Quick Thoughts on the "Doctor Who" Specials

Spoilers ahead.

Are we still talking about how bizarre it is that "Doctor Who" is now a co-production between the BBC and Disney?  Because it's bizarre.  I certainly don't mind having access to "Who" on Disney+, but everything about this situation still feels weird, like "Sesame Street" on HBO or the Peanuts specials on Apple TV+.  It's going to take me a while to get used to it.  

Anyway, I've finally caught up on the recent "Doctor Who" specials, which were designed to transition the series into a new era with a new Doctor, played by the extremely charming and likable Ncuti Gatwa.  In order to do this, we had Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor transform into David Tennant's Tenth Doctor for three episodes (now technically also the Fourteenth Doctor), where he got to run around with his old companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) for a bit, before Gatwa properly took over as the Fifteenth Doctor with his own companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).  

I feel a little upset for Whittaker that returning showrunner Russell T. Davies felt it necessary to shoehorn some Tennant and Tate adventures into the middle of this transition.  And while many of the other "Who" adventures and characters got shoutouts in the specials, Whittaker's era was barely referenced.  On the other hand, there's no denying that the Thirteenth Doctor adventures helmed by Chris Chibnall were not popular, and getting the wider audience's attention back required drastic measures.  Also, the Donna Noble storyline was a big loose end that really did require addressing, so I'm glad Davies and crew got to take care of that.  Of course they created more loose ends and never properly explained why David Tennant's Doctor returned, but I suppose we can always come back to that, considering the shameless loophole concocted to keep Tennant around for future adventures.

Russell T. Davies being Russell T. Davies means that Donna now has a mixed race nonbinary daughter named Rose (Yasmin Finney), Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor may be more more pansexual presenting than Captain Jack Harkness, and the big villain in the regeneration episode, the Toymaker, is played by a very over-the-top Neil Patrick Harris.  There are lots of cameos and lots of good lines.  It's all delightful, especially with Disney contributing funds for bigger budgets.  There's all kinds of fancy CGI effects in the show now, which probably accounts for the longer production times - the teasers for the specials were released more than a year before they actually aired.  Honestly, I don't think they made much of a difference though.  The bottle episode "Wild Blue Yonder" featured all sorts of shiny visual trickery, but was about as effective as the similar "Midnight" from fifteen years ago.  Yes, it's been that long.    

I liked all the specials just fine, though I wouldn't call any of them standouts.  It was nice to get a taste of the Davies era again, and Tennant really is the best at playing his particular brand of manic-pixie inhuman adventurer.  As a milestone anniversary event, this is fine - classic-era companion Mel Bush is a hoot - but the 2023 specials really feel like Davies trying to give this chapter of "Doctor Who," that he helped kick off in 2005, some closure before moving on to the next one.  I like that he tries to address the Doctor's existential angst and lingering PTSD issues - a hallmark of all the modern Doctors - in a healthy way.  There's a lovely moment where the two versions of the Doctor take a moment in "The Giggle" to acknowledge how much trauma they haven't taken the time to process.       

However, I'm more interested in what we're going to get with Gatwa's version of the Doctor.  Traditionally it takes me about a season to get used to any new actor in the role, but I already like Gatwa very much and I'm rooting for him to succeed.  Millie Gibson is more of an unknown quantity, and her introduction in the Christmas special was fine, but very familiar.  We're back to the regular formula of one main companion, and that feels like the right place to start again.  The next proper season of "Doctor Who" starts in May and I can't wait.     

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The Painful "Anatomy of a Fall"

A writer named Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is suspected of murdering her husband, Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), after he's found dead from a fall from the top floor of their house.  The body was discovered by their young blind son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), who becomes a key witness in his mother's trial.  But as more and more comes out about Sandra and Samuel's rocky relationship, Daniel doesn't know what version of the truth to believe.

"Anatomy of a Fall" has a distinctly multicultural nature.  Sandra is a German woman who has married a French man and lives in France.  She's more comfortable speaking English than French, so the dialogue in the film is fairly evenly split between the two languages.  However, Sandra frequently seems to have trouble communicating.  She lies to the investigators about certain details around the death, struggles to explain why her marriage was so contentious, and her behavior is often puzzling.  Her attorney Renzi (Swann Arlaud) is as puzzled by her as everyone else.  Does her evasiveness and coldness indicate that she doesn't care about her husband or does this point to something else? Is she less demonstrative because she's German?  Is she less trustworthy because she's a writer?

It's been a long time since I've watched any kind of courtroom drama where I wasn't sure how the ending would turn out.  I could tell that the aggressive questioning of the zealous prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) was probably supposed to make me feel more sympathetic to Sandra, but I wasn't sure if that was also a misdirection.  Sandra is a successful novelist and often seems to be constructing a convenient narrative to absolve herself of any guilt.  Because Samuel is dead, we only have her side of the story for most of the movie, but there are so many little details that point to very troubling behavior on her part.  The film purposefully allows the audience to mentally construct their own version of Samuel by keeping him offscreen for most of the film, and then challenges all your assumptions in the film's most devastating scene.

Sandra Hüller's performance is the key to why the film works as well as it does.  From the opening where she avoids personal questions during an interview, to the intense courtroom scenes where you can't tell how much of her testimony is true - and if it's true whether it might be colored by her own biases, everything she does seems to raise doubt and suspicions.  I felt myself on guard every time she was onscreen, trying to figure out how and why she was lying, even though I was also sympathetic to her situation the whole way through.  It's a relief when she finally has a recognizably genuine emotional reaction late in the film.

I've seen several films like this, usually darker thrillers that end with an unsettling moral ambiguity.  I like the way that writer/director Justine Triet goes in a different direction.  She never reveals what actually caused Samuel's death, but in the face of there being no clear answer, a choice still has to be made, and Triet ensures that the right person makes it.  While there are lingering questions that I'm sure viewers will have fun debating, "Anatomy of a Fall" makes its case that this is ultimately pointless to the parties who have been the most hurt by Samuel's death.  We don't get the truth, but we do get an emotional and thematic resolution.  

At two and a half hours, "Anatomy of a Fall" is a lengthy, but absorbing watch.  Like most courtroom dramas, the proceedings are accelerated and somewhat sensationalized, but the central characters and relationships feel genuine in their unknowability.  The chilly winter visuals emphasize the characters' psychological isolation, but never feel oppressive.  There's a wonderful matter-of-factness to the film's tone, especially the procedural aspects of the investigation and trial preparation, that keep it very immediate and accessible.  

And despite all the language switches, the unfamiliar French legal and police procedures, and Sandra's inscrutability, I had no trouble following what the film was doing.  And now I have a lot of Justine Triet films I need to go catch up on.

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Confronting "Killers of the Flower Moon"

You know it's Oscar season when you find yourself sitting through a three and a half hour period piece made by one of our greatest living directors, and wondering if you could get away with not writing anything about it.  "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a great film, shedding light on a terrible moment in American history, and showing us a different aspect of Native American history.  However, it is also undeniably the kind of movie that requires effort to watch, and tackles such difficult subject matter that I have no useful knowledge of, I'm wary of saying anything, for fear of coming off as an idiot.  For easier viewing, I'd suggest breaking the movie down into two sessions since the story has two distinct parts - the conspiracy and the investigation.  

Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a WWI veteran who comes to Gray Horse, Oklahoma after the war  to live with his uncle, "King" Hale, a prominent rancher and community leader.  Gray Horse is home to many of the wealthy Osage who have rights to oil discovered on their lands, and King presents himself as a friend to their community.  In private, however, he schemes to gain control of their wealth.  He encourages Ernest to marry Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), a diabetic Osage woman with an ailing mother, Lizzie (Tantoo Cardinal), and three sisters, and then starts arranging their deaths, one by one.  Ernest loves his wife, but is easily swayed by his uncle into helping with the murders.  Because the local law enforcement and government are corrupt, there are no consequences for the deaths, which are easily swept under the rug.  However, Mollie finally raises enough outcry that a federal agent, Thomas White (Jesse Plemmons) shows up on their doorstep.

What makes this telling of the Osage murders a Scorsese project is the way that it's framed.  The book "Killers of the Flower Moon" is largely about the investigation of the killings by federal law men, leading to the creation of the FBI.  The film sees the events unfold from the POV of the perpetrators, namely Burkhart and Hale.  Scorsese has a lot of experience making movies about criminals and organized crime, and that experience is put to good use here.  The plot against the Osage involves an ever-expanding number of people, with a lot of little subplots covering the planning and fallout of various killings.  It's absolutely chilling to see how casually the murders are arranged and discussed, and how almost all of them are of people that Hale and Burkhart know personally and have relationships with.  

Robert DeNiro gives the standout performance of the film, playing Hall as a charming, generous paternal figure who is nothing but sympathetic to the "sickly" Osage he devotes so much attention towards.  DiCaprio as Burkhart is thornier and more frustrating.  Burkhart is a weak man who isn't very smart, and frequently chooses being loyal to his uncle over his wife and children.  While he's capable of doing the right thing, we watch him make bad decisions over and over again.  DiCaprio's performance is sweaty and guilt-ridden and excellent.  Finally, Lily Gladstone is rightly getting attention for playing Mollie, one of the most well-rounded, tragic Native American characters in film history.  Unfortunately, she doesn't get nearly as much narrative emphasis as I would have liked to see, especially in the second half of the film when her health starts failing.

A major criticism I've seen of the film is that the Osage are only secondary characters.  However, Scorsese wouldn't be the right filmmaker to make "Killers of the Flower Moon" if the Osage were the leads.  This is very much a story about bad men doing bad things, and trying to justify it to themselves.  And beyond that, it's about taking the established narrative of American history and challenging it with several forgotten, disturbing chapters that most of the audience will be unfamiliar with.  I like how Scorsese uses familiar artifacts and media from this time period - photographs and tintypes, early film reels, and storybooks - to orient us.  Framing devices, like the fanciful epilogue, draw attention to the fact that Scorsese is concerned with his own biases as a storyteller.

As for the Osage, I was immediately struck by seeing a portrayal of a Native American community in this time period that was wealthy and prosperous, though they certainly faced other challenges.  A significant portion of the film is also in the Osage language, with DeNiro and DiCaprio both taking a stab at Osage dialogue.  It's a valuable addition to the American cinematic lexicon, and will hopefully lead to more media like it.  Scorsese is very aware of what he's doing,  and the cultural references he chooses to include in the film are very pointed, with the Ku Klux Klan making a brief appearance, and the Tulsa Massacre having just taken place.

Like fellow octogenarian director Ridley Scott this year, Scorsese has made a rare epic, and I don't know how many of these he has left in him.  "Killers of the Flower Moon" is far from perfect, but it's a film I'm very happy that Scorsese chose to make and make with such care.

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"May, December" and "Leave the World Behind"

Todd Haynes' latest film is a curious psychodrama that boils down to two terrible women forced to spend time together, who then have to face their own shortcomings.  It is loosely based on the real life scandal of Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who began a sexual relationship with her sixth grade student in the '90s, and later married him.  In "May, December," the film looks in on a similar couple, Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore) and Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), who have three children together.  The younger two, Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are about to graduate high school, when an actress named Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) arrives to spend time with the family.  She'll be playing Gracie in a new film about the scandal.

You can view "May, December" as a straight drama about the two women slowly revealing their monstrous sides to each other and to poor Joe, who finally starts grappling with the extent of the control that Gracie has had over his life.  Because this is Todd Haynes, there are also strong elements of high camp and torrid melodrama, recalling the twisted women's pictures of the '70s and '80s.  The heavy-handed symbolism, the attention-grabbing stylistic touches, and the self-aware sensationalism give "May, December" a sense of heightened unreality.  There's a repurposed Michel Legrand piano theme from "The Go-Between" used to punctuate portentous moments, and simultaneously wink at the audience.  While some of the material is wrenching, and Charles Melton's performance particularly poignant, Haynes is clearly having fun a lot of here.  The Golden Globes have decided that this belongs in the Comedy or Musical category, and I can't really fault them for that.     

On the other hand, part of me can't stomach calling this a comedy.  Make no mistake that this is a film that is playing on the audience's appetite for the sordid, but also reveals the horrific cost.    No doubt Haynes decided to frame the story through the experiences of an actress in order to show how predatory and exploitative the entertainment industry is - Elizabeth ends up retraumatizing Joe in the process of getting what she needs for her upcoming performance.  However, Gracie comes across as more heinous, because it becomes clear that not only was she completely cognizant of her crimes - despite what she'd have everyone believe - but those crimes are still ongoing.  Her battle of wills with Elizabeth isn't nearly as well matched as it appears at first glance.  As melodramas go, this is very well made and absorbing to watch, but at the same time incredibly disturbing.  The damage these women cause is visceral and impossible to downplay.  I can appreciate "May, December," but its monsters are truly repulsive in a way that make me want to recoil from the film, and it's going to take me a while to sort out all my feelings towards it.   

Now for something completely different.  It's hard to categorize "Leave the World Behind."  It feels like a genre film, though it's difficult to say which genre.  It definitely is a type of disaster movie, though one that isn't very interested in geopolitical thrills or action scenes.  Instead, the unfolding crises serve as a backdrop to a more existential drama playing out amongst its characters, the Sandfords and the Scotts.  The Sandfords, Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke), have rented a house on Long Island for an impromptu, off-season vacation with their children, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie).  The house belongs to George Scott (Mahershala Ali), who shows up unannounced with his daughter Ruth (Myha'la), after a series of ominous disasters occur.  Communications and media services are down.  Ships are grounding themselves and animals are behaving strangely.

"Leave the World Behind" was written and directed by Sam Esmail, who is best known for "Mr. Robot."  Here, he uses the same overactive cinematography, apocalyptic visuals, and disaffected characters to comment on the modern social climate of mistrust and disconnection.  All the characters are heightened types, meant to stand in for various groups of people.  Amanda is hostile and paranoid, a self-proclaimed misanthropist who is initially incredibly unpleasant to the Scotts.  Clay is the one with the good moral compass, but he panics and acts badly under stress.  George is more helpful, perhaps to a fault, as his daughter points out.  She's a cynic, who believes aiding others will be at their own expense.  The kids know more than they let on, but are so emotionally detached that they barely seem to react.  "Leave the World Behind" is not Esmail's first film, but it is the first with a significant budget and resources, enough to put his vision of a deeply damaged, crumbling social order on display.     

The film is very good at creating a looming sense of dread and some sequences of sharper suspense and thrills.  M. Night Shyamalan tried something similar with "Knock at the Cabin" last year, but Esmail is much better at creating a larger scope and weight to the destruction.  He's also keenly aware that the scariest situation is the one where there are no apparent answers or obvious enemies.  So much of the film is driven by the characters operating in a total information vacuum.  Unfortunately, the characters themselves are very shallow - too shallow for the excellent cast to do much with.  "Leave the World Behind" comes off as a provocative thought exercise with more punch than films like it usually do, but too lacking in the human element to be truly moving.   

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Rank 'Em - "What If…" Year Two

This season of "What If…" is better than the last one.  The animation is about the same quality, and the attempts at ongoing storylines are iffy, but several individual episodes are standouts.  The funny episodes this year are actually funny, and the writers clearly got to cut loose and take more chances.  I'm always surprised by the number and caliber of actors who decided to voice their animated counterparts, and the voice actors filling in for the absent ones are stellar.  High marks to Mick Wingert and Lake Bell in particular as Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov.  

Now here they are, from best to least, and many spoilers lie ahead.  So, What if…?

1. "Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster" - This is the leftover episode from last season, where Tony Stark ends up on Sakaar for a galactic adventure.  He buddies up with Korg and Valkyrie, antagonizes the Grandmaster and Gamora, and never seems to stop quipping.  This episode is a ton of fun, featuring several big personalities and  big action scenes.  Best of all, it's a great spotlight for Tony Stark, and a reminder of how important he is to the MCU. 

2. "Happy Hogan Saved Christmas" - It's "Die Hard" in a festive Avengers tower, but instead of Bruce Willis we have Happy Hogan with a side of Darcy.  Happy has access to some Hulk blood to help him Freak out, but most of the episode sees him seriously outmatched against Justin Hammer.  I wish the animation here were better - Sam Rockwell's dance moves are not done justice  - but the writers are having a blast.  The Werner Herzog A.I. and Darcy's Chrstmas carol are highlights.

3. "Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes" - It's a 1988 Avengers team, who are up against a powered-up kid version of Peter Quill, sent to conquer Earth by his Bad Dad, Ego.  I love the mix of characters, and what is legitimately the best use of Hope van Dyne in any MCU story I've seen yet.  I love that Michael Douglas, Kurt Russell, and Laurence Fishburne all decided to show up for this.  The ending is a little syrupy, but it's also one that feels earned.  

4. "The Avengers Assembled in 1602" - I couldn't follow the logic for why the mash-up universe happened, but the jokes and the character reinterpretations kept me entertained throughout.  Here's Cap playing Robin Hood.  Here's Happy Hogan as the hapless Captain of the Guard.  Here's Loki being a thespian again.  Captain Carter being the lead in so many episodes was too much, but I legitimately liked her connection with a different version of Steve here. 

5. "Kahhori Reshaped the World" - The biggest swing this year was introducing the Native American heroine Kahhori, voiced by Devery Jacobs, who gets a chance to head off European colonialism when the Tesseract lands in her neck of the woods.  The narrative is speculative fiction in its purest form, and a rare example of a "What If…" episode that you don't need to know anything about the MCU to watch.  While not a totally successful experiment, this was a welcome one.

6. "Strange Supreme Intervened" - As is tradition, the season finale pulls in cameos from all the previous episodes for a climactic battle.  The premise and the big bad are interesting, but the execution is not, sadly.  Kahhori in particular feels awfully shoehorned into this story as a supporting player, but I like the way Strange Supreme got some more development - his origin remains the show's best episode.  If "What If…" had decided to wrap up here, I wouldn't have had any complaints.    

7. "Nebula Joined Nova Corp" - So, "Blade Runner" with Nebula on Xandar sounds great on paper, and the guest stars are certainly a fun bunch - can we get more of Seth Green's Howard the Duck please? - but otherwise this was a pretty humdrum outing.  The double crosses and the film noir tropes were telegraphed far in advance, and even killing off some familiar faces didn't have much impact.  Too bad this was Nebula's only appearance in "What If…" this time around. 

8. "Hela Found the Ten Rings" - I feel like the only reason this episode happened was because Cate Blanchett said yes to appearing as Hela.  Giving her a redemption story via the "Shang Chi" mythology feels very random, and Hela never really works as a protagonist.  It all looks great, and Odin being a real villain for once is nice, but it never stops feeling like the Chinese elements are only there because the creators were mandated to get some "Shang Chi" into the show.  

9. "Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper" - I like Captain Carter, but her story is such a one-for-one substitution that her story isn't as compelling as most of the other episodes.  Here she gets to gal-pal with Black Widow, Steve ends up in the Winter Soldier role, and Bucky founds SHIELD.  So we replay the second "Captain America" movie, and the rest of episode is mostly used to set up other storylines.  Consider some of the other universes for sequels next time, please.

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Holidays With "The Holdovers"

I love Alexander Payne movies.  I love Christmas movies.  I love throwbacks.  So, I was in the bag for "The Holdovers" pretty much from frame one.  There's a treacly, maudlin version of this film that would have made for easy holiday programming, but whatever "The Holdovers" is, it's not easy in any sense, and thus has a greater chance of being a lasting classic.  There's certainly sentiment in the movie, enough that I'm comfortable calling this the most crowd-pleasing film of Payne's career, but it's a character drama at its core, and character drama of a kind that's been out of style for decades.  

It's 1970, and the winter holiday season at Barton Academy, a prestigious New England boarding school near Boston.  A group of boys, the "holdovers," have nowhere to go during the break, and are stuck at Barton under the watch of Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), the despised classics teacher who seems to enjoy antagonizing his students.  The only other staff member around for the duration is the head of the cafeteria, Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who stays to cook for them, though others like the custodian Danny (Naheem Garcia) and another teacher, Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), make appearances.  The two week break is very eventful, and Hunham ends up befriending one of his charges, the troubled Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa).       

"The Holdovers" starts straight off with the '70s version of the Universal Pictures logo, an ancient R-rating notice, and even a Focus Features logo card done up in 70s graphics.  We're going back to the era of "The Graduate" and "Goodbye, Columbus," and Payne makes sure we're very aware of this.  The pace of the film is slow and thoughtful.  The comedy is wry and observational.  We learn about the characters gradually, their layers peeling away bit by bit.  We learn that Mary's son has recently died and she isn't ready to spend time with family yet.  We learn that Hunham rarely leaves the school, and prefers being alone.  We learn that Tully's mother has recently gotten remarried.  Lots of little things are revealed, and it takes time for the dots to connect, but it's so satisfying when they do.  

There are so few films that are comfortable with this kind of storytelling anymore, where you have scenes of characters just existing in the frame together, doing very little for minutes at a time.  What's more, Payne keeps finding ways to undercut the big dramatic moments, keeping the proceedings more realistic and relatable.  When someone has a drunken outburst, when we realize a character lied, and when we realize the girl already has a boyfriend - the other characters' reactions are conciliatory, politely sympathetic, or just kept private.  And yet we feel them just the same.  "The Holdovers" is a wonderfully empathetic film, one that takes its time and earns its emotional payoffs.  It might seem odd to call this a Christmas film, but it's a Christmas film for all those people who don't have people to share the season with, or aren't in the right headspace for celebration, but could still use some comfort and joy.

Hunham is a ridiculous character, with his gleeful misanthropy, his lazy eye, and his puffed up self-importance hiding so much insecurity underneath.  It's thanks to Paul Giamatti that he's not only watchable, but sympathetic and redeemable by the end of the picture.  Dominic Sessa is a newcomer, who does a great job of being both an annoying little smartass and a deeply wounded kid in need of saving.  Watching him spar with Giamatti is irresistable.  However, Da'Vine Joy Randolph handily blows them both off the screen every time she appears.  Mary is the character with the rawest pain, and even when I knew the hurt was coming, it still caught me off guard in the best way.  May the people who give awards out to movies kindly pay some attention.        

I don't think that I'm going to like any movie from 2023 more than I like "The Holdovers."  Alexander Payne has more or less made my ideal Christmas movie - no Santa or Jesus in sight, but a little black humor, plenty of bittersweet kvetching about the season, some socially conscious nostalgia, and a gigantic heart.  I'm sure I'll be revisiting it on many imperfect holidays to come.

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"Loki," Year Two

Moderate spoilers ahead.

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead are known for their indie films about time travel and time loops, so it makes perfect sense that the two of them were recruited to direct most of the second season of "Loki."  However, this doesn't become clear until the last two episodes of the season, which are far and away the best part of any Marvel television series so far.  These episodes provide, unexpectedly, an ending for a storyline in the MCU - an ending that is as epic and definitive as anything they've ever done.  

The last time we saw Loki, he and Sylvie had killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), resulting in multiple timelines being allowed to grow, and the leaderless Time Variance Authority, the TVA, being thrown into chaos.  The second season takes a while to get going, but involves Loki dealing with "time slipping" - being jerked around in time and space at random - and fixing the temporal mess they created.  This involves getting help from TVA's chief engineer Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), an 1890s variant of He Who Remains named Victor Timely, and hunting down Sylvie again - who for cross-promotional purposes is working at a 1980s McDonalds.  

It's a little hard to follow what's going on at first, because the show isn't interested in any of the characters besides Loki.  Jonathan Majors and Ke Huy Quan get a few good scenes apiece, but the show completely wastes everyone else, which is a terrible shame considering the caliber of the cast.  Fortunately, Tom Hiddleston is very good at making a lot of science-fiction gobbledegook sound compelling, and manages to muddle through a lot of very half-baked concepts and ideas.  Fortunately, the one big idea that the show manages to get right is the most important one.  Eventually, enough plot and thematic threads do tie together enough to let Loki actually face a meaningful choice and embrace a new direction.  I did not see the ending coming, which isn't so important because of how Loki's story ended, but because it was an ending, full stop.

We've actually had a lot of wrap-up stories in the MCU lately, from "Wakanda Forever" to "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," though they haven't been nearly so explicit.  Having an unmistakable end point in "Loki" makes the whole series look better in retrospect, because it means that we now have a rare example of a Marvel character actually having a full, complicated character arc that pays off, and most of the journey takes place onscreen.  The MCU has notoriously let this sort of emotional growth happen offscreen for many characters in the past, such as the Hulk becoming stable between "Avengers" movies.  Loki, like Nebula, has always been one of the best MCU characters because he changes so significantly over the years, and we're with him every step of the way. 
    

It also helps that "Loki" is one of the better looking shows in the Disney+ catalog.  We get to see more weird corners of the TVA, and there are more trips to different time periods.  The show is very effects heavy, and really leans into more stylized, unique visuals this year.  I especially like the effect where people who are removed from the timeline disintegrate into floating tangles of string before they disappear.  The bulky retrofuturist style of the TVA and its tech also presents endless opportunities for fun interactions.  Part of the big finale involves having to repair a major piece of TVA equipment through a laborious set of steps, while wearing a clunky space suit connected to a giant accordion hose.    

I'm sure Tom Hiddleston will show up in future Marvel projects, but Loki's story is done and "Loki" is the best Disney+ Marvel show by a pretty comfortable margin.    Count this as a win for the MCU in a very rough year for this franchise, and let's hope they learn the right lessons from its success.  

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Oof, "Secret Invasion"

2023 was a bad year for the MCU and Disney in general.  I thought we had hit rock bottom with "Quantumania," but then came the big summer miniseries event on Disney+, "Secret Invasion," which the MCU has been building up to for a while.  It reportedly cost as much as one of the theatrical releases, but the end result is so much worse.  Created by Kyle Bradstreet and largely written by Brian Tucker, "Secret Invasion" is supposed to be a showcase for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the other military characters like Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle).  It's based on a comics storyline where the Skrulls, alien shapeshifters, infiltrate the government and the superhero community.  In the series, this also involves a rift among the Skrulls themselves, between their hopeful leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and a splinter group led by an extremist, Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), and Talos's estranged daughter G'iah (Emilia Clarke, playing another character with a terrible superfluous-apostrophe name).

"Secret Invasion," is a mess from the beginning for several reasons.  One of them is that unlike other MCU shows, "Secret Universe" is oddly disconnected from the rest of the Marvel universe.  There are only about ten characters of any importance, half of them introduced in "Secret Invasion" itself, which really limits how many big  reveals you can have about which characters are secretly Skrulls.  And the reveals are the whole point, right?  Another problem is that the scope of the show consistently feels very small, despite the focus on geopolitics and globetrotting.  Most of the budget was apparently spent on the action scenes and CGI, which are perfectly fine for what they are.  However, there's an awful lot of the show that's just scenes of tense conversations in cars or alleyways, and feel weirdly cheap.

Good writing might have helped make up for some of these deficiencies, but it's in short supply.  Similar to "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," the show never figures out a way to connect the action with the more personal stories of Nick Fury and Talos, or to make us care about the crisis.  Big things happen in this series!  Major characters die!  We get to meet Mrs. Fury (Charlayne Woodard) at last!  The fate of the planet is at stake!  However, it's very difficult to follow the narrative, because everyone's motives are so muddled, and everything always feels rushed so that the big reveals have no time to land.  The fake-outs and double crosses don't work because the characters' actions often don't make sense.  Kevin Feige discussed in promo materials how some of the Skrull reveals had been planned long in advance, so you could go back and rewatch other shows and movies and see where familiar characters were actually switched out.  But after having seen "Secret Invasion," where every reveal was so heavily telegraphed, and barely anything made a difference to the outcome, who would bother?

As with many of these MCU stumbles, I understand what kind of series the creators thought they were making.  There's a very compelling idea for a Fury story here, where he has to come back to Earth to confront all of his past sins - broken promises to his friends, personal issues with his family, a crisis of self-confidence - and become a badass again.  However, trying to do this at the same time as making a paranoid spy thriller, with the Skrulls as a sympathetic stand-in for a dispossessed outgroup, seems to have been too much for "Secret Invasion" to handle.  Maybe getting Brie Larsen to make an appearance as Captain Marvel would have helped, but the cast that was assembled here - including Olivia Goddamned Colman as an MI6 agent who is the best goddamned thing about this show - suggests otherwise.  I have never seen so many clearly talented, committed actors trying so hard to save material that doesn't work.   

Maybe I shouldn't have bothered writing this review, but I sat through all six episodes of "Secret Invasion" absolutely dumbstruck by how badly this show came out, and I feel I'm owed a good spleen venting.  Not all of Disney's bombs and flops this year were deserved, but this one definitely was. 

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"Wish" and "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"

So, "Wish" is a financial disaster, and I'm afraid that it's mostly deserved.  The film on its own isn't bad, but looks woefully mediocre next to all the other animated features from the past twelve months that have managed to do just about everything better.  The Disney take on cel-shaded CGI looks a little basic next to the recent "Spider-verse," "Ninja Turtles," and "Puss in Boots" movies.  The characters are highly derivative from other recent Disney musicals, with leading lady Asha (Ariana DeBose) entirely too reminiscent of Mirabel from "Encanto" and Anna from the "Frozen" movies.  Worst of all are the songs, which are aping Lin Manuel-Miranda something fierce, but some with lyrics that are so inept as to be unsingable.  And if you've made a Disney soundtrack that is unsingable, you're in deep trouble.

The worst part of this is that the entire concept behind "Wish" is serving as a sort of origin story to many of the famous tropes and concepts from the Disney animated canon.  The Wishing Star from "Pinocchio" is its own character here, who comes down from the sky to help Asha when she wishes on him.  She lives in the kingdom of Rosas, where the sorcerer king Magnifico (Chris Pine) has manipulated the populace into giving him their deepest held wishes - which manifest as glowing crystal balls - and are sort of parts of their souls?  It's not very clear.  Anyway, Asha has help from seven dear friends, some talking animals, and eventually her own magic.  The Disney references come fast and furious.  But even if they're by design, it doesn't make the patchwork of familiar tropes less awkward or the story less half-baked.  Many of the recent Disney animated features have felt incredibly rushed, often with parts of multiple ideas weirdly mashed together in the script.  "Wish" is absolutely rife with this, especially the musical sequences that were clearly written for different characters, or different versions of characters.  

As a lifelong Disney animation nut, I can't say I didn't enjoy picking out references, or that Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine didn't try their hardest, or that there wasn't clearly a lot of love packed into the film.  However, like too many other Disney projects lately, "Wish" was clearly rushed out the door and suffered for it.  The attempts to be metatextual inevitably felt cynical and pandering, often due to the sheer volume and arbitrary nature of the references.  I've seen a few jokes online about how the movie was written by ChatGPT, and it certainly feels that way at times.  It irks me because I can see the potential for a much better film here, and the audience certainly exists for one.  However, by not taking more care with this production, Disney has not only flubbed "Wish," but it's flubbed what was supposed to be a celebration of Disney's artistic legacy, and now the movie stands for nothing except corporate hubris.

On to "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget," a direct sequel to the 2000 Aardman film "Chicken Run."  I was probably influenced by seeing this right after "Wish," but it was such a relief to see a competently handled, old school animated feature.  Aardman's stop motion animation has improved over the last two decades, and there's probably a lot of invisible CGI I'm not aware of, but there's still a lovely handmade quality to the puppets and their miniature world.  Several of the original voice actors have been replaced, notably Zachary Levi filling in for Mel Gibson as Rocky the Rooster, but you'll hardly notice after the first five minutes.  And instead of a prison escape movie patterned off of WWII POW action films, "Dawn of the Nugget" has a spy themed caper with a mad scientist and a few aesthetic nods to James Bond and the swinging '60s.   

   

There's not much in "Dawn of the Nugget" you haven't seen before.  Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky's daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey) is a mischievous little escape artist who runs away from the safety of the bird preserve to see the world.  She's quickly caught and sent to Fun-Land Farms, which looks like a chicken paradise, but is really a high-tech processing facility run by the nutty Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed).  Ginger and Rocky, naturally, dust off their old capering skills to break into the facility and get Molly out.  However, there are many complications, including the return of their great enemy, Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson).  However, for me the familiarity was exactly what I wanted, particularly the well-constructed visual gags, the very British humor, and Babs (Jane Horrocks) being a cheerful dim bulb at every opportunity.  It's not nostalgia being evoked here, but instead a sense of continuity.    

Aardman films are few and far between, and I haven't seen one yet that I didn't enjoy.  "Dawn of the Nugget" often feels like a throwback to much older animated projects, but is constructed with such care and such commitment that I wish they made more like it.  I have no idea if modern kids will respond to its earnestness and cheesy punnery, but I adored every second. 

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My Top Ten Episodes of "The Crown"

Here are my top ten favorite episodes of "The Crown," which wrapped up its final season last year.  The show had its ups and downs over the years and it's very obvious which seasons I think of as the stronger ones.

The episodes below are unranked and ordered by date of release.

Wolferton Splash - The series premiere features four years worth of history packed into one episode, starting with Elizabeth's marriage to Philip, and also introductions to the dying King George IV and the ascendant Winston Churchill.  This is very much a prologue to Elizabeth's reign, but does a fantastic job of setting up character dynamics and the central theme of "The Crown" - the uneasy relationships that everyone in the royal family has with power.

Gelignite - Claire Foy and Vanessa Kirby were launched to fame by "The Crown," and this was one of the episodes that definitely propelled Kirby.  Her Margaret is so dynamic and so doomed, it's impossible not to feel for her as the relationship between Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend is methodically blocked and denied by those closest to her.  Every other appearance by Margaret in the rest of the series ties back to this episode, and her defining tragedy.

Assassins - A showcase for John Lithgow, as Winston Churchill spends the episode worrying over his legacy.  Churchill was a major part of the first season of "The Crown," and none of the other prime ministers in later years ever came close to having the same impact.  This version of Churchill is very human and fallible, and terribly saddened by the end of his career.  Peter Morgan had trouble humanizing some historical figures, but succeeded admirably here.  

Misadventure - Elizabeth deals with the Suez Canal crisis while also facing a more personal dilemma with her marriage.  This episode has some of the best Elizabeth and Philip interactions, even though they're separated for a good chunk of it.  I especially enjoy the confrontation on the boat in the middle of a storm, which is the least subtle metaphor ever, but so much fun to watch.  Claire Foy and Matt Smith are so well matched and carried "The Crown" through their seasons splendidly.  

Paterfamilias - Prince Charles is such a bore in the later seasons of the show, it can be hard to remember how devastatingly good his early episodes are.  "Paterfamilias" portrays the contrasting experiences of Philip and Charles at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, revealing the lifelong disconnect between father and son.  Punches are not pulled in depicting the misery of UK boarding school, with the athletic competition in particular representing a new, damp, circle of hell.   

Aberfan - As someone who didn't know anything about the Aberfan disaster, this was a riveting hour of television, from the recreation of the terrible events to Elizabeth's struggle with her feelings in the aftermath.  It's one of the few times where the royal family effectively serve as stand-ins for the general public, because they're just as powerless as everyone else reacting to the horrible situation.  It took me a little while to warm up Olivia Colman's Elizabeth, but this outing won me over.

Bubbikins - The royal family's difficulties with the media are the subject of more and more installments of "The Crown" in later seasons.  I don't like many of these episodes, but "Bubbikins" strikes me as a thoughtful,  evenhanded look at the state of things in the late '60s, with the notorious "Royal Family" documentary.  The Princess Alice story is also tremendously touching, which ends up humanizing the family far more than their own clumsy attempts ever could.  

Tywysog Cymru -  Season Three of "The Crown" saw Prince Charles, played by Josh O'Connor, become a major POV character.  His investiture as the Prince of Wales brings out a lot of feelings, and political tensions with Wales are high.  So, of course Charles' relationship with his Welsh language instructor becomes a microcosm of the thorny relationship between England and Wales.  We also get some insights into the difficult relationship between Elizabeth and Charles.

 

The Balmoral Test - I have some trouble with Gillian Anderson's performance as Margaret Thatcher (mostly the voice), but this is a highlight of the series regardless.  Two trips by two different women to visit the royals at Balmoral Castle represent how the most famous British women of the era will deal with power.  I like how we see the royal family from an outsider's point of view here, emphasizing their privilege and chilly distance in a way that puts their behavior in perspective.   

Favourites - Finally, we all have our oddball personal favorites, and this one is mine.  "Favourites" feels like a stage play, exploring Elizabeth's relationships with her children through one-on-one interviews.  Trouble is already brewing between Charles and Diana, Anne and Edward are discontent, everything about Andrew foreshadows trouble, and Tobias Menzies as Philip couldn't be more wryly amused.  As for Elizabeth, she's very relatable here in a way I liked very much.

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"The Crown," Year Six

And so we come to the end of the road for Peter Morgan's epic dramatization of the lives of the UK's royal family over sixty years.  Season six covers the post-divorce life of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) through the marriage of Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla (Olivia Williams).  Along the way, we check in with Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville), while Prince William (Ed McVey) becomes a major character, before the final episode lets Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) have the last word.

I don't appear to have written an entry for the fifth season of "The Crown," though I know I watched it.  To be blunt, Diana's marriage troubles and short-lived romance with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) didn't do much for me, though I appreciated that this version of it gave Dodi and his father Mohamed (Salim Daw) so much narrative emphasis.  Season six is better, but it spends the first half of the season on Diana's death, and by this point there had simply been too much Diana in "The Crown."  I want to point out that Peter Morgan has already covered these events in the 2006 film, "The Queen," which is told largely from the POVs of Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair.  In "The Crown," it's more of an ensemble affair, with Charles and other major figures getting more screentime.  I don't take much issue with how these episodes dealt with the death and aftermath, and even the appearances of Dodi and Diana's specters seemed like perfectly legitimate dramatic devices.  However, it felt less like "The Crown" and more like an entirely separate piece of Diana-centric media - and there have been a few too many of those over the last few years.

Morgan manages to course correct a little in the second half of the season.  There's an excellent final Margaret episode, featuring younger versions of Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn) and Margaret (Beau Gadson) during WWII.  A young William, Harry (Fflyn Edwards), and Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) are properly introduced, with a few ongoing conflicts set up in case Morgan wants to return for a seventh series of "The Crown" sometime in the future.  At this point and time, unfortunately, the youngsters are pretty bland and uninteresting.  However, I feel for Imelda Staunton who isn't nearly as large a presence in her seasons of "The Crown" as her predecessors.  The finale, which shows her considering funeral arrangements and possibly stepping down in favor of Charles, has her sharing screen time with all the other actresses who have played Elizabeth in the show.  Still, it's a better showing than Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce), who mostly fades into the background, or Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), whose character arc is severely truncated.  

"The Crown" spans so much time that it feels like multiple shows under the same title, and the last two seasons are easily the weakest.  I'm sure part of it is due to Morgan being more cautious with very vocal royal family members like Harry, so the portrayals are very safe, and part of it being that the media has been so much more intrusive since the events of Diana's death that there's less space for conjecture. Individual episodes are still decent, but they no longer cohere as a greater whole.  Another issue is that many of the characters no longer feel connected to the younger versions from earlier seasons.  Debicki fares well because she and Emma Corrin are mostly on the same wavelength as Diana, and they feel like the same person.  The same is not true of Dominic West and Josh O'Connor as Charles, and Olivia Williams is so far removed from Emerald Fennell's Camilla as to be downright jarring.    

The show's production values are still as good as ever, this time around featuring recreations of Diana's funeral, Charles' second wedding, and the WWII flashbacks.  If you enjoyed prior seasons of "The Crown," I doubt you'll come away disappointed from this one.  However, I'm glad that this is the last season for the foreseeable future.

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Falling For "The Fall of the House of Usher"

This is my favorite of Mike Flanagan's television shows so far, because it is the least serious and the most pulpy fun.  In "The Fall of the House of Usher," We're introduced to a family of terrible people, who are all dispatched one by one in very entertaining ways.  The show is also a pastiche of various Edgar Allen Poe stories, but updated for the modern day.  For instance, the first death is patterned off of "The Masque of the Red Death," but instead of the events happening at a costume ball it takes place in an opulent illegal rave.  Later on black cats, a raven, a pendulum, and a bottle of amontillado come into play.

Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood and Zack Gilford) and his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell and Willa Fitzgerald) are the powerful heads of a pharmaceutical company, and Roderick has fathered a brood of six awful children - eldest son and heir Frederick (Henry Thomas), health guru Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), medical device researcher Victorine (T'Nia Miller), video game producer Leo (Rahul Kohli), spin doctor Camille (Kate Siegel), and young hedonist Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota).  The two eldest, Frederick and Tammy, are the product of Roderick's marriage to his first wife, Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), while the rest are illegitimate.  The story begins near its end, when all the kids are dead, and Roderick is confessing his crimes to a detective, C. August Dupin (Carl Lumbly), explaining how each of his children perished along the way.  Everything is tied to a mysterious woman named Verna (Carla Gugino), who seems to have supernatural powers.  

Because this is Mike Flanagan, we skip around in time quite a bit.  There are flashbacks to 1980, a major turning point in Roderick's life, when he was involved in shady dealings with his former boss, Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco).  There are also a few tragic innocents among the reprobates - Annabel Lee, Roderick's teenage granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran), and his much younger second wife, a drug addict named Juno (Ruth Codd).  The final major character is the Usher family's ruthless lawyer, Arthur Pym, played with gravelly menace by Mark Hamill, clearly enjoying himself.  Many of the actors are from Flanagan's past projects, often playing very different characters or against type to good effect. Mary McDonnell as the wonderfully evil Madeline is a highlight, and Carla Gugino makes for a very charming specter.  However, Bruce Greenwood definitely deserves the largest share of praise for anchoring the whole affair with such commitment.  There are definitely some of the usual, lengthy Flanagan monologues, but not too many of them this time around, and the ones we do get are very memorable.  

I've heard "The Fall of the House of Usher" referred to as a Gothic "Succession," but more than that it's "Succession" with the kind of consequences and karmic justice that we all wish existed in real life.  The Ushers are clearly modeled after the Sacklers, heading a pharma company that makes a painkiller called Ligadone, which has contributed to the opioid crisis.  Flanagan gets to make them all pay for their transgressions in the most gruesome and poetic ways possible.  Some of the kills are very graphic, but shot in a stylized and heightened way so that they never pinged as anything really horrific.  I've always appreciated that extra layer of distance and unreality that Flanagan's projects seem to have.   

 

However, I think why I like "House of Usher" so much better than Flanagan's other shows is that it is by and large a very efficient piece of work.  Most of the episodes are about an hour long, and none overstay their welcome.  There's some sentiment and romanticism, as Roderick muses over his regrets, but no wallowing.  We get some rants about the dark side of capitalism, but nothing too gratuitous.  There's a Trump jab of course, but only one.  Some might take issue with the repetitiveness of the kills and a clear formula being followed - you can probably guess many of the twists if you're familiar with Poe's work - but the execution (heh) of the setups and payoffs is note perfect.    

For creepy winter viewing, you couldn't ask for anything better.

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"Pantheon" Year Two and "Pluto"

I'm not sure that "Pantheon" is ever legally going to make it to most of the world, since Amazon Prime acquired the show from AMC, it has only released the second season in the Australia/New Zealand region, and nowhere else.  However, VPNs are a thing, and if you're a fan of the first season of "Pantheon," you're going to want to see the second.

This picks right up where the first season left off, following Caspian and Maddie in the wake of the global blackout as the world becomes aware of the U.Is.  The story takes several twists and turns, which I won't spoil, but they involve the further attempts of Stephen Holstrom's team to find a cure for the existing flaws in the U.Is, and the attempts of the world powers to respond to the reality of U.Is.  There are several time jumps, several wild leaps into more theoretical realms of science-fiction, and the love story you may have suspected was developing in season one resolves in a satisfying way.  I was critical of the first season for being so careful not to step too far into abstraction and ambiguity, but that's not true of the second season.    As the show explores more facets of U.I., the worldbuilding really steps up.  The second season also explores artificial intelligences, introducing the character of MIST (Thomasin McKenzie), an A.I. who latches on to Maddie.  

Fans who liked the paranoid thriller elements of "Pantheon" may be disappointed that the show focuses less and less on thrills as time goes on.  There's plenty of geopolitical conflict and occasional action scenes - the U.I. fight each other and a new anti-U.I. program called Safe Surf - but most of the mystery and conspiracy elements are phased out.  However, I like that "Pantheon" leans into extrapolating all the consequences of U.I. instead, from early fears about them taking over the world to the possibilities of integration into human society.  I like the way that the characters grow and change, including Ellen (Rosemarie DeWitt) involving herself in politics and reconnecting to Peter Waxman (Ron Livingston), and Maddie eventually figuring out her own path toward enlightenment.  The ending is one of the headiest, weirdest, and most fitting jaunts into the unknown that I've ever seen, even in science-fiction.  Not everyone is going to appreciate this, but I'm thrilled that "Pantheon" exists for those who will.

And now, I feel  I should say a little about "Pluto," which was an anime that I had been looking forward to since it was announced.  Based on a manga by Naoki Urasawa, which was itself a modernized adaptation of one of Osamu Tezuka's "Astro Boy" stories, the show is a detective mystery about a future world where robots are common, and a mysterious force that is going around killing off the most powerful ones, along with their human creators and defenders.  An android detective named Gesicht (Shinshu Fuji) determines that the perpetrator is a mysterious new robot named Pluto (Toshihiko Seki).  In order to stop Pluto, Gesicht enlists the help of the robot boy hero Atom (Yoko Hisaka), his sister Uran (Minori Suzuki), and the other robots that Pluto is targeting.   

I've seen most of the anime based off of earlier Urasawa manga, including "Monster" and "Master Keaton," and enjoyed them.  Urasawa is great at tales of suspense and criminal masterminds.  Unfortunately, he's not so good at action, and despite so much of "Pluto" being about these powerful robots who can cause great destruction, any real fights are brief or anticlimactic.  Pluto himself is often treated like a sinister supernatural entity, capable of generating huge storms and tornadoes that obfuscate what's really going on with the early robot deaths.  The mystery itself is also underwhelming - very talky with a lot of characters to keep track of.  It was a bad idea to have forty-minute episodes, since the pacing  frequently slows to a crawl.  I'm not fond of what Urasawa did with Tezuka's premise either, which revolves around the major players all being involved with a Middle-Eastern war in the past, lots of convenient amnesia, and way too much ham-handed hand-wringing about robot and human relations.  The Middle-Eastern characters in particular come across as very tropey and outdated.  

The animation doesn't help.  Urasawa's characters always look a certain way, and that's fine, but they don't offer much opportunity for interesting visuals.  Tezuka's robots, on the other hand, are usually very dynamic and exciting.  I was very disappointed to discover that the robots in "Pluto" are very much Urasawa characters, who mostly stand around talking in very ordinary environments.  When they do fight, it tends to look less like "Ghost in the Shell" and more like a gritty, depressing, real-world war drama.  Add some bad CGI and no humor whatsoever, and you wind up with a slog.  "Pluto" might have come off better if there weren't half a dozen other, much more interesting animated shows for adults that came out in the same month, but that's how it is.      

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Playing With AI Image Generators

After signing up for several waitlists, and deciding I really don't want to download any more apps, I've finally gotten sucked into playing with one of these AI powered image generators you've been hearing so much about.  Microsoft has partnered with DALL-E for the Image Creator, which has the benefit of being browser based and a lot less popular than Midjourney right now, so the wait times are shorter.  I also have a lot of Microsoft rewards points, which I've never found anything interesting to cash in on, so they're going towards "boosts" to shorten the wait times even more.

And… the results are exactly as advertised.  Hands look weird.  Lines don't quite match up.  However, as someone who has dabbled in visual arts, and knows the amount of work that can go into similar images, the results are often astounding.  I didn't spend much time generating photorealistic images (pool floatie in the shape of a Honda Accord!), instead trying out a lot of fantasy art in different styles.  There was very little that came out so perfectly that it looked like it was intentionally drawn by a human being, without all the little telltale signs of AI art.  However, I was frequently startled by how perfectly it managed to imitate other artists' styles.  The program blocks out the use of most recognizable intellectual property and any prompts that it deems harmful or malicious.  However, there are characters that have simply become too universal to filter out, like Elsa from "Frozen."  I used her as the common variable for a lot of prompts, generating pictures of Elsa in the style of John William Waterhouse, Jean Honore Fragonard, Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Alphonse Mucha, Kathe Kollwitz, Erté, and Frieda Kahlo.  Some turned out much better than others.  Ever wanted to know what Batman would look like if painted by the post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau?  Now you can find out.  

Prompt construction takes some effort to learn, and you have to experiment with word combinations for a while before you figure out what the program needs to generate the image you want.   Words like "corpse" and "kissing" trigger the filters on violent/sexual images, though not consistently.  You don't get a specific style or medium unless you ask for one.  You don't get a background unless you ask for one.  Unless you specify "full figure," the default will always be a portrait view of any person or character.  Even under the best circumstances, the results are very hit-or-miss. Amusingly, using the word "cute" with "cartoon" or "illustration" is almost always going to get you a chibi anime kid.  Asking for something in a specific artist's style is a good shortcut, but not foolproof.  I asked for a picture of a fairy in the style of Maurice Sendak, for instance, and got back four lovely pictures that looked like they'd been plucked out of children's books - but none of them remotely in Maurice Sendak's style.   

As a consumer of art, I can see how this could quickly become addictive.  You can generate just about any image you could think up with minimal effort, skipping the laborious efforts of a human artist, and not having to worry about copyright issues.  The implications, frankly, are scary to think about.  As a creator of art, it can be absolutely maddening to look at some of the images, because you have such limited control over how they turn out.  My immediate instinct with so many of these pieces is to fix the glaring errors I see.  (In addition to weird hands, DALL-E has a real problem with swords.)  I get no feeling of accomplishment when I generate one of these images, because I know I did none of the work involved, and know that I would have executed them very differently.  However, I can see how this would be a helpful tool for artists, especially at the conceptual stage.

As these image generators keep getting better, and the proliferation of AI generated images becomes more widespread, it's clear there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.  Artists are rightly concerned about being edged out, and having their work devalued.  As for me, I'm fascinated by these programs being able to accomplish in seconds what it's taken me decades and decades to do so much more poorly.  They may never be a substitute for a real artist with real talent, but they're certainly doing better than most of us.

  

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