Return to the Planet of the Apes

Well, here's a review I never expected to be writing. 

That's not because I've been severely absent from my blog since 2019, but because I figured the Planet of the Apes reboots had ended seven years ago with a conclusion that was pretty solid and pretty final. The main protagonist of those reboots had died after all, and the last film had set things up in a way that could easily bring us full circle back to the events of the original 1968 film. What else could there be to cover?

Well, in the spirit of its subject matter, this franchise just showed us again that evolution is a never-ending process. As long as humans and hyper-intelligent apes share a planet, they'll keep finding newer and bigger problems to have with each other — and for screenwriters to write about.

And that's what's so interesting about these reboots: each installment jumps years ahead of the previous one to show us a new stage in the apes' history, so we get to see exactly how they and their problems are evolving. It also gives us the chance to explore a lot of the same themes and ideas from new perspectives since the power dynamics between humans and apes keep shifting. This latest film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, actually has a fairly similar plot to War for the Planet of the Apes, except that the delusional villains who enslave the hero's people this time are other apes and we get a character who's sort of a human version of Koba.

Speaking of characters from the first three films, Caesar, Maurice, Rocket, and a few others have cameos in Kingdom's prologue, but that's it. This film is both a sequel and a soft reboot that jumps ahead "many generations later" to give us a new cast of characters, including a new chimp protagonist named Noa. I'm assuming the writers gave him that name as an allegory since he literally has to save his people from a flood at one point in the film.

We get tons of new world-building this time around. We get a new orangutan character who also steals the show. We get our first mention of gibbons in the whole franchise. We even get a surprise appearance from William H. Macy for some reason, although no casting choice in this series will ever be as much of a head-scratcher as Kris Kristofferson in the Tim Burton film. And of course, we get lots of action, lots of nods to the original film, and even more of what's still some of the best character CGI put to film. All in all, Kingdom is a fun ride.

So how does it fair as a Planet of the Apes film?

As I mentioned before, this installment treads new ground by giving us a large-scale ape vs. ape conflict and also seeming to play with a few allegories. The main villain is an ape who goes by the name Proximus Caesar, a cult leader/dictator whose goal is to advance ape-kind into the planet's dominant race by forcing humans to share the secrets of their history and technology. He's presumably done his research on the name Caesar, since he often references the Roman Empire, but his preachings on the values of Caesar the ape are either sorely mistaken or deliberately twisted in order to brainwash his followers and serve his own corrupt agenda. There's some obvious social, political, and religious commentary there, with Caesar the ape even having become a savior-like figure in the eyes of the current ape clans. Just like its predecessors though, Kingdom handles this commentary with a subtle enough hand to avoid the traps that a lot of other movies fall into these days. 

The same goes for the human side of the conflict. Kingdom gives us a strong female character done right in the form of Mae, a teenage girl who manages to stay engaging and somewhat sympathetic throughout the plot even as her deception and prejudice against the apes slowly reveals itself. She's not doing what she does to be evil, she's doing it because her world has been shattered by the apes and she hasn't seen enough of their good side to accept that there are shades of gray in the struggle around her. Again, obvious commentary that's handled well. What's more, the movie ends her arc on a note that seems to suggest further development from her character if she returns in any sequels. 

I will say though that Kingdom is probably still the weakest of the Apes reboots. Noa isn't as compelling of a protagonist as Caesar, the supporting ape characters (aside from Raka the orangutan) aren't as memorable as the ones from the previous films, and the pacing could stand to speed up in many places. Still, calling a film the weakest entry in this series is like saying The Two Towers is the weakest Lord of the Rings film. It's still something to be proud of.

As a minor nitpick though, if it's even canon, the Planet of the Apes Wiki claims that Proximus is a bonobo just like Koba. Why keep making bonobos the bad guys? They're way less aggressive than common chimpanzees and way more endangered. And could this series please give us a gorilla character who doesn't get killed off? They've been through enough! 

All in all, it's nice to make my own return of sorts alongside Planet of the Apes. I don't know how long we'll have to wait for the next installment, or if any more will come after this, but like the titular apes, I've seen enough strength and evolution along the way to be hopeful for the future.

And remember: if you ever tell Maurice the orangutan that gingers have no souls, he'll simply steal yours.

Book Fair Success

The Local Authors Book Fair at the Norwin Public Library went great this weekend! Thank you to everyone who came, and thank you to everyone for all of your help and support for the event.

Sold some books, donated one to the library, and met a lot of cool authors, including one I've actually crossed paths with multiple times before at the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival. Events like these are a great way to network and share ideas for possible venues and ways to market your books.

...And since the event happened to take place on International Hyena Day, I gave away a lot of hyena fact pamphlets as an educational tie-in to my novel Crocuta!

"Crocuta" Now Available!

My newest book Crocuta is now available in paperback on Amazon! Click here to check it out and order your copy today.

Vaka is the son of a clan leader, but for spotted hyenas, being male means being second best. When tradition forces him to leave home on his second birthday, the former prince reluctantly joins a rival clan and finds himself all the way at the bottom of their pecking order. This soon inspires Vaka to escape and start recruiting other rogues to form his own all-male clan. Can he manage his new followers and old enemies now that tradition has been broken, or will his rise to power be his undoing?

Or if you're more of the ebook type, click here to check out the original story on Kindle Vella. The first three chapters are free to read, and Vella provides new users with 200 free points that you can use to keep reading.

Neytiri's Necklace

Since the first sequel to James Cameron's Avatar is finally on the horizon after 13 years, I figured it's worth going back and talking about the original film. I've managed to walk the line with it since its release in 2009, owning it without being a huge fan and recognizing its flaws without being a hater, but I do get curious enough to do some digging into its lore every now and then. Some of the things I find curious about it are simple details that I don't even find answers for, but today, I want to discuss something that I may have found one for: Neytiri's necklace.

It's the choker with the three green beads. She seems to wear it the entire movie, even though the rest of her wardrobe changes throughout. I've always found it to be an interesting, subtle character detail that she seems to have a favorite accessory like that, but that was all I thought the necklace was until my most recent time watching the director's cut of the movie.

That cut mentions her sister, Sylwanin.

For anyone not familiar with that version, the additional scenes explain that Neytiri and Sylwanin were both students of Dr. Grace Augustine prior the film's events. One day, Sylwanin and some of her friends destroyed a bulldozer that the humans on Pandora were using to level her clan's home forest, and the humans' military responded by chasing her to Grace's school and gunning her down right in front of Neytiri. This explains why relations between the Na'vi and Grace's research team are so strained by the start of the main plot.

The only images we see of Sylwanin in the film are old photos that Grace shows protagonist Jake Sully while talking about what happened to the school. These are the images:

We see what appears to be Neytiri, wearing her green choker necklace, posing next to another young female Na'vi. Some Avatar sources like the Wiki website identify this female Na'vi as Sylwanin, but there's one issue with that. This sister seems to be the smaller of the two, but every source states that Sylwanin was older than Neytiri.

Obviously, younger siblings can be larger than the elder ones in many cases, but the size difference here seems too extreme for that. I don't know if Sylwanin was originally younger than Neytiri and then became older in a rewrite after these images were already made, but that's where we are now. This leads me to wonder if the smaller sister in these pictures could actually be a younger Neytiri while the larger one who looks like present-day Neytiri could actually be Sylwanin.

It would be a heck of a family resemblance between the two, but that is possible. And given how close the sisters seem to be from these pictures, and how tragically Sylwanin died, it stands to reason that her death was devastating to Neytiri. Perhaps so devastating that she kept some of her late sister's jewelry, including a green choker necklace, and wears it to remember her by?

Sylwanin also appears in a few Avatar video games, and on one occasion, we see her wearing a long hair accessory that appears to be made of red and gold feathers. It's hard to tell from the game's graphics, but it seems to closely resemble the red and gold accessory in one of the pictures above -- an accessory that we see present-day Neytiri wear on occasion. This could very well be an example of Neytiri wearing her sister's things as mementos.

This theory is complicated slightly when you notice the necklace that Grace's Avatar body wears -- which resembles the necklace worn by the smaller sister in the school photos.

If that smaller sister really is Sylwanin, it would make sense for Grace to keep something of hers to remember her by. It would seem strange for Sylwanin's parents to allow it though, given the falling out their clan had with Grace's team after that tragedy, but we don't know the circumstances of how Grace came to possess it. If that smaller sister is actually a younger version of Neytiri, it could be that she gave her own necklace to Grace as a parting gift when the school closed because she intended to wear her sister's green choker from then on. Sort of a symbolic gesture to show that she was letting go of her old self and choosing to literally carry her grief with her always.

Whatever the case, it's a real testament to Avatar's rich visuals that little details like that can hint at so much backstory and character connections without a single word being said. That's actually why I'm curious about the upcoming sequel; the first movie feels like it contains a much bigger world and way more stories than even a three-hour epic could flesh out. Maybe I'll become a full-fledged Avatar fan once it grows into a series, or maybe I'll remain a casual viewer who just rewatches it every few years. Either way, I'll be keeping my eyes on the smaller things when I go to see The Ways of Water this December.

A Tale of Two Lokis

With the premiere of Marvel's "Loki" series less than a week away, I think it's time for me to finally dust off my book of speculations on the God of Mischief. I'm not familiar enough with the comics to weigh in on anything involving the Time Variance Authority, Mobius M. Mobius, or anything else from the source material that will appear in the series, but I have seen Avengers: Infinity War more times than I can count, and I still have a lot of unanswered questions about Loki's role in that film. As a writer myself, I see the "Loki" series as a prime opportunity for Marvel to finally answer those questions.

To recap, Infinity War begins with the villain Thanos slaughtering half of Thor and Loki's people in an attempt to steal the Space Stone for his Infinity Gauntlet. He almost gets Loki to hand over the Tesseract containing the stone when the Hulk intervenes, and Loki tackles his brother Thor out of the way to make room for the ensuing fight. We don't see Loki onscreen again until well after Thanos wins that fight, then the God of Mischief attempts to "join" Thanos and kill him while his foe's guard is supposedly down. This sadly fails, resulting in what appears to be Loki's death.

I've discussed this scene numerous times on my blog, and I've only grown more suspicious of it over the years. The lack of cutaway shots to Loki throughout the Hulk's fight with Thanos, the way Loki seems to emerge out of nowhere with a totally different demeanor after the fight, his extremely telegraphed and underwhelming attempt to kill Thanos -- it all adds up to a scene that simply doesn't add up at face value. I used to think that Loki faked his death, and that he'd spent his few minutes offscreen during the fight putting together some elaborate scheme that the filmmakers deliberately weren't showing us. Now that I've seen Avengers: Endgame and the trailers for the "Loki" series, I have a new theory: 

The Loki who tackles Thor out of the Hulk's way and the Loki who tries to kill Thanos are not the same Loki. The Loki who tries to kill Thanos is actually the alternate timeline Loki who will star in the "Loki" series.

Another quick recap: The Loki we see in Endgame is technically not the original Loki. He's an alternate version of Loki that the Avengers encounter while traveling back in time to the events of the first movie. Thanks to a snafu, that Loki manages to steal the Tesseract from our time-hopping heroes and teleport away, effectively creating a new parallel timeline to the one we saw in the movies. 

This new timeline will be the focus of the "Loki" series. What's more, the previews for the series suggest that this "New Loki" is going to do a lot of his own time-hopping on behalf of a possibly shady organization called the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. I say "possibly shady" because the purpose of Loki's time travel mission seems to be to alter key historical events that will drastically change the present. Knowing Loki though, it could instead turn out that the TVA means well and the God of Mischief just decides to deviate from his mission and change history for his own personal gain. That is why we love him, after all.

Bottom line, my theory is that New Loki will eventually realize that his meddling has caused some catastrophic ripple effect across multiple worlds, maybe even across the whole universe, and his conscience will finally get the better of him. His efforts to undo the damage he's caused could even be what the entire second half of the series focuses on. After several attempts to make things right again, New Loki will realize that the ripple effect has grown beyond his ability to repair it, and he'll then realize a solution: to convince the original Loki, who perhaps has more knowledge and wisdom due to his different life experiences, to take over the mission while New Loki ends his own alternate timeline.

In my opinion, Loki's scene in Infinity War will make so much more sense with this context. We don't see Loki during the Hulk's fight with Thanos because New Loki appeared and pulled him aside to brief him on another cosmic crisis, and the reason the Loki we see afterwards fails to kill Thanos is because he intends to fail. Because that Loki is New Loki who knows he needs to die in order to restore balance to the space-time continuum and cover the tracks of the original Loki who's leaving to resume the mission. This way, the fans who thought Loki died in Infinity War and the fans who didn't will both be right.

The series could even do something really heartfelt with this twist, having Loki reflect on his whole character arc by having a heart-to-heart with another version of himself. New Loki (who hasn't seen Thor since their fight in the first Avengers film) could see from the original Loki that he always had the capacity to make peace with his brother and his enemies on Earth, and the original Loki could see from New Loki that he's right to keep moving away from his old selfish ambitions and that he has the power to make a difference in the universe. There could even be a clever little payoff where New Loki tells the original Loki about some sort of MacGuffin from earlier in the series that will benefit the original Loki in some way. There's apparently going to be a scene in the series where we learn that the famous missing criminal D.B. Cooper was actually New Loki in disguise; perhaps telling his original self the location of a certain bag full of money would be a nice way to thank him for taking over the mission?

This is all just speculation of course. For all we know, the "Loki" series could kill this theory in the first five minutes and then conclude with Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson ad-libbing in a diner like the end of Pineapple Express. As always though, theories like this are a good way to practice plot and character development when you're involved in the creative field. My guess of where the "Loki" series will go could be way off, but when the time comes to start writing my next novel or fanfiction, I might be just a little better at managing the mischief I've created in my own new universe.

"The Last Good Man Part 3" Now Available!

The final novel in my "Last Good Man" trilogy is finally here. Check it out on Kindle today and in Amazon paperback on May 18th:

www.amazon.com/The-Last-Good-Man-Part-3

Owen Bronson and his companions are in a fight for their lives. Driven from their compound by the deadly Patrol agents and unable to survive in a virus-plagued world, their only hope is an army base in Ivydale, WV. The soldiers who live there seem helpful at first, but it isn't long before Owen starts questioning the motives of his strange new hosts—and what they could mean for his team's goal of curing the virus.

Meanwhile, Jodi Sullivan is in an even bigger mess. Captured and forced to join the Patrol alongside many other survivors, she's now surrounded by enemies who could discover her connection to Owen at any minute. Things get worse when she learns what the agents are planning: a full-scale assault on Ivydale to steal back the cure and eliminate Owen's team.

Time is running out as the Patrol close in. Can Jodi, Owen, and the soldiers of Ivydale band together to save themselves? More importantly, can they trust one another enough to finally save the human race?

Also be sure to check out the entire trilogy at this link: www.amazon.com/The-Last-Good-Man-Series

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!

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