2019 3K Film Fest

Do you like filmmaking competitions but want something a little more off the wall? Do you want to win a 3K race but prefer one with (slightly) less running involved? There's still a few more weeks left to sign up for the 2019 3K Film Festival. 

From Nov 1 - Nov 3, teams will have 50 hours (3,000 minutes) to write, shoot, and edit a short film from scratch. We're currently offering a $35 entry fee, so be sure to check out our website for more details today!

> 3K Film Festival website <

Join the fun, and good luck!

*

Rereading "Remnants"

I want to start this review by adding to an idea from my Everworld review. I speculated that the Scholastic Corporation had been afraid to promote a young adult book series from the late 90's called Everworld, due to it being written by the same co-authors as Animorphs but possibly being too mature for the same audience. This seems all the more evident now that I've reacquainted myself with Remnants, a third book series that K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant also co-wrote together. The beginning of every Remnants book features a list of the pair's other Scholastic titles, and while that list includes Animorphs, it doesn't include Everworld.

This could be forgivable, since Remnants was also geared towards a younger audience than Everworld, but the final Everworld book actually promoted Remnants. The finales of both Animorphs and Everworld presented a full-page ad and a chapter-long excerpt from the first Remnants book, and yet only one of them got a shoutout in return when Remnants came out. I still can't say anything for certain, but this one-way "cross promotion" really suggests that Scholastic wanted readers to forget Everworld and embrace Remnants as "the other K.A. Applegate series" instead.

This is ironic for two reasons. The first is that despite its lack of adult content like swearing, sexuality, and alcoholism, Remnants is actually way darker than Everworld in tone. Multiple gruesome character deaths occur in almost every book, and most of the proceedings have a bleak, humorless, mean-spirited vibe to them. The second reason is that despite all of this favorable treatment from its publisher, Remnants really didn't fare much better than Everworld. It only ran for about two years with fourteen books, fell into obscurity afterwards, and has very little information about it available today.

And as someone who tried reading it once before as a teen but didn't get halfway through the series, I have a pretty good idea why.

Remnants tells the story of eighty humans who escape from Earth right before an asteroid destroys the planet. After five hundred years in hibernation, they wake to find they've landed aboard Mother, a deserted alien spaceship that can simulate any environment. The catch is that Mother currently has no operator, and three hostile alien species are fighting the humans to seize control of it. Totally unarmed, the humans have to dodge perils at every turn as they wander the ship's patchwork of environments in search of the command bridge.

At least that's what the first half of Remnants is about. The second half centers around the humans, now more or less in control of Mother, rediscovering what's left of Earth and trying to return to it so they can rebuild the world they lost — all while three mutants in the ship's basement try to overthrow them and use Mother to conquer the universe.

Notice that I didn't mention any character names in that summary. That's because when you get right down to it, Remnants isn't really about its characters. Unlike Animorphs, which was almost entirely character-driven, and Everworld, which was more setting-driven but still had an interesting main cast, Remnants is mostly plot-driven. It's about weird things happening and other weird things being done to resolve them. The characters' emotions are largely glossed over, and while some of them do grow and change throughout the series (at least the ones who survive), their primary role is just to witness and carry out all these bizarre happenings until the main conflict changes again.

To be fair though, here are some of the core characters. The main one is Jobs, a fourteen-year-old computer wiz and romantic idealist who just wants the group to have a home again. There's also his best friend Mo'Steel, a fun-loving adrenaline junkie with an easy-going, can-do attitude; 2Face, a girl with a half-burned face who wants to be a strong leader but is too aggressive, manipulative, and paranoid for her own good; Violet, a sophisticated, no-nonsense art expert who always does her best to help; Yago, a selfish, entitled bully who constantly tries to divide the others so he can control them more easily; Billy, a quiet Chechnyan orphan who goes mad during his hibernation and is the only human able to control Mother; and Tamara, a Marine soldier who gave birth to a creepy, possibly alien baby in hibernation that is now mind-controlling her to do its bidding. Like I said, bizarre happenings.

I should point out that unlike Animorphs and Everworld, which were written in First-Person with a different narrator for each book, Remnants is written in Third-Person with numerous shifts in perspective throughout each book. It could be that this different writing style just makes the Remnants characters seem less personal since it's not what I'm used to from these authors, but I also think that having a lot fewer characters would have done this series a world of good. Most of the characters that I didn't list above are either red-shirts who are just there to get killed or seat-fillers who have nothing to do half the time. Some characters die offscreen in between chapters or even in between books, and one who manages to live through the whole series doesn't get mentioned in the final book's epilogue. The story just seems to forget about him.

The most engaging characters are probably 2Face and Yago. We never quite get the full details of how 2Face got burned, but she sees her disfigurement as sort of a scarlet letter for the "ugly" side of her persona. Eventually, that inner ugliness alienates her from the group, and she becomes so desperate to redeem herself in their eyes that she'll stoop to any low towards the end of the series. She's tragic and despicable all at once, much like her supervillain namesake.

Yago, in contrast, is so over-the-top slimy and egotistical that it kind of gets funny after a while. You can actually love to hate this guy at times, especially in Book 6 when he makes Mother simulate a world where he's the president of the United States. Surprisingly though, the series manages to give him an arc towards the end that leads to some of its few legitimately poignant moments.

But since the plot is the real focus of Remnants, how does that hold up? Well, it holds up fairly well for the first half of the series. The mystery surrounding Mother, Tamara's baby, and the various alien species is all kind of intriguing, and we get just enough answers in each book to keep it that way. Other developments, such as Billy learning to harness Mother and some of the other humans learning that they've gained mutant superpowers, can also make us curious about where the story is going. The climaxes of Books 5-7 are imaginative and exciting, and while the characters don't quite resonate enough to give us an emotional connection to anything, the end of Book 7 still feels like a satisfying achievement.

The second half of the series is where the real trouble starts.

Again, I can't say anything for certain due to the lack of info, but I get the sense that sales for Remnants really started to drop halfway through its run. Books 1-8 have fancy, embossed, metallic lettering for their titles on the front covers, but Books 9-14 have flat, standard printing for theirs. The cover art also starts to look more slapped together after Book 8, and the books themselves start to get shorter on average. It feels like Scholastic saw the writing on the wall and started doing whatever it could to cut corners and wrap up the series as quickly as possible.

But getting back to the plotting, Books 8 and 9 are about the same in quality as the previous ones, even though Book 8 starts with a three-month time jump from the end of Book 7. Book 10, however, is hands down the worst book in the series.

See, Book 9 ends with a mid-battle cliffhanger, and instead of picking up from there, Book 10 jumps ahead another three months and just gives us a summary of how the battle ended. We find out that two somewhat important characters died in the fight, and then a third, more important one also dies pretty much offscreen with little fuss during the events of Book 10. We get two more massive time jumps over the course of the book as the humans sail Mother back to Earth, and then shortly after they land there, a fourth character who was finally starting to get interesting also abruptly dies. And then the book pulls a surprise twist that effectively throws everything the series was about into the garbage. I don't blame K.A. Applegate or Michael Grant for this, since I suspect Scholastic was starting to tighten the vice and I'm fairly sure Book 10 was ghost-written, but reading it made me furious.

Books 11 and 12 have the opposite problem; they try to slow things back down to establish the new characters, setting, and conflict, but they go too far and just drag. I was pretty much ready to pan the entire rest of the series after this point...but then Book 13 came along.

I've heard that this one was also ghost-written, but out of all the Remnants installments, Book 13 feels the most like Applegate and Grant's usual writing style. It's told almost entirely from the perspective of a girl named Tate who got separated from the other humans in Book 10, and it deals with her fighting for survival against the new villain trio in Mother's basement. Survival also happens to be the book's official subtitle, by the way.

This is a character piece first and foremost. It still has a lot of the weird, otherworldly elements you expect from the series, but we're allowed to single in on just one protagonist's view of them and see how she gradually comes to grips with them. The focus is on how those things impact her character, not on the mere fact that they exist and that they're weird. We also get to explore the protagonist's backstory in an open, honest, and meaningful way, and the things that we learn about her from her memories actually factor into her decision making throughout the book. Best of all, the ending throws more of those mind-bending Remnants twists at us, and while they could stand to be better explained, they have a genuine emotional resonance because the book let us properly get to know the character that experiences them. One of Tate's big discoveries at the end of the book even lends emotional weight to the entire scope of the series and makes us understand why it's so important for the characters to try and start a new life on Earth.

Book 13: Survival has Animorphs Chronicles levels of pathos. It's easily the crown jewel of the whole Remnants series, and I wish the rest of the series had been more like it. So it's only fitting that this wonderful exception to every complaint I've ever had about Remnants...is entirely skippable.

I'm not kidding. Everything that Tate accomplishes and discovers in Book 13 gets reexplained to the other characters in Book 14, so you don't even need to read Book 13. Good news for the superstitious readers, I guess.

Book 14, the finale, has the same problem as Books 11 and 12, plus it barely ties up any of the loose ends from all the mysteries that the series built up. One character gets a thought-provoking ending to their arc, another major one dies offscreen, and everyone else gets an ending that's earned, I guess, but the tone of it doesn't feel consistent with the overall series. In fact, I question if it was even Applegate or Grant's idea.

Despite this, I am glad that I finally went back and read all of Remnants. There was a gem or two in there, and when the series was imaginative, it was extremely imaginative. However, I think it's more interesting as a case study in how constant corporate deadlines and pressure can wear down a project. At least that's what I have to deduce it's a case study in. I'll always have the utmost respect for K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant, and while I do believe that Remnants could have been better under more ideal circumstances, I'm willing to view the series itself as the ultimate testament to its thesis: that no matter how disastrous things get, there's always a chance of something good surviving.

But seriously, Everworld is better.

"The Lion King" Review

I'll admit up front, I had no desire to see the new Lion King movie at first. I'm as tired from these endless Disney remakes as anyone else these days, and I actually have skipped seeing most of them. However, two major things spontaneously came together this past Tuesday that convinced me to go see The Lion King:

1) I had no plans and remembered that movie theaters give discounts on Tuesdays

2) I'd heard so many scathing reviews for this film — probably more than the last three Disney remakes combined — that I decided I had to see if it was really that bad

Now that I have seen it, I'm willing to say that the Lion King remake didn't quite live down to my expectations. It's not horrible, but it doesn't remotely hold a candle to the 1994 original.

There are some improvements to the story in this new version. Simba's a lot less bratty as a cub, and things like the way Rafiki figures out that Simba's still alive and the way the lionesses figure out that Scar killed Mufasa are handled a lot better this time around. I also like that this version removes that part where Scar knocks out Zazu during the stampede to keep him from going for help. In the remake, Scar tells Zazu to go get help because that will look way less suspicious and he knows that Zazu won't be back with help in time anyway. They're good updates.

At the same time though, the new version makes a lot of changes that hurt the story. It tries to give Scar more backstory than the original by implying that he once fought Mufasa for the right to marry Sarabi, which was how he got his scar. The problem with this is that it now gives Scar a history of having challenged Mufasa in the past. That just makes Mufasa look foolish for keeping him around in this version since he can't give his brother that benefit of a doubt that he had in the original film.

We also get a new scene where Nala escapes from Pride Rock during Scar's reign to find help. This lessens the suspense of the later scene where she attacks Timon and Pumbaa because now we know who that lioness is and we have reason to think that she won't go through with killing them. Scar only introduces himself to the hyenas after Mufasa rescues Simba and Nala from them, which makes his alliance with them less compelling, and there's just a ton of extra dialogue thrown in all over the place that adds nothing and throws off the pacing of a lot of scenes.

As far as the voice-acting goes, there's not a lot to say. It wasn't as bad as a lot of reviews have made it out to be, but it still pales in comparison to the original. This is most evident in James Earl Jones, who for some reason sounds a lot less intense in this version despite reprising his role of Mufasa. Most of the actors sound like they're either going through the motions or (in the case of Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as Timon and Pumbaa) ad-libbing so much that it sucks all the meaning out of the original dialogue. The only really noteworthy performance is Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, who's allowed to give a theatrically villainous line delivery every now and then.

Also, John Oliver probably laughed all the way to the bank when he got cast as Zazu, because he's joked before about how much he looks like the original version of the character.

Music-wise, the movie's all over the place in quality. The orchestral score is pretty good, but the new versions of the songs are hit or miss. I think the only song to really improve is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which uses a wide variety of animals with a wide variety of vocal ranges to give a pretty neat doo-wop rendition. The worst song revamp is "Be Prepared," which is only half as long now and has Scar mostly talk-singing new lyrics that fit better with the hyenas' less dim-witted depictions in this version.

And I'm just going to come right out and say this: the hyenas in the remake are a huge downgrade. Shenzi gets the best treatment out of the main three, since she keeps her original name and her role as the leader, but she's all menace and no personality in this version. Banzai and Ed technically aren't even in the remake; instead we get two other recurring hyenas in the clan named Kamari and Azizi who barely interact with Shenzi.

Apparently, the reason for these changes was because director Jon Favreau felt the hyenas in the original film wouldn't mesh with the more realistic feel that he wanted the remake to have. He wanted their characters to be dangerous instead of funny in his version.

First of all, the hyenas in the original weren't just funny. They were also dangerous, and the way they easily switched back and forth between those two gears made them even more intimidating. They were unpredictable because their silly attitudes made it easy to underestimate them, and that was the whole point of Scar's downfall.

Second of all, the hyenas in the remake are still used as comic relief. It's just that instead of having all three of them go back and forth between serious and funny, we get one who's always serious and two who handle all the comedy. But because it isn't realistic for the comic hyenas to make cartoonish gestures or anachronistic jokes, there's not a lot of funny things they can actually do or say. As a result, we get a villain "trio" where two thirds of them fall flat.

And that's the remake's biggest problem: its super realistic approach to everything. Most reviews have rightly pointed out how the animals' lack of humanlike facial expressions weakens the emotional impact of everything, but there's so much more to it than that. Everything is presented like a nature documentary, so nothing fantastical or cinematic is ever shown onscreen. Instead of a vibrant color and style change when Simba's imagination kicks in during "I Just Can't Wait To Be King," we get a regular looking scene with just more animals in it. Instead of towering skeletons and hellish red and green geysers in the Elephant Graveyard, we just get lots of brown rocks. Instead of seeing Mufasa's face in the clouds when he talks to Simba from the afterlife, we just see normal storm clouds that sometimes look a bit like a lion for a split second when the lightning flashes just right.

Even scenes taken straight from the original film like the "Circle Of Life" opening and the wildebeest stampede look smaller in scope because they're presented in a less visually dramatic way. The crazy thing about all of this is that, just like the original film, this version of The Lion King is also entirely animated. I get that they didn't want it to look 100% identical to the original, but there's just no reason why they had to make it look this much less compelling.

Bottom line, the remake of The Lion King is nothing special. It's gorgeous to look at, it fixes a few problems with the original, and it's entertaining enough for kids, but just like all the other recent Disney remakes I've seen, it clearly expects you to already know the story from the original. You're better off just watching that instead.

Long live the king.

The Dog Brain of Ragetti & the Secret Success of Pintel

The characters Pintel and Ragetti from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise are no strangers to my blog. I've discussed a few things about them in past entries, mostly on how their actors and the screenwriters view them, but I've never delved into any serious analysis of the characters themselves. As hard to believe as this sounds, I actually think there's a lot to analyze about this comic relief duo, even if most of what you come up with probably wasn't intended by the writers.

Intended or not, the fact stands that in the three Pirates films that feature Pintel and Ragetti, we see a surprising amount of growth in both characters. Since the films rarely explain any of that growth, the door is left wide open for fans to speculate and fill in the narrative gaps. This essay is my own interpretation of Pintel and Ragetti's character arcs throughout the series, and if there's any truth in what I've gathered, then their subplot could be one of the more meaningful ones in the original trilogy.

Played by Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook, Pintel and Ragetti first appear in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl as two members of Captain Barbossa's evil, undead pirate crew. At first they seem like your typical dim-witted henchman duo, but throughout the movie, we get a lot of hints at their personalities, their backstories, their thoughts on their situation, and most importantly, their relationship with each other.


As far as that goes, there are three important things to notice:

1. Pintel and Ragetti are always together

2. Pintel frequently loses his temper and lashes out at Ragetti

3. Ragetti acts like a dog 

I don't mean that Ragetti's lewd, either. I mean that he literally barks and growls at people whenever he gets angry or excited. He also shrinks back with his head down in a very tail-between-the-legs manner whenever Pintel yells at him. He doesn't talk much in Curse of the Black Pearl, but often when he does, it's just to chime in with Pintel. Given that Pintel hits him with a parasol and throttles him purely out of embarrassment at two points in the film, you can kind of see why Ragetti tries to be so obedient.  

The only time we see another side to their relationship is roughly halfway through the film, when Barbossa's crew tries using the heroine Elizabeth Swann to break their undead curse. Right before the proceedings, the crew sorts through the piles of treasure around them, and Pintel and Ragetti more or less have a moment alone to talk. Pintel is curiously sympathetic towards Ragetti, assuring the one-eyed pirate that he can buy a glass eye once the curse is lifted and then patiently chiding him when he rubs the splintery wooden one that he does have. During the curse-lifting ritual, Pintel is seen leaning over Ragetti's shoulder at the front and center of the crowd and playfully nudging his arm to keep him excited about what's happening.

To me, Pintel comes across in these scenes like a guilty parent trying too hard to make up for letting their child down. There's sincerity there, but also a slightly selfish motive behind it. We don't know if he and Ragetti are really uncle and nephew like their actors say, but Pintel is obviously the mentor/decision maker in this relationship. Perhaps he feels responsible for getting his younger companion into this mess with the curse, and perhaps he believes he can clear his conscience by helping Ragetti have a better life after it's over.    

The problem in the meantime seems to be that they're in a situation where Pintel feels he can't afford to look weak. Barbossa and the rest of his crew are frequently shown to be bullies, needlessly mistreating their captives and sometimes turning on each other, and Pintel and Ragetti appear to be at the very bottom of the Black Pearl's ranks. As fond as Pintel is of pillaging, plundering, and shooting people in the face, we see that he's terrified of the crew's first mate Bo'sun — and because of Bo'sun's authority, that can make Pintel fear the entire crew at times. It's conceivable that he and Ragetti always stay close together for security as well as company, and that at least some of Pintel's vicious persona is just a front that he puts up to avoid harassment.

He drops the act during his talk with Ragetti in the treasure cave because despite the rest of their crew being present all around them, no one's really paying attention to them at that exact moment. As soon as Bo'sun walks by and sees them holding the frilly parasols that they've found though, Pintel panics and hits Ragetti with his parasol as mentioned before. The reason he throttles Ragetti later is because Bo'sun has ordered them to distract the British Navy by dressing up as women, and Ragetti makes him feel even more insecure by complimenting the way he looks in a dress.

Slapstick comedy aside, Pintel and Ragetti's relationship is not a healthy one. Ragetti's doglike demeanor (his "Dog Brain" if you will) is most likely a defense mechanism from all the abuse and trauma he's suffered, and unlike Pintel's murder-hungry rage, it doesn't seem to be an act. Pintel has contributed to Ragetti becoming a poorly adjusted, socially inept man with low self-esteem who can barely think for himself. That's not going to give him a better life after the curse is over.

We last see the duo getting outwitted by the hero Jack Sparrow and then arrested by the Navy right as their curse is finally lifted. In the second film, Dead Man's Chest, we first see them rowing through the ocean in a longboat with the jailhouse dog as they discuss how they escaped from prison. This takes place one year after the first film, and we get a very different Pintel and Ragetti this time around.

Here are the three important things to notice in Dead Man's Chest:

1. Ragetti is less doglike and more well-spoken than before

2. Ragetti constantly talks back to, argues with, and defies Pintel

3. Pintel never punishes Ragetti for it

He still yells at Ragetti a lot like he did in the first film, but he doesn't physically harm him anymore. And let's face it, doing that could very easily revert Ragetti back to his old self. It's possible the writers just made these changes to make Pintel more likable and Ragetti more three-dimensional since they join the heroes in this film, but this dramatic character growth can be explained in the context of the story.

For someone as naive as Ragetti, being thrown in jail with a guarantee of hanging has to be earth-shattering. It's the complete opposite of all the great things Pintel told him were going to happen after they broke their curse. What did they do to deserve something this awful instead? Ragetti probably had time to realize what they'd done to deserve it, and with all his pirate aspirations in ruins and death on the horizon, he probably turned to the only salvation he could find: religion.

Hence the Bible that he's trying to read in Dead Man's Chest (which he probably stole, by the way). His "beliefs" are flimsy at best, often getting twisted to justify the crimes that he and Pintel keep committing, but he still seems convinced  that "divine providence" was what broke them out of jail. Pintel disagrees, saying that he was what broke them out, but Ragetti doesn't relent. And why should he? Pintel was wrong about what would happen to them after the curse was lifted, so maybe he's wrong about a lot of other things. Ragetti might see it as his duty now to teach Pintel some humility and eventually steer him away from the sinful life of a pirate. This gives Ragetti some confidence, and that makes him rebellious. And I think for all his annoyance, Pintel lets him rebel because he sees it as a good thing.

If Pintel really did feel guilty for involving Ragetti in their curse, he probably also felt guilty for getting him thrown in jail — so guilty, perhaps, that it pushed him to break them out. He probably also did that to save himself, but the fact that he's stopped mistreating Ragetti (thus allowing the younger man to give him grief all the time) says a lot about his own growth. Maybe he doesn't feel the need to act tough anymore now that they're rid of Barbossa's crew. Maybe lifting the curse and losing his immortality has made him so afraid of death that he doesn't mind having a bolder sidekick to watch his back now. Or maybe he's gained some perspective since their arrest and really is trying to rein in his temper for Ragetti's sake. In the little way that he can, maybe Pintel is still trying to make life better for his friend.

Whatever the reason for this restraint, it does seem to be making a positive difference. Along with speaking up and acting out more often, we also see Ragetti perform a few duties aboard the Black Pearl without Pintel, including a hazardous one that involves clinging to the outside of the hull to hold a longboat in place during a storm. By the end of the film, he's built up enough nerve to save Elizabeth from the giant Kraken squid by chopping off one of its tentacles. He never would have taken a risk like that in the first movie.

Not that Ragetti's Dog Brain is completely gone. We see him slip back into it twice in Dead Man's Chest, both at times when he's overwhelmed with emotion. As he and Pintel move in to fight Elizabeth for the titular chest, he sticks out his tongue like he's panting and goes back to mumbling and repeating what Pintel says. During the Kraken assault at the climax, he stops talking altogether and cowers close to Pintel for most of it. These moments seem to suggest that his more mature demeanor hasn't fully found its roots yet.

And this brings us to the third film, At World's End.

I've complained in the past about how this film handles Pintel's character, especially compared to how much better it handles Ragetti's. I still take issue with some of it, but I do feel like it plays out better if you watch it with this interpretation in mind.

We first see Pintel and Ragetti with three other members of Jack Sparrow's crew as they sneak into a building through a basement sewer. Ragetti is leading the mission, impressively enough, but when they enter the basement and a huge guard walks into view, his Dog Brain sends him running to hide behind Pintel again. This time though, the first mate Gibbs intercepts him. Gibbs says they don't have time for that kind of behavior anymore, then shoves Ragetti to the front of the line again.

After this, we start to notice three new dynamics with Pintel and Ragetti's relationship:

1. Ragetti spends more time on his own

2. Pintel spends more time with Gibbs

3. Pintel frequently follows Ragetti's lead without any arguments 

We don't know if these changes have been in place for a while since the second film or if the confrontation with Gibbs suddenly triggered them. Either way, it's interesting to see Pintel spending less time with his closest friend and more time with a former enemy. It's also interesting that in spite of his growing desire to become the Black Pearl's captain, he's willing to go along with Ragetti's ideas and let Ragetti do a lot of the talking for them in this film.

Pintel could just be so overwhelmed by everything in At World's End that he's content to go with the flow for now, even if it means giving Ragetti the oars, but I also think he agrees with Gibbs that Ragetti needs to grow more independent. It could be that letting his younger pal have more space and responsibility is his way of helping that to happen, and that warming up to the Pearl's first mate in the meantime is him trying to further secure a better future for them. The fact that the duo barely argues anymore also says volumes about Pintel's anger management progress since the first film.

Take the scene where the pirates escape from Davy Jones' Locker by turning the Pearl upside-down. Not only does Pintel humor Ragetti's plan to tie themselves to the mast as the ship tips over, but he also keeps a pretty level head after that plan turns out to be terrible. What's more, when this watery escape ruins their gunpowder, Ragetti clunks him on the head with his pistol to practice wielding it as a club instead and Pintel doesn't hit him back. This is the same man who once throttled Ragetti just for telling him he looked nice in a dress. Pintel doesn't even yell at his friend for the pistol incident. He just simmers for a few seconds, then lets it go. If that isn't proof of how much their relationship has changed since Curse of the Black Pearl, I don't know what is.

And just like in Dead Man's Chest, this new approach seems to pay off in the end. The two main obstacles that Ragetti has to overcome in At World's End are his Dog Brain and his fear of people, which are both represented to him by Captain Barbossa. The former cursed captain joins the crew again in this film, and with him comes a whole boatload of Ragetti's old insecurities. Not being allowed to hide behind Pintel all the time anymore probably makes that all the more harrowing.

But after days of being pushed around, slapped around, and even made to give up his wooden eye by Barbossa, Ragetti finally summons just enough courage and confidence to show up his tormentor right before the film's climax. This involves freeing the sea goddess Calypso from her human form by reciting an incantation, which he points out that Barbossa had failed to do properly. Once he frees Calypso, Ragetti also becomes free himself. He's free of his Dog Brain, free of his fears, and is now a stronger, braver, and more capable man.

I used to dislike how Ragetti gets this big moment (and several others) all to himself in At World's End while the biggest moment Pintel gets is a throw-away scene of him chickening out after yelling at Jack and Barbossa. It just felt like the writers were sidelining him and scrapping the duo concept for no good reason. However, if his underlying arc really is about him reforming so he can see his friend better off, then Ragetti's success with Barbossa and Calypso is Pintel's success as well. That big triumphant moment secretly belongs to both of them. It's theirs to share as a duo after all.

The only downside is that Calypso doesn't end up saving the pirates like they'd hoped she would. Once she's free, she just abandons them and creates a maelstrom to add chaos to the final battle. We even get a moment where Pintel looks down over the ship's rail and laments that "she's no help at all," almost like he's disappointed for Ragetti. Despite this, the two pull themselves together for the final battle. They help to win it, part ways with the heroes when it's over, and then go back to their usual pirates' lives. The difference this time is that they seem to be working together to move their ways up in the ranks now.

Pintel and Ragetti were supposed to appear in the fourth film, but for various reasons, that didn't end up happening. The Pirates of the Caribbean Wiki site claims that their subplot would have involved them getting separated, each thinking the other was dead, and then reuniting by the end. As nice as it could have been to see their relationship finally get some dramatic focus, I don't think it's needed. Pintel and Ragetti's story on screen ends with them standing side by side as equals on the deck of the Black Pearl, carving a new wooden eye and possibly plotting a mutiny against Barbossa. And since it's been shown that other crew men have survived what happens to the ship before the fourth film, we can assume that the duo did as well. All in all, it's easy to interpret a better life for both of them on the horizon.

Welcome to Everworld

If you were a kid in the '90's, chances are you crossed paths with the book series Animorphs in some way. Written by K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant, this sci-fi/action epic about kids turning into animals to fight off an alien invasion was one of the Scholastic Corporation's most popular IP's of that decade, rivaled only by Goosebumps. It had sixty-four books, numerous video games and toy lines, a TV show that ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon, and even cross promotions with fast food chains like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut that sold Animorphs collectibles with their kids' meals. An official graphic novel adaptation is now in the works, and the series still has a devout fanbase.

And rightly so. I started reading Animorphs at age nine, and to this day, it's easily one of the most powerful and formative works of literature that I've ever read. It was funny but tragic, relatable but imaginative, entertaining but horrific, and it often hit you with a sobering dose of reality that made the message of each book stay with you long after you finished reading. Best of all, its mature themes and ideas about the morality of war have made it just as meaningful and relevant to read as an adult as it did as a kid, so I highly recommend the series.

With that said, I want to discuss another book series that Applegate and Grant wrote during that same time called Everworld.

I occasionally saw ads for this series in the backs of the Animorphs books (exactly four of them), but the ads were always vague, and eventually those back pages were used to advertise other things. A promotional CD called The Everworld Experience was given out in bookstores upon the third Everworld book's release, but if the series was ever sold in Scholastic's monthly school catalogues or at any of its school book fairs, I can't find evidence of that. Botton line, it barely had any of the exposure or success that Animorphs did, and the series came to an earlier-than-planned conclusion after two years and twelve books.

This is a real shame, because now that I've finally sat down and read all of Everworld, I think the series is great. It deals with four Chicago teens (David, Christopher, April, and Jalil) who are dragged by a witch named Senna to a parallel world where the gods, monsters, and famous figures from all of Earth's mythologies live at constant odds with each other. The teens exist in this place, called Everworld, and on Earth simultaneously, with their consciousnesses jumping back and forth from one world to the other whenever they go to sleep. In addition to staying alive, their main goals in Everworld are to save it from an invading alien god named Ka Anor and to keep Senna from transporting more dangerous people to—and from—Earth.

I should start by saying that Everworld was written for an older audience than Animorphs; for high schoolers instead of middle schoolers. As a result, it has a much darker and grittier tone with less, shall we say, innocent protagonists. It shares a few themes with Animorphs, such as the stress of leading a secret double-life and having to compromise personal values for the greater good, but it also deals with themes like letting go of old perceptions as you grow up, realizing the cost of your deepest desires, and deciding whether to keep to the safe life you know or venture into a greater unknown.

Everworld's premise is clearly a metaphor for coming of age, a representation of the crossroads between childhood and adulthood where you need to start finding a direction for your life. For all of its fantastic settings and elements, the series is really about the four main characters' internal conflicts, not the external conflict around them. The external conflict is just a device that serves to make the characters deal with their internal conflicts, and this is important to keep in mind when reading the series. We don't see much of how the teens change Everworld by getting involved in its dealings, just how much deciding to get involved changes them.

As for the characters themselves, I think we're given a pretty well-rounded and relatable main cast. We have David, the self-appointed leader who feels unfulfilled in his normal life and is desperate to prove his worth due to his toxic masculine upbringing; Christopher, the less-than-sensitive class clown who leans on immature humor and sitcoms to cope with his problems; April, the wily, religious idealist who takes care of business when she needs to; and Jalil, the level-headed skeptic who tries to learn the science of everything so he can master it. A huge part of the overarching conflict is these four learning to get along and work together, and once that starts to happen, they become a fun group of friends to go through all of these crazy adventures with.

I've read complaints that some of their early character flaws (especially Christopher's tendencies towards xenophobic humor) turn off a lot of readers after the first few books. That's understandable, but the point of giving the characters those flaws is that they eventually see the error of their ways and reform. I don't approve of Christopher's intial brand of humor, but I actually like him the most out of the four because he undergoes the biggest and most dramatic transformation throughout the series. You see how finding a life goal in a world where he can't tune out reality so easily makes him a better person.

The other major character is Senna the witch, who really serves as the main antagonist of the series. Not that she's a villain; a major part of the story is trying to figure out her motives and allegiances, since she seems to help the four leads as often as she gets them in trouble. We even get a book narrated by her eventually, and that does a great job of swaying you to feel one way about her right before the series yanks you in the other direction. She's not as complicated as Snape from Harry Potter or Gollum from Lord of the Rings (even though she does shape-shift into him in one rather amusing scene) but I found her arc just as engrossing and its conclusion extremely rewarding. The whole series is worth reading just to get that rush at the end.

And that level of engagement is the ultimate reason why I recommend Everworld. It's one of the most immersive works I've read in a while, both in setting and tone. It takes you right back to the '90's from Page 1 with its now-nostalgic pop culture references and laid-back view of the world, and then it slowly pokes at that bubble with an ominous undertone until all hell finally breaks loose. The descriptions of Everworld effectively capture the feel of every location and threat, and Applegate and Grant's tongue-in-cheek humor goes a long way in keeping the series self-aware enough to avoid turning hokey. One of my favorite parts is in Book 4 when the teens try to catch a wild boar for food, only to have it beat them up and then suddenly order them in English to give it what little food they do have. It becomes a running joke after incidents like this for David, Christopher, April, and Jalil to mumble, "W.T.E. Welcome to Everworld," and then move on with their business.

Also, borrowing so many of its settings and characters from preexisting mythologies (with the authors' own creative twists, of course) builds anticipation as you wonder what other pantheons the series might explore as it goes on. It also gives the protagonists some prior knowledge going into each conflict, especially when some of them start using their "visits" back to Earth to research mythology. This helps endear them to readers by showing their proactive sides, as well as their overarching growth throughout the series as they start trying to help Everworld instead of escape from it.

What's interesting though is that the scenes on Earth are also very descriptive and immersive. It's easy in cross-world narratives like this for the "real world" to take a back seat to the more creative fantasy world, but the Earth scenes in Everworld have their own overarching story that also builds into a genuinely suspenseful conflict. This really sells the idea that David, Christopher, April, and Jalil still have some grounding in their normal lives that keeps holding them back from fully embracing their new lives in Everworld.

With that said, I do wish that their families had more of a presence in the series. The families in Animorphs were very well defined and prominent in a lot of the B-plots of some books. This made us like them almost as much as the Animorphs themselves by the end of the series, which raised the stakes tremendously whenever things started to escalate. In Everworld, we see the families occasionally but get very little sense of their personalities or the teens' relationships with them.

I don't think either of David's parents ever makes an appearance throughout the whole series, and I actually forgot for a while if Jalil's mother was even alive until he mentions her in one of the other characters' books. Things like this make it hard to feel the full emotional weight of certain events near the end of the series. I guess the idea is that teenagers going through major life changes like these just aren't always that close to their families, but it still feels like this particular element of the story could have had a little more focus to sell how torn the characters are between their two lives.

It's worth noting that Christopher's parents and brother probably get the most character out of all the families, with scenes as early as the second book showing their interests and personalities as they banter with him. Given his similarities to Marco, the main comedic character from Animorphs, I'm starting to think Christopher was the authors' favorite lead as well.

Also, one of the Earth antagonists in Everworld is named Mr. Trent. This was also the human alias of the main villain on the Animorphs TV show, which predates Everworld. I can't find any information on how both of these characters came to have the same name, as Applegate and Grant didn't write the TV show, but it certainly has me conjuring all kinds of theories about the two book series existing in the same universe.

So why wasn't Everworld more successful if it's so good? Why didn't Scholastic advertise the hell out of it to at least try and hook the millions of Animorphs fans back then?

Sadly, I think the answer lies in the reader demographics. When you're dealing with kids, a couple of years can mean a huge difference in maturity and what's considered appropriate material for them. Animorphs was surprisingly graphic and intense for a children's book series, but it was still written for children. I can't recall a single swear word ever being said in it, and things like drugs, sex, and xenophobia were either very vaguely implied, disguised in metaphors, or presented as problems that the alien characters (not the humans) struggle with.

The very first Everworld book features flashbacks where David recalls seeing a camp counselor molest a child and hearing a football coach call a player the "F" word for not being tough enough on the field—and they don't just say "the 'F' word" in the book either. Add a few dollops of religion, sexuality, infidelity, teen alcoholism, and other adult language throughout each book, and there was no way Scholastic could promote this series to the same kids who read Animorphs. The Everworld books don't even have that bright red Scholastic logo at the bottoms of their covers; there's just a tiny, inconspicuous logo on the spine and an even less conspicuous trademark credit on the back.

Again, I can't currently find any information about this. I'm very curious to know how this situation came to be though. Did Scholastic give the authors more leeway for Everworld because of Animorphs' success and then found out too late how far the pair had run with that? Did the company want to experiment with publishing more adult material but then started getting cold feet closer to Everworld's release?

The worst part of this, if it's true, is that Scholastic may have been right to worry. According to some of the YouTube comments and online book reviews I've read, a lot of kids who read Animorphs in the '90's were barred by their parents from reading Everworld. Some say their parents found the series too dark and inappropriate. Some say their parents took issue with it for religious reasons, due to all the pagan deities that it shows to exist. One person even said they were almost barred from Animorphs too after their parents vetoed Everworld. Not the kind of thing a Scholastic executive in 1999 would have wanted to hear.

I know that Scholastic would go on to publish the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series over the next decade, and both of those saw their share of controversy too. All things considered though, I do side a little with the parents when it comes to Everworld. The topics that I listed three paragraphs ago are important for teens to discuss, and it's realistic to include them in a story about teens, but I feel like the series presents them a little too bluntly for me to totally disagree with the parental discretion. There's an entire book about a lustful underworld goddess who does nothing but capture men and force them to "please" her under threat of castration, and there's an ongoing subplot where April questions what the existence of all the different pagan deities in Everworld means for her own Catholic beliefs. Even if this series had come out today, there would be a legitimate reason for the concerns.

I'll never say to bar your kids from reading anything, but here's a thing to consider: the main characters in Animorphs are roughly thirteen years old at the start of the series, they're sixteen by the last book, and the Everworld characters are sixteen throughout their series. Maybe letting your kids read Animorphs first and giving them a chance to mature alongside those characters is a good gauge for when you think they'd be old enough to read Everworld.

And if they decide for themselves that they don't want to read Everworld, then that's them choosing a direction in life, just like the series would want them to make.

"The Last Good Man Part 2" Now Available!

My latest novel "The Last Good Man Part 2" is now available on Kindle. Check it out at the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Good-Man-Part-2

Two months after finding the underground compound in Strange Creek, WV, things are looking hopeful for Owen Bronson—and for the whole human race. Owen is adjusting to life in the compound, the scientists who live there are adjusting to him, and they finally have a cure for the devastating virus that's ravaged the earth. The only threat is that deadly federal agents looking to confiscate that cure could find them any day.

Things suddenly escalate when a violent encounter with one agent leads to the scientists capturing Jodi, Owen's former sister-in-law. Wanting to escape, Jodi claims to know where the agents have made camp, but she's far too dangerous for anyone but Owen to trust her. It isn't long before his own loyalties are thrown into question as well.

The scientists' only hope now is to find and wipe out that camp before their enemies do the same to them. Torn between helping his new allies and mending his bond with Jodi, Owen has to make choice. Can he sever that final tie to his old life, or will the scientists' growing desperation drive them down a dark path that even he won't dare to follow?


Also be sure to check out Part 1 at this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Good-Man


~

Avengers: Endgame Review

Well, after three viewings, I think I'm finally ready to share my thoughts on Avengers: Endgame.

This has got to be the most secretive film in any franchise that's ever existed. I can't think of one other movie where the directors withheld something as basic as its title for nine months and then wrote a public letter to fans right before its release asking them not to spoil it. I'm kind of surprised the Russo brothers didn't borrow a page from Alfred Hitchcock and bar people from entering the theaters once the showings began while they were at it.

One reason for all this secrecy could be that the MCU is one of the few adapted film franchises that doesn't directly follow its source material, so its plots actually CAN be spoiled, and also because Endgame throws so many narrative curveballs that no one could have predicted. Seriously, the first ten minutes alone had me at a loss. So with that said, I'm going to try to avoid spoilers.

First of all, I have to admit that I liked Endgame slightly less than Infinity War. It's a lot more emotional and exhilarating, but its overall plot isn't as solid. Four of the core Avengers go through major changes off camera early in the film, but only two of those changes really serve any purpose to the story beyond a visual gag. Thanos is far less complex this time around, and this movie (while it's probably earned the right to) leans way more on the previous MCU films in order to tell its story than Infinity War did.

It actually took all three of my viewings to decide that I really was happy with Endgame. I saw Infinity War five times in theaters because I loved it so much the first time that I wanted to keep seeing it over and over again. And that movie killed my favorite character before the title even came up.

And then of course, there's the time travel aspect of Endgame.

I don't think that's a spoiler for anyone. Set photos hinting at it were leaked a year ago around the same time that Infinity War first came out. As the internet guessed from those photos, the Avengers' plan in Endgame is to go back to several points in the past, including to New York City at the time of Loki's Chitauri invasion, and collect the Infinity Stones so they can undo Thanos's snap with their own Infinity Gauntlet. We get some exposition about how time travel works in this universe, and I think the gist is that changing your past just creates alternate branching timelines instead of changing your future. At least I think that's what I think.

To paraphrase critic Greg Stevens from the Pop Arena YouTube channel, the key to writing good time travel is to not write time travel. More often than not, it just creates plotholes and raises billions of hopeless questions about how it works. The Russos have come forward and addressed a few questions concerning this aspect of the plot (I know, right? They're actually answering questions about Endgame now!), but the fact that any explanation has to be given outside of the film itself shows that there's a flaw in its storytelling.

And for me, this was a huge flaw. I didn't get the least bit emotional the first time I saw Endgame. By my third viewing though, I'd made enough peace with the film's troublesome elements that I could finally appreciate the heartfelt ones. I just hope that wasn't Marvel's plan to squeeze more ticket sales out of anyone.

At the end of the day, I think the best way to approach superhero movies like the MCU is perhaps to think of them as modern-day fairy tales. They're fantastical stories aimed mainly at younger people that teach lessons and have a certain emotional impact, and their logic is kind of beside the point. People today ask why the townsfolk in Beauty and the Beast never wondered what happened to the prince after he became cursed or why Sleeping Beauty's parents didn't put her under constant surveillance on the day of her sixteenth birthday, but the people who first read those stories didn't question those things. The point of those stories was what happened and what the characters did to overcome it, not the how or why, and they're still famous classics to this day. Taking time out of the plot to address questions like that might make those stories more cohesive, but I doubt it would really make them better.

Overall, Avengers Endgame is a very emotionally satisfying conclusion to the MCU's first major story arc, but to quote Sarah Connor, "God, you can go crazy thinking about all this."

Also, if you're worried about Captain Marvel ruining the movie, relax. The Russos didn't go for the head with that blow either.

One Strange Scene

As the final clock winds down to Avengers: Endgame, I want to make a last-minute prediction or two on this blog. I don't even know if they're so much predictions for Endgame as much as predictions for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. That's because I originally assumed them to be predictions for last year's Avengers: Infinity War, and they ended up never factoring into that movie.

My predictions all center around the scene in Thor: Ragnarok where Thor meets Doctor Strange in New York. The setup for this scene is that Thor just exposed his brother Loki as an imposter who's been posing as their father Odin on Asgard for the last four years, and now he's forcing Loki to bring him to the real Odin on Earth. They can't find him in New York, the place where Loki imprisoned him, and then Doctor Strange shows up and takes them to his Sanctum to question what they're doing on Earth. After some comical banter and slapstick, he sends them to Odin in Norway.

I've had a complicated relationship with Ragnarok ever since it came out, but the one aspect of it that I've actually argued about is this scene. Forget about the Avengers crossovers just for a second; in the context of the single movie Thor: Ragnarok, this scene is completely pointless. It brings the pacing to a halt, nothing that Thor and Doctor Strange talk about comes into play later in the plot, and including Doctor Strange in this story at all just raises questions about why he didn't help to fight the villain when she first showed up on Earth. You could easily rewrite the script to just have Loki know where Odin is and take Thor straight to Norway himself.

What's more, Strange doesn't cross paths with Thor or Loki in Infinity War, so this scene doesn't even work as a setup for future MCU films.

At least not yet.

Strange was one of the characters who died from Thanos snapping his fingers at the end of Infinity War. Since the majority of Endgame's plot will most likely center around the Avengers trying to undo that snap, I suspect that Strange will make a comeback somewhere in the second half of the film. It's also been speculated that Loki, who appeared to die in a more traditional way in Infinity War, will also come back. Perhaps the scene in Ragnarok was a means of introducing him and Thor to Strange in order to set up a two- or three-man teamup between them in Endgame.

Loki and Strange working together especially would be interesting, since having Loki use his powers for good in alliance with someone who once dismissed him as a threat for having them would show all the more how much he's come full circle. In turn, it could show growth on Strange's part by having him acknowledge that a fellow magic user he once dismissed from Earth can have some use if enough need arises for it. Strange's mastery of the Time Stone could also come into play and turn out to be the force behind some of the bizarre circumstances of Loki's (again, we'll say "alleged") death in Infinity War.

If that doesn't happen in Endgame, then there could still be a chance of something along those lines occurring in Phase Four of the MCU. Tom Hiddleston's contract with Marvel Studios is expiring after Endgame, but Chris Hemsworth has said on multiple occasions that he'd be interested in reprising his role as Thor afterwards if possible. Maybe this is a well-disguised spoiler being leaked about Thor's status at the end of Endgame, or maybe it isn't. What we do know is that a Doctor Strange sequel is in the works for Phase Four, so if Hemsworth does end up coming back for that phase, there's a real chance that we might get a Strange-Thor team up after all.

That would make a lot of sense, since their predecessors Odin and the Ancient One who once oversaw the universe have effectively passed on from it. I feel like Thor meeting Doctor Strange in Ragnarok is so beside the point for that movie that it HAS to serve as a setup for something bigger, maybe as a preview of how the future Allfather and Ancient One will interact when protecting the universe post-Endgame.

It's hard to say how far ahead Marvel Studios plans their MCU movies anymore. Given their history with the Infinity Saga though, I'm willing to believe that they have enough foresight to plant seeds five or six movies in advance.

Or maybe that scene in Ragnarok was just an excuse to put more pratfalls in the movie and the studio's still looking for a sequel where they can shoehorn in justification for it. Neither one would surprise me.