Christopher Nolan and "The Odyssey"

Just as Guillermo Del Toro's "Frankenstein" was a father-son story with redemption and monsters on its mind, Christopher Nolan's version of "The Odyssey" reflects its director's preoccupations with themes he's been exploring for a while - namely the price of glory and the misuse of intellect and power.  I think fans of Nolan will expect the nested narratives and achronological storytelling, which follows an amnesiac Odysseus (Matt Damon), and  his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) separately learning the truth about what happened after Odysseus's great victory at Troy, and the events of his long journey home.  What's a surprise is that this version of "The Odyssey" is such a brooding, psychological take on the story, with more in common with "Oppenheimer" than "The Dark Knight."

First and foremost, however, "The Odyssey" is an epic, one that makes great use of its large budget and stacked cast.  Collaborating with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and composer Ludwig Goransson, Christopher Nolan does a fantastic job of creating memorable action set pieces, bleakly beautiful visuals, and theater-shaking soundscapes, aiming for the kind of epic scale filmmaking that hearkens back to the era of David Lean and Akira Kurosawa.  Behold an imposing King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) in all black armor, who calls an unwilling Odysseus away from his loving wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) to go to war.  Here's the massive Trojan Horse jutting out from an empty beach, sinister and portentous.  Here's the hut of the witch Circe (Samantha Morton), the cave of the Cyclops (Bill Irwin), and the deceptively peaceful shore of the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron).  And here are the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Laestrygonians, the Land of the Dead, and the palace of Ithaca.  And here's our hero Odysseus on his ship, with his right hand man Eurylochos (Himesh Patel), and a crew willing to follow them to the ends of the earth.  

All the most famous, fantastical monsters and miracles from the story are here in one form or another, but it's clear that Christopher Nolan is more interested in Odysseus's inner turmoil.  While he's done an impressive job of constructing an IMAX-worthy world of magic islands and ancient kingdoms, abstaining from CGI as much as possible, what's even more impressive is how he resurrects a civilization built on the harsh laws of fickle gods, codes of honor, fatal curses, and bloody sacrifice.  It's a universe in turmoil, disrupted by the Trojan War, and a major theme is Odysseus reckoning with his own transgressions and their devastating unintended consequences.  There's an abiding melancholy that hangs over the whole film, the roots of which are revealed piece by piece, as Odysseus makes his way home.  And in the process Norton completely justifies many of his storytelling choices - the nested narratives, the stark aesthetics, and even some of the casting choices - in a way that caught me by surprise.

I want to make it clear that "The Odyssey" is a very entertaining film.  The Greek myths are the progenitors of modern superheroes and arguably the whole adventure genre after all.  Matt Damon acquits himself well as Odysseus, and there's a fantastic, slimy villain in Penelope's suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson) who is so much fun to root against.  Each new island offers some new monster or obstacle, so the momentum rarely flags, and there's a big action showdown at the end.  However, it was such a pleasure to discover Nolan had found a way to include some very sincere examinations of war, loss, guilt, and heroism in the middle of all of this. The emotional core of the movie is so unexpectedly human and bittersweet, and makes his version of "The Odyssey" very distinct from any other adaptation I've seen.  I love how he keeps making the scope bigger, putting in little references and allusions to so many other stories and histories, from Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyongo) to the Sea Peoples at the end of the Bronze Age.  

As someone very familiar with The Odyssey by Homer, I can't help feeling a little disappointed about some of the adaptation changes and omissions.  The sirens are only seen from a distance, and we don't spend nearly enough time with Circe.  The gods are frequently discussed, but only a solemn Athena (Zendaya) appears to Odysseus.  On the other hand, I like that much more of the narrative is given over to Penelope and Telemachus trying to keep the suitors at Ithaca in check.  My favorite performance in the film may be John Leguizamo as their faithful servant Eumaeus, who has the most expanded role of all the major characters.  It's impressive how much of the story Nolan kept, all things considered .

A film of this size and ambition and vision could have only come from one director, and I'm glad that Christopher Nolan got to make his "Odyssey," and make it so unambiguously his own movie.

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"Lanterns" Sheds Some Light

James Gunn's DC projects have a very mixed record, but I'm not surprised that the most successful so far has been the "Lanterns" series.  The talents assembled for the show are considerable, including Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and comic book scribe Tom King, who are credited as the show's creators.  Based on the DC comics about multiple superheroes who have fought evil as the Green Lantern, "Lanterns" gives us a grounded detective series that takes place in the DC universe.  It rarely leaves the small Midwestern town of Rushville, Nebraska, and doesn't show off many flashy special effects.  Super-powered showdowns are backgrounded in favor of nuanced character portraits and complex interpersonal drama.  Anecdotally, fans of the original "Green Lantern" comics don't seem to like the show as much as adult viewers with less knowledge of the characters and their comic book histories.  

"True Detective" is the clear template for the plot, which follows an ongoing mystery unraveling in two different time periods.  In 2016, the current Green Lantern, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), and his intended replacement/trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) come to Rushville suspecting alien activity in the area.  They're met by the doubtful Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly MacDonald), part of a complicated family that runs the town.  She warns them not to pry too much into local affairs as they're carrying out their investigation.  In 2026, John returns to Rushville and finds himself in the middle of a mystery again.  This is connected to the fallout of events from 2016.  Lots of flashbacks are involved, but the structure of the show is interesting in that the 2016 and 2026 mysteries largely play out separately, and in very different circumstances, rather than being intercut together.  The cast also includes Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Ulrich Thomsen, Jason Ritter, Laura Linney, Nathan Fillion, and Jasmine Cephas-Jones. 

At the center of "Lanterns" is the difficult relationship between the two leads, who are never on equal footing.  Beloved hero Hal Jordan is getting old, but clings to the power granted to him by "the Guardians," who designate each member of the specially chosen intergalactic Green Lantern Corp by bestowing them with a matter-controlling power ring.  Hal is supposed to be training John with the ring to be the next Green Lantern of Earth, but mostly just treats him as an unwanted, bothersome sidekick.  As for John, he's been preparing himself for the superhero job for his whole life, as a part of a deeply troubling family legacy, and has a lot of personal baggage to work out.  His frustrations with Hal grow steadily, episode by episode.  The show examines the racial and generational distinctions in play here, and offers a lot of interesting commentary on the nature of heroes, power, and self-determination.

The show has admirable ambitions, but "Lanterns" was met with an unusually contentious reception because of some wildly mismatched expectations.  To be blunt, "Lanterns" is an HBO prestige drama targeting adults, but its original source material is a comic book aimed at children.  Some existing fans didn't take too well to these larger-than-life characters being brought down to size and treated like fallible, flawed human beings.  Also, those who were expecting a more traditional superhero narrative, replete with cosmic green light shows and alien fisticuffs, instead got a very dialogue-heavy drama about morality and the responsible use of power instead.  The last episode doesn't even have a big fight scene in it.  Despite having clear connections to the 2025 "Superman" movie, "Lanterns" is tonally very different, with much smaller, more personal stakes and a far more complicated moral framework.        

The bigger question is whether or not this works as a television series, and my first instinct is to say yes.  The characters and their quandaries are interesting enough to follow whether or not you have any knowledge of the Green Lantern and the wider DCU.  You don't have to like superheroes at all, because superheroics are so peripheral to the concerns of the story.  "Lanterns" is better described as neo-noir and detective fiction.  However, as with much detective fiction, the plotting is sometimes rushed and messy, with some notable logic gaps.  The emotional payoffs and character arcs, however, are all very solid, which I consider much more important.  

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"House of the Dragon," Year Three

Spoilers for seasons one and two, and the first two episodes of season three ahead.

So, this is the season where "House of the Dragon" made some fundamental mistakes.  The most obvious one is not its fault.  HBO has cut down on episode orders, so the second season that premiered in 2024 had to end before its planned finale, the Battle of the Gullet.  This exciting naval battle ends up opening the third season instead, delivering lots of action and thrills that nothing else in the season matches up to.  An eight episode season would seem to be a perfectly fine length for "House of the Dragon," but there are a lot of characters who still don't have much to do between the violent clashes, and the showrunners seem determined to drag out the series for as long as its source material will allow, so the pace has slowed to a crawl.    

Most of the season is spent exploring the new status quo, with Rhaenyra having finally ascended the throne at King's Landing, but finding governance extremely difficult in the unsteady circumstances.  Up until now, Rhaenyra has been the most sympathetic of the main protagonists.  However, as the show moves into its later seasons, she's clearly not supposed to remain so.  The audience really should also be rooting for some of the other characters left on the board too, like Aegon II and Aemond, who are still on the run, or the scheming Ormund Hightower (James Norton), who has custody of Viserys's youngest son Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Ainsworth), and is set up as a major foe of Rhaenyra's this season.  Though attempts are made to get us more invested in all of them, it doesn't work.  A few cool moments doesn't make up for Aegon being a brat for most of the year, and Aemond has gone from fun psycho to angst-ridden brooder.  Ormund is entertaining while he lasts, but reeks of cannon fodder and desperation.  Alicent and Helaena, put under house arrest, are still around, but too passive and ineffectual to really be players this season.  

I was still invested in Rhaenyra's reign and her relationship with Daemon, but watching her flounder as a monarch really tested my patience.  Rhaenyra's been interesting so far because she's a strong character blinded by tragic flaws, far too self-obsessed and conceited to believe she could be in the wrong.  Once she's installed in King's Landing, all these new anxieties and self-doubts kick in, rendering her weaker and more unlikeable with each episode.  And it's absolutely maddening to watch this play out.  I don't like that the show seems to so often be making Rhaenyra a victim of bad circumstances instead of letting her decisively make the mistakes that will lead to her ultimate fate.  It might be an issue with Emma D'Arcy's performance, but the writing is not doing her any favors.

This leaves me without many sympathetic characters left to follow through the story.  There are several secondary characters who still have my attention, though.  Baela had a great tragic turn this year, and was at the center of a major action set piece. Gwayne Hightower has weirdly emerged as one of the more heroic characters.   Ulf and Hugh are decent enough wild cards.  Alyn, Addam, and Rhaena feel like they're stuck on standby after the premiere, unfortunately, along with Lord Corlys.  I think the less said about Mysaria - a problematic figure from the start - the better.  

There is plenty of potential in this show going forward, but "House of the Dragon" has already fallen back on some of the worst habits of "Game of Thrones."  The third season was better than the second because it was more eventful, but it's still moving too slowly and getting repetitive.  Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Harrenhal subplots.  Daemon was stuck there for most of the second season, with Alys as his enabler, and once he left, Aemond showed up and went through almost the exact same experience.  

Maybe HBO could have gotten away with this if "House of the Dragon" was being released yearly, but my interest is already on the wane, and I don't see any end in sight.  As someone who wasn't too impressed with "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," it might be time for me to take a break from this franchise for a while.

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"Frieren" and Friends

A common anime trope is the cute, girlish character who is actually decades or centuries older than she appears.  These are often pretty flat characters built for easy laughs or guilt-free titillation, and rarely examined in much depth.  So imagine my surprise when I came across "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End."  The title character, Frieren (Atsumi Tanezaki), is a long-lived elven mage who inhabits a swords-and-sorcery universe.  The series begins where most fantasy stories end, in the aftermath of Frieren and her adventuring party having defeated a mighty Demon King, beginning a new era of peace.  They all go their separate ways, but Frieren comes back to visit a few decades later, and is shocked to find her companions at or near the end of their lives, while time has barely passed for her.  Contemplating her relationships to humankind and the passage of time, Frieren sets out on a new journey with an apprentice mage Fern (Kana Ichinose), and a young warrior, Stark (Chiaki Kobayashi).

From what I'd heard about the series, I'd assumed that "Frieren" was a slower-paced slice of life show, where the adventures are fairly low stakes and the tone is kept very light.  This is sometimes true, as Frieren and her friends spend the introductory episodes slowly retracing the steps of the original adventuring party, doing small missions for local villagers, bonding over shared experiences, and collecting bits of new magic as they go.  And its all very pleasant and charming.  However, "Frieren" also fits the mold of a more traditional fantasy adventure series, having Frieren fight surviving allies of the Demon King for a string of episodes, or putting them in other dire situations that tend to end in spectacular fight scenes and the use of showy magic spells.  To allow them to travel through a more dangerous region, Frieren and Fern decide to take a mage certification exam that pits them against a slew of other powerful magic users, which takes up about a third of the show's first season.  However, there are still slower episodes between these arcs.  "Frieren" is able to take its time building up its characters and its lovely fantasy world, explaining the different types of magic and gradually digging into past events.

And the chief reason to watch the show is the character of Frieren, this detached, aloof being of immense power who has come to realize that she does value her connections to others, and wants to find ways to deepen them.  Though largely unspoken, her chief reason for going on this journey is to learn how to be more present for the people she values, and trying to reckon with her past and her regrets.  Himmel the Hero (Nobuhiko Okamoto), her warrior friend from the original party, dies in the first episode but his memory is a constant presence, and flashbacks to Frieren's time with him are common.  I like that the series will show Frieren struggling over small, day-to-day concerns, like choosing a birthday present, or spend a whole episode on a minor spat between Fern and Stark, because these dilemmas can be as confounding for the group as trying to slay the monster of the week.  The characters are pretty typical animal creations - Frieren is a lazy slob in private, of course, and Fern is the fussy rule-enforcer type - but they really grow on you.

The production values of the anime are very high, with animation by Madhouse Inc.  The appealing character designs work in both comedic and melodramatic contexts, and look great in motion.  I especially like their habit of using wordless montages to skip ahead in time, which will often use more character animation than all the scenes around them.  The limited animation of the anime style is utilized very well, with good editing and shot design making the stillness look more natural.  And the scenes that do feature lots of action look spectacular.  

"Frieren" is based on an ongoing manga, and a third season is in production for release sometime next year.  I'm a little wary of getting attached to another long series with no end in sight, but "Frieren" is good enough that I'll be happy to catch up with her again in the future.  

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Aang and Grogu Get New Movies

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to pair these two features together.  "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu" are both movies that are spinoffs from popular and beloved series designed for younger viewers.  They are both intended to be watchable for people who haven't seen their respective shows, so they both feel a little detached from anything else in their franchises.  However, getting the feature treatment means that the creators get to do things that they never could in a television or web series format.

Let's start with "Aang," which follows up the three-season "Avatar: the Last Airbender" Nickelodeon series.  A now adult Aang (Eric Nam) unexpectedly comes across another member of his nearly extinct clan named Tagah (Dave Bautista), who sends him on a quest to retrieve a magical relic.  This means reuniting with his friends Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Roman Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Zuko (Steven Yuen) for the adventure.  The voice cast is entirely new, and so is most of the crew, though one of the animation outfits involved, Studio Mir, previously worked on "Avatar" sequel series, "The Legend of Korra."  The series creators have story credits, but otherwise "Aang" feels a lot like the baton has been passed to an entirely different creative team.  The movie they've made looks absolutely fantastic, especially the epic scale action sequences with much more fluid and impressive animation.

However, as someone who has seen a lot of this series, because I have multiple younger relatives currently obsessed with it, "Aang" comes off as a little bland.  There are a couple of good character moments, and I have no complaints about any of the voice cast, but it's difficult to connect these versions of the characters with the ones from the show.  By making this a stand-alone adventure, the movie takes place well outside of the original narrative and sidesteps any potentially difficult questions about dangling plot threads and what's happened since the series finale.  Everyone is feeling a little adrift.  If this is the first time they've been together in a while, shouldn't they all be catching up?  Maybe resolving a few cliffhangers? And where is the rest of Aang's friend group?  Notably, all the secondary characters, including love interests, evil sisters, and beloved uncles are completely missing and never remarked on.  

The new Tagah storyline is also exactly the kind of throwaway, one-off plot that makes for a lot of great spectacle, but offers little in the way of expanding the "Avatar" universe, or offering any compelling stakes.  Aang learns an important lesson, but it's a lesson that we've seen him learn before, and there's none of the character growth and interesting worldbuilding that the franchise is known for.  Adult Aang seems nice, but he doesn't get much of a chance to display much personality.  Neither do any of the other heroes, except in the broadest terms - Sokka's still dropping one-liners, of course.  The "Aang" movie is lovely, and might be a good starting point for another series, but I didn't get much out of it.

 On to "The Mandalorian and Grogu," which I was happy to discover is firmly a "Star Wars" children's film.  Well, it's for children who are okay watching the hero constantly fighting sci-fi monsters and shooting enemies for over two hours, but still.  This is a creature feature full of aliens and robots and travelling around in cool spaceships to a bunch of different planets.  It's also got an incredibly simple plot.  The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, with doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder) and his adopted son, the green toddler Grogu, hunt down baddies for the New Republic, represented by a nice administrator played by Sigourney Weaver.  There are some complications involving hidden villains, double crosses, and Jabba the Hutt's angsty son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White), but for the most part we're just watching this duo travel the galaxy, getting into and out of trouble wherever they go.

This could be a short arc from the "Mandalorian " television show, since there is absolutely no change to the status quo or any character progression, except for Grogu being slightly better at controlling the Force.  Like "Aang," you could absolutely watch this without having seen the series at all.  However, amusingly, the movie does assume you've watched "Return of the Jedi" and know who Jabba the Hutt is.  Classic movie fans will also notice the influence of the "Lone Wolf and Cub" samurai adventure series is more pronounced than ever.  Director Jon Favreau and his collaborators seem to have decided to use this as an opportunity to do some of the more expensive characters that they couldn't justify appearing previously, like the Hutts, and experiment with the format a little.  Ludwig Gorransson's soundtrack gets the space to expand a bit, with the theme music getting a new electronica remix.  There are also noticeably a lot of puppets and practical effects being used here, especially little Grogu getting the spotlight for some major sequences.

And it's all very charming and very much in the vein of the "Star Wars" that I grew up with, but the film has been ignored by most audiences because it's definitely not the kind of "Star Wars" movie people have come to expect.  Between the lackluster marketing and the reluctance to deviate from the existing formula of the show at all, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" feels too much like an extension of the series that everyone can watch at home.  There are no ties to the rest of the "Star Wars" universe, but also no attempt to deepen the characters, or give them any new challenges. And aside from Sigourney Weaver and Martin Scorsese lending his voice to a new minor alien character, there aren't even any big names dropping in for cameos.  "Aang" has a more star-studded cast list than this!

I'm not worried about the state of the franchise, because the budget here was fairly modest and "Stafighter" is coming next year, but I still feel compelled to defend "The Mandalorian and Grogu." It's very slight, but perfectly fine for what it is, and I enjoyed it.  I expect that it'll work especially well for younger viewers looking for an entry point for "Star Wars." The youngest kids, who might be scared by little Grogu being menaced by scary aliens, and loud blaster fire, however, should stay home.

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Getting Through "Disclosure Day"

Spoilers ahead, but the big ones will be clearly marked.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is my favorite Steven Spielberg movie, and one of my favorite movies period.  When I learned that Spielberg was making a new movie about aliens and conspiracies, I was excited but also full of trepidation.  I haven't connected to many of Spielberg's most recent films in the last few years, especially the genre efforts like "Ready Player One" and "The BFG."  Was "Disclosure Day" going to have any of the old Spielberg cinematic magic from his older classics?  Was I simply too old and jaded?  Were his filmmaking sensibilities now too nostalgia-driven and schmaltzy for me?

I'm sorry to report that "Disclosure Day" is a deeply mediocre effort for a Spielberg film, one where every issue I've ever had with Spielberg's work feels magnified.  As advertised, "Disclosure Day" is about a group of people trying to reveal the truth about alien activity on earth.  It turns out that all significant evidence and information about aliens is being suppressed by a government contractor, Wardex, led by the ruthless Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), that has grown into a malignant, unchecked entity with too much power.  One of the employees, a cybersecurity expert named Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), steals information with the intent to release it to the public.  He and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) go on the run, with help from another Wardex defector, Hugo (Colman Domingo).  Meanwhile, a Kansas City weather lady, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), mysteriously starts speaking in different languages and displaying strange powers.  She and her skeptical boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) also start being chased by Wardex operatives.

Written by David Koepp, who has often collaborated with Steven Soderberg in recent years, "Disclosure Day" feels like a film of a much older, less cynical era.  There are earnest declarations of wild concepts ("sometimes they take the forms of animals"), plot holes everywhere you look, and big, important questions raised without much expectation of trying to answer them.  Most of the plot boils down to getting characters from point A to point B, juggling Macguffins, and getting into improbable action set pieces.  And some of those action set pieces are very good, like one involving a car getting dragged alongside a train.  An extremely effective suspense sequence in the first act involves Scanlon using a mysterious device to eerily interrogate and control Jane from a distance.  Spielberg has always been good about creating images we haven't seen before and I loved some of the individual shots here - soldiers crashing through an invisible window, or a throng of camera lights through a windowpane looking like a starfield.

However, the storytelling is often very heavy-handed, with every emotional beat underlined by a far too noticeable John Williams score that is not doing the movie any favors.  The main characters were so credulous in such a mannered way that it kept taking me out of the picture.  Every time Emily Blunt did a Jedi mind trick, I wanted to roll my eyes - not at her, but at the overly reverent presentation of it.  I sat through two hours of "Disclosure Day" knowing how every single scene would play out, admiring the committed work of all the actors and crew involved, but being completely emotionally unengaged with anything onscreen.  I was ready to throw in the towel and write this off as a handsome, well-intentioned disappointment.

And then the last fifteen minutes of the movie happened, and suddenly everything worked.  Here I will spoil the ending, because I can't talk about it unless I do.  The news broadcast production control room sequence, where we watch the footage being sent nationwide, is absolutely extraordinary.  Suddenly we're in a room full of strangers, reacting to this stream of images that everyone is seeing for the first time together.  The mood shifts.  An NBC news presenter played by Courtney Grace offers live commentary, her stunned and emotional reactions accompanying the montage of audience reactions we watch unfold.  And I realized Spielberg had orchestrated a beautiful moment of shared global viewership and unity that I hadn't felt in decades.  I knew it was fictional, but it hit me so hard.

Yes, there's a lot about the movie that doesn't make logical sense.  And it's unapologetically hokey and bright-eyed, and don't think that I didn't notice the cutesy "Snow White" references paralleling the "Pinocchio" ones from "Close Encounters."  But I had a Spielberg moment with this film, a real taste of cinematic wonder for the first time in I don't know how long.  And my head says the movie fundamentally doesn't work and is a terrible slog, and my heart says that the last fifteen minutes was still worth it.

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"Prison Break," Year One

"Prison Break" is a FOX drama that ran for five seasons.  I watched the first one, and will not be watching any of the others.  It's not a bad show, but I'm definitely not the right audience for this one.  After many years of enjoying prestige crime dramas with much higher budgets and more resources, a pulpy, melodramatic prime time network show from 2005 simply doesn't work for me the way I want it to.

There's plenty to like about "Prison Break," and the first season lives up to its reputation as a thrill ride.  Each of the 22 episodes follows Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) in the fictional Fox River State Penitentiary, as he works to bust his wrongly convicted brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) out of the joint before he's executed.  The cast is a bonanza of character actors, including Peter Stormare, Stacy Keach, and a young Frank Grillo.  Other standouts include Amaury Nolasco, Robert Knepper, Muse Watson, and Silas Weir Mitchell as inmates, and Wade Williams as the primary correctional officer villain.  Famously, the show was largely shot on location in the former Joliet Prison and nearby Chicago, and it looks fabulous.  

On the other hand, "Prison Break" is a soap opera.  There are over-the-top dramatic twists left and right, and the scripts are written so that your average twelve year-old can follow along without difficulty.  There are subplots devoted to Michael's lawyer Veronica (Robin Tunney) unraveling the conspiracy behind Lincoln being framed, and Lincoln's teenage son L.J. (Marshall Allman) being driven to a life of crime by the baddies trying to ensure his father is executed.  There's nothing wrong with any of this, except the execution is so lacking.  There are multiple instances of bad ethnic stereotypes and poorly used prison vernacular, and way too many cases where prison officials are willing to bend protocol so that Michael or Lincoln can get away with something just in the nick of time.  The show is also shot and edited in the most overbearing, obnoxious way possible, with the Ramin Djawadi score blasting over every cut to commercial, like reality programming.    

The characters are extremely shallow.  Michael's a brilliant, insightful mastermind who has obsessively planned the escape, and yet keeps taking stupid risks and tends to choose the most elaborate and circuitous ways of doing things.  He also falls in love with attractive prison doctor Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies), who conveniently also happens to be the governor's daughter.  I feel for Dominic Purcell, because Lincoln is written as an absolute lunkhead, who shouts his feelings in any dramatic situation, and Purcell has little opportunity to inject any subtlety or complexity into his performance the way some of the other actors were able to. There's a scene where Lincoln literally berates the warden to let him go look for his missing son, despite being days away from his execution.  The rest of the ensemble can be more fun, especially the actors who get to be more theatrically villainous, like Knepper and Williams. 

Part of my disappointment with the show is that "Prison Break" has a great premise, and many of the people involved are very talented.  However, the end result is so compromised and diluted by the demands of television at the time, and I found it pretty disposable.  Even the parts that were good, dumb fun kept being undercut by elements that I found so contrived, it completely broke my suspension of disbelief.  A big part of the problem is that I know enough about how the justice system actually works that the more idealized characters who do the right thing often struck me as far too naive and unbelievable.  2005 was before the prestige TV era and all those antihero protagonists really came in, so Michael is still expected to be unreasonably morally upright, despite being surrounded by convicts.

I'm glad that I watched the first season of "Prison Break" for context, if nothing else.  As I've been working through my Top Ten TV project, it's been enlightening to trace the trends and expectations of episodic television back through the years.  "Prison Break" is a show very much of its time - ambitious and novel in many ways, but also very beholden to the programming demands of broadcast television.  

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"Michael" and "Is God Is"

The trouble with Antoine Fuqua's "Michael" is that the subject is too famous and the audience is too well informed.  If they made this kind of uplifting, all highlights biopic about a musical star of less renown, it probably would have come across better.  Antione Fuqua does a fantastic job of recreating the hype and the excitement of Michael Jackson's incredible rise to the top of the charts.  Jaafar Jackson, Michael's nephew, certainly looks the part of the '70s and '80s Michael Jackson and handles all the singing and dancing flawlessly.  If all you want out of this movie is to relive the most fun and triumphant parts of Michael Jackson fandom with all these big budget re-enactments of his most famous performances, this is the movie for you.  

As a biopic, however, there's a lot to be desired.  "Michael" posits that the biggest difficulty Michael Jackson had to overcome was wresting away control of his own destiny from his abusive father Joe Jackson (Colman Domingo).  Creatively, he seems to have no difficulties whatsoever, from his early days as a child prodigy, portrayed by Juliano Valdi, to the writer and performer of "Thriller," "Billy Jean," and "Beat It."  He's constantly referred to as a generational talent destined for greatness by everyone around him.  As "Michael" was made with the heavy involvement of the Jackson family, there's also the familiar characterization of Michael as a lonely kid who never grew up, collecting pets, watching cartoons, and daydreaming about "Peter Pan" well into adulthood.  The film cuts off in 1988 with the first solo tour, and there's no mention of the well-documented abuse allegations that would mar the rest of Jackson's career.  

From the news of the production troubles around the film, it's clear that Fuqua tried to address some of the later parts of Jackson's life, but was stymied by legal issues.  As a result, "Michael" feels incomplete, if not outright evasive.  However, the portrayal of Michael Jackson is still fundamentally unsatisfying in the parts of the biopic that remain.  Jaafar Jackson's acting abilities are mediocre but serviceable.  The larger problem is that Michael is written as totally opaque, a bland extension of the public persona we all knew instead of a full human being.  Any signs of complexity or dysfunctions are acknowledged only for the purpose of being forgiven, minimized, or explained away as mere eccentricities.  The last twenty minutes of the film are given over to recreations of Jackson's stage performances, similar to the end of "Bohemian Rhapsody," but in context they feel like Fuqua simply giving up on the narrative, and playing the hits.  

A far more interesting and rewarding film comes from writer/director Alesha Harris in her feature debut.  "Is God Is" is a revenge film, one that looks like a "Kill Bill" style exploitation flick at first glance.  Twins Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) were left burned and scarred after the Man, their father, set their mother (Vivica A Fox) on fire when they were children.  All of them somehow survived.  Long estranged, but now on her deathbed, the mother summons her two grown daughters and charges them with a mission to hunt down and kill the Man who hurt and abandoned them, and to bring ruin to everyone around him.  On their journey, Racine and Anaia encounter the Man's other children, partners, and associates, who have all been damaged in one way or another by his evil.  Other members of the impressive cast include Janelle Monae, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Sterling K. Brown, Justen Ross, and Xavier Mills.       

Revenge is a hard thing in "Is God Is."  It is inherently destructive and violent, which is difficult for Anaia because she isn't a violent person.  She's the quieter, more reserved twin, whose terrible scars mar her face.  However, she is deeply connected with her more beautiful twin Racine, the fiercely aggressive and protective sister, who has no such qualms.  And as we learn more about the Man and his trail of evil deeds, whose legacy to his children is violence.  It's clear that more  violence may be the only thing that can stop him.   Anaia's journey is one of empowerment, loss of innocence, and self acceptance.  Eventually she chooses violence too, but never becomes inured to it.  In "Is God Is" violence is always brutal, and the consequences are ugly.  Racine's weapon of choice is a rock in a sock, which she uses to bludgeon her unfortunate targets to a bloody pulp.  It becomes emblematic of the film's attitude toward hate and revenge - a heavy, blunt, smashing force that can so easily be turned back against those who wield it.  

While the film is about hate, it's also about love.  It's about women connected through common blood, culture, language, and trauma.  Racine and Anaia look and sound like no other cinematic characters I've ever seen, with their blond dreadlocks, their heavy scars, and their sharply stylized dialogue.  They're so close, they often address each other simply as "Twin," and sometimes don't need to speak at all to communicate.  Their wordless exchanges are helpfully captioned for us.  But in spite of their closeness, Racine and Anaia's relationship is often rocky, and their disagreements can be vehement, even explosive.  And "Is God Is" looks like no other film this year.  The frames are bright with purposeful color, and the landscapes bake under the midwestern sun.  The editing is exacting but playful, reflecting characters who are full of irrepressible life and emotion.  Everything here feels so alive, pulsing and vibrant.  Everything demands your attention, and I couldn't look away.

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My Favorite James Cameron Film

James Cameron has a pretty short filmography, but most of his films have made so much money that his reputation as a filmmaker and hitmaker looms larger than almost any of his contemporaries.  The only reason that it's taken me this long to feature him is because he didn't make his tenth narrative film until "Avatar: Fire and Ash."  I could've used some of his documentary work to fill the gap, the way I have with other directors, but here it didn't feel right.  James Cameron will never be famous for being a nature documentarian.  He will always be known for the gigantic blockbusters that blew everyone's minds, and raised our expectations for cinema spectacle.  His influence has been unmissable in the modern film landscape, and this entry is definitely overdue. 

So, let's go back to the summer of 1991 when every kid's favorite movie was the R-rated Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick with the awesome chase scenes and brain-bending CGI special effects that let the bad guy look like liquid metal.  The hype was inescapable.  I remember watching the edited version of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"  multiple times on television, and discovering the gnarlier original years later, with all the swearing and more disturbing kills, plus a whole nuclear annihilation sequence I hadn't known about.  But to be honest, the edits didn't make much of a difference to me.  What caught my attention from the beginning were the effects and action sequences directly related to Robert Patrick's T-1000 Terminator character, which were so much cooler than what anybody else was doing at the time.  

Cameron has always been known as a technological innovator, and has made this part of his public persona.  There was an upswing in interest about the "movie magic" of special effects during this era, and Cameron's movies were often the primary examples of the use of new technologies like computer generated imagery, advanced prosthetics, and novel creature effects.  "Terminator 2" was sold on the appeal of all this shiny maximalist spectacle, with a larger-than-life movie star fighting an impossible science-fiction monster that could only exist on the silver screen.  However, the film was also full of old fashioned filmmaking tricks like the use of doubles, models, clever editing, and skillful stunt work.  I always watched the behind-the-scenes features about the making of Cameron films whenever I could, to marvel at all the effort that went into  visuals that might appear onscreen for only a few seconds.   

"Terminator 2" was a hit in spite of several things working against it.  It was a sequel to a horror film that was switching genres to action-adventure, in order to accommodate the rising stardom of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The marketing completely spoiled what was supposed to be the big surprise of his T-800 Terminator being the good guy in this movie, where he'd previously been the bad guy in the original.  Watching the movie as a child, however, the story was easy for me to grasp.  You had a good Terminator helping Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton, and a bad Terminator who was trying to kill them.  Arnold's difficulties with the English language were solved by having him speak entirely in catchphrases, which young Xennials quickly adopted into their own lexicons.  I also salute the decision to let Linda Hamilton become a full-fledged badass action hero in this movie, paving the way for more female action stars in the years ahead.      

It's the simple, uncomplicated nature of "Terminator 2" that still appeals to me, and why I never attempted to write this post about any of James Cameron's other films.  In "Titanic" and "Avatar" you have to contend with middling melodrama and tepid romance before you get to the fun parts.  "Terminator" is just one set piece after another - chase scenes, escape scenes, infiltrations, showdowns, and eruptions of beautifully orchestrated cinema carnage.  Arnold Schwarzenegger was so impossibly cool onscreen, we were all on a first name basis with him after this.  If you believe that blockbuster films are worthy of being treated as art, and I do, then you have to give the work of James Cameron its due.  In terms of pure spectacle, I don't think any film has ever surpassed "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" for me.  

And I watch a lot of movies.    

What I've Seen - James Cameron

Piranha II: The Spawning (1982)

The Terminator (1984)

Aliens (1986)

The Abyss (1989)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

True Lies (1994)

Titanic (1997)

Avatar (2009)

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

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"Project Hail Mary" Scores

"Project Hail Mary" is the closest thing to a movie that I was guaranteed to enjoy.  It's comedic science-fiction, a genre I adore.  It's Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directing, with a Drew Goddard script based on the Andy Weir novel.  It stars Ryan Gosling as a perpetually scruffy middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace, who got himself kicked out of the scientific establishment years ago, but is now being recruited to help save the world.  A bunch of microscopic space critters called astrophage are feeding on the sun, you see, and causing it to dim.  The loss of energy spells doom for life on Earth unless they can figure out how to stop it.  But though the stakes are high, the movie is anything but glum, making great use of Gosling's comedic talents, and a boatload of fancy special effects.  And if you don't want any spoilers for the movie, you should probably stop reading here and go watch it.

Still with me?  I read Weir's Project Hail Mary a year ago in anticipation for the film, and enjoyed it.  The movie is a very good adaptation that left out a lot of the science, but surprisingly kept in almost everything else.  This means that the pacing is a little rough, particularly the sped-up ending, but there are also a few nice additions, like humanizing Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), the implacable task force leader in charge of Project Hail Mary.  The biggest change is that the movie focuses more on the relationship between Grace and the alien he meets light years away from home, a faceless rock-creature that Grace names Rocky (James Ortiz).  The narrative is split between Grace in the present day on the Hail Mary spaceship, and his muddled but gradually returning memories of his work on Earth, and how he ended up on this mission.  Smartly, the filmmakers decide to skip most of the early introductory stuff in the book and just get straight to Grace and Rocky meeting, learning to communicate, and becoming best cross-species science bros.  

The Golden Globes got a lot of guff for classifying the last movie based on an Andy Weir book, "The Martian," as a comedy.   I don't want to hear any of those complaints about "Project Hail Mary" when this inevitably happens again, because it is absolutely a buddy comedy, without question.  The movie has its moments of spacefaring awe and wonder, but what keeps it so engaging is watching Grace and Rocky interacting on a personal level, and figuring out how to help each other in their shared missions.  Gosling's Ryland Grace leans heavily on goofy humor as a defense mechanism, which Lord and Miller enable wherever they can.  The slapstick is fun, but it's the subtler stuff that really got to me.  Grace's collection of dorky knitwear and thematically appropriate T-shirts is perfect.  

Rocky is already iconic, a cinematic alien that looks like no other.  He is essentially a mobile pile of rocks that is configured like a five-legged spider.  Rocky has no face, but is very articulate with his multiple arms, insectoid digits, and musical vocalizations.  Eventually he is given a human voice via Grace's translation program, but the most important part of his performance is physical.  He gestures.  He dances.  He mimics.  He gets across a wide range of emotions from happiness to fear to deadpan exasperation simply with body language.  Rocky was reportedly mostly performed with puppets and animatronics, which likely contributed to the very effective screen chemistry that Rocky shares with Ryan Gosling onscreen.  

"Project Hail Mary" works great as an optimistic, feel-good space adventure, and arrives at a time when audiences are very receptive to it.  And I think it's the optimism that's the important part, as someone who loves science-fiction but has been weary of the overabundance of dystopian fiction in recent years.  The more cerebral parts of the book mostly end up in the margins of the movie, which is probably for the best.  One thing about the film that caught my attention was that its pop culture references were pretty dated - "Rocky," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and the Beatles.  But then again, that is also fitting, as "Project Hail Mary" successfully evokes the spirit of that age of space exploration where we didn't automatically believe that the aliens were bad, or the mission was hopeless.  And we could certainly use more movies with that mindset going forward.         

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"Crime 101" and "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice"

Two quick reviews of some interesting genre films today, which I don't want to see fall through the cracks.

First we have "Crime 101,"written and directed by Bart Layton.  This is his first proper narrative film after making earlier features that were either documentaries or documentary/drama hybrids.  And it's an old fashioned kind of crime film that you don't see much of anymore, because these projects tend to get turned into prestige miniseries on Apple TV+ or HBO these days.  "Crime 101" follows the fortunes of four characters in Los Angeles.  There's Mike (Chris Hemsworth), a very successful and principled jewel thief whose heists tend to happen near the 101 freeway.  There's Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a detective who is investigating Mike's robberies, but is hampered by a police department that is more concerned with their clearance rate than justice.  Finally, there's Sharon (Halle Berry), who sells insurance policies to very rich people, and sees an opportunity after crossing paths with both Mike and Lou.  Finally there's Ormon (Barry Keoghan), Mike's unhinged new rival, who regularly chooses violence.

With a running time of 140 minutes, a fairly leisurely pace for the first hour, and a downright introspective tone at times, "Crime 101" is going to be pure catnip for some cinephiles, but it might be a tough watch for the more casual viewer.  However, the filmmaking is solid, the performances are excellent, and the script offers some genuine surprises.  While "Crime 101" never reaches the heights of the classics of this genre, like "Heat" or "Thief," it belongs in the conversation.  The action and chase sequences aren't too flashy, but they're very good at building up real suspense and tension.  The characters embody a lot of old cliches, but inevitably draw you in.  It's been a long time since I've seen Halle Berry in a role this thoughtful and grounded, and it's a shame that it doesn't happen more often.  Ruffalo and Hemsworth are playing variations on other roles I've seen them in recently - notably Ruffalo in "TASK" - but they have some memorable moments.  If this is your genre, but you're been weary of films like "Den of Thieves" that are all flash and no substance, give this one a try. 

On to "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice," written and directed by BenDavid Grabinski, which is a time-travel comedy where most of the main characters are gangsters.  Nick (Vince Vaugh) is unhappily married to Alice (Eiza Gonzalez), who is having an affair with Mike (James Marsden), Nick's partner in crime.  Mike is trying to leave the mob, but is enlisted to help Nick with a job one night - kidnapping a different Nick.  And that's about as much plot as I think I should reveal before we get into spoilers.  

I really like "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice," but I think it's a movie that's easy to oversell.  At its heart, it's a silly comedy about silly, cartoonish versions of tough guy gangsters in a ridiculous situation.  None of the characters are very deep and the plot feels sort of thrown together, with a lot of "Gilmore Girls" references and a retro soundtrack.  However, the movie kept surprising me because it managed to constantly be a little better than I was expecting in every department.  The humor worked for me.  The action scenes are inventive and well-executed.  Every single actor is charming and funny and endearing, especially Vince Vaughn in loveable asshole mode.  The plot, though its full of holes, turns out to be built around a truly touching character transformation that I found unexpectedly heartwarming.  

However, you'll notice that a lot of this depends on going in with pretty low expectations.  "Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice" is a Hulu original, and while it's significantly above average for a straight-to-streaming feature, it's still got a pretty modest budget and I don't think the dry, idiosyncratic humor is going to work for everyone.  Like "Crime 101," I also suspect I responded to it because it feels like a throwback to a different era of filmmaking, when theatrical comedies were more robust, and Vince Vaughn was a leading man with significantly more star wattage.  However, it's nice to be reminded that Vaughn can still carry a high concept comedy, and carry it well.  I hope to see more like this from him in the future.          

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"The Artful Dodger," Year Two

"The Artful Dodger" is back for a second season, another fun romp through 1850s Australia with a couple of Charles Dickens characters.  After narrowly escaping the noose in the opening sequence, Jack Dawkins finds himself back under the influence of his old mentor Fagin, and forbidden from seeing his lady love, Belle Fox.  Belle's manipulative mother, Lady Jane (Susie Porter), is bribing her with Jack's freedom and a potential medical career if the two of them stay apart, but of course Belle breaks her promise almost immediately.  Much sneaking around and angsty love declarations commence.  New characters this year include Belle's untrustworthy uncle Dickie (Jeremy Sims), a hunky new Inspector, Boxer (Luke Bracey), and Tim Minchin as a villainous harbor master, Cracksworth.  We also see more of Belle's younger sister Fanny (Lucy-Rose Leonard), who discovers a talent for criminality.

There's a breezy irreverence to "The Artful Dodger" that makes it very easy to watch.  Despite the subplots about plagues and criminal schemes and even a serial killer on the loose, the show stays lighthearted and very entertaining throughout.  It's operating by the tried-and-true rules of more old-fashioned serials, where the lovers will always come back together in the end, despite being tested and pulled apart at every turn, and an old trickster like Fagin will always land on his feet, no matter how unlikely the circumstances.  I find I don't mind the paper-thin plotting and the characters whose hearts can be swayed with the flimsiest arguments, because the show is so good about delivering satisfying emotional moments and everyone looks like they're enjoying themselves so much.  I might grouse about David Thewlis being way too good for this material, but he's clearly having a ball with Fagin's florid patter and questionable hygiene.  

The show is not a cheap production with its period setting, elaborate costuming, ambitious art direction, and frequent action and chase sequences, so we were lucky to get a second season at all.  I suspect that the budget was a little more generous this time around, at least when it came to the money for music licensing.  The needledrops are a lot more prominent this year.  I was hoping we would get more of the Australian interior and indigenous characters in a second season, but this is not the case.  Fagin's regular conspirators include locals Rotty (Brigid Zengeni), Flashbang (Aljin Abella) and Aputi (Albert Latailakepa), who are mostly comic relief, and though there's a lot of discussion about the unexplored Australian outback, the show never leaves Port Victory.  

Instead, more of the spotlight is given over to the underutilized female characters.  Lady Jane emerges as a primary villain, the one who's really running the show instead of the governor.  Fanny gets her own love interest with her uncle's assistant Phineas (Zac Burgess), and then has a delightful arc where she embraces the dark side and decides Fagin and company are her new "bohemian friends."  And while "Artful Dodger" does prominently feature the clinic, and medical procedures are still central to many episodes, there's less of a focus on surgery and medical mysteries.  I'd go so far as to say that you could characterize the first season as a medical show, but not the second, which is shifting towards period romantic melodrama.  Not that I'm complaining.   

The show also moves even farther away from its Dickensian origins, though Uriah Heep (Benedict Hardie) becomes a recurring character this season, as a representative of the East India Company.  Fagin is still pulling schemes left and right, and the rich-poor divide is a major theme, but the character dynamics have changed since the first season.  Jack is rarely in danger of falling back into his criminal ways, and stays very committed to Belle.  His relationship with Fagin is also more unambiguously paternal, and probably too one-sided - if there's one weak spot in this year, it's that Jack and Fagin don't get enough scenes together.

All in all this was a nice surprise, probably one that only happened because of the new Australian streaming quotes for local content.  We might get a third season as well, but this season wraps up well enough that I won't be disappointed if we don't.  

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"The Night Manager" and "Fallout" Return

I'm grouping the reviews for the second seasons of "The Night Manager" and "Fallout" together, because they're both short ones, albeit for different reasons.  In the case of "The Night Manager," it's a good season with plenty to talk about, but the spoilers are unwieldy, and I feel that saying less is more.  As for "Fallout," the new season is worth some acknowledgement, but I don't feel that I have that much to add that wasn't already covered in my review of the first season.  So, here we go.  

First, the second series of "The Night Manager" comes ten years after the first, and really should be treated as a self-contained sequel.  Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman) parted ways after the death of arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), and Pine has been quietly working in intelligence under Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge) at the Foreign Office.  Contact with a woman named Roxana (Camila Morone) brings Pine to Colombia, where a major arms deal appears to be in the works.  The key figure is the mysterious Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who turns out to be a protege of Roper's.  We also get a new villain played by Indira Varma, and a new ally played by Hayley Squires.

We've swapped out directors, so Georgi Banks-Davies replaces Susanne Bier, but David Farr is back to script the whole series.  I'm happy to report that the quality hasn't fallen off at all, and the second season of "The Night Manager" is every bit as good as the first.  Thorny personal relationships and a very intense menage-a-trois are again at the center of the story, but the dynamics are different.  Hiddleston and all the returning cast are great, as expected, but the actor who really grabbed my attention this time around was Diego Calva, who I last saw in "Babylon," channeling a young Javier Bardem here to very good effect.  The new tropical setting is also very helpful in distinguishing this season as a different animal, with lots of excuses for everyone to get sweaty and disheveled.  As I mentioned previously, I do want to steer clear of spoilers, but I want to give the last episode special kudos for being one of the very best season cappers I've seen in a while, with a lot of good surprises, and the best set-up for a possible third series that may never happen.  And if it doesn't I won't even be mad. 

On to the second season of "Fallout," which follows Lucy, Cooper, Maximus, and Norm on their various adventures.  There's less of a piecemeal approach to exploring the "Fallout" world this year, and more of a commitment to sticking with the various storylines that are playing out.  Hank (Kyle McLachlan) and Steph (Annabel O'Hagen) become more prominent characters who also get their own narratives, and there are some fun new recurring characters, including those played by Kumail Nanjiani and Macaulay Culkin as prominent members of the Legion.  As promised in the last episode of the prior season, there's a lot of time spent with Lucy and Cooper in and around New Vegas, who learn that there was a Vault specifically for management located there, and Hank may be restarting certain experiments.  

Frankly, I wasn't too interested in the plottier parts of the season.  It's clear from pretty early on that the showrunners aren't going to provide any major payoffs, and they spend a lot of time setting up bigger conflicts down the road.  We have several factions preparing for war again, scuffles for leadership in both the Vaults and the Legion, and more revelations via flashback as to what Hank and his cohorts were up to in the past.  Cooper and Lucy are briefly on the outs with each other when their priorities clash.  Everybody makes some incremental progress - most notably Lucy, who becomes more comfortable with violence on her quest to bring her father to justice - but mostly it feels like we're playing the side quests.  

Eight episodes is enough to build up some stakes, so that the big, violent, season finale feels kind of meaningful, and one of the major characters gets a pretty good exit.  And that's not too bad for a show like this, which is still very dependent on the spectacle and the action.  The shock value of the gore and black humor have worn off a bit though, so this season isn't as fun.  However, it's still fun enough that I plan to keep watching.  

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"The Boys," Year Five

Parts of "The Boys" fandom seem to have vocally turned against the show in its last season, which is getting weirdly common with genre media these days.  I find this a little mystifying, because "The Boys" has been pretty consistent in quality throughout its whole run, and has even been released on a reasonable schedule - five seasons across seven years.  My pet theory is that it's the same old story.  Some of the fans expected the show to be something that it never was, and handled the disappointment badly.  "The Boys" did decrease in quality the longer it went on, ran short on ideas, started repeating itself, and had to juggle the same issues that all long-running shows do.  Still, I thought it ended just fine - better than "Supernatural," or "Preacher," other genre shows from the same creators.

The fifth season has its ups and downs.  Like "Daredevil: Born Again," events in "The Boys" mirror current events in 2026 to a startling degree.  However, "The Boys" has been purposefully reflecting the rise of MAGA and the alt right since the beginning, with Homelander standing in for Donald Trump.  Still, it's wild how some of the extreme escalations in Homelander's tyrannical behavior look an awful lot like what the Trump administration is actually doing, starting with our heroes incarcerated in a "freedom camp" in the season premiere.  The season's biggest storyline involves The Boys hunting for the means to create a plague that will only affect people with superpowers, and to prevent Homelander from obtaining Compound V, a substance that will potentially give him immortality.  After establishing total control over the US government, Homelander finds he's still miserable, so he turns to religion.  With the help of the superpowered televangelist, Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), he decides to create a new American belief system with Homelander himself as the supreme being.  

Beyond this point, there will be spoilers.

I suspect that one of the reasons certain fans of "The Boys" were so unhappy is that this season, is that it stays pretty small scale throughout.  There's no epic spectacle, no mass casualty events, and a fairly modest amount of property damage.  We do get our big showdown in the last episode, but it's not any more impressive than the showdowns we've seen in previous seasons.  The pacing is also fairly slow and meandering, not really building up to a major climax.  Instead, the season could be called a collection of false-starts, abrupt endings, and lots of indulgent nonsense that the creators wanted to try while they still had the chance.  There's an episode that's essentially a bunch of one-shot character shorts that at one point involves a lot of random celebrity cameos and a few "Supernatural" alums.  It's also very apparent that the creators are setting up storylines for other shows in "The Boys" universe - we're at three spinoffs so far.  This means some characters like Solider Boy really wear out their welcome, and nobody bothers to explain who any of these kids from the "Gen V" show are.  

Still, I was satisfied with the way things shook out, even if the season felt like it was running short of material.  This time there is no more pulling of punches or ducking out on the consequences.  The bill comes due and there are a lot of major character deaths.  Some of them should have probably happened earlier, but none of them feel cheap.  Endings are difficult, and I thought that the showrunners did the right thing choosing to focus on the characters instead of the carnage.  My favorite storylines this year had to do with the Vought toadies like Ashley and Firecracker dealing with their complicity in Homelander's reign of terror.  Ashley becoming Vice President and literally growing a second face on the back of her head (Who has her own personality!  And is telepathic!) is so much fun. 

Sure, there are missteps.  Everything involving Soldier Boy and Sage is pretty underwhelming.  Kimiko being able to talk felt kind of pointless, though clearly it needed to happen.  I wish some of the big character moments, like Hughie finally standing up to Butcher, were given some better buildup.  Honestly, I haven't been very invested enough in the show since the first season, so its slipping quality simply didn't bother me much.  The ending was telegraphed long in advance, and the fact that they stuck it was all I really wanted.          

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"Invincible," Year Four

Spoilers for the first three seasons ahead.

I'm having some trouble with "Invincible."  I've become convinced that the show probably peaked with the first season.  There's plenty of interesting stuff that happens this year, as Mark and Nolan reconnect to wage war against the Viltrumites.  There are more allies to be gathered and new villains to be revealed.  However, an awful lot of time is also spent on Nolan's apology tour, as he starts to make amends with Debbie, Mark, and Oliver.  And while I appreciate that "Invincible" is still committed to portraying all of Mark's personal relationships with something approaching realism, it still bothers me that the show has spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to walk back Nolan's betrayal, arguably the defining moment of the entire show.  And the show is worse for it.

It's not that three seasons isn't long enough to pull off this kind of development, but "Invincible" is much better at being a superhero action show than it is at being a melodrama.  During the big emotional showdowns the vocal performances are very good, but visually the characters are noticeably static and there's hardly any change at all in lighting or composition or shot choice to help sell the intensity.  "Invincible" has been cutting corners with its animation from the beginning in order to keep the production timeline reasonable, but I felt it more this season.  There are several flying scenes where the limited animation is especially egregious.  It's hard not to notice that the character designs of new characters like The Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace), rebel leader Thaedus (Peter Cullen) and new recruit Tech Jacket (Zoey Deutch) are very derivative of other characters.  

Many of the writing choices this year struck me as off.  While I liked some of the individual episodes, there's a real head-scratcher in "Hurm," which is spent exploring the Under Realm, the show's version of Hell that is populated by supernatural creatures.  It might be setting up something further down the line, but feels like a strange digression the way it's placed in the season.  The Guardians show up for two early episodes, set up a big cliffhanger, and disappear until presumably next year.  The most interesting subplot is actually about Eve having trouble with her powers, and big chunks of that take place completely offscreen.  I'm glad that Debbie gets more of the spotlight, but her wonderfully cathartic scenes with Nolan wind up being seriously undercut by where the story goes in the last episode.  I haven't read all of the source material, but I have the same terrible feeling that I had with a lot of cartoons growing up when they were about to do something that drove me crazy - moving back to the original status quo, and resetting the board even where it doesn't make sense to.  Maybe it won't happen.  I really, really hope it doesn't. 

I know some viewers are only here for the outrageous level of violence that "Invincible" regularly delivers.  I don't think this gets remotely as gory as the third season, but the action fiends should be satisfied.  There are many more Viltrumite-on-Viltrumite battles, and the premiere episode had a pretty gnarly take on an alien invasion that I enjoyed.  Those who have been waiting for a full scale Viltrumite war might come away a little disappointed, however.   Despite spending so much of the prior seasons setting up the Viltrumites as an implacable threat, when push comes to shove they almost feel like underdogs in the fight.  It was akin to preparing for the Galactic Empire, and finding out the enemy is a single terrorist cell - it's still bad, but much more manageable.  

I still like "Invincible" enough that I'm going to stick it out until the end, but I've had to adjust expectations.  That relentless sense of narrative momentum from the first season is probably not coming back.  We're never going to get a better villain than Nolan on this show because it was the family connection and the deception that really made the twist hurt.  And now Nolan is more akin to a redeemed antihero, and watching him is no longer very fun or frightening.  I still want to see where Mark and Eve's stories go, but Nolan's wearing out his welcome.  I hope to see less of him from here on out, as it's already been established that "Invincible" works perfectly well without him.

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