out the light of the sun. I think that'd take out a lot of the army of the dead in huge swaths.

3) Kill the White Walkers.
We learned from the episode called "Beyond the Wall" that the magic of animating the dead stems/flows from the one that did the animating. A lot of the animating has been done by the Night King. Kill him and probably 90% of the army will just fall to pieces.

Conclusion.
There are six episodes left, and they are all rumored to be of feature length (around the two hour mark). This may mean that we've got a lot of epic stuff in the works coming down the pipe from HBO. However this ends...will it be an apocalypse? or will it be a last ditch effort thrown by the living to conquer the dead? I'm sure it will be entertaining television. But it's clear to me in writing this post that the living does have many options to deal with what's coming for them. They just have to get busy and actively work to put their differences aside.

Is Game of Thrones going to end with an apocalypse?

Guys, in the Dragon and the Wolf, the season finale of the penultimate season of everyone's favorite tv show, I gotta say that I had hope. I had hope that Cersei somehow (either because Tyrion said the right things or because she had thoughts of the welfare of her unborn child) saw the light. That she recognized the threat of the army of the dead and the Night King. But when she turned around and decided to back-stab the alliance, renege on her promises, and threaten her brother Jaime (who might have just escaped King's Landing with his life), that little bit of hope I was feeling got snuffed out.

How are the living going to defeat the dead? Their army just keeps on growing, and they have an ice dragon now that took down the wall (kudos to my friend Kevin who predicted as much on my post on Friday). As a side note, I'm kinda wondering what's up with Viseryon's breath weapon. Is it fire or ice? Blue fire? Cold fire? Whatever it was, it sure made quick work of that section of the wall. And it looks pretty cool. I'm not certain why Viseryon's wings are all tattered now though (other than it looks cool that way). I'm just not sure why they would be so tattered after being pulled from the lake, but maybe all the undead knocked holes in them or something.
I'm not quite in full despair mode for the next season (rumor is that it will be two years from now with six episodes each two hours long). Here are things I really was pleased to see that give me some glimmer of hope:
1) Littlefinger's dead. I was kind of thinking that Bran was telling the Stark girls what was up with Littlefinger and making sure that they didn't fall into his trap. I was surprised when they turned the tables on him, and it felt good to see Lord Baelish finally die. At this point in the story, he was completely useless, conniving and scheming while an army of the dead was marching down on them all.
2) It was great to see (finally) that Jon is not a bastard and that his last name is Targaryen. That's going to make the last season very interesting as he's the legit heir of the iron throne. I always saw Jon and Dany sitting in King's Landing when it was all over. But now, I'm pretty much thinking that everyone is going to die. There just doesn't seem to be a way to defeat the army of the dead without Cersei (I'm thinking of Qyburn's "scorpion" invention here). They need that tech to fire dragon glass arrows at the frickin' ice dragon or they are all going to die quite fast.
This season was a pretty wild ride. The final season will soon be upon us, and I suppose the whole world will be tuning in to watch. But is it too much to ask that the world doesn't end in an apocalypse? 

We need to talk about the Beyond the Wall episode of Game of Thrones.

So let's talk about that episode of Game of Thrones that aired last week. It was called "Beyond the Wall," but there's really only one thing that anyone is talking about: the mutha-f*ckin ice dragon. My friend Jake has been yammering about an ice dragon for over a year now. He even showed me a picture of the Night King sitting on top of an ice dragon that he claimed was from this season of the show. I told him it was a fake. Now I'm not so sure. Jake seemed to think that the ice dragon would come from inside the wall itself (which I thought was ludicrous), but now that I know it's Viseryon, I kinda wish it had come from inside the wall. I kind of liked Daenerys having three dragons. I suppose if one of them needed to die, going by way of the Night King was about as epic a death as you could hope for. And boy is the Night King ever powerful. He took out that adult dragon with one throw! As a side note, I love that Drogon dodged the second throw. He's obviously learned something from Qyburn's "scorpion." So what does an Ice Dragon mean exactly? Let's think about this....
1) The Night King didn't turn Viseryon into a mindless undead. He turned him into one of them. That means that Viseryon is an intelligent undead (not mindless) and can make his own minions (just like any of the other White Walkers). It also means that he's invulnerable to anything except dragon glass and Valyrian steel.

2) The Night King can now fly around. This means that he can be everywhere just like Daenerys. One moment she's in the south where Dragonstone is and in the next moment, she's north of the wall saving Jon Snow (and the travel time between them appears to be essentially the time it takes liquid water to turn into ice at around the freezing temperature). So in the time it takes to make ice cubes in your freezer, the Night King could be anywhere he wants to be if only for that wall thing....

3) Prediction for this week: The wall is coming down. It has to. With only six episodes left in the final season, the wall as a plot device to separate the north from the south has run its purpose. Either that...or it will be rendered useless as Viseryon freezes the ocean with his breath to allow the army of the dead to walk around the damned thing. And for what it's worth, I've been frustrated that the army of the dead appears to be stopped by water. If the Night King brings the cold with him, why isn't he freezing the lakes and oceans so that his minions can walk on solid ground?

4) Second prediction for this week's season finale: Cersei dies. Her story is just about up methinks, and I don't think she's capable of allying herself with Daenerys. Jamie's going to need to take over (he's already the Kingslayer folks!), and I think he'll take Cersei out so that we can get down to business: the seven kingdoms uniting behind Daenerys and Jon Snow to fight the Night King.

5) Prediction for the final season: Viseryon will be killed by a dragon glass spear hurled from Qyburn's "scorpion" invention. That's why we were introduced to it in this season. It's an invention that will come in useful to unseat the Night King from his ice dragon mount. That is (at least) how I see it.

6) Question: Can Bran warg into an ice dragon White Walker? He's already established that he can enter the mind of a living human like Hodor. What's to stop him from taking control of Viseryon?

7) My fear: The wall will come down because Samwell makes it back to the north with Gillie and has brought the horn of winter with him. The Night King kills Samwell, takes the horn, and brings down the wall. That would be terrible. I really like Samwell Tarly. He's the only truly good person in the entire series (which unfortunately means he has a target on his back).

Anyway...I'm sure the season finale this Sunday will give us lots to speculate and talk about for sure. See you then.

The total eclipse of 2017 was the most beautiful sky I have ever seen.

I had plenty of time to reflect on the great solar eclipse of 2017. Leaving Idaho Falls, Idaho where my father still lives, it took us four hours to go fifty miles because the traffic on the interstate and every back road and highway was so clogged with people trying to drive south. Once we hit Pocatello, we drove about fifty miles per hour on average to Salt Lake City, with a few places that was bumper to bumper for miles on end (and traffic proceeding at a crawl). My friend summed it up best when she said, "Eclipse traffic is real folks." Yup...it sure was. Was it worth it? Yes.
"Totality" was the most spectacular natural phenomenon I've ever seen. Just prior to it, as the sun was rapidly disappearing, there were waves of light racing across the ground, separated by dark bands. I learned later that these are called "shadow snakes," and they are incredibly rare. The sky to the west got dark and hazy, the temperature dropped, and the colors became intensified almost like a 4K television set. I'd never seen anything like it. Then (of course) the sun disappeared behind the moon and it looked like a black spot in the sky. I was in a twilight world where the only light came from the ring around the sun.

It was the most beautiful sky I have ever seen. When the sun's corona exploded into view behind the moon, it lay gently against a backdrop of midnight blue. The sky around it was filled with stars, and this midnight blue faded to a green and yellow and red on the horizon in every direction. There was a sunset no matter which way I turned, 360 degrees, and it was incredible. It was otherworldly, and the experience left me awestruck. I felt small, insignificant in the universe, and it was a good feeling because it took me away from any thoughts that I had and made me live in the moment. 
What an incredible experience, and I got to share it with my dad, my friend Meg Dolan, and some people that I work with who drove up for the event. Did anyone else take the time to watch it? Below is a picture that my boss took of it from up on a hill. He shared it with me, and it's better than anything I took.

I'm dreading the eclipse but I'm still going to try and watch it.

I've decided that I'm heading to the zone of totality for the eclipse that's scheduled to pass over the United States on Monday, August 21st. So I'll be pausing my blog until Wednesday of next week. You may wonder why this wasn't a "set" thing, and it's because I've been dreading the eclipse the more and more I hear about it. Driving there is going to be a real conundrum.

My hometown is in the zone of totality, but it's a town of only 50,000 people. And they are expecting half a million to try and drive from Salt Lake City to Idaho Falls this weekend. The local news has been saying that porta potties are going to be available on interstate 15 for the first time in history. Why? Because apparently the traffic jam is going to make Los Angeles traffic look heavenly in comparison. Reports are saying that people may run out of gas on the interstate (idling) as it were and that you should take food and extra gas tanks just in case. The trip to I.F. normally takes about three and a half hours. They are saying on the news to prepare (just in case) for something that takes twice as long.

Additionally, in my home town, the grocery stores sold out of food. Milk, groceries, bananas, you name it... Crowds hit the grocery store hard on Monday in a panic. Lines went around the block at every food outlet and gas station. All because of a solar eclipse and people questioning whether or not they will be able to get supplies.

This may be one of the worst decisions I've ever made. But I'd like to see the eclipse, and I already have glasses for it. I want to see the sun's corona live. I think it will leave me with a sense of awe. I hope it doesn't cloud out. If the weatherman says it will be obscured by cloud cover, I'm going to stay home. I bet there's a lot of pressure on the local weather people here to get the forecast for Monday just right.

Anyway, to anyone else out there that's trying to make the trip, I wish you good luck. See you on the far side of the shadow.

Five assorted musings regarding the Eastwatch episode of Game of Thrones

"Eastwatch" as envisioned by Ted Nasmith. It actually looked a lot like this in the episode last night.This week's episode of Game of Thrones seems to have set up a pretty strong White Walker episode. And for what it's worth, it was a good episode in its own right. Here are my assorted musings that I took away from the episode (and feel like pointing out):

1) I thought for sure that Jaime Lannister had his goose cooked and drowned last week when he fell into that lake. How Bron saved him other than it being "plot armor" is beyond me. But I suppose that Bron has proven himself time and time again to be an incredibly valuable resource to the Lannisters. For what it's worth, I think that the showrunner of Game of Thrones understands George R.R. Martin very well. George typically cliffhangs something in the books, making you think that something important has happened (Arya being blind for instance). And then when the tale resumes, it's just a minor thing and resolved within a couple of minutes.

2) I was pleased to see that Drogon didn't die from a poisoned harpoon. I'm also not really sure why Tyrion and Varys are making such a big deal of Daenerys burning her enemies when they clearly chose that fate as opposed to bending the knee. I would have bent the knee immediately, but then again, I would find little honor in allowing myself to be burned alive by dragonfire. There's bravery and then there's just plain stupidity. I did like how Dickon stood with his father though. They held hands at the end. That was a nice touch.

3) I'm not sure what Jon Snow hopes to accomplish with his little band that are headed north of the wall to capture a wight and bring it down to a meeting between the queens. They may find that the magic that animates the wights doesn't work over a great distance from the Night King. I think that someone should have at least mentioned that possibility...that it might have some kind of range they don't know about. Also, it's strange that the maesters at the Citadel still have such a hard time swallowing Samwell's tale about the Night King and the army of the dead. Are learned men really that skeptical in a world where dragons are real?

4) Cersei has nothing to win by helping out Jon Snow to take on the Night King. I'm not sure why even trying to convince her that an invasion of walking dead men is real is even a strategy. If she admits that it's real, then she loses any support of locals in Westeros who will march north to fight the army of the dead with Daenerys. How does that at all solidify her position? It doesn't. It only weakens it, which means that even having a meeting with her is at best a waste of time and at worst, incredibly dangerous.

5) Littlefinger knows Arya is following him and manipulated her into finding that raven message. My guess is that it's from season one, when Sansa was forced to write to Robb to try and get him to bend the knee to King Joffrey. Splitting up Sansa and Arya (sowing doubt between them) is in Littlefinger's best interest as together, they are too strong for him.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Do you have any assorted musings you'd like to share in the comments below?

I shouldn't have to pay to see the new Star Trek series airing this fall and yes this is a rant.

I just want to say once and for all that cord cutters, greed, and the twisted idea that monopolies are somehow inherently bad are (in the very near future) going to nickel and dime the middle class to death. A man (or a woman) should be able to subscribe to cable and get all the channels. It should be easy. That's it. Done. One bill. Yes, all monopolies are not bad people. Sometimes monopolies can get things done efficiently and with government regulation, can make it so that they aren't too powerful.

But in this country of "greed is good" where everyone is punching each other's lights out to fleece the middle class, I am now faced with the following dilemma:

1) I need to subscribe to cable so that I can watch episodes of The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Legion, Better Call Saul, Shameless, and American Gods live (as they air).

2) I need to maintain an Amazon subscription so that I can watch shows like "The Man in the High Castle."

3) I need to maintain a Hulu subscription so that I can watch shows like "The Handmaid's Tale."

4) I need to maintain a Netflix subscription so that I can watch shows like "Luke Cage" and "Jessica Jones" and "The Defenders."

5) I will need to maintain a CBS All Access subscription in order to watch "Star Trek: Discovery" this fall. This is complete bullshit by the way. I should be able to get this from CBS for free.

6) I will need to maintain a Disney subscription because they just announced that they are going to have their own streaming service and are pulling all of their stuff off Netflix. Why the hell not? Everyone else is making money with their streaming service, I'm surprised it took Disney this long. So I guess for any new Star Wars series or Indiana Jones thing or Pixar or just plain old Disney movies, I'll need to have a streaming service for it.

Sigh.

Everything (AND I MEAN EVERYTHING) is going to this model of pay as you go. The problem is, this will keep you on a treadmill forever. You will never get ahead with pay as you go. Ever.

/End Rant

Here are two burning questions I have about the Spoils of War episode of Game of Thrones

This last Sunday, the fourth episode of Game of Thrones' penultimate season aired called "The Spoils of War." As episodes go, it was a really good one with (spoiler alert) a battle that "set the Guinness Book of World Records" for most people set on fire at once. The last twenty minutes or so of the episode are thoroughly entertaining. But having watched those last twenty minutes over again, I have some questions (or maybe it would be better to say "observations" that are certainly open-ended and just waiting for some answers). So, I'll share them with you:

1) Why is the harpoon chucker that got Drogon in the shoulder called a "scorpion?" A scorpion has a poisoned tail as most people know. Was the ballista harpoon poisoned with one of Qyburn's deadly cocktails? He's already demonstrated quite the skill at manipulating and recreating poisons. I can't believe that the whole parade in front of the Dornish queen in the dungeons of King's Landing was simply to showboat how Cersei intended to kill one of the Sand snakes. So, are we about to see Drogon sicken and then die? I would hate that, but she does have two more dragons, and I suppose there's an irony to being wounded in the shoulder and then dying the same as his namesake, Khal Drogo.

2) Why did Arya end up with the Valyrian steel dagger? If she was going to kill more people, she hardly needs a Valyrian steel dagger to do that. Just about any dagger will do. The thing about Valyrian steel is that it's useful against White Walkers. Guys...I think this detail in the show is important. I think we've just seem some foreshadowing that Arya is going to kill the Night King and most likely take his place as the leader of the White Walkers--a "Night Queen" as it were. What do you think?

Anyway, those are my two questions/observations I had regarding the episode. I'll be interested to see what those of you (who watched it and care to respond) have to say. 

Comic artist George Rottkamp gives us a snarky look at how the characters in Game of Thrones have changed in seven seasons.

Game of Thrones season 7 is on the downhill slide to its finale now. My friend, Meg Dolan, sent me a group of comics drawn for Dorkly by artist George Rottkamp. They feature everybody from Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen, and if you're a fan of the show, then you'll probably smile. It's odd to see just how the characters have changed in seven seasons, especially when taken in this kind of context.