“You shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time…”

Okay.

You know what? This year has been pretty fucking awful and we all need, nay deserve, a break. The world is a lot scarier and more uncertain than it was before (and it was already pretty damn scary and uncertain) and there wasn’t much I could do about it then and there certainly isn’t much I can do about it now. But I can write something that hopefully you’ll find funny and interesting and maybe brighten your day a little and I categorically refuse to believe that that’s nothing. So how about this? No more talking about politics and America and we just enjoy a review of The Winter Soldier, a political thriller starring Captain America OH GODDAMNIT!!!

Anyone want to skip ahead to Guardians? Anyone?

Sigh. Okay. Let’s review the movie where the living exemplar of all that is best in America defeats the forces of tyranny and hatred.

Y’know. Escapism.

***

I remember when it was announced over a decade ago that Marvel were bringing Bucky Barnes back to life and I was opposed to the whole thing. Damn opposed!

Bucky Barnes is one of Marvel’s oldest characters, debuting all the way back in 1941. Bucky and Captain America were introduced as a twofer in the very first issue of Captain America Comics because, ever since Robin had been introduced in Batman the previous year, superheroes had to have kid sidekicks. It was non-negotiable. In his origin story, Bucky is a kid who likes hanging around a military base and one day sees Steve Rogers changing into his Captain America costume. Bucky tells Steve that the only way to protect his secret identity is to let him be his crime fighting partner and Cap of course has the kid sent to a military lock up as a threat to national security agrees. This, incidentally, is how Steve Rogers deals with anyone who walks in on him changing, which is how you got such storied superheroes as Clothing Store Assistant Girl and the Incredible Mom. So anyway, Bucky was a pretty blatant Robin rip-off and not even a particularly interesting one and the character was eventually replaced by the female sidekick Golden Girl, before then being brought back for the fifties “commie smasher” version of Captain America in the fifties. When that comic failed, both Cap and Bucky were retired by Marvel.

Then came the sixties, and with superheroes popular again, Stan Lee decided to bring back Marvel’s most popular character from the war era, Captain America, to take his place alongside the Fantastic Four, Avengers, Spider-Man and all the other classic characters that Stan Lee and his collaborators had been minting at a rate of around three a second.

But Stan did. Not. Want. Bucky.

At all.

Why? Well, sidekicks from Robin onwards had been conceived as surrogates for their young, mostly male audience. But Stan found the whole idea of kid sidekicks to be condescending, and so instead had created teen superheroes like Spider-Man and the new Human Torch who were teenagers but also the stars of their own stories rather than playing second fiddle. Then there was the issue of the comics industry’s brush with death in the early fifties thanks to the publication of Seduction of the Innocent by Doctor Frederic Wertham which made the case that comics were a dangerous influence on the minds of America’s youth. Now the bulk of Wertham’s argument was against horror and crime comics but he also took aim at superheroes, claiming that Batman and Robin were clearly in a sexual relationship. Which, of course, if he had actually bothered to read the comics he would have realised that he was absolutely, totally, 100% percent correct.

So yeah, Stan rather wisely decided that the last thing the newly revived superhero genre needed was little boys in tight shorts running around so when Cap was revived in Avengers #4 he revealed that Bucky had died at the end of the war trying to stop a bomb from destroying London and that they were totally just friends, you guys.

This change gave the fairly one-dimensional character of Steve Rogers some much needed emotional shading. Steve was no longer a smiling, lantern jawed, shield-slinger but a grieving, troubled hero out of time and wholly unsure of his role and place in the world. In fact, it worked so well that Bucky was one of a Holy Trinity of dead comic book characters who it was implicitly understood would never, ever be brought back to life; Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, Jason Todd and Bucky Barnes. So when Marvel actually did the unthinkable and brought Backy buck…um, brought Bucky back as a grim and gritty assassin with a robot arm called “The Winter Soldier”, I just rolled my eyes and decried it as another lazy stunt that would be undone in a few months at most. But, credit where credit is due, Cap writer Ed Brubaker made the damn thing work and it’s already considered one of the best and most seminal Captain America stories. In fact, it was chosen as the plot for the second Captain America movie despite being so recent, thereby skipping decades of older, classic Captain America storylines.

What I’m trying to say is; WHERE THE FUCK IS MY WEREWOLF CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE, MARVEL?

What I find weird about the Captain America trilogy is that, while you often get movie series where instalments are vastly different from each other, it’s pretty damn rare to find a series of movies that hops between genres. This time around, Marvel followed Joe Johnston’s glorious, retro, Indiana Jones homage with a gritty political thriller that would have been perfectly at home in the seventies. How did that work out? Let’s take a look

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A dispatch from Pandaemonium

This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;

Besides what hope the never-ending flight

Of future days may bring, what chance, what change

Worth Waiting.

John Milton

A reason to vote you may not have considered…

Ugh.

What’s up Mouse?

I’ve been a US political junkie since the early Bush years and, as a junkie, this election has proven to be my Requiem for a Dream. The thing I’m addicted to is making me ill and may quite possibly be killing me and I am just about ready for this rampaging shit-beast of an election to finally drag its filthy carcass over the finish line. But, with a mere five more days until November 8th, I feel it’s my duty to try and convince as many of my American readers as possible to…

Blaaaaaaaaaradhlakhsdjklahkjhasdjhasdjkhadsljha!!!!!!

I know. I know. I know. You’re sick of this. You’re sick of the constant reminders that “this election is different”. But here’s the thing. This election is different. Radically different. Why? Because this election can get you laid.

Go on…

Picture the scene. A few years from now you’re in a bar in Paris, or Rio, or Dublin, or anywhere else where legendarily beautiful people are known to congregate. You get talking to a particularly gorgeous member of your preferred gender and the conversation goes like these:

BEAUTIFUL FOREIGN HUMAN: So tell me about yourself Meester/Mademoiselle American, so that I may decide eef you are worthy of my beautiful time.

YOU: Aw shucks pardner, I’m just a simple American who likes apple pie and baseball and workin’ down on the ol’ farm.

BEAUTIFUL FOREIGN HUMAN: (silently deciding not to have sex with you) I see.

YOU: Oh yeah, and one time in 2016 I helped prevent a fascist takeover of my country.

BEAUTIFUL FOREIGN HUMAN: Zut alors! We must make love immediately!

YOU: Okay. My place or yours?

BEAUTIFUL FOREIGN HUMAN: No time!

BAR PATRONS: Ooh la la!

Guys, I don’t think you understand the gift that’s been handed to you. You get to stop Trump. You get to stop an actual fascist. This opportunity will not come again in your lifetime (dear Christ I hope it doesn’t). There is nothing sexier than defeating fascism. Look at the Greatest Generation, do you have any idea how much action those guys got when they got home?

HINT

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WALL·E (2008)

WALL·E sucks!

“MOUSE WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“MWAH HA HA HA HA! YES!! BURN THE INTERNET! BURN IT TO THE GROUND!

Sigh.

Okay, fine, WALL·E doesn’t suck. I was just trying to get out of this review.

WALL·E is the kind of movie I actively dread tackling and the reason why (ignoble automotive abberations aside) I’ve largely steered clear of the Pixar canon in these reviews. They are possibly the most beautiful, perfectly crafted feature length animated movies ever made and that makes them absolute kryptonite to a Snarky Internet Reviewer like me. What the hell am I supposed to make fun of here? “HA HA, look at these idiots and their perfectly crafted and utterly charming meditation on the human condition”? I got nothing to work with here. Nothing!

This is what I see when I look at this movie.

Alright. Background. So, one day in 1994 John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft sat down in the Hidden City Cafe for a cup of coffee, a chat, and to change the history of animation as we know it (as you do). From this legendary brainstorming session came the ideas that would eventually become A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and WALL·E. No doubt muttering “What the FUCK was in that coffee?” they then paid their bill, and left a generous tip for the waitress along with a cure for cancer that Lasseter had idly scribbled on a napkin. One thing you notice about WALL·E is that it’s not so much one film as two short films starring the same characters. The first is a film about the last robot on earth discovering humanity through its refuse and the second is a sci-fi romp about plucky robots helping the human race overthrow a dictatorial wheel. There’s a reason for that. The first half of the movie, with WALL·E putzing around on Earth, arrived fully formed at that meeting and never changed all through the writing process. The second half, through, got re-written to hell and back and at one point was going to be about a robot uprising against evil aliens called “the Gels”.

This means that WALL·E is the rare movie that not only has fans, but has fans of different parts of the movie. There’s probably someone out there who loves the first half of WALL·E utterly but doesn’t regard the second half as canon. That happens a lot with TV shows. Movies? Not so much. What do I think?

I think this movie is going to kick my ass and make me say “Thank you sir, may I have another?” Let’s just get this over with.

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SVB NLMLULINH. DSZGH TLRMT LM LEVI SVIV?

Soooo…this happened.

Over the weekend UCD Dramsoc, the drama society where I spent some of my happiest days and avoided some of my must important college lectures, published an anthology of plays that were originally written and performed there. The plays are A Certain Romance by Stephen Jones, Sluts by Caitriona Daly, Stoop by Gillian Greer and The Hole by…

“Yo.”

Yeah. So. Published writer. How are you? And if you’re interested in checking out some early work by the absolute cream of young Irish playwriting talent right now (and me), the book is available on Amazon and is actually kinda gorgeous.

“It’s not that I don’t love our little talks, it’s just… I don’t love them.”

By now we are thirteen films into the MCU and the question of which movie is the “worst” feels more and more moot. Sure, we all love ranking things from best to worst because this is the future and the internet has turned us all mildly autistic but really, what’s the point? There have been so many of these things, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become less like a series of stand alone movies and more like a single, ongoing epic to the point that calling one movie “the worst” is almost like singling out a single chapter of Lord of the Rings for scorn and derision. Why bother?

Although, I think we can all agree that with Chapter VII, In The House of Tom Bombadil, Tolkien utterly shat the bed.

I bring this up not because I think Thor 2: The Dark World is the worst MCU movie but because it sure does pop up a lot in that particular conversation. Part of that, of course, is just blatant Thor-prejudice. Lotta people just can’t grok with the character. But there’s no denying that this is a flawed movie, and while it certainly wasn’t the most troubled Marvel production (Ant Man sits on that throne and will not be vacating for a good long time) it was, by all accounts a rather unfun experience for all involved. After the original director, Patty Jenkins (who’s now helming Wonder Woman) was axed over “creative differences” Natalie Portman almost walked out in solidarity. Jamie Alexander was injured on set and was out of commission for a month. Replacement director Alan Taylor hated the final product. Screenwriter Don Payne died of bone cancer during production. Idris Elba described the shoot as “torture”. And plagues of locusts and boils befell the production and the catering table ran with blood. Probably. In fact, it seems that only one of the principals involved actually had a good time.

He brings the party with him.

But just because almost everyone spent every waking minute wishing for the sweet release of death, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie sucks. Apocalypse Now had a hellish shoot after all. Then again, so did The Island of Doctor Moreau. Which example does Thor 2 follow? Let’s take a look.

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The wild post has been contained…

It’s never fun to be woken at four in the morning and told that an unfinished blog post is wandering the Internet in a confused state and with its dangling typos on display to the gawking neighbours. Yes, as many of you noticed, the Thor 2 review published early (well I have only been doing this four years). Sorry for this unscheduled look at how the sausage is made.

Steven Universe

So here’s something hilarious; I actually thought this was going to be an easy review. “Three episodes of Steven Universe?” I thought “That’s only half an hour’s worth of animation! I can do that in my sleep! I can wrap this review up in one night and take the rest of the week off to maybe work on some other things and actually be a writer for once!”

“Oh Mouse! You are a FOOL!”

Of course not. Because before I can get into reviewing Steven Universe I actually have to explain what Steven Universe is and the backstory of the show to people who have never seen it. And with a backstory this epic, I have been forced to employ special tools. Please click this link.

(NOTE this link may not work on all devices, I’m working on getting a video to embed in the post but that may take some time. In the meantime, the Mary Sue gives a good run down of the backstory)

So yeah, that is the incredibly dense and rich mythology that the series has built up over one hundred episodes and is IN ABSOLUTELY NO HURRY TO LET YOU IN ON. Seriously, this show is such a goddamn tease, I’d say it drip feeds its backstory but these aren’t even drips, these are molecules of plot moisture.

Oh goodie. Another episode where Steven eats ice-cream.

I kid, I kid (mostly). One of the show’s charms is actually how it carefully builds up its world and devotes time to the various characters that make up Steven’s social circle, whether it’s the gems, or the various residents of Beach city, or his father Greg. And all these characters are so wonderfully layered and charming that even episodes where nothing substantial happens to move the main plot forward feel worthwhile.

Except Ronaldo because, oh my giddy Aunt, FUCK RONALDO.

So this show first aired in 2013 on Cartoon Network and is the creation of Rebecca Sugar, a former writer and storyboard artist on Adventure Time. At the top of this post there’s some concept art from the original pilot which was much more “Adventure Timey” in its animation and style but the actual series looks quite different. The show has a simple but very elegant art style favouring beautiful painted backdrops and clean, uncomplicated character designs. The music is also really inventive with original songs featuring in many episodes (it helps that the main and supporting cast are crammed with professional singers). But all that would just add up to a very good looking and sounding children’s cartoon. To understand what makes Steven Universe so special we have to talk about fusion.

So, when the Crystal Gems are battling a threat that’s too powerful for them to take on alone, they can fuse together to form more powerful gems. Okay, hardly revolutionary. Power Rangers, Digimon and Transformers have all used a version of this trope to one degree or other. But here’s the thing. In Steven Universe fusion is very explicitly a metaphor for, well…

Okay, well maybe that’s a little simplistic. The metaphor is fairly elastic and, depending on the episode, fusion can be a stand in for a romantic relationship, platonic friendship or sometimes just the hard fucking. It’s also really important to remember that within the universe (heh) of the show, it’s none of those things. In the world of Steven Universe, fusion is not sex, or relationships or anything else, it’s fusion. It’s its own thing with its own rules and norms and etiquette. This is important to remember because if you treat the metaphor too literally it can go to some weird places. Like, the episode A Giant Woman where Steven first learns about fusion and sings a song about wanting to see Amethyst and Pearl fuse. If you take it to literally mean sex then it becomes the story of a creepy little boy wanting to watch his two foster mothers fuck.

So. Don’t do that.

So today we are going to be looking at three episodes from Season 2; A Cry For Help, Keystone Motel and Friend Ship. Let’s take a look. (Oh and, needless to say, there will be spoilers both for this episode and the series more generally so be warned.)

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