The Last Guardians of the Orville's Trek (OUTDATED)

Douglas Adams spent virtually his whole life trying to push science fiction comedy into the mainstream. Drawing primarily on the absurdist works of Kurt Vonnegut and Stanislaw Lem, Adams took the edge off such hard satire and social commentary for something seemingly more light-hearted and overall softer in tone. That's not to say he was unsophisticated or less compelling or somehow tarnished those who pointed out the shortcomings of the human condition within the scope of speculative fiction. He still had the same borderline misanthropic, cynical DNA of Pirx the Pilot or Player Piano, but added a distinctly English flavor of self-deprecation one might call Happy-Go-Lucky or even Quixotic. 

When he worked on Doctor Who, future writer Steven Moffat said of his tenure that his contributions were worthless, that his humor and comic sensibility were of such esoteric genius replicating it would be impossible. 

Sadly, I don't think he's wrong. Science fiction and comedy is a delicate balance that you're either going to get very right or very wrong, and what few times you get it right are usually going to get a tad samey after some time. It's the very definition of niche, with the appeal leaning rather heavily on novelty and rarity. Historically, the most successful examples of Sci-Fi-Com apart from Adams' own Hitchhiker series have been Men in Black and Red Dwarf. In fact, MIB is partially responsible for kickstarting many more lucrative talks about getting Hitchhiker made into a feature film. Previous attempts were frequently stalled at the pitch level with many a stuffy executive insisting that science fiction and comedy didn't mix, that if they did someone would have succeeded at it by then. Along comes MIB, and suddenly sci-fi can be funny after all, laughing all the way to the bank. 

As a die-hard Hitchhiker fan, hardcore Smeghead, longtime Whovian, and whatever MIB fans are called, as well as a fan of Stansilaw Lem (haven't gotten to Vonnegut yet), you'd think I'd be really cool with the success of light-hearted humorous sci-fi options like Guardians of the Galaxy. However, as much as I like Guardians, certainly Guardians 2, I think I may well have reached my point of saturation. Even while watching Volume 2, I began letting out audible groans at the many recurring instances of what, if I had to coin a term, I'd call Deflated Melodrama. It starts with someone saying a line that's very melodramatic, almost Shakespearean, and the next line is a shrugging dismissal. In The Long Dark Tea Time of The Soul, quite possibly my favorite Adams book, certainly that's not part of the Hitchhiker cycle, the God of Thunder Thor himself declares in a loud booming voice that he shall meet his father Odin in the Halls of Valhalla, to which a minor character asks, "Again?" Put simply, this is the dead horse that Guardians 2 kicks into the ground for two hours. It was funny the first time because it came out of nowhere and was repeated maybe only one other time in the remainder of the book. I stopped counting how many times Marvel's manic merry misfits made their mark on this martyred muse of a mare. 

Seth MacFarlane's new show The Orville is coming to FOX, an absurdist parody of Star Trek that looks and feels to be one part Red Dwarf and one part Galaxy Quest. For the record, I liked Galaxy Quest. It came out in 1999, a full year after Star Trek: Insurrection made it pretty clear that First Contact was bottled lightning and the Star Trek franchise as a whole was beginning to fade from favor with even its most ardent fans. It essentially said what we were all thinking at the time. I bring it up because I can't help but feel like the same thing is happening with The Orville. 

Although the J. J. Abrams/Bad Robot reboot of Star Trek has been successful, it hasn't been successful enough for Paramount to reinstate it as the company's crown jewel. For my viewing pleasure, I think the series is just fine, each film getting incrementally better than the last, especially with Beyond. Hell, I wish Beyond had been the first, instead of faffing about establishing the canon with Number One (pun intended) and giving fans a pandering tribute they never asked for with Into Darkness. As such, there's considerable debate as to whether or not there will be a fourth film, whether or not that will be the final chapter in the Abrams timeline, and if the cast wants to commit to that many future installments. 

Then there's the TV show... the one that's been cancelled now. I've never seen a grander, hotter mess than this spectacle of entertainment-by-committee versus social media outrage culture. A wise man once described the Falklands War as two bald men fighting over a comb, and I don't feel like that's too far off from what's happened now. No one wanted the show that Paramount wanted to sell, but no one necessarily agreed with the Social Justice Warrior outcries. Sure, setting the series in line with the original (Enterprise, Classic, Next Generation, DS9, Voyager....) would have been as welcomed as a female, non-white captain (staying faithful to Gene Roddenberry's super-centrist, egalitarian ideologues), but not only was the proprietary streaming service eye-rolling, the last-minute ground-up overhaul of everything from the setting to the ship and alien designs to the cast being more, er, "washed out" reeked of the studio playing it safe in the laziest possible manner known to them, which ironically is what causes franchises like this to stifle in the first place and lose footing to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Social media mobs may have had good points about racism and sexism dominating mainstream entertainment, if only passive-aggressively, but I don't share their basis for that point of view. That is, I didn't care what race or gender the captain and crew were, I cared about having something different that still paid tribute to the original. A safe bet to Paramount, systemic racism to others, and lazy repetition to me. Yeah, Picard is probably my favorite captain out of Archer, Kirk, Sisko, and Janeway, but I don't want him to be the gold standard against which all other candidates are judged. It's like all the actors who have played the Doctor; I like Tom Baker, but I like the others as well and all for different reasons (even Matt Smith and Colin Baker). The last thing I ever want to say about a Doctor is how much like (insert any other Doctor here) they are. It's the same for Star Trek. I want different starship captains to captain their ships among the stars differently. Challenge my expectations, for pity's sake (feel free to make your own joke about spaceships and the word "Challenge" if you want some sort of parallelism like the sentence about captains... I don't feel like pushing that boundary just yet). Maybe I won't like the new direction, but I don't want someone else missing out on what they make like for the sake of my placation. 

YouTuber Armoured Skeptic can explain all of what happened with Star Trek Discovery better than I can:

So, here we are. A Star Trek series has been cancelled, but a Galaxy Quest-like parody is getting the greenlight. Will I watch it? I don't know, probably not. It looks well-made and I don't doubt it will be funny, but barring any exceeding of expectations within the first few episodes, I don't see myself staying invested. Even then, nothing really makes me want to check it out in the first place. It's offering to scratch an itch I don't have. Instead, I think maybe I'll fill up my Kindle with some Vonnegut, and finish Pirx the Pilot. I also realize I've never actually read the first Dirk Gently book, and I'm rather mad at myself for that. 

You know that guy who really likes (insert band from 1960-1985 here) and says all current music is bullcrap? If I end up becoming as much for science fiction comedy, swearing that it all never got much better than Red Dwarf before returning to my reading of The Cyberiad... I'm completely and totally okay with that. 

UPDATE: I guess it's not cancelled, after all. (shrugs before returning to reading Memoirs Found In A Bathtub)

Four Movies

I'd been writing this review for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 wherein I criticize the story for the changes it makes to Starlord's origin. While I still stand by that criticism, its weight was gradually diminished the more research I did into the GotG's lore. Turns out I knew even less than I did about just how malleable this series is and the myriad ways Marvel keeps pounding it into different shapes in a desperate bid for appeal. Some comics blog out there once referred to Guardians as something along the lines of, "A series comic fans desperately want to pretend to love." that's not to say it's bad, just that it never seems to have any lasting appeal. The way the original publication played out was it ran for a few issues, got cancelled, the characters made cameos in other books, the series was revived, cancelled again, and all the while keeping a swiftly revolving door on their roster worse than the X-Men ever got. Silver Sable had the same problem; she seemed stupidly popular with fans and demand for a standalone series would be through the roof, only for the sales figures to dig a well in the basement. Anyway, as for the Guardians and my attempt at reviewing their newest incarnation, I found that the version I knew was so different from any other that complaining about continuity was more than a little futile. As I said, though, I still stand by most of the criticisms I leveled at it. I get that changes get made in adaptations. I don't mind that at all. What I take issue with is when the change is made for the sake of broad appeal and marketability rather than for the sake of fitting the story into a new medium. It's like Watchmen; I get why fans of the book were upset about the ending being changed, but for my money, I think the ending works better in the case of the film. It keeps the story on track and doesn't feel like a mad dash add-on. So, as much as you didn't need me to tell you by now, this many weeks after box office records were shattered, Volume 2 was perfectly adequate as another entry in the Marvel cinematic universe. Also, water is wet. 

The week following Guardians, I went to see King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. I had no intention of seeing it thanks mostly to a painfully humdrum trailer. My roommate, however, a fan of all things Arthurian and fantastic, couldn't wait. For as much of a renaissance as the fantasy genre is getting in Hollywood, it's still fairly slim cinematic pickings compared to sci-fi and superheroes, especially if you venture outside of anything with Peter Jackson's name on it. Some say that's because fantasy has found a good enough home on television with the likes of Game of Thrones and Vikings. Anyway, my expectations were very low for the movie, to the point I genuinely expected to nap my way through the entire thing. I also thought, "hey, maybe it'll be good for a laugh." Two things happened in the first ten minutes, however, that threw the nap in the fire along with those low expectations. First was Eric Bana scaling and toppling a mountain-sized war elephant while sporting glowing armor and a flaming sword. Okay, I thought, you've got my attention. Second was seeing Guy Ritchie in the credits as director. All right, I thought, what have you got for me? Admittedly, the steam starts letting out immediately thereafter, but it's a slow enough burn that by the time the duel with NOT-Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer came around, I can safely say I was never truly bored. I was legitimately invested despite some horrific cliches and tropes. While I'm not pretending it's a perfect film or even a hidden gem, but it was a pleasant surprise, which is almost as good. It reminded me a lot of Solomon Kane, which had similar qualities. A few genuinely cool moments of visual artistry wrapped up in an overall mediocre package of safe, bland design and extremely poor marketing. Seriously, what is it with trailers underselling movies these days? The trailer for Logan made it look like the entire film would be set at that one location (the repurposed water tower in the desert) and padded with a lot of Sergio Leone-styled long stares over the landscape, instead of what we got. As for Arthur, which has unfortunately joined a list of box office flops, I genuinely recommend it. If you're a fan of Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this won't satisfy you like a proper third entry in that series (Hound of the Baskervilles, maybe?) but you'll be able to fill up your Guy Ritchie witty banter-riddled irreverent action movie bingo card well enough. 

Last week, I did something I hadn't done in years: a twofer movie day. The first time I did that was back in 2002, seeing the first Sam Raimi Spider-man film the same day as Attack of the Clones. The second time was in 2011, the films being Super 8 and Green Lantern. 

The first was Wonder Woman, for which all the world was waiting. It was good. I know that's not very in-depth, but that's the kind of movie it was. It did a lot of things right and while it didn't quite excel at most of them, it never failed in any regard. It delivered what it promised and the only true complaint I had besides some pacing issues in the beginning and the middle was the child playing young Diana. Of course, that's not being fair, they did the best they could with what they had and I'm sure she was the best pick, but if we never hear from that kid again (I'm not even sure we "heard" from her this time around; I'll be surprised if she's not dubbed), I won't be surprised and certainly wish her well in whatever she pursues. As for Gal Godot, I take back my doubts about her handling the role. I'd already been proven mostly wrong by Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but this confirmed it. 

After that, and over a plate of some lovely battered chicken fingers at a sports bar, we got our tickets to The Mummy. My reaction to it is about the same as Wonder Woman, but I have to mention Iron Man 2 as part of my criticism. Iron Man 2 is a decent Marvel movie (water is still wet) except when it grinds its own story to a screeching halt and spends what feels like a full half-hour telling how awesome the Avengers movie is going to be. The Mummy isn't quite so clumsy, but if I didn't know that Universal was trying to have its own cinematic universe (which they kind of started back in the day with Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and even their own early Mummy movies) it would have caught me off guard. At around the halfway mark, Tom Cruise gets taken through a room with cryptid specimens in jars, including what appears to be a Lagoon creature's arm in a jar, and the skull of a vampire (also in a jar of alcohol, which doesn't make sense unless it stops it from dissolving in sunlig... you know what, it's fine, forget it). To top it off, Russell Crowe introduces himself as Dr. Jekyll, and the reference doesn't stop at the name. Luckily, this doesn't linger or feel like an intrusion on the story, so I forgive it. I do wonder, however, if they've planned this out that far ahead. I mean, Dracula: Untold is arguably the first inkling of Universal trying to snag a piece of the Marvel pie, but those hints have been snubbed in favor of this new appetizer. What's to say we won't get a third introduction with the added note, "No, this one's the start, this one for sure. This time we mean it!"? The Bride of Frankenstein isn't even slate for release until 2019. That's a ways off given how often new Marvel films get released. If you read anything by Sandy Collora about his involvement in a Black Lagoon movie, you'll find yourself even less eager to see how this Dark Universe plans to dazzle us. Should we even mention that Bencio Del Toro remake of  the Wolfman getting "rebooted"?