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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