Historical Fiction Archives

March 5, 2024

FX’s “Shogun” Is A Stunning Accomplishment

**MINOR SPOILERS FOR SHŌGUN EPISODES 1 – 2 AHEAD!**

Epics. Every streaming service (with the possible exception of Peacock and Paramount+) has one nowadays – a visibly expensive series of breathtaking scale and scope, typically an adaptation of a classic fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction novel, boasting inspired cinematography, immersive production design, stunning visual effects, gripping action sequences, an outstanding cast, and in at least a few cases, strong writing to match. Think HBO’s House Of The Dragon, Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, Andor on Disney+, Apple TV’s Foundation, Netflix’s…uh, relentless barrage of live-action anime adaptations and projects set in The Witcher universe? Most of these are good shows. A few are even great. But with high price-tags come even higher expectations, and in this economy it’s not enough to be a good show, or even a great one. You have to be the best, and your first season needs to be an unprecedented success within its weekend of release, or you’re getting canceled. So every one of these shows is inevitably and unfairly measured up to Game Of Thrones, which for one brief shining moment in television history had all of the aforementioned elements in abundance as well as keeping audiences glued to their TVs week-to-week, and most fall short. Heck, even Game Of Thrones itself went from being great to good, to just okay, to downright bad, over the course of its last three seasons, though that didn’t stop the controversial finale from having record-breaking viewership (somewhat justifying the slew of spin-offs and prequels that HBO has greenlit since).

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun, seated on a white horse on a grassy hillside, with a hawk perched on his hand. He is wearing golden-brown garments, and a tall straw hat with a chinstrap. — Yoshii Toranaga | ca.style.yahoo.com

So when I saw that critics were using the phrase “the next Game Of Thrones” to describe Hulu and FX’s Shōgun – a remake of the 1980 miniseries adapted from James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel by the same name – I didn’t think too much of it. I’ve heard the phrase misused so many times before that it’s lost virtually any and all meaning that it ever had. There is no “next” Game Of Thrones because streaming doesn’t accommodate that kind of communal viewing experience the way television did for Thrones, and streaming shows are given too few episodes and seasons to gradually prove their value, as Thrones did. Don’t get me wrong, in a fair and just world, Shōgun would absolutely be a cultural phenomenon, maybe even running for several seasons and accumulating dozens of Emmy awards and other accolades along the way to a satisfying series finale, but it doesn’t have to be. What it is, however, is an extremely high-quality production with a fine-tuned script, so in that regard, I suppose it is comparable to early Game Of Thrones, and probably more deserving of the comparison than most.

Now, I’ll confess, I’ve never seen the original miniseries and only read about a quarter of the book before putting it down, as I recall being unmoved by Clavell’s writing style and suspicious that the protagonist would turn out to be a white savior (though I’ve heard that’s not the case), so this reimagining of Shōgun wasn’t on my radar until fairly recently. But that only makes the pilot episode more of a triumph, in my opinion, because even without much prior knowledge of the story I was hooked in almost instantly – by the artistry, authenticity, and attention to detail on display in every frame, by the magnificent performances from the entire cast, and by the subversive score from Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Nick Chuba.

This adaptation’s smartest and most significant deviation from the source material is in putting the focus squarely on Shōgun‘s Japanese characters, thereby gently nudging English explorer John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) into a secondary role for which he’s much better suited. He still functions like a window for (white, Western) viewers into the (to white Westerners) unfamiliar world of feudal Japan throughout the first episode, but Shōgun trusts its audience not to need him after a certain point and to come join the party on the other side of that window where all the really interesting stuff is happening, leaving Blackthorne to just keep strutting around confidently – and most amusingly – as if he’s the protagonist, while in reality, he’s unknowingly being used as a pawn in the power struggle between Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the other warlords on Japan’s ruling Council of Regents, spearheaded by Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira).

Sanada, who also serves as a producer on Shōgun and was instrumental in getting this series made in the first place and, furthermore, made with historical accuracy front-of-mind, needs virtually no introduction after more than fifty years spent working across every medium and genre, but outside Japan, audiences far too rarely get a chance to see him in starring roles (in Hollywood blockbusters, most egregiously in Avengers: Endgame, he’s often cast as expendable sword-wielding villains). Shōgun rectifies that. Sanada lifts a sword only once in the first two episodes, and his most memorable scenes have him employing carefully-selected words and precipitous silences as his weapons of choice in negotiations with his enemies and prospective allies. With any stoic and seemingly unshakeable character, there is a balance that must be skillfully maintained to convince the audience of both their humanity and their almost inhuman composure in equal parts, and Sanada walks that invisible line with such ease that you simply have to marvel. It is especially evident through his profoundly intimate conversations with Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a noblewoman of his house whom he appoints to be Blackthorne’s translator, that Toranaga’s sincerity and his solemnity are not in conflict nor in danger of canceling each other out, but in fact conspire to keep him on the path to victory.

Mariko, on the other hand, finds herself torn in different directions by her loyalty to Toranaga and her commitment to her Catholic faith, after Blackthorne’s arrival brings with it the chilling revelation that the Portuguese missionaries embedded in Japan are but the forerunners of a brutal empire that would absorb the country and eradicate its culture. In the middle-ground, that limitless sandbox, Anna Sawai sculpts the series’ most complex and formidable character, who must overcome obstacles that do not exist for the men around her if she intends not only to survive the dark days ahead but carve out a path for herself across blood-soaked battlefields. Her performance is made up of subtle, immensely purposeful movements – the merest flicker of the eyes conveys a hundred emotions.

The cast are backed up by a clean, concise script from Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks (among others) that moves between Japanese, English, and English-representing-Portuguese (one of the few immersion-breaking choices in the series, but ultimately a small grievance to hold against it). The original miniseries notoriously shunned the use of subtitles, a decision one could conceivably praise as subversive if it weren’t made with the explicit intention of shackling the series’ majority non-Japanese speaking audience to the viewpoint of the white Western protagonist, Blackthorne. All this while also aggressively whittling down the book to focus exclusively on Blackthorne, discarding many of the Japanese characters, their subplots, and with them, just about everything I can think of that makes Shōgun worth adapting in the first place. As I’ve mentioned, this new iteration of the story distributes the focus more evenly amongst its cast, denying us access to no crucial scene because Blackthorne isn’t there to witness it.

While I am by no means qualified to speak over actual historians, Japanese historians in particular, as to everything that Shōgun gets right (or wrong; in a production of this scale, it would be shocking if a few small inaccuracies didn’t slip past even the most hands-on cultural consultant, but I have not yet come across any), it has been heartening to hear the whole cast and crew emphasize the importance of telling this story as truthfully as possible, with Japanese creatives in key positions behind the camera as well as in front of it, and to have this further accentuated by the series’ clear, crisp lighting that ensures no aspect of the set design, costume design, or visual effects used to reconstruct entire early 17th Century Japanese cities and castles on Vancouver backlots is lost in the literal darkness that has subsumed so much of modern television as a quick fix for dodgy CGI and cheap wigs. There is a tangible sense of age and wear and depth to every set, every costume, every prop and piece of furniture, on this show.

Now, to be clear, lavish production design is only half the battle in making a visually outstanding piece of television. Good lighting also helps, but cinematography is crucial. I can think of several shows with genuinely beautiful set decoration and costumes and whatnot, that are burdened down by conventional cinematographers who prioritize blunt efficacy over artistry. Shōgun does not suffer from that problem, at least not under Christopher Ross (Ross, whose credits most shockingly include the film adaptation of Cats, only worked on the first two episodes). Intentionally or not, the elegant composition of each shot heavily evokes the artform of Japanese garden design, and many of the same design elements that go into creating these three-dimensional structures, concepts such as empty space, enclosure, and borrowed scenery, can be found in the texture of Shōgun‘s cinematography, albeit adapted for the stark rectangular confines of a television or phone screen.

Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne in Shogun, from the chest up, wearing a dark brown robe. He has close-cropped brown hair and a beard. — John Blackthorne | msn.com

Debuting with a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, which it was able to hold for a couple of days before dipping by a single point based on a single review, Shogun is poised to remain one of the highest-reviewed series’ of the year, and there is no doubt in my mind it will be a strong contender at next year’s Emmys in practically every category (it’s being called a limited series, but that term is used somewhat…liberally, these days). On every front, it is a mighty force. If that holds true throughout the remainder of this season, it may well be that future epics of this staggering scale and exceptional quality will no longer be measured up next to Game Of Thrones, but to Shōgun. Ideally, we would do away with the comparisons altogether, as they help pretty much nobody, but I for one would probably consider it the greatest honor of my life to someday have my work mentioned in the same breath as this masterpiece.

Review: 10/10

May 24, 2021

“Eternals” 1st Trailer Review!

After months of anxious waiting, with only a thirteen second clip to assuage our hunger for new Eternals content, a full-length trailer for Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao’s upcoming Marvel blockbuster has finally been released, offering audiences a proper look into the sprawling, colorful, world that Zhao has designed within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The confines of that universe are nearly limitless, but the Eternals are outsiders regardless – a group of immortal beings appointed by the Celestials to watch over Earth for thousands of years, and determine impartially whether the human race and their planet is worth saving. The twist, of course, is that many of the Eternals end up falling in love with Earth, and start subtly manipulating the flow of human history to guide humans towards a more desirable outcome for everyone…something which will presumably result in chaos, although there’s no official indication yet of the film’s main villain. Unofficially, thanks to toy leaks, we know that the unearthly Deviants, led by a Lovecraftian entity named Kro, will be battling the Eternals.

But thematically, the primary antagonists in this conflict are humanity’s darkest impulses and urges – constantly thwarting the Eternals’ well-intentioned efforts at every turn, and leading the planet into further turmoil. The trailer starts out with a recreation of idyllic rural life in prehistoric times and at the dawn of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, gradually building to the construction of the first walled settlements and cities, including ancient Babylon. There’s plenty here for history buffs to mull over, including the implication that it was the Eternal sorceress named Sersi who gifted an early human one of the famous ceremonial golden daggers found in the tomb of Meskalamdug in the Mesopotamian city of Ur.

But it’s not long before we see humans turning on each other, the gifted dagger being only a prelude for greater and more terrible weapons to come. One scene in the trailer appears to depict the fall of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan to Spanish colonizers, with the supernaturally fast Eternal Makkari helping Aztec civilians to escape while Salma Hayek’s Ajak prepares for battle with the conquistadors. We catch a glimpse of the youngest Eternal, the mischievous Sprite, wandering through the wreckage left in the wake of a volcanic eruption. The trauma and dawning realization in her eyes that this fate awaits the entire world if the Eternals don’t act is clearly a turning point in her character arc.

But in the meantime, while Skeeter Davis’ “The End Of The World” plays hauntingly in the background, many of the other Eternals simply abandon their mission and enjoy themselves while they still can. The film teases several sequences of extraordinary beauty, including an Indian wedding ceremony for Sersi and the Eternal Ikaris, concluding literal millennia of flirting and courtship; a sprawling Bollywood dance number for Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo (who has become a popular celebrity, and is constantly followed around by a camera crew documenting his interactions with the other Eternals); and karaoke night with Sprite. I’d have loved to have seen even a single shot of Phastos joined by his mortal husband (with whom he apparently shares the MCU’s first gay kiss), but alas, nothing just yet.

Crucially, there’s one other thing that we don’t get to see in this trailer – and that’s the Celestials, at least one of whom will presumably arrive in the film’s climax to judge the fate of the world. And I’m talking about the real Celestials, not whatever the heck Ego the Living Planet was supposed to be in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. A Celestial is clearly inbound for Earth based on a shot of the skies darkening with storm-clouds and alien lightning while Sersi and her mortal boyfriend, Dane Whitman, stand hand-in-hand to face the apocalyptic sight. It’s a classic “time-to-get-the-team-back-together” scenario.

But getting the team back together, in this case, has a very literal meaning. The Eternals all have the ability to sync their minds and bodies through something known as the Uni-Mind, which Chloé Zhao depicts through luminous ribbons of golden energy connecting the characters as they levitate above a cliffside in the Canary Islands. Zhao’s use of light – particularly natural light – has become one of the hallmarks of her style, and Eternals provides her with a chance to turn that up to an eleven with the CGI budget now at her disposal.

Of course, this is still a Marvel trailer, so it still has to end with a humorous stinger to remind general audiences why they should go see it (since apparently Chloé Zhao’s name alone and the potential for Marvel’s second serious Best Picture contender isn’t enough for some). But the humor between the Eternals feels natural and easygoing – Ikaris jokes that he should take over the Avengers in the absence of Iron Man and Captain America (whom the Eternals refer to as Captain Rogers, further evidence of their attempted impartiality), and his fellow space gods laugh at him. It’s a cute little moment, made even more endearing by the fact that Angelina Jolie is sitting at one end of the table, cheerfully swigging from a beer mug.

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10

December 21, 2020

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” Review!

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost four months since the world suddenly, shockingly lost Chadwick Boseman to cancer. Despite most of us having never known or met the man personally (and I will forever regret I never had the chance), I and millions of others around the globe were left devastated by Boseman’s death, which cut short an extraordinary career and a life lived honestly by a humble, kind-hearted, man. It’s natural to think of “what would have been”: the films he would have gone on to make, the awards he would most surely have won, and so on. But Boseman’s posthumous filmography, which includes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and numerous episdoes of the animated What If…? series for Marvel, reflects not only Boseman’s versatility as an actor, but his determination to create a lasting legacy for himself that would span vastly different mediums and genres; a legacy that stands on its own.

And that’s what makes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom so incredibly painful to watch, as the film now feels almost too cruel for illuminating the setbacks that Black creatives have always suffered due to the efforts by mediocre white people to hijack their art and culture, not because it’s wrong to depict this by any means (quite the opposite)…but because it’s Chadwick Boseman’s character, underdog horn player Levee, who is actively being cheated out of his legacy in the film by a system that rewards theft and punishes integrity. But while some may find the pain still too raw to revisit (and as always, I encourage you to decide for yourself if that’s the case), I believe that the film makes one thing clear unintentionally: that even Chadwick Boseman’s sheer ability to carve out the beautiful, incredible legacy he has is something that cannot be taken for granted, although by rights it should – because for centuries, and right up until this present day, Black art, talent, and culture has been appropriated by white folks. And it’s up to white folks and allies of the Black community to call out that appropriation, and help to protect and preserve the legacies of Black creatives.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is entirely focused on this concept of trying to build a legacy, and the harsh toll it exacts on the Black creatives who have to fight every single day to protect their work. Ma Rainey (played by Viola Davis, who herself famously called upon Hollywood to stop calling her the “Black Meryl Streep” unless they were going to start paying her accordingly) is seen as a difficult and unreasonable diva by her white manager and producer, but that’s because – as she explains in a brilliant monologue to her trombonist, Cutler (Colman Domingo) – she can’t afford to be fair and reasonable, because she knows that as soon as she lends her voice to the record album her production studio is creating, they’ll have no further use for her. She has to demand better, or she won’t be treated any better; whether that means requiring that she be served a Coca-Cola (in a prolonged sequence that, let me tell you, really made me want a Coca-Cola), or insisting that her nephew, who stutters, be featured on her biggest song, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, even though it takes six tries and six vinyl records to get it right.

Davis commands attention from the moment she appears onscreen, decked out in feathery finery, and literally glistening under lighting that is somehow both deeply uncomplimentary and strangely flattering to her mesmerizing stage persona. Maxayn Lewis provides Rainey’s rich, soulful, singing voice on almost all the songs in the film, but the rest is an intoxicating blend of Davis’ physical presence, her costuming department, and the particularly noteworthy efforts of her hairstyling and makeup team, whom I predict will be the Oscar frontrunners in their category. The final result of all their contributions is a bundle of joyous, irreverent charisma – a proud Black woman owning herself, her body, and her sexuality.

Her sexuality is a particularly interesting topic because the real-life Ma Rainey is strongly believed to have been a queer woman. And although the character of her girlfriend in the film, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), is entirely fictional, there’s evidence to suggest that Rainey did have a romantic relationship with one of her contemporaries, blues singer Bessie Smith. Depicting Ma Rainey authentically is important for several reasons, not least of all because we’ve seen very few stories of real-life Black LGBTQ+ historical figures depicted onscreen: and even fewer in a context where their sexuality is not the defining feature of their character. Ma Rainey is queer and a great singer and a savvy businesswoman…she’s allowed to be multi-faceted, and I love that.

Boseman’s Levee, meanwhile, spends a considerable amount of time trying to seduce Ma Rainey’s girlfriend away from her, much to her annoyance. A cocky, easy-going young playboy making his own music and gradually distancing himself from his older, wiser, bandmates, Levee is an antagonist to Rainey’s ambitions, but one gifted with warmth, charisma, and humanity: all talents innate to Chadwick Boseman, and which the actor easily imbues into his character…particularly in one beautifully written monologue sequence that I imagine must be taken word-for-word from the August Wilson play upon which Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is based (like the recurring motif of Levee’s yellow shoes and the closed door in the recording studio that Levee repeatedly tries to break down, both of which came off as obviously theatrical devices to me). My biggest gripe with stage-to-screen adaptations tends to be dialogue, which can feel gratingly unnatural in movies: but while I wouldn’t say Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom doesn’t sometimes have that problem, I do think the actors – particularly Davis, Boseman, and Domingo – make it work in all the scenes that count.

The one aspect of the film that has drawn criticism, however, is the one crucial scene it adds to the screenplay: drastically changing the overall tone of the story – rather like the inverse of The Boys In The Band, which added a single, hopeful scene to the film adaptation’s ending to address criticism of the original play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom adds one scene that, without context, is completely mundane and uninteresting…but with context, is haunting, deeply disturbing, and a bleak reminder of how far we haven’t come since the 1920’s, and how much further we still have to go. Without getting into spoilers, I will say this much: it directly addresses the topic of cultural appropriation, and forces you to re-evaluate the entire film from that perspective. The original play did touch on this subject too, from what I understand, but not in this manner. I get why this scene was added – it’s not merely shocking, but also extremely important to the film’s central theme.

Cultural appropriation, an extension of white supremacy and imperialism, is the ultimate act of theft: the grand robbery of an entire art-form, or fashion, or tradition, or way of life, in most cases carried out by white folks who either think they’re being funny by contributing to harmful stereotypes, or are actively stealing an idea because they’ve decided they like it so much that they want to market it as something socially-acceptable for white people to buy/wear/whatever, and don’t understand or care how their actions keep the violent spirit of colonialism alive in the modern day. The latter is the more insidious of the two, and has been deeply engrained in the music and entertainment industries for over a century. How many great legacies were set in stone by Black creatives, only to be overwritten and overshadowed by white people stealing their ideas? We’ll probably never know. But I hope that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, for many, will be the wakeup-call they need to the terrible effects of cultural appropriation, and the need to address it now, as we head into the roaring 2020’s.

Movie Rating: 9/10

December 16, 2020

“Anastasia” Review!

So…this isn’t really a Christmas movie, or a holiday-themed movie in general. In fact, most of Fox Animation’s Anastasia takes place in the spring or summer. But just as the film has often been mistaken for a Disney Princess movie ever since its release in 1997 and is now even being categorized under the Princesses section on Disney+ (where it arrived on the 4th of this month), so to has Anastasia acquired a lasting reputation as a winter movie thanks to its iconic theme, Once Upon A December, one of only three memorable songs in the entire movie; and its early scenes in frigid Saint Petersburg during the Bolshevik Revolution.

Obviously, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, this movie has glaring historical inaccuracies. As many, if not more than, Disney’s Pocahontas: which is saying something. And look, I get it. The mystery of Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna’s “disappearance” is timeless and alluring, and in 1997 still technically unsolved…but even then, most people had already come to the logical conclusion (confirmed in 2009, after DNA testing) that Anastasia, like the rest of her family, was murdered by a Soviet firing squad. The long line of impostors who famously claimed to be the lost Romanov Princess were just that, impostors: most of them vying for the family’s fortunes rather than the throne of Russia. There’s even reason to believe the rumors of Anastasia’s survival were circulated by the Soviets themselves as a harmless distraction from the violent truth. Over the years, she’s become an almost mythical figure: whether she’s mythic enough to warrant a romantic fairytale about her life is a question for the ages.

But the film doesn’t just paint an inaccurate depiction of one historical figure’s life. More offensively in my opinion, it also makes the laughable decision to portray all of Anastasia’s family as heroes, whose opulent existence is justified because of how elegant and righteous they are. The truth is that the Romanovs (specifically Tsar Nicholas, Anastasia’s father) were tyrannical aristocrats who unknowingly orchestrated their own destruction. And in reality, the Bolshevik Revolution was spurred by Russia’s poor and battle-worn citizens, who rose up in protest of the Tsar’s crimes against his people – they were not inspired by demons under the control of the mystic Rasputin, a controversial and fascinating figure whom history has remembered as a devilish villain for reasons unfathomable to me. Even today, films like The King’s Man still rely on that trope. Obviously, movies are going to mess around with the truth: animated family movies especially. But who makes an animated family movie about a brutally murdered Tsarist princess to begin with?

Don Bluth, that’s who: and his talent shines through in the finished work, because Anastasia‘s stunning animation is among its strongest elements, blending the traditional hand-drawn style with bits and pieces of vivid CGI – still quite new at the time, and alarmingly beautiful even today, after 23 years. The character design is marginally more interesting than Disney’s formula, with Anastasia (voiced by Meg Ryan) in particular having a more mature face than many of her teenaged equivalents over at the House of Mouse.

Meg Ryan and John Cusack are both well-cast, and perfectly likable as Anastasia and the con-artist Dimitri, who initially tries to pass off the unassuming amnesiac girl as the lost Romanov princess before realizing that she’s the real deal. Anastasia, despite bearing little more than a passable physical resemblance to her real-life counterpart, is actually a really compelling character in animation: confident, capable, and pro-active, taking the lead when she’s in trouble and fixing problems on her own. She’s not a damsel in distress, and it’s she, not Dimitri, who takes on the villain in the third act and defeats him. When this movie was released, no Disney Princess could boast the same claim (Mulan would become the studio’s first, a year later). Additionally, the movie puts a fun little twist on the classic “happily ever after” trope, which for most Disney Princesses means marriage, by having Anastasia and Dimitri elope and run off together instead (a minor scandal in comparison to the political crisis that Anastasia’s reappearance probably should have sparked in 1920’s Europe: something the film never addresses).

But as Disney demonstrated time and time again during the height of its Renaissance, a good animated movie needs a good animated villain – and by animated, I mean both literally and figuratively: the best of Disney’s villains are the big, bold, campy caricatures who leap off the screen thanks to their eccentric mannerisms, comedic vocal performances, and eye-catching designs. Think Ursula, Scar, Captain Hook, Jafar, or Cruella De Vil. Anastasia‘s villain, the mystic Rasputin (voiced by Christopher Lloyd), is a half-baked imitation of these and others. He’s cool in theory, a turbulent evil spirit trapped in Limbo, with limbs and appendages constantly popping off and scurrying away: but he’s also just…trapped in Limbo for most of the movie, relying on his minions to do his dirty work. He’s a big, bold, campy caricature that’s got nowhere to go and nothing to do until the third act. And whereas most Disney villains interact with the protagonist at least once or twice before their final confrontation, Rasputin doesn’t. So he nears success, but falls short of true greatness.

The other key ingredient in a Disney movie is a collection of hit songs that drive the plot forward and allow characters to reveal their motivations and goals to the audience in a dynamic and engaging way, rather than just unloading it all in a series of exposition dumps. Anastasia emulates the best of the best, but its songs – apart from “Once Upon A December” – don’t really match the film’s grandiose subject matter. “Journey To The Past” is probably the most effective song in the movie, being the next step up from an “I Want” song, in that Anastasia isn’t just singing about something inaccessible she yearns to have; she’s already singing about how she’s going to get what she wants, and simultaneously setting off on her physical and emotional journey (and interestingly, in recent years, Disney Princesses have begun to follow suit: “Almost There” from Princess And The Frog, “Let It Go” from Frozen, and “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana are all songs about and accompanied by action). One has to wonder how much of the film’s progressive attitude is the result of Carrie Fisher, an uncredited screenwriter who apparently lent her talents to helping craft the entire “Journey To The Past” sequence.

It’s deeply ironic that Anastasia, which shamelessly followed the tried-and-true Disney formula and battled Disney’s Hercules for box-office supremacy in 1997, is now a Disney movie thanks to the Disney/Fox merger, and is already being ranked among the studio’s legendary princesses – although she’s still unofficial, and is unlikely to ever retroactively become an actual member of the line-up. When Anastasia released, Disney concentrated all its efforts on trying to sabotage the film’s marketing strategy, even re-releasing The Little Mermaid on the same day, and banning the film’s corporate sponsors from advertising on ABC’s Wonderful World Of Disney program. Now, the official Disney+ Twitter account has been busy promoting the movie as if nothing ever happened. That’s what I call character development (or typical capitalism: you decide).

Movie Rating: 8/10