James Gunn's announced DC slate sounds a lot like MCU Phase Four (the first thing the Waller show made me think of was Agatha Harkness--something no one asked for or wants) and not at all like the fresh, clean new slate that was promised. This has created a lot of negative shockwaves among DC fans, who have Guardians of the Galaxy so stuck in their brains they've ignored the warning signs about Gunn. I think the reason Gunn floated the idea of Ezra Miller remaining as the Flash is pure marketing shtick to save The Flash at the box office, but it's a bad look. His garbled and contradictory explanations for firing Henry Cavill just made things worse and put his Superman project under a negative cloud of his own making. I never thought Gunn was the right person to put in charge of DC (or Cosmic MCU when that was the plan), as I think he's highly overrated and lived off the fundamental script work of Nicole Perlman on the first Guardians (as evidenced by the tedium of The Suicide Squad or the bloated Guardians 2). The upcoming dumpster fire might seriously hurt WB, but the core IP will always be available for serious adaptations years down the line. Do I see any hope at all? No, but we can hope that I'm wrong.
The normies have enjoyed HBO's adaptation thus far (4 episodes in), but it hasn't had resonance with the gaming community ala The Witcher when it debuted in December, 2019; in fact, in terms of Google Trends it's only half as impactful as that season. The point of entry for normies into TLOU is almost zero (the genre and characters are far more approachable than a sprawling fantasy IP), so I wonder how much traction the show will actually have. Anecdotally, people I know who've seen it have enjoyed it thus far, but it's worth pointing out the praise is exclusively for Pedro Pascal (unlike the game, where the love for Joel is equaled by the love for Ellie), which echoes The Witcher and Henry Cavill (just to a lesser extent). Whether we'll see a show version of Abby ignominiously beat the race-swapped hero to death with a golf club remains to be seen (I don't think Neil Druckman has the temerity to show a white person beating a POC to death--then again, maybe Abby will be race-swapped too), but we can hope normies get to enjoy that just as much as the gaming community did.
We got another update on Red Sonja, with the Variety article's tone feeling a lot like the Deadline article from August (serving as both marketing and to assuage the politically active entertainment world to chill out about the project)--it's entirely possible both articles were paid for to drum up interest. Let's go through the key points:
- It has a B-movie budget (15-20 million) and still lacks a US-distributor; the former means a reliance on practical effects and that the bar to profit is low
- With M. J. Bassett in charge the film is relatively 'safe' from the usual sorts of attacks (as she represents the most important letter in the alphabet community)
- Bassett's comment about the film dealing with climate change is puzzling--there's context missing unless it's meant as a sop to the media in an effort to sell the film to a distributor (I don't oppose a positive environmental message, but it's an odd thing to place in a Red Sonja property); Andre's theory is that it will reflect the Younger Dryas period--grains of salt on that, but maybe
- As I predicted, the film will skip Roy Thomas' origin story and stick with the updated version from Gail Simone (I have no attachment to the Thomas origin, so that's no big deal)
- The earlier Joey Soloway iteration of the film was described as 'incompetent', which is no surprise (perhaps it would have been the Velma of fantasy)
- This is trivial, but I'd somehow missed that Soloway had been MeToo'd (something quickly forgotten--I don't think any of the women accused of harassing men got cancelled during the movement--hell, Weinstein's assistant Leslye Headland is still making a Star Wars series)
The fear for the film is getting a US-distributor. it might be able to make enough money elsewhere, but there's much more profit (and hype) to be gained in the US. Will it? I have no idea, but my hope is simply that we'll get some competent fantasy after all the garbage of the last few years.
The Willow disaster has come and gone and mercifully there's no serious talk about a second season. While this unfortunately means the IP is dead (the original film was a cult classic rather than a blockbuster), at least the show can be forgotten and the original film left untouched (unlike how Star Wars retconning has actually damaged its original characters). There's not much to say about Willow, as it simply echoes the tendencies of modern fantasy adaptations (Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, The Witcher, etc). Indeed, for those who had never seen the original film, they'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between Willow and any of the other properties. It's a funny thing that execs have missed out on part of what makes fantasy successful: distinctiveness. Modern fantasy adaptations are utterly generic, with casts that reflect modern metropolises filled with cheap generic sets, costumes, and poorly designed Elves. The damage being done to the genre means I don't have any anecdotal stories to tell about Willow, because no one I know watched the show (and I know people who enjoyed Rings of Power as well as Wheel of Time).
Speaking of failure, the gloves were off for Blood Origin as critics were given the greenlight to slaughter the show. Is it meaningfully worse than Willow or Rings of Power etc? No, but Netflix choose not to run the usual interference to get a critical pass. Clearly the execs decided there was no point in trying to save face here, which mercifully saves us from a second season. With that out of the way, we can hope The Witcher season three flops and Netflix gives up on the IP entirely. The other planned spinoff show (Rats) looks to be a similar train wreck, but may be too far along for Netflix to cancel it (I believe it's set to start filming soon). If it does go into production, I won't be surprised to see the episode count cut for Rats just as it was for Blood Origins. Sapkowski says he dislikes the show (cf, which isn't a big deal, as he doesn't like the video games either), which is bad optics for Netflix. Just like with Willow above, no one I know has seen the show, but in this case people were aware of it and simply thought it looked bad.
Season two of Vox Machina slipped through my radar entirely and clearly I'm not the only one, as its Google Trends dropped by a full third compared to season one [it even trails the Dragon Age animated show no one watched in December]. I haven't watched it yet (my reaction to season one can be found here, but in brief its awkwardly paced, histrionic, predictable, but with enough good humour to carry you through it). In talking to people who have seen it, the second season is just like the first (which makes sense, as it's the same creative team). I presume the announced Mighty Nein adaptation will be more of the same in terms of content (will they let Marisha Ray voice a POC?), but if the audience drop continues I'd imagine no second season and no Bells Hells.
This article was written by Peter Levi
