Movie Review: Deadpool and Wolverine

Marvel Studios/Disney

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After thoroughly enjoying Deadpool and Deadpool 2 I was quite looking forward to Deadpool and Wolverine. Friday night I sacrificed a couple of hours of sleep by attending a late screening of the film at my local AMC and with the seat fully reclined laid back to enjoy the show.

I would have been happier with the sleep.

I can say with all honesty that the screening of Deadpool and Wolverine elicited just one emotion from me: boredom.

The credits list five writers for the screenplay and man oh man does it show. The film is wildly inconsistent lacking in any unifying vision, theme, or structure. It is almost as disrespectful to the Deadpool stories that preceded it as Alien 3 was to Aliens.

Characters exist within the context of the relationships if you break the relationships, you break the character. Deadpool and Wolverine shatters the relationships between Wade Wilson and the previous characters of the franchise.

The nature of Wade’s relationships with the various secondary characters is a crucial element in Wade’s own character. Mind you all these characters are present in the film, in a group scene that has all the emotion of a checklist.

The character disrespected the most, whose transformation is so at odds with their earlier incarnation is beggars belief to accept them as the same character is of course Vanessa.

Introduced in the first film Deadpool’s love interest Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) became an instant favorite for many people. Her sex worker character was neither tragic nor possessed of the trite and cliche ‘heart of gold’ but rather a suitable and equal foil for Wade Wilson’s massive presence. She had the vitality and sprit to occupy the screen and hold her own. The second film’s ending was reshot to satisfy audiences who were unwilling to accept such a dynamic character’s death for mere protagonist motivation points.

In Deadpool and Wolverine Vanessa now an office worker and manager has had all of that fire extinguished. The changes to her character is presented as the reason for the changes to Wade’s but are so totally at odds with what has been established as to make it all utterly meaningless.

Without the loving and interesting character relationships, Deadpool and Wolverine is simply meta references, gags, and pointless combat lacking in all tension.

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Not Every Aspect of a Franchise Should be Mined

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In May, Variety reported that Warner Brothers Studios had announced a new The Lord of the Rings live-action feature to be released in 2026 The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt For Gollum.

To be produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Andy Serkis very little is known about the plot or details of the feature but there are reasonable guesses that can be made.

In the first book of the series The Fellowship of the Ring Gandalf tells Frodo that he and Aragorn had searched for the creature Gollum but that the enemy found him first. In both the film adaptation and the novel this is entirely an off-screen second bit of exposition, but it is a hunt for Gollum and likely the source of the new film. (Though I suppose it is possible that you might build an entire movie around the River folk hunting for Gollum the murderer.)

Making a story work around Gandalf and Aragorn’s search is a tall and tough task. We know they fail; we know they are unharmed and any new or side characters introduced will be treated with life expectancy of a Trek Red Shirt.

I can tell you one thing from Gandalf’s recounting of the hunt that will not make it into this feature, the evidence that Gollum ate babies will be excised.

This is an image, empty cribs left in Gollum’s wake, that haunts me from the novel and one of the reasons why Gollum never achieved any sympathy from me. The wanton murder of children strips any character of any slim hope of redemption. (Yes, I am looking at you Frankenstein’s monster. Life is tough and you were treated horribly but nothing excuses the murder of children.)

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On RDJ’s Return to the MCU

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At the San Diego Comic Con, it was announced after much speculation that the critical role of Dr Doom for the Fantastic Four will be played by Robert Downey jr. This set off debate and speculation about strange possible connections between Tony Stark and Dr Victor von Doom.

Dudes, RDJ is what is technically known as an actor, people skilled in performing characters in fiction. Characters plural.

It used to be much more accepted by audiences that an actor stepping into a role even in a continuing franchise was a new person even if that actor had played someone different in the same franchise before.

Granted this was much more common in television than in film but it was true in film as well. Charles Grey could both be Bond’s contact in one film and then Blofeld in another. Maud Adams could be Bond’s girl in two different movies, and no one asked how she survived her death in the earlier entry because she is playing different characters.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has recycled actor in earlier production. Gemma Chan is both a Kree Warrior and an eternal robot. Alfie Woodward is both a street level criminal and a mother who worked hard for the state department putting her sun Charlie through school. Michell Yeoh is both a Ravager and an elder is a mystic Asian village. Robert Downey jr, while being the most high-profile actor to play two utterly critical and central roles, is following in an established performing arts tradition.

RDJ is a talented actor able to inhabit a number of unique characters. His turn in Oppenheimeris fantastic and I look forward to his portrayal of the vain, villainous, and compelling Dr Doom.

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Quick Thoughts on The Acolyte

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I am late to the party because I have not been overly enamored with the expanded Star Warsproducts of late. I adore Andor and thoroughly enjoyed season 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian but season 3 was aimless, The Book of Bobba Fett felt as though it had no point and Ashoka failed to entrance me and I dropped the show after two episodes.

Disney Studios/Lucas Film

The Acolyte falls squarely in the upper half of these offerings. It was decent enough and I was interested enough to watch the entire season. Set considerably earlier in the cannon’s history the series’ focus is twin girls, Mae and Osha, powerfully force sensitive and at the center of possible Jedi maleficence.

The cast is uniformly good with the most surprisingly performance in my opinion belonging top Mannie Jacinto. He manages a performance so distant to his previously best-known character, Jason Mendoza on The Good Place as to reside in an entirely different galaxy. (Yes, that analogy was intentional.) Lee Jung-jae as a troubled Jedi master was also exceptional.

Amanda Stenberg as the twin women held my attention and played the two characters quite well.

The Acolyte received some serious scorn from elements of fandom. I will not address if the root cause of that scorn is out of misogyny or from a desperate need to preserve an image of the Jedi as pure and wholly good. I must admit that I side with the fiction galactic senator that questions unchecked political power held by a religious order.

Overall, The Acolyte entertained and remained a pleasurable way to past a few evening hours but it is unlikely to stay with me in the manner that Andor has proven. It is not quite Star Wars for adult, but neither is it explicitly for children

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Why the Joke Sticks

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The conservative side of the political divide is upset because the ‘JD Vance is Weird’ line sticks to their vice-presidential candidate like napalm to an innocent civilian.

The ‘weird’ descriptor gained a lot of traction when it was deployed by a Democratic governor and then amplified by a political group that governor headed. From there is has taken off with other surrogates and just plain people on Twitter. Vance’s people have yet to find an effective counter and I think it is unlikely that they will, but it is also unlikely to the dispositive in the election. It sticks because it fits like a key in a lock to many people’s perception of Vance.

One of the minor fake controversies surrounding Vance and that surface before he was picked for the number two slot was that he used eye liner make-up. I have no idea if the man utilizes that particular form of facial make-up, but his eyes are striking in a manner consistent with that use. It adds to his appearance feeling ‘off’ in a way that doesn’t quite rise to intuitively obvious but noticeable.

Vance also exhibits a lack of stage presence or charisma. This is not a new phenomenon. in the 2022 election cycle that elevated Vance to the Senate the Republican Governor in a red state beat his Democratic rival by 25 points but Vance in the same environment could only manage a 7-point victory over Democrat Tim Ryan. Even among Republicans affection for Vance is lukewarm.

These observations made Vance particularly vulnerable to the label ‘weird.’ Bill Clinton gave the impression of someone willing to tell you whatever you wanted to hear, to a smarminess that made the description ‘slick’ stick. During the Regan administration there was a skit where Regan showed his old friend Jimmy Stewart about the white house with Regan kindly but slightly befuddled. Once Stewart left Regan turned into a cold, brilliant calculating man commanding ever officer with sharp orders. That skit is forgotten because it found no cultural fire because that image of Regan, the brilliant mastermind, was at odds with the popular perception. Narratives stick with they line-up with preexisting perceptions.

After McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 the Alaskan governor came under national scrutiny that she was ill-prepared for. When asked what sort of foreign policy experience she brought to the ticket she answered that as governor of a state that was close to Russia this gave her foreign affairs experience. Just as Rick never said, ‘Play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca Palin never said, ‘I Can see Russia from my house.’ That was a satirical performance on Saturday Night Live. But because that performance fitted perfectly with the impression because of Palin poor performance under intense press scrutiny that image of her stuck.

When a single Twitter user posted a joke tweet reporting that in his memoir Hillbilly ElegyVance confessed to having sex with a couch the visual raced to the top of the political environment. The joke about the couch stuck to Vance for a few reasons, firstly because he already had a poor charismatic image, his already well-known and extremist views on sexual matters lends itself to sexual perversions, and finally because anyone slapped with the label ‘hillbilly’ is suspect in American Culture.

JD Vance no matter the outcome of this election is going to remain stuck with the ‘weird’ couch screwing image until he managed to fully shatter it with a wholly new one but that is a monumental task.

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My First Mid-Summer Scream

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Last week was a bit of a jumble with dental appointments and all so I did not get in any blog entries. (And despite what JD Vance might fear Blogs are neither more or less ‘masculine’ than a diary.)

Saturday, I attended my first Mid-Summer Scream a convention focused on horror in the arts. It is in Long Beach so it’s just a couple of hour drive from home, so the plan was up in the morning stay the day and return home late evening.

I posted on Facebook that this was like Comic-Con, going on the same weekend in San Deigo, but for horror. That impression is dead on target. The line to get into the convention wound around the complex for nearly a mile and took nearly an hour to navigate.

Inside the major attraction to people were the Dealer’s Floor, a massive space crammed with dealers in booth selling all sort of things and celebrities there for paid for autographs and photo opportunities. Upstairs and on the main floor were panels discussion, presentations, and performances which I had planned to take up the majority of my time.

I had a brief and pleasant conversation with Victoria Price daughter of legendary actor Vincent Price but my plans for the day were ruined.

About an hour or maybe more after I got into the facility the fire alarm began blaring and flashing. There was no fire or emergency. Perhaps some idiot had pulled the alarm as a stupid prank. Announcements were made that they was no cause for alarm at the alarm and technicians were trying to deal with it.

Forty minutes later it continued to sound and flash. I knew it would not take much more continued exposure on my part to instigate a migraine attack. I still had a long drive home and the prospect of that while suffering a migraine looked unbearable.

I left, the fire alarm still blaring, and made my way home.

Mid-Summer Scream is great for some people but not for me. Like Comic-Con it is simply too large too populated for my taste or enjoyment. I do not regret by day trip, but I shall not repeat it.

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Biden is Out

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In a surprising and ultimately selfless political move President Biden as renounced his intention to be the Democratic Party’s Nominee this November.

No person rises to with reach of the office of President of the United States without possessing a hefty ego and Biden is no exception. Candidates on a glid path to electoral defeat typically remain in the race hoping and delusionally believing that some fantastic twist of fate will win the prize and that bowing out only ensures defeat.

But that is for normal election against normal opponents.  Despite what every election cycle insists most elections are about government at the margins. Tax rates may rise or fall, regulations may tighten or loosen, now programs may start or old ones end but the nature of the American experiment remains the same.

Not this time.

Trump and his cronies have already demonstrated in deed and word that they have nothing but contempt for our democratic way of life. Trump led an attempt to overthrow a valid, free, and fair election and steal the office of President. His Vice Presidential pick has publicly stated that the President should simply ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court and impose the president’s will as that person desires.

The fate of our democracy is as stake in this election and Biden, in a move that is beyond Trump comprehension, understood this. Biden’s ego may have screamed for him to stay in the contest but his understanding of what was at risk proved the greater motivation. He understood that if he lost the nation lost and stood aside to let another carry on the fight he had won the first bout of in 2020.

That is real patriotism and not the false self-serving corrupt thieving that the GOP offers in their lies.

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How Many Legs Should a Dragon Have?

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In a recently and utterly low stakes online conversation the topic has been raised how many legs should a dragon have? This discussion has principally been initiated because G.R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones novels, disputed the image used for the newest series which shows the beast with four legs and two wings.

Martin’s argument is based on evolution and that flying creatures evolved wings from their forelimbs leaving only the rear two to serve as legs. He’s right about that. On Earth all land animal life descended from a common ancestor which set the pentadactyl limb structure. Everything animal we know has the basic limb design, One Bone, Two Bones, Many Bones. IF dragons were evolved creatures from an ecology that mirrors Earth’s, then you would expect the same body form rules to apply.

In fact, the common ancestor is the reason why I have an issue with Cameron’s Avatar. Every land animal in that ecology has six limbs except for the big-eyed human analog. They are as out of place as a four-legged dragon.

But if they were evolved creatures they would not exist.

There is simply no way that a beast that large, that massive will evolve flight. Yes, there were some flying dinosaurs with absolutely enormous wingspans, but they remained light, fragile creatures not massive lizards with weights measures in tons. It is furthermore an impossibility for the ‘fire breathing’ to evolve as depicted. The energy consumption required to power such abilities is too staggering to contemplate.

With all that said, dragons exist in a setting where the laws of physics are upended by sorcery and magic. In a world where non-nuclear transmutation is possible, and the laws of thermodynamics are abandoned. In such a setting a genesis for a creature outside of biological evolution exits and along that path the arguments of two or four legs are reduced to the author’s preference.

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No One Knows

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Macbeth Act 1 Scene 3

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favors, nor your hate.

We have no untrustworthy witches with which to foretell the destiny of our nation. All we have are untrustworthy polls and badly fitted historical analogies as we confront a crucial presidential election like no other.

The Republican Party is now shorn of all principle, devoting itself to a charlatan, a felon, a misogynist, and an insurrectionist all melded together like some horrid Voltron in the orange hued body of Trump. Never has a major party candidate mused about setting aside the Constitution, suggested that the military fire upon those protesting him, or been so enamored with strong men that murder and repress their own populations. And yet every measurable metric indicates a strong possibility of his electoral victory in November.

The Democratic party meanwhile is led by an aging pol form whom the signs of time’s inevitable decline seeming grow by the hour. It is an unavoidable truth that in appearance Biden’s looks weaker and more frail than he ever has. A terrible truth of elections is that appearance matters far more than reality. Did you know that there are studies that show a population of test subjects, utterly unfamiliar with any election or candidate can predict the outcome of a two-person election based solely on photographs of the candidates? Elections are not about policy and positions but vibes and narratives and the narrative is bad for Biden.

The Trump’s campaign is to attack Biden as ‘weak’ and Trump as ‘strong’ a battle plan that works more and more as Biden appears frailer and more aged.

Does that mean Biden should step aside?

I don’t know. In the modern era no party that has dumped its incumbent has gone on to victory.

A new candidate would throw the Trump’s campaign plans into chaos, but no one know what narrative would emerge.

Trump is the most dangerous candidate to ever try for the office and should he win reelection the nature of our democracy is changed. Even if he leaves at the end of his second term, either by walking out or being carried out, the changes he and his people plan to do lay the groundwork for further changes. Project 2025 envisions sweeping changes to the Federal government amplifying the powers of the presidency. This prospect thrills those on the right but they should quake at the thought that that those newly found powers will not always reside in hand that they control.

Never craft a political power you aren’t willing to hand to your opponents.

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No Two Books

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A common discussion point among writers is if you are a ‘plotter,’ that is someone who outlines your novel before writing it, or a ‘pantser’ (from ‘by the seat of your pants’ a person who writes without an outline. What I have discovered for myself is that no two books are written the same way even for the same author.

I have written heavily plotted novels. The longest outline I have created I think was some 87 pages, that’s nearly 22,000 words or about 20 percent of the total book. My last completed novel, the fascist werewolf one, I write sans outline. Though after about the first 10,000 words I created a 1-page document with the major thematic events for each of the five acts.

The current novel, a folk horror that is sort of The Wicker Man meets The Dunwich Horror is flying between these two extremes. I have crafted detailed character studies for the major character, again I have the 1-page document about the five-act structure but this time I am outlining act by act.

I have written a fairly detailed outline for act 1 and that act has mostly conformed to the battle plan. Now with 16,000 words completed (but not edited) the first act is finished. It is time to write the outline for the second act informed by how the characters appeared to me in the first. Luckily, I started the writing process early on this one and I am currently about 10 days ahead of schedule so there is plenty of time to compose this next outline and still make my goal of a completed draft by year’s end.

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