leviticus-stroud-513-767280 Reviews

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Good, but slow, first half that rushes into a failed overly fast second

[6/10 · 20 March 2024]

Having first been introduced by my dad to Arrakis via the 1984 movie, followed by my reading the books, then watching the extended TV version of the David Lynch cinema tale when it became available on DVD, and also the Sci-Fi mini series on release, I very much enjoyed the first film.

The changes, though a couple of omissions were disappointing, made sense for setting up future instalments and also helped carry the story forwards in a more theatrical manner. I was therefore looking forward to seeing this film.

As we approached the end of the first half of the film, and we got to see Feyd-Rautha in the arena- followed up by Lady Fenring's seduction no less, I thought to myself "I wish my dad had been here to see this. He'd have loved it.". And then we got the second half of the film, and I immediately took back that thought.

He'd have been mad as hell!

Where the first film set up better avenues for the plot to go into future book adaptations than Herbert did (he hadn't planned on there being sequels at the time), and made certain things flow better and seem more logical to the casual viewer, instead the second movie does the complete opposite. Subtle allusions to the dangers of playing with prophecy were already being wielded too heavily in the first half of this, but by the second Paul's entire character- and that of Chani too- are being changed wholesale for the sake of that heavy handed use being turned to utter sledge hammer.

Meanwhile, drastic changes to the plot not only remove some of the most iconic lines in the book (eg 'Usul, we have wormsign the likes even god has never seen before', 'I remember your gom jabbar, now you remember mine', etc), but threaten to totally derail the main story beats of Dune Messiah- the next book in the series- along with important elements in later ones too.

Instead of Alia being born, and surprising all present in the court by delivering Paul's message to Emperor Shaddam IV (when he comes to Arrakis after several years of disrupted spice production) despite being just a few years old, the plot is accelerated to all conclude before her birth . Instead his identity is revealed in a letter sent to Corrino.

Good grief. Does no one in this universe fully understand the concept of spies? Constantly telling secrets in front of staff and servants in this film, when they made a big deal of not even having a 'pet' in the room for any such discussion in the previous one, is just a terrible movie trope. Even if every single one could be totally trusted (and they know that even Imperial Conditioning can be broken, cos they've done it), that seal on the wax of that message's cylinder would have been recognised by the courier- and most importantly the Guild workers who are required to transport him between solar systems.

As for the Guild and the importance of The Spice Melange, well despite being central to the very plot of the entire book series, and theoretically this film too, their importance is conspicuously downplayed- except when it isn't of course.

In the books, and the Sc-Fi channel adaptation was sensible enough to include this, Paul works out how to create a chain reaction of poison that would end spice production on Arrakis. The mere threat of doing this is enough to bring the guild, and as a result all the noble houses, in line.

THIS is how the crusade spreads amongst the stars! Not a couple of million Fremen assaulting a bunch of ships and hoping to take on an entire galaxy. They'd lose. In minutes. If the main vessels didn't simply fold space away from orbit, the stolen landers would be lasered out of the sky in the same way the film showed us the taking down of spice harvesters about an hour earlier. What, did Denis forget he had that in his film?

The crusade is supposed to spread by the fact that Muad'Dib ended both the imperial line and the dominance of the guild with little more than the threat of giving a command all knew his followers would obey.

And speaking of that threat, in the film this is instead made with the potential use of atomics. Yet said threat is ignored by the Landsraad, and not carried out when they 'call his bluff'. The trouble is, it wasn't a bluff in the book! He challenges the navigators to look into the future, where they see him do it. Not only is this classic part lacking in the film, so is his challenge to the Bene Gesserit order: 'Look into that place where women dare not look. You will see me, staring back at you!'.

Meanwhile, the death of Paul and Chani's first son at the hands of the Sardaukar is totally absent, as they have had no time to have any children at all in this overt rush to the conclusion (did Denis get the same itch Beniof and Weiss did for GoT?). This omissions would be excusable, but now they may never be parents as the film ends with Chani leaving and apparently now hating Paul. What's going on here? Is Paul now going to have the twins Leto II and Ghanima with Irulan?

But that missing time elapse is important to plot and continuity. The first film established how much spice reserves Baron Harkonnen had, and as a result any disruption to the flow could be kept secret from the other houses for some time. Yet instead Villeneuve doubles down on this plot hole, by having Feyd get the spice production back on track. This doesn't happen in the books, for a reason!

The first successful assault on a sietch (ie taking the Fremen on in their own home) doesn't occur until the Emperor unleashes his Sardaukar on Tabr, to which he notes to the Baron that his elite could barely best the women, the old, and the infirm, as the warriors were away at the time. Having the Harkonnen attack the northern Fremen strongholds and drive them away would have revealed just how many of them there were in the North- which is vastly more than their intelligence network believed. As stated in the first movie. If this was revealed to them, why were they not questioning their other assumptions? We can only assume it is because they have decided to suddenly make the bad guys dumb, so that the next bit of altered plot can take place.

Finally we come to the action sequences of the 2nd half.

Whilst they look good, they also suffer from 'the Hollywood treatment'. Paul now leads infantry running along the ground towards an enemy also running along the ground. This was literally the biggest complaint most people had about the battles from the first movie, and its an order of magnitude sillier when the Fremen have access to Sandworms, which they are riding in from one of the other flanks. Speaking of which, where the hell did they disappear to halfway through the battle?

The Sardaukar are treated like The Golden Company in season 8 of GoT. They are all brought to one place, with none in reserve, and get wiped out with virtually no resistance to speak of. Off screen for the most part. Was that to save on screen time?

This would literally be the daftest thing for the Emperor to do (put them all in one place that is), as fear of his elite troops is one of the ways in which he maintains his rule. All planet side somewhere they are unused to and utterly at the mercy of the Guild should they decide not to move their space ships? It would make about as much sense as the US putting every ship of every fleet in Hong Kong harbour, whilst the entire rest of the US military was deployed in HK itself, just because the president was visiting. Dumb. Just like the second half of this film.

Rick and Morty: Summer's Sleepover (2022 Video)

Bad. So so bad.

[2/10 · 18 January 2023]

Being quite a fan of Rick and Morty, I gave this special a watch in the same way I have seen pretty much all the other specials and spin offs. And by 'gave it a watch', I mean I tried to. Several times.

Oh dear lord this is so god awful mere words can't do it justice.

I simply haven't been able to make it more than 3 minutes in yet, as attempting to do so feels like some torture channel from a dumb reality show. Except there's no reward to be had here it seems, only a greater deal of psychological damage the longer I persist.

This short seems to be deliberately ugly in its design, as I can't imagine anyone would put out such unaesthetic animation to such a wide audience- and have it approved- by accident. It's not just visually lacking, the sound design seems to be attempting to hit the mental equivalent of the brown note, making me want to physically vomit within 90 seconds. Hence my endurance not yet making it past 180 seconds- any further and I feel like I'd be in need of a clean up crew.

Maybe I'll try again with it on mute. After all, there doesn't appear to be a single auditory cue linked to the imagery. Possibly if I've just ingested something toxic, and need to expel it from my stomach.

Feel free to watch it yourselves, but don't say I didn't warn you if your guts have a similar to response to the one mine did!

(2nd star is in case I'm simply expecting too much of it from the connection to R&M)

Black Adam (2022)

Very enjoyable

[9/10 · 21 October 2022]

I remember back when Dwayne Johnson had a Myspace account and did a poll on whether his fans thought he should play Captain Marvel or Black Adam. I was one of the significant majority who voted from Adam.

Many years on, we finally got an announcement that he'd been successful in lobbying to get a movie made at last- and I've been in nervous anticipation regarding whether it would be good enough ever since.

Thankfully, it seems I didn't need to worry. Whilst this movie isn't perfect (I suspect a few trimmed scenes being popped back in for a directors cut will up it to a full 10/10), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The origin story is close enough to both the original, and the revised 'anti-hero' one from a few years ago, to please the majority of die hard fans. It also includes elements of the New 52 one, but not so much as to alienate said die hards (who mostly hate said latest rewrite)- just give enough of a spin for a bit of a different take.

Many critics have moaned that the film doesn't get deep enough into the philosophical arguments regarding the different approaches to what is, essentially, extra judicial vigilantism regardless of whether you agree with Teth Adam, Carter Hall, Kent Nelson, or even Amanda Waller. Well, this is a 2 hour action movie, and not a courtroom drama or similar. Just how deep into introspection did you expect the dialogue to get? I find this particularly amusing given that in BvS and ZSJL, those same critics complained when that same topic was dealt with to a greater degree.

For me though, the best point was made by Sarah Shahi's character of Adrianna Tomaz. She notes that the Justice Society never intervened in the 27 years of illegal occupation Khandaq has suffered, but now are suddenly interested in maintaining political stability when someone they don't approve of turns up to help.

I recommend watching this film for yourself, and making your own judgement. As with most recent DC films, the approach is not the Action Comedy of the MCU, but the Myth Made Real approach. This one does include more humour than most DC titles, but this humour is well placed rather than ubiquitous.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Chapter Thirty-Six: At the Mountains of Madness (2020) Season 4, Episode 8

A strong series falls apart at the finish line

[3/10 · 10 January 2021]

I had been enjoying the Sabrina reboot, and was liking the tale of the Eldritch Terrors, but was concerned when first starting part 4 on Netflix that there were 8 terrors and 8 episodes. If the final terror was the big bad, surely it would require a double episode? Or at least an extended length one? Hmm, seems my concern was legitimate.

Episode 7, which I much enjoyed, started with Sabrina Morningstar jumping through a dimensional mirror into another world, and ended with her doing the same back into the 'real' world of the show.

As part of this, she has discovered that The Endless is Salem Saberhagan- an animatronic talking cat version of her own familiar in a never ending sitcom version of her life. A hell version of the 90s sitcom, complete with guest stars in the form of the actresses who played Hilda and Zelda in that show.

She defeats The Endless by demonstrating to Salem that The Void will not just destroy her world, but that of The Endless too. This puts The Endless on Sabrina's side, and he helps her escape and return to her own world. Cue the first major plot problem with this finale...

Episode 8 starts with Mary Wardwell telling the tale of the episode as if recorded in a book written by Lovecraft- Blackwood's alias that the congregation she is reading to know him by. This storytelling device is returned to several times during the episode, and is rather problematic.

Later in the episode this reading by Mary includes a reference to 'and this is how I became involved', referring to herself. But isn't this an tale supposed to have been written down by someone other than you Miss Wardwell? This is before we take into account the sheer amount of things that neither Blackwell nor Mary know that is in the finale.

Now these sorts of things can be accounted for in this type of device, provided reference is made before such a scene. You'll see this done in other shows/ movies by use of dialogue stating words to the effect of 'here's something that you the audience are getting to know that the characters here don't'. This doesn't occur in this episode, and so the entire sequencing of this comes off as a method to try and cut down run time by reducing connecting scenes- that in turn doesn't work because it has had its own run time cut down too much.

The story proper kicks off with Sabrina Morningstar crashing through the mirror back into the real world. Except this time there's a whole bunch of minor cuts she has received. Erm, why? This didn't happen before, so why this time? Has the mirror been affected by The Void as she escaped from it? No explanation is given. All we do know is that these light amount of cuts somehow cause Sabrina M to die in Sabrina S's arms. Due to minor blood loss I assume?

This in turn causes further issues, as later in the episode her body has no such injuries, and in fact her body is so intact that it gets used to house Sabrina Spellman's soul.

Meanwhile, not a single further word about Salem Saberhagen (incarnation of The Endless) is ever stated in the rest of the episode. The animatronic cat goes lifeless in the real world with no explanation. No explanation is made as to whether Spellman knows what it is, it's just something Morningstar was carrying. Do they just assume it is a terror? Do they examine it magically? Who knows, cos the audience certainly isn't told.

Episode 7 ended looking like they had gained a Terror as an ally, the finale starts by acting like episode 7 was irrelevant and not part of the season. You can actually skip from 6 to 8 in this season, and the finale will not be affected in any way. Don't though, E7 was far superior to E8. Skip that instead. I recommend coming up with your own finale where Saberhagen help Sabrina defeat the Void. Perhaps one where The Uninvited gets an Endless invite. It'd be better than this.

Meanwhile, Blackwood gets his dismembered head reattached to his body due to the intervention of Judas and Judith, who appear like a Deus Ex Machina then disappear again in the exact same manner. If anyone knows what is supposed to have occurred with those two please let me know, cos the show didn't bother to tell us! This Deus Ex approach seemed a bit heavy handed in episode 4, but that was a light touch by comparison.

Whilst coming up with a plan to try and battle The Void, the 'Trinket Man' -which is all we can call him, as there's no other explanation about him given- turns up to get his Imp (terror number 4) back. Him going Deus Ex in a single episode wasn't enough, apparently. This is, of course, with perfect timing to 'save the day'- as all statues of gods on a pulley system lowered onto the stage at just the right point when the writer has painted themselves into a corner must do.

Trinket Man wants his stolen Imp back, and Sabrina asks if he has anything that could stop The Void. When he reveals he does, in the form of Pandora's Box, the exact same 'huh?' type trade is made as per episode 4. She'll give him the Imp in return for the box. Erm, wasn't use of Cronos's stone already traded for getting that Imp back? Ok, whatever. This guy is obviously manipulating things to get the Terrors stopped, I'm sure we'll find out why in the epilogue. Oh, we won't due to run time? Yeah, there's that issue again...

So Sabrina give him The Imp of the Perverse, and trundles off through the dimensional gate mirror to face The Void and trap it in Pandora's Box. You know, that mirror that if you go through it will give you lots of superficial cuts that cause you to die in a short period of time. Or at least appears to do so if used near The Void, which is where she is going.

Sabrina then goes on to mostly trap the Void, first seeming to suck in all the realities that The Void has devoured previously that are trapped inside it. I'll give you a few seconds to consider the ethics of leaving entire universes trapped instead of rescuing them for a moment. Is this a problematic decision whereby there is no choice as they are already lost? Maybe something that happens about 35 minutes later might shine a light on this moral dilemma and make it look like a pretty awful decision to make.

So as she'll die in this situation, Salem (the familiar, not the manifestation of The Endless) warns the other witches as to what Sabrina is up to and they try to teleport her out of the Void before she is consumed. Unsurprisingly they fail. It's almost like that dimension mirror has a reason to exist in this world. you now- for reaching other dimensions you can't physically teleport to/from.

This attempt is just one of many situations where The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina starts to feel like later seasons of Game of Thrones. I, as a viewer, appear to have greater knowledge of how this universe works than the characters living in it. Or, more accurately, the writers.

So they can't teleport the body, but apparently can teleport her soul, so they decide to bring her back to the real world and into the vacant body of Sabrina Morningstar. You know, that one which was (but suddenly isn't) all cut up and incapable of being alive. I get the feeling there is a cut scene involving said body getting repaired by The Cain Pit, with said pit no longer being able to bring back the dead- cos there's a big plot hole relating to that thing right here, and again later on.

This they succeed in, but very obviously they align themselves with the trope of doing so too soon, and The Void isn't completely within Pandora's Box. Cue rest of episode as all this so far is only a third of the way in. Did I mention running time issues and not enough room to resolve things properly already?

On that note of things being rushed, I'll simply run through the highlights of the rest of the episode's oddities in an unsatisfactory way. These include: -Lucifer being more interested in the body of his daughter being his to be buried (it's not, other Sabrina has far more claim) than the potential removal of his infernal realm from existence- despite the fact that this would include said body/grave disappearing. And him. -The good guys deciding to trap the Infernal Terrors in The Void. Does this include a reneging on the deal with The Endless? I know Spellman didn't know about this deal, but she also didn't know the animatronic cat was The Endless either. -The group having The Imp with them to put in the void. Did we not have a Deus Ex plot point earlier specifically stating you no longer had this? -The heroes rescuing the possessed miners, from the Void without undoing their demonic possession. Is this cos the demons doing the possession got consumed by The Void simialr to that Incubus that jumped into The Uninvited? There really are no answers given, as... -We don't see any of what goes on in The Void when it is Nick etc doing the activities. Like, literally nothing. -The heroes not rescuing any of the trapped realities whilst they are at it. Because the needs of the half dozen, outweigh the needs of the untold billions. -Sabrina S then dying from blood loss too. Is this just a failing of Sabrina M's body at this point? Is losing a pint or two a fatal side effect of being queen of hell for a while? Like, you can now resist hell fire, but blood loss outside of the nine circles is deadly? If there was a Part 5, would she die if she donated blood at a hospital in one of the episodes? -The two Sabrina's being buried at the location of the Cain Pit, and it still doing nothing. -Lucifer's fate being entirely tell don't show. It is literally entirely Lillith doing a monologue whilst Lucifer doesn't say a thing and just writhes a bit.

And yeah, let's not mention the problems with the end scene in The Sweet Hereafter.

Ultimately, I suspect there is 30 to 45 minutes of unfilmed and/or cut footage that addresses all of the above. But without it, this finale presents itself as a hot mess of bad writing that marks itself out as the lowest point of the whole series.

Doctor Who: The Timeless Children (2020) Season 12, Episode 10

An on screen essay in how to write fiction badly

[2/10 · 11 March 2020]

Whilst one could talk about the excessive virtue signalling, and in particular the massive hypocrisy regularly involved (I'm looking at you 'woke' Mengele) in Chris Chibnall's writing, it is more fitting to simply talk about how dumb this episode is purely on construction and continuity.

So the current show runners have decided to write a new element into the back story of Gallifrey? Well ok, we can get on with that if it is done well. After all, it's been done well several times in the history of the show. Gallifrey wasn't even part of the canon in the first series! Trouble is, this isn't done well. Most importantly, unlike the previous ret-cons, this doesn't adjust off screen and implied events of the past- it directly contradicts vast amounts of what we've seen on screen. This re-writes the very underlying tenets of what the show is.

I was annoyed when RTD adjusted the character of Rassilon in End of Time in a manner that directly opposed his appearance in The Five Doctors. But this puts that debacle in the shade. It doesn't just make a ludicrous alteration to a character from history we only knew a little about, it pretty much eradicates the existence of entire characters and stories in the process. Cos if this new backstory is true, those other events simply could not have happened.

This episode is so full of self contradictions it would take a video many times longer than the episode itself (and probably a hundred times more interesting) to explore. But lets simply state that a single statement from Ivanova to Lorien in a scene in Babylon 5, over two decades earlier, already stated why the character of Tecteun could not have done what they did without already having what she was later seeking.

Fans can only hope that all these retcons to the show will themselves be retconned out by the next show runner, but the decline in ratings may well lead to a cancellation before this gets to happen.