The great Jedi master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the most legendary and respected figures in Star Wars lore, is apparently being dished out to the Mouse House’s fledgling streaming service, Disney+, in a new show set to (presumably) cover Kenobi’s exploits in the decade between the Star Wars prequels and the original trilogy.
But don’t give up hope just yet: Disney is making a valiant effort to have this show look and feel like movie-quality material – so much so, that they’ve gotten Ewan McGregor, who played Kenobi in the prequels, to reprise the iconic role. There’s no hint yet of how large McGregor’s paycheck for the series is, but I’m guessing it’s got to be pretty big to tempt the actor to the small screen – then again, he seems to have a pretty comfortable relationship with Disney already, having previously portrayed a grown-up version of Christopher Robin in the 2018 film of the same name.
As of right now, the show has no official title, so we’ll call it “Kenobi” because I like the sound of that. More details will probably be announced at Disney’s D23 event later this month, but until then we have a few things to think over.
Firstly, the fact that Kenobi is only a Disney+ streaming show is already upsetting fans (by the way, I’ve begun to spell the name of Disney’s streaming service with a + sign instead of writing the word Plus, since apparently that’s how we do things in Hollywood nowadays). That’s a pretty rational complaint: it’s still unclear how large the budgets for these shows will be, and whether they’ll actually maintain the same level of quality as the movies they’re based on – let’s not beat around the bush; people are worried that it’s going to look like a CW show. I’m sorry, CW, you get a lot of flack for stuff you have absolutely no control over (except the ridiculous costumes; those are entirely your fault), but this is how the public thinks. Some are also frustrated that someone of such prestige in the franchise would be demoted in such a way, instead of getting his own film trilogy: in my opinion, the Star Wars prequels were already a perfectly good Obi-Wan Kenobi trilogy, since he was arguably more of an interesting protagonist than Anakin Skywalker. But yeah, this news probably means that all those rumors of a Kenobi movie are just that – rumors. Even if they did come from Deadline.
As for the show’s setting, we have no indication as of yet: but we have to assume it will take place in the decade or two between The Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope, while Kenobi is off…wandering the barren wastelands of Tattooine? I don’t know about you, but a whole series of Obi-Wan just hanging out with Jawas sounds like fun to me: unfortunately though, the showrunners probably will deny us the content we deserve, and instead give us some half-baked story about Obi-Wan before he arrived on the desert planet, stoking the fires of rebellion, fighting rogue Sith lords and running into CGI reconstructions of characters from the original trilogy. Nowhere near as entertaining, I know.
Do I sound slightly cynical and annoyed in this post? It might be because I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about this news: am I happy, or am I one of those angry fans ranting about how Obi-Wan Kenobi, the greatest Jedi in history, was demoted to a Disney+ series? Or is it just because I’m annoyed that I have to use a dumb + sign from now on?
Visionary director Greta Gerwig is bringing the story of Little Women back to the big screen this Christmas, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. This is an adaptation of the story that turns the spotlight on 19th Century gender politics, and the four March sisters who learn how to navigate an oppressive society without sacrificing any of their freedom and passion for life. This is, according to Gerwig, a story drawn not only from Louisa May Alcott’s original novel, but from the author’s personal worldviews and other writings: it is a message about what defines true love, perseverance and resistance.
It leads to an unusual but exciting first trailer for the film, which seems both old-fashioned in its setting and peculiarly modern in its attitude; even radical at times. Saoirse Ronan, the film’s lead actress, portrays Jo March, the eldest of the four sisters and the writer of the group, who tries to publish a novel in which the lead character, a woman, doesn’t marry – something to which her publisher strongly objects; Emma Watson is Meg March, who, of course, does end up happily married, despite Jo’s insistence that she should follow her dream to become an actress – she’s seen as one of the weaker characters in the story by some modern critics, but Watson is clearly making her much more sympathetic; Florence Pugh is Amy, the self-absorbed “last hope” of the March family; and Eliza Scanlen is Beth, the family’s quietest, most soft-spoken member, who also receives the least screentime in the trailer. All four are forced to look at their lives in new ways, as they experience the turbulence of first love, marriage, motherhood, grief and the pain of growing up and out of their naive innocence.
Meryl Streep also makes an appearance as the short-tempered and domineering Aunt March, easily stealing her scenes in the trailer. We’re in for a definite treat here, with Streep bringing wit and charming elegance to the role of the elderly matron, whose callous exterior hides a gentle heart.
The main takeaway from this trailer is that this Little Women is awards-season gold: a close, intimate study of the era’s views on gender, and the slowly blossoming feminist movement, witnessed through the eyes of four independent and strong-willed heroines. I won’t spoil the story for anyone new to this, but I can assure you it’s perfect material for Christmas: it has heart, personality, and plenty of tearjerking moments, and there’s a strong emphasis on family.
And if you’re not into historical fiction, don’t fear: the first trailer for Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding’s holiday rom-com, Last Christmas, apparently drops tonight, so I’ll probably review that too.
I debated for a long time whether to title this “Jupiter Ascending Review” or “Two Hours Of My Life Wasted On Space Monopoly”. That should tell you something about what this movie is like.
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I only decided to watch Jupiter Ascending, a movie I had never previously seen, because Netflix was promoting it on their social media as a “wacky space opera” that needed to be seen to be believed. The only thing I knew about it was that it starred Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne, someone who I have loved in previous movies like The Theory Of Everything and the Fantastic Beasts franchise. I now feel like I am well within my rights to sue Mr. Redmayne for emotional damages caused by this particular film, which is less like a “space opera” than it is like ” Wagner’s entire Der Ring des Nibelungen but with spaceships”.
This movie is long. So long, in fact, that I had to physically force myself to keep watching at multiple points, but I made it: well, technically there were three or four unnaturally long action-sequences that I had to fast-forward through, and I can’t even say that I’m ashamed. Action-sequences are supposed to be exhilarating and fun – but for some reason, these ones were bizarrely quiet (like Redmayne, but we’ll get to him), and also incredibly dull. There are lots of films out there that get bombarded for having good fight-scenes but a boring, convoluted plot: Jupiter Ascending doesn’t even have halfway-decent fight-scenes, and its plot is structured similarly to a labyrinth. I have to wonder how anyone actually convinced themselves this movie was a good idea – that this movie was even an okay idea. In my opinion, it doesn’t even count as a bad idea: abysmal is nearer the mark. And while I don’t like ranting, I have to make an exception in this case: mostly because I’m going to use this as evidence for when I sue Netflix, Eddie Redmayne, the Wachowskis, and everybody else even remotely involved in this film’s conceptualization, production, release and distribution.
Where do we begin? Can I even try to make sense of the…hmm, it’s not a plot – what’s the word I’m looking for? It’ll come back to me. Anyway, the thing-that-isn’t-a-plot begins with a young Russian woman named Jupiter Jones (the fact that she’s Russian has no impact whatsoever on absolutely anything, but you would at least expect it to influence her name: yeah, no), played by Mila Kunis, who, to give her credit, tries her level best to act with all resources available to her, including, but not limited to: an oversize blanket, a hand-gun, toilet-brush, space-iPad, cloud of CGI bees, wedding-ring dispenser, and eyeliner. Unfortunately for her, everybody else in this film is also trying to act with their eyeliner – and everybody, including Kunis, is failing. Jupiter Jones just so happens to be obsessed with astrology (wouldn’t have guessed it from the name or anything), and her entire motivation throughout the film is…to buy a telescope. She has no interest in playing the Game of Thrones with Eddie Redmayne, and she’s only temporarily intrigued by the laws and customs of Jupiter (for whatever reason), but getting home to her telescope is her primary goal. And, look, I’m not here to judge you (I’m judging you), but who in their right mind actually approved this script? While trying to make money to buy this telescope, Jones gets kidnapped by aliens disguised as fertility clinic doctors (I’m not making this up), before being suddenly rescued by a werewolf/human/alien/angel hybrid bounty hunter with flying boots named Caine Wise. And basically it’s Channing Tatum with eyeliner, pointy ears, a ridiculous chin-beard, and wings (or, rather, horrific scars where his wings used to be, before he was thrown out of heaven or whatever for biting somebody: I’m not joking). Then they blow up most of Chicago, but somehow it gets rebuilt within a day. And that’s it. That’s the plot of this movie.
Don’t make me continue. Please don’t make me.
After being rescued by Channing Tatum and his Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jupiter Jones is whisked off to a farm in the middle of nowhere, where she meets Sean Bean – sorry, “Stinger”, who happens to be a human/alien/honeybee hybrid bounty hunter. You read that correctly, he’s part honeybee. And yes, his name is Stinger. It gets worse from there. Stinger has a lot of helpful exposition to share with Jupiter Jones, and thankfully she has all the questions in the world, including ones that we really didn’t need answered, like “who killed the dinosaurs?” – (it was aliens, by the way). Stinger then tells her everything there is to know about Caine, except for the crucial stuff like; why is he a werewolf? Why did he have wings? Why does he own flying boots? Why did Channing Tatum willingly do this to his career? And when Jupiter learns that she can control bees, Stinger immediately realizes that means she’s the one true queen of the earth, because…because…(don’t make me literally write these words)…bee-cause bees are genetically disposed to recognize royalty, and because bees don’t lie. Remember, somebody actually wrote this script. Jones is then taken captive by a different gang of bounty hunters working for Lord Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne), until it turns out that some of them are actually working for Lady Kalique Abrasax (Tuppence Middleton) – if only I knew or cared who either of those people were, I might actually be somewhat interested in this plot twist. Unfortunately, the movie then decides to try and force me to care by carrying our bee-dazzlingly boring protagonist off to an alien planet where Kalique decides to give another long expository speech about how Jupiter Jones is actually the reincarnation of her murdered mother, before losing Jones in another boring, eerily quiet action-sequence that features Channing Tatum once again swooping in (literally) to save the damsel in distress. Good thing the Wachowskis decided to use that overdone trope a few hundred more times in this movie! Because not only does Jones need to be rescued from Kalique (flying boots do the trick there), but she then needs to be rescued from Lord Titus Abrasax (handy-dandy spaceship battle and incredibly slow-moving wedding ceremony saves the day), and finally from Lord Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne’s incompetence combined with Channing Tatum’s flying boots get Jones out of this one), as various planets and civilizations crumble around her. Thankfully, I couldn’t care less about any of them. Spoiler Alert!, Jupiter Jones eventually ends up with her werewolf alien boyfriend; Eddie Redmayne falls to his death; thousands of innocent human beings are saved by one magical pair of flying shoes, proving that practical footwear is the answer to all of life’s problems; Sean Bean don’t die and the bees don’t lie. Oh, and did I mention that deep inside the planet Jupiter there’s a giant factory where flying lizards transform human souls into a nectar which keeps rich and famous intergalactic bureaucrats eternally youthful? But that, for some reason, the hair-and-makeup team didn’t get the memo and decided to make Eddie Redmayne look like he was sixty?
That’s the plot. That’s Jupiter Ascending. Sadly, it doesn’t end there: this movie relies heavily on some of the most pathetic dialogue ever written, so much so that it deserves a special shoutout for lines like:
“I CREATE LIFE! And I destroy it…” – Lord Balem Abrasax (delivered in a high-pitched scream followed by gravelly whispering, in what I suspect was meant to be an artistic decision).
“I love dogs. I’ve always loved dogs.” – Jupiter Jones (delivered while trying to convince her gravity-defying werewolf buddy that he and she are meant to be together: Tatum’s glassy-eyed silence in response is possibly the only time this film tried to make its characters’ dialogue logical: by not having them speak).
“Does any part of you want to bite me?” – Jupiter Jones (not taking no for an answer, Jones hounds (haha, a canine joke) the werewolf and again tries to make this relationship seem even remotely interesting. I have to hope and pray that this line is only in the movie because someone left the cameras rolling while Kunis was making fun of the script, but didn’t cut it out of the finished product because unfortunately it could easily be misconstrued as intentional: then again, this is the same film that informed me that bees don’t lie, so I don’t know what to bee-lieve anymore).
Now that I’ve shared those gems with you, it’s obviously time to talk about performances, or what little remains of them once you dig through all the exposition, Random Dialogue About Bees, and several layers of hurricane surrounding the planet Jupiter (don’t worry, Channing Tatum does). Eddie Redmayne could have been the highlight of this movie, the one thing preventing it from totally collapsing into a murk of space-ooze. He could have been the sole remaining survivor of this catastrophe, the one member of this cast who could hold his head up high after making this film and point to his performance as the one thing that kept Jupiter Ascending from descending into the never-ending bleakness of the void.
Thank goodness he didn’t do any of that. Instead, we get to see the Academy Award-winner gliding around in a shimmery space-bathrobe before Jeff Goldblum made them cool, alternately screaming at the top of his lungs, whispering so softly you can barely hear him, or drawing breath. The fact that he was still breathing was quite possibly one of the most interesting things about his performance, because I, for one, don’t know if I would have had the strength and perseverance necessary for that role. Alongside Redmayne is screen legend Sean Bean, desperately clinging to his dignity for as long as humanly possible, until he finally just gives up, betrays the good guys for unexplained reasons, develops a moral compass out of nowhere, redeems himself, and…doesn’t even die. The Wachowskis got Sean Bean for their movie and did not kill him: what kinds of filmmakers are they?
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I’d rather not talk about Kunis and Tatum, if it’s all the same to you. I’d rather just stop now.
So what can I say for this film that isn’t negative? It’s wacky, that’s undeniable, and it doesn’t let you forget it once during its incredibly long runtime. But its wackiness isn’t good: it’s the sort of scratching-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that leads to extended sequences spent watching Jupiter Jones walk back and forth between desks at the space DMV, or gives aspiring talent like Gugu Mbatha-Raw a bad name by forcing her to wear giant prosthetic ears. It’s boring, once you’ve seen all that space has to offer, and even Jupiter realizes that halfway into the movie: she couldn’t wait to return to earth, and nor could I. Sadly, there isn’t a place in the universe where I can be far enough away from Jupiter Jones and the flying werewolf angel, because they’re permanently scarred into my brain now. If you want more scathing satirical analysis of this film’s many faults, I will refer you here and here – I don’t even particularly like CinemaSins, so me recommending them says a lot about how bad this movie is.
But if Jupiter Ascending taught me anything, it’s this:
It’s theorizing time! I’m not always an expert at this sort of thing (I tend to have flashes of what I think could be an interesting idea, but…well, we’ll get to that), but I’m mainly writing this post so you – and I – can understand better one of the more intriguing developments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the unveiling of the long-anticipated villain, The Mandarin, and his shadowy terrorist organization; the Ten Rings.
marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com
Well, them too – mainly we’ll be talking about the literal ten rings, what they are, what they can do, whether we’ll see them used as frequent plot devices like the Infinity Stones were (the proper term for an object in a film/book that is used as a plot device, such as Marvel’s Tesseract, is a MacGuffin: bear that in mind).
Let’s start with a recap of what we know: The Mandarin, one of Marvel’s most enigmatic villains, will finally appear in the upcoming film Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, probably filling the role of Shang-Chi’s villainous father from the comics: Fu Manchu. The Mandarin is traditionally an Iron Man villain, and has indeed already been connected with Iron Man in the MCU – members of his terrorist organization kidnapped Tony Stark all the way back in the very first Marvel Studios film. But Stark never actually got a showdown with the mastermind himself – instead, he was surprised to learn that the man he had believed to be The Mandarin was actually just a regular guy (well, if you can call Ben Kingsley a regular guy) who had rather inadvertently had to adopt the moniker before becoming a puppet for an entirely different terrorist group. Needless to say, the Mandarin’s followers weren’t too happy with this guy pretending to be their criminal warlord, so they broke him out of prison after the events of Iron Man 3 and brought him face to face with the real Mandarin, someone we’ve never actually seen onscreen. And that was the last we’ve heard from The Mandarin or the Ten Rings, except for one brief encounter in the first Ant-Man movie, where Scott Lang battled a mercenary working for the organization. Since then, the group has apparently gone underground. But someone (or something…) is going to bring them back to the forefront of the MCU in 2021, clearly, so what can it be?
Well, to explain that, we have to look at the Ten Rings themselves – and I’m not talking about the terrorists anymore, I’m talking about the ten rings; like, rings you wear on your fingers, those kinds of rings. The Ten Rings (the terrorists) will probably be very important to the story of Shang-Chi’s solo movie, but I highly doubt they’re the Ten Rings being referenced in the film’s title – because the Ten Rings, while very mysterious, aren’t exactly legendary: the ten rings, on the other hand…well, those are.
I feel like this post is going to get very confusing. Warning to all future Marvel criminal masterminds: please don’t name your business after your jewelry – it just makes things a lot more complicated than they need to be. Thanks.
Anyway, the Mandarin’s ten rings are almost mythical, and very nearly divine. In the comics, these ten devices were created by a race of aliens known as the Makluans: they are weapons, endowed with the incorporeal spirits of ancient cosmic warriors and heroes, and each also possesses the ability to think and operate on its own, without even needing a wearer to use it. The ten rings are named Remaker, Influence, Spectral, Spin, Incandescence, Nightbringer, Daimonic, Zero, Lightning, and The Liar. They each have specific powers, but if you’re interested I’ll direct you to a place where you can learn more about those. For the purposes of this post, I’m not going to go into the subtle differences between “manipulating the atomic and molecular structures of matter” and “destroying the bonds between the atoms and the molecules”. Let’s put it this way: these things are powerful. Maybe not on quite the same level as, say, the One Ring of Power, but they’re up there.
Now, at first, upon reading all this, I had a crazy idea that somehow the Infinity Stones themselves would be used to explain the ten rings: that, somehow, when Thanos destroyed the seven stones, their broken fragments wandered across the universe and ended up in/on the hands of The Mandarin. Then I kind of realized that The Mandarin has been established to have had these ten rings since at least the 1950s. In the comics, he just happened to be the one guy around when a Makluan spaceship carrying the ten rings crash-landed in China: being a quick-thinking, practical sort of guy, The Mandarin killed the alien pilot and stole the rings. Much of the rest of his story has already been adapted in a slightly different fashion: he kidnapped Tony Stark (been there, done that), and then one of his rings ended up with Malekith the Dark Elf (he’s already dead in the MCU timeline). But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t interesting stories to be told.
For instance, the story of Tony Stark being kidnapped might have been adapted to the big screen already, but the Titanomechs which he built for the Mandarin in the comics haven’t: interestingly, these cyborg killers were later defeated by a swarm of Stark’s nanobots – and in the MCU, one of Stark’s last actions was to bequeath a similar swarm of nanobots to his friend, Peter Parker. There’s also the question of whether or not the rings will have their sentient abilities in the movies: if so, they could easily escape before The Mandarin is (possibly) defeated by Shang-Chi, and might find ten willing hosts for themselves. In the comics, when this happened, none of the hosts were really extraordinary, big-name characters – Malekith was by far the most important of them, and the MCU has already reduced him to a cut-and-dry one-off bad guy. The people that did end up with the rings were all rather pathetic, in fact: a disgruntled Broadway director who named himself “Lightning Conductor”, and a French neo-Nazi, for instance. But this time around, wouldn’t it be much more exciting if the rings actually went looking for the most powerful villains and criminals in the world – especially at this critical time, when there have been reports going around that Marvel wants to produce a villain team-up movie such as Thunderbolts, which could unite characters like Baron Zemo, Justin Hammer, Red Hulk and Ghost.
What do you think? How would you like to see the Ten Rings and the ten rings implemented into the MCU, and what sort of future could they have? Will the Mandarin be a one-and-done villain, or could he make multiple appearances in the next phase of Marvel films? Share your own theories in the comments below!
