TheVictoriousV
Joined Sep 2008
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How blessed we are to have something like Andor. It is the only great thing (maybe even the only truly good thing) to come out of the post-Disney Star Wars era, it's the best that Star Wars has been since the franchise first began, and perhaps most impressively, it is the only piece of Star Wars media I could recommend even to people who don't much like Star Wars.
The reasons for this are several: It is mature in a way that the other films and shows aren't, it goes to different corners of George Lucas' galaxy that don't involve (or demand the viewer's knowledge of) the same old characters and concepts, and it aims to first and foremost tell a good, complex, resonant story of revolution instead of getting bogged down in precisely that -- call-backs to characters and places you already know and whose mere mention you're supposed to soy out over.
The characters act and speak like fully fledged human beings, things move with heft and weight, its political messaging goes beyond modish buzzwords, and the Galactic Empire feels like a threat in a way you'll never see in other Disney-Star Wars media -- where Din Djarin or Boba Fett or whoever dispose of Stormtroopers like they're mere video game enemies. Andor understands "quality over quantity" better than the Sequel Trilogy ever could; it doesn't just throw 100 superlaser-equipped Star Destroyers (that then get easily destroyed because "they don't know which way is up") at us. Last season, one single TIE Fighter (the ship that exists in a swarm of disposable "mooks" during most of the franchise's space battles) was presented with all the terror of the WW2 bomber that inspired their sound design. In Season 2, we get scenes that demonstrate how fascists make their ideas more palatable to those on the fence; these aren't simply mustache-twirling villains, which would be the easy way of doing it.
Certain fanboys are, of course, testy about all this: from complaints that it "doesn't feel like Star Wars" -- even though my father, a fan since the 70s, argues that the fact that it treats us to new sights makes it "feel" the way witnessing Star Wars felt at the very beginning -- to complaints that the franchise that gave us The Slave Bikini "suddenly" regards sexual abuse. They also think it's boring and that nobody cares about Cassian Andor, which may be the same mentality for why Disney execs let Tony Gilroy cook, meddling-free, vs if he'd used more marketable characters and stories.
You'll get your keys plenty jangled some other time, guys. Let the adults have something.
The reasons for this are several: It is mature in a way that the other films and shows aren't, it goes to different corners of George Lucas' galaxy that don't involve (or demand the viewer's knowledge of) the same old characters and concepts, and it aims to first and foremost tell a good, complex, resonant story of revolution instead of getting bogged down in precisely that -- call-backs to characters and places you already know and whose mere mention you're supposed to soy out over.
The characters act and speak like fully fledged human beings, things move with heft and weight, its political messaging goes beyond modish buzzwords, and the Galactic Empire feels like a threat in a way you'll never see in other Disney-Star Wars media -- where Din Djarin or Boba Fett or whoever dispose of Stormtroopers like they're mere video game enemies. Andor understands "quality over quantity" better than the Sequel Trilogy ever could; it doesn't just throw 100 superlaser-equipped Star Destroyers (that then get easily destroyed because "they don't know which way is up") at us. Last season, one single TIE Fighter (the ship that exists in a swarm of disposable "mooks" during most of the franchise's space battles) was presented with all the terror of the WW2 bomber that inspired their sound design. In Season 2, we get scenes that demonstrate how fascists make their ideas more palatable to those on the fence; these aren't simply mustache-twirling villains, which would be the easy way of doing it.
Certain fanboys are, of course, testy about all this: from complaints that it "doesn't feel like Star Wars" -- even though my father, a fan since the 70s, argues that the fact that it treats us to new sights makes it "feel" the way witnessing Star Wars felt at the very beginning -- to complaints that the franchise that gave us The Slave Bikini "suddenly" regards sexual abuse. They also think it's boring and that nobody cares about Cassian Andor, which may be the same mentality for why Disney execs let Tony Gilroy cook, meddling-free, vs if he'd used more marketable characters and stories.
You'll get your keys plenty jangled some other time, guys. Let the adults have something.
In an age where a great many animated TV shows are given the closure they never quite got when they first aired (from Samurai Jack to Clone High), it figures that, since we still somehow aren't sick to death of superheroes, it would eventually happen to 1992's X-Men: The Animated Series.
Released around the same time as Bruce Timm's Batman series, this was a show that ushered in a new era of darker and heavier superhero cartoons when most were accustomed to the tone of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or Ninja Turtles. Alas, beloved though it was, it ended on a cliffhanger -- one that only now, 27 years later, gets resolved.
The announcement of X-Men '97 made me cautiously optimistic; intrigued but wary. And when we eventually saw that the final product looked more like Invincible and less like Marvel's What If...? (few of us expected a properly 2D-animated show), I became hopeful. Most of the characters looked right, many of the old voice actors were back, the Ron Wasserman theme music went as hard as ever, and, get this, the show seemed to understand that Cyclops is the leader of the group -- now with even more on his plate following the passing of Professor Charles Xavier -- and that Wolverine isn't the main character.
In the first episodes alone, they managed to understand the Cyclops character better -- while making far cooler use of his optic blasts -- than Fox's movies ever did. The show quickly made me realize just how much those films were lacking in terms of what I once adored about this crew of heroes: Beast quoting literature while kicking ass, Storm being a fearsome mentor, Rogue NOT being an angsty teenager, and of course, Wolverine being short, smelly, and unpleasant instead of an Australian Broadway hunk.
Hell, some elements of the show are spot-on precisely because of how "bad" they are, namely the sometimes stiff animation, the odd pacing, and the very "Saturday Morning" dialogue (there's even a "...NOT!" joke). The digital drawings do look a little too clean, which results in more distractingly stiff moments; it's never as charming as the old hand-drawn images. But the action is often spectacular (in choreography as well as speed and sound design) and the themes are handled in a way that works for the temporal setting while evoking modern equivalencies -- MAGA rioters, Jan6, etc. -- in ways that make sense. The stories being adapted are fairly old; nonetheless, their themes resonate just as much today, if not more. The personal drama is just as potent, and while I ragged on the character animation earlier, the coloring and shading intensify the drama something fierce.
And in some ways, I do understand people who feared that this reboot would be, maybe not "suddenly progressive-minded" -- there is nothing sudden about it -- but more didactically, preachily, and simplistically so. As it should, however, X-Men '97 regards issues of injustice and equality in mature terms -- certainly more so than 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the throwaway lines about rich white men in Harley Quinn.
Most importantly, it treats the debates between Xavier and Magneto in a manner where we understand both perspectives; both methodologies. A flashback scene between the two includes one of my favorite lines in the series, where Magneto scrutinizes humanity's unwillingness to get better: "They're already the best everything. Best tribe. Best faith. They even fight over who is the best victim."
In an age where more and more people are growing weary of superheroes, X-Men '97 serves to remind us what it is we love -- or used to love -- about these stories and what it is that, for the longest time, has either been missing or been shoddily replicated (not just because men in tights will always look a little silly in live-action, hence why the first-ever X-Men film sheepishly went for black leather instead of colorful spandex, and yes, there is a joke about that in one episode). Hell, this show even seemed to steal all the attention away from Season 2 of Invincible (once regarded as the best and cleverest superhero show of its era), which is no small feat. As tired as we get of both superhero stories and reboots, it's always a joy to see both done right.
Released around the same time as Bruce Timm's Batman series, this was a show that ushered in a new era of darker and heavier superhero cartoons when most were accustomed to the tone of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or Ninja Turtles. Alas, beloved though it was, it ended on a cliffhanger -- one that only now, 27 years later, gets resolved.
The announcement of X-Men '97 made me cautiously optimistic; intrigued but wary. And when we eventually saw that the final product looked more like Invincible and less like Marvel's What If...? (few of us expected a properly 2D-animated show), I became hopeful. Most of the characters looked right, many of the old voice actors were back, the Ron Wasserman theme music went as hard as ever, and, get this, the show seemed to understand that Cyclops is the leader of the group -- now with even more on his plate following the passing of Professor Charles Xavier -- and that Wolverine isn't the main character.
In the first episodes alone, they managed to understand the Cyclops character better -- while making far cooler use of his optic blasts -- than Fox's movies ever did. The show quickly made me realize just how much those films were lacking in terms of what I once adored about this crew of heroes: Beast quoting literature while kicking ass, Storm being a fearsome mentor, Rogue NOT being an angsty teenager, and of course, Wolverine being short, smelly, and unpleasant instead of an Australian Broadway hunk.
Hell, some elements of the show are spot-on precisely because of how "bad" they are, namely the sometimes stiff animation, the odd pacing, and the very "Saturday Morning" dialogue (there's even a "...NOT!" joke). The digital drawings do look a little too clean, which results in more distractingly stiff moments; it's never as charming as the old hand-drawn images. But the action is often spectacular (in choreography as well as speed and sound design) and the themes are handled in a way that works for the temporal setting while evoking modern equivalencies -- MAGA rioters, Jan6, etc. -- in ways that make sense. The stories being adapted are fairly old; nonetheless, their themes resonate just as much today, if not more. The personal drama is just as potent, and while I ragged on the character animation earlier, the coloring and shading intensify the drama something fierce.
And in some ways, I do understand people who feared that this reboot would be, maybe not "suddenly progressive-minded" -- there is nothing sudden about it -- but more didactically, preachily, and simplistically so. As it should, however, X-Men '97 regards issues of injustice and equality in mature terms -- certainly more so than 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the throwaway lines about rich white men in Harley Quinn.
Most importantly, it treats the debates between Xavier and Magneto in a manner where we understand both perspectives; both methodologies. A flashback scene between the two includes one of my favorite lines in the series, where Magneto scrutinizes humanity's unwillingness to get better: "They're already the best everything. Best tribe. Best faith. They even fight over who is the best victim."
In an age where more and more people are growing weary of superheroes, X-Men '97 serves to remind us what it is we love -- or used to love -- about these stories and what it is that, for the longest time, has either been missing or been shoddily replicated (not just because men in tights will always look a little silly in live-action, hence why the first-ever X-Men film sheepishly went for black leather instead of colorful spandex, and yes, there is a joke about that in one episode). Hell, this show even seemed to steal all the attention away from Season 2 of Invincible (once regarded as the best and cleverest superhero show of its era), which is no small feat. As tired as we get of both superhero stories and reboots, it's always a joy to see both done right.
This is the only episode I've seen of the new batch so far, but I'm comfortable saying the season is a "return to disturbing form" for this show.
I've joked before that Black Mirror is becoming an increasingly unnecessary show in a world where nothing these writers come up with could hold a candle to some of the things that have started happening in reality -- the things people actually do with technology now, including letting it do creative expression for them. Dystopian sci-fi satire doesn't hit as hard when we live in a time of suicide pods, gamepad submarines designed to take billionaires on vacation to the Titanic wreckage, apps in place of girlfriends (or even friends), pop stars going to space (!) for fun while others barely make ends meet, and the IDF making wholesome anime AI art of itself.
That said, I think the latest season is a step up from the previous one (with its weird werewolf story and its poorly acted, toothless critique of Netflix and AI entertainment), starting strong on what feels like a decently believable "not-too-distant future" where companies have found a way to effectively make life itself into a subscription streaming service, through a procedure that puts the personhood of a dying patient on a hard drive and then "streams" the consciousness -- for a price, of course -- to a brain implant that replaces the malfunctioning bits. As you'd expect, the service eventually sneaks in price changes, extra costs, and even ads, as per the TOS fine print.
Episodes like this make me rethink my stance: Black Mirror has the potential to hit even harder than before, its dark futures/reflections seeming more realistic than they ever did.
We'll see if the rest of the season is up to par or if it continues to pale in comparison to real life. When a bunch of tech bros took to Twitter and started talking about how nice it'd be if we had a "White Mirror" that talks about how GOOD technology and AI can be for everyone, Charlie Brooker no doubt kicked himself over the fact that he didn't come up with the premise of an AI apologist getting angry at Black Mirror and asking ChatGPT to make White Mirror for him.
I've joked before that Black Mirror is becoming an increasingly unnecessary show in a world where nothing these writers come up with could hold a candle to some of the things that have started happening in reality -- the things people actually do with technology now, including letting it do creative expression for them. Dystopian sci-fi satire doesn't hit as hard when we live in a time of suicide pods, gamepad submarines designed to take billionaires on vacation to the Titanic wreckage, apps in place of girlfriends (or even friends), pop stars going to space (!) for fun while others barely make ends meet, and the IDF making wholesome anime AI art of itself.
That said, I think the latest season is a step up from the previous one (with its weird werewolf story and its poorly acted, toothless critique of Netflix and AI entertainment), starting strong on what feels like a decently believable "not-too-distant future" where companies have found a way to effectively make life itself into a subscription streaming service, through a procedure that puts the personhood of a dying patient on a hard drive and then "streams" the consciousness -- for a price, of course -- to a brain implant that replaces the malfunctioning bits. As you'd expect, the service eventually sneaks in price changes, extra costs, and even ads, as per the TOS fine print.
Episodes like this make me rethink my stance: Black Mirror has the potential to hit even harder than before, its dark futures/reflections seeming more realistic than they ever did.
We'll see if the rest of the season is up to par or if it continues to pale in comparison to real life. When a bunch of tech bros took to Twitter and started talking about how nice it'd be if we had a "White Mirror" that talks about how GOOD technology and AI can be for everyone, Charlie Brooker no doubt kicked himself over the fact that he didn't come up with the premise of an AI apologist getting angry at Black Mirror and asking ChatGPT to make White Mirror for him.