It was worth the admission, 6/10 stars and a good afternoon diversion, but like many of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) films, it didn’t particularly move me. There have only been a handful of MCU films which I was really excited about, and this wasn’t one of them.

Stoic, all business, battle hardened.., Brie Larsen has taken a lot of flak during the marketing build-up to this film, one of the criticisms being that her appearance in press materials was emotionally void, however given the character I think she played it about right. Captain Marvel IS wooden, not supposed to have any emotion, so of course playing it flat made sense. Mind you.., if she were a great actress, we could have perhaps been treated to the portrayal of the cast-iron, brainwashed super-soldier and have been able to empathize with her. That’s why I go to the movies, anyway. Is there a human in there? It was hard to tell. We don’t know how much better the character could have been because we have no other version to compare it to. There is no Christopher Reeve standing beside a Henry Cavill (both cast as Superman) in the case of Captain Marvel.

Perhaps we can compare Captain Marvel to Captain America; also a super-soldier but one who radiates both strength and warmth and genuine affection for the human race. Part of that appeal is in the scripting, but part is what the actor does with it. Sadly, we may never know if another actress could have brought something more to the role of Captain Marvel. The MCU has tied the knot with Brie for the next half dozen films.

In any case, personally, I’d have written her differently. I’d have written her whole story differently.

Her origin story, though they tried, just isn’t core or epic or relatable enough as with the great characters. Great comic book characters are like viral memes; you have to try hundreds of times before you strike gold. You can’t just create them on demand according to some formula, and Captain Marvel’s story simply didn’t have the magic. That’s probably why they’ve had to re-boot her comic like, eight or nine times due to rotten sales. It doesn’t grip and grab the reader by the soul. There’s nothing for a regular person to latch on to; the living with a bright soul inside but not being able to express it, leading to the wishing and the unfairness and the human hurting, “If only I had a chance..!”

The best characters are often underdogs, or they experience moments of soul illumination where they completely switch sides. There’s power in a soul transformation.

Captain Marvel is a functional plot device and that’s all. She was given power without asking for it, without valuing it, without earning it. She was programmed to fight, and her Terminator-like performance fit that scheme. But we only loved the Terminator when the Terminator learned love. Captain Marvel’s lukewarm moment of illumination, (I barely even noticed it frankly, and it came off as tinny), didn’t convince me that she was a real hero.

The key revelatory moment even seemed as though it were politically motivated by hot topic real world events, (in this case, migrant refugees). If this was a deliberate insert, it might explain why it felt so lackluster as a motivational moment for the character; allowing a story to become a vehicle for political activism is often a dangerous dalliance with the 4th wall. -Not just for the writer, who is no longer thinking of the character’s well-being first and foremost, but for the audience. In this case I think Marvel, to their credit kept their politics light enough to avoid full-on collision with viewer opinion.

Whatever the case, it’s never a good idea to betray your audience by tricking them into swallowing a manufactured argument while they are dissociated around the camp fire. Being smacked with a “Gotcha!” will snap people out of a narrative and fill them with distaste and disbelief in further travel in that world. When you dream, you are trusting the narrator with your soul and betrayals are rarely forgiven. This is story-writing 101; a writer must learn the difference between story, satire and propaganda. -It can be done effectively, but you have to subconsciously warn people ahead of time, and further, they have to agree to participate in the thought experiment. Star Trek is an excellent example of testing social theory through lots of small experimental story arcs, and viewers both recognize and happily embrace this aspect of Star Trek. The MCU, however, is not set up in this way, so a critical left turn rings false when previously, political environments served as backdrops for personal heroic journeys, not the other way around.

Anyway.., moving ahead… If Captain Marvel kills Thanos in the next Avengers film, it would be basically a long, drawn out and disappointing example of Deus Ex Machina. Lazy writing.

I’m hoping it won’t go like that. It would be very strange, in fact, quite out of keeping with the past story world vibe. The Marvel movie writers have demonstrated that they know how to make the real victories the result of spiritual struggles, not material contests.

Given the competence of the MCU’s writing for the most part, I think that the much anticipated Avengers, End Game will have enough twists and unexpected new story elements that it won’t come down to such an easy solution as a personal vendetta realized or a simple “I’m stronger!” contest. After all, most of the big characters, from the Hulk to the Racoon and everybody in between, have been personally hurt in such deep ways that any one of them could be justified in delivering the victory. (Except Captain Marvel, that is. Thanos took nothing from her.)

I’m hoping that with such a well crafted villain as Thanos, the solution will be more psychological. I’d like to see him realize, like Doctor Manhattan in Allan Moore’s Watchmen, that he’d made a critical error in his earlier judgment about the value of life and reverses his decision. That would be beautiful!

The whole “Overpopulation” motivation behind killing off half the universe was flat out nonsense, and I feel like even little, meaningless me could have talked him around over coffee. And part of my soul strains to see him recognize the error in his ways. I’d like to see him illuminated. That would be a reward and make for an epic story!

-Mark Oakley

Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
March 13th, 2019

There’s a Cixin Liu sci-fi movie! And it looks really good!

News meanders slowly West across oceans when it comes to pop culture.

I remember being one of the first and only ‘manga’ fans back in 80’s. Like, me and maybe a dozen other guys in the whole city were even aware that Japan made these crazy-awesome comics and animations. I knew it was going to be a big hit in pop culture eventually, but it sure took its sweet time. Ironically, I don’t pay very much attention these days, having gotten my fill during my teens.

Anyway.., here’s something new and exciting from yet another foreign culture; “The Wandering Earth” is a Chinese sci-fi epic, and it’s getting limited release in the West. Boy, I sure look forward to seeing that! Cixin Liu wrote the, “Three Body Problem” one of the best new sci-fi novels I’ve come across in a long while. Billed as, “China’s Asimov”, Liu is skilled in both the hard sciences and in human insight. That’s a very tough mix to get right.

Liu writes BIG. Like, end of civilization big. No tidy little back yard science adventures for him. He ponders in broad strokes about what it’s like to face planetary alien invasion and catastrophic solar system upsets. One of the things I always find frustrating in sci-fi is that it’s hard to get BIG right. -And Liu doesn’t necessarily get it right either. He just does it from a Chinese perspective.

-Global problem solving using Chinese thinking. Lots of sacrificing the many to save the many. I’d not want to live in China and be on the wrong side of a dam project or cultural revolution, but it sure makes for great sci-fi!

I can barely believe it! I mean, Sargon of Akkad being de-platformed, I can at least comprehend. After all, he’s a rational, pro-human, opposite-of-nihilist, super-smart guy who reveals the PC ideological war machine as the silly and blood-thirsty thing it is merely by applying reason and dry British wit. Therefore he must be destroyed! Lies and defamation and gossip-factory tell-the-teacher-on-him tactics are all fair game! (All in the name of tolerance and being nice, you understand.).

But PewDiePie??

Really?? He’s got to be one of the most endearing young media personalities on YouTube today. I don’t think there’s a mean bone in his body! He just likes to play games. And 77 million young viewers agree.

Interesting side-bar; there was the Hitler Youth, right? Buncha tragically brain-washed youngsters with arm bands who snapped out sieg heils on demand to please the authority figures in their lives. But after them? The younger brothers and sisters of the generation coming up a few years later? THEY were awesome! They saw the B.S. for what it was, instinctively recognized the propaganda and rebelled. As kids will do! They were a serious thorn in the side of the Nazi regime, and Hitler was enraged enough to have some of their leaders hanged! Wow. Hanging kids for laughing at your evil B.S. -Rebellious youth is a built-in fail safe.

I figured that the whole cell phone, anti-depressant, toxic food thing was designed in part to blunt the edge of this formidable safety feature. But the machinations of the dark side may not have been enough, (Thank God!), because it appears that the kids coming up are smarter and more resilient than the Social Justice generation before them.

As the Far Left continues to unravel, and their bleak, make-believe reality structure crumbles in the face of *actual* reality, the hysterics become shrill indeed.

To be continued, I suppose…

Watch PewDiePie’s amusing response below… Pass the popcorn!

For some reason, I started thinking about math a couple of days ago. I don’t know why exactly; I floundered around in math during my time at school until finally flunking out in grade 10. It wasn’t pretty.

I had no idea what was going on! I couldn’t understand how the other kids could listen to the gobbledegook language the teacher was speaking, (like the muffled wah-wah noises the off-panel teachers in the Peanuts cartoons spoke with), nod with bored expressions, -and write it down and understand it and pass tests and such! It was amazing! I’d just feel stunned and look around sometimes for the hidden camera. No way did any of that make sense..!

But it did, and I failed often and badly.

Still.., there’s always been something about numbers which appeals to me. I find the whole mystery fascinating. And, to be fair, I was very good at geometry. -In a balancing kind of way, I was very good at it when it served to confound the other students. That was my mystery language! -Once I could visualize things, there was no stopping me! However, that’s a rather limited super-power, because once I got beyond 3 dimensions, it became impossible to visualize the results, and I become lost and hopeless once more. I’m evidently a creature meant to function best in 3D.

Anyway…

I decided a couple of days ago to do some thinking about Fractals. -They’re nothing new, and everybody has seen the famous shapes on the covers of science magazines and nerdy posters, but I couldn’t remember how they worked or why, so I decided to figure it all out again. It didn’t take too long, because fractals are really quite simple, so that even a dunderhead like me can work it out.

And the Mandelbrot Set blows my mind!

Check it out:

Z = Z² + C

That’s it!

The idea is that you pick some arbitrary number for Z and for C, run the equation, and when you do, you get a new number out the other end. Then you take that new number and make it equal Z, and then you run the equation again. Rinse and repeat. You get a unique number every single time. Then you use a basic plotting scheme with simple rules. X, Y coordinates. -And you end up putting dots all over the chart. Those dots create fantastically complex shapes that never seem to repeat.

When you run the equation a HALF BILLION times, why, you get a shape which is super complex and deep. The authors of this little math experiment made a video (above) where they zoom into it, and it feels like you’re a parachute jumper falling endlessly into god’s eyeball or something

Anyway, I thought that was cool; how you can find an infinitely deep shape in such a simple equation!

But in doing so, a question occurred to me…

Well, check out the episode trailer first to get up to speed…

Okay.

Just once…

I’d like to see the sudden appearance of the Too Good To Be True, Wonderful Person (the long lost parent/scientist/captain/leader/king/compatriot/etc.), turn out to NOT be a shape-shifting, corrupted, demonic vampire creepazoid from another galaxy or whatever. To NOT be Too Good To Be True! To actually be true!

Just once!

I mean, we have been hit with it so many times in pop culture story that we inwardly cringe at the very first tell tale signs, at the immediate appearance of the smiling benefactor, the long lost father figure, the Good Captain To The Rescue, -or the marvelous restorative town discovered in the heart of the desert. Whether our heroes are armed with spears, super-suits or phasers, the instant they meet the Seemingly Good New People, we harrowed viewers hunker down and emotionally prepare ourselves for the inevitable betrayal. They’ll be cannibals or witches or something. Every time! We know this story, are intimate with it.

After seeing hundreds (it must be hundreds at this point), of depictions of this particular story twist, it is obvious that we are collectively obsessed with the idea that Newcomers Offering Wisdom and Gifts, are bad.

What’s up with that?

Is it based on some kind of deep truth we need to warn ourselves about on an almost genetically expressed myth level? Like, “Beware Snakes and Wolves” or “Stepmothers try to kill you”, or “Don’t take candy from Strangers”?

I can see the logic in that.

But I also wonder.., is it some kind of dark programming designed to separate us from people who might actually have something good to offer? Closing us off to help, opening us to attack and subversion from genuinely vile forces which pretend to be our peers? “Don’t trust those nasty rescuers, precious, stay here and listen to meeeee. hsss.”

Hmm.

The problem is that I can think of examples in real life of both situations being true.

Maybe discernment, its learning and application, should also be a part of the story universe. Hm. Maybe it already is.

What do you think?