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.

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.

"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.

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.

"The Nice List" - Coming Soon!

Coming soon to Amazon Prime this holiday season is our new Christmas film The Nice List.

Cole Davidson isn't just naughty. His constant selfish, dishonest, and hurtful behavior towards others has landed him on a list even worse than Santa's Naughty List. When he and his best friend Ralph discover this on Christmas Eve, they hurry out in search of good deeds for Cole to do so he can redeem himself before midnight. The only problem is that Cole is painfully bad at being good. Can he earn enough points to get himself onto the Nice List in time, or will Cole get a lump of coal this Christmas?

Looking Back on Loki - Part 2

SPOILER ALERT!!

THIS ESSAY WILL ALSO GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET AND YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING IN IT TO BE RUINED, SEE IT BEFORE READING THIS.

IF NOT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, THEN DO IT FOR LOKI'S.

--

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

It's worth mentioning that during this film's post-production, actor Tom Hiddleston appeared in character as Loki at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. He "interrupted" a sneak preview of Thor: The Dark World, scolded the crowd for not accepting him as their king the summer before, then vowed to show them the preview if they pledged their loyalty to him. Needless to say, the crowd got their preview and the God of Mischief gained a wildly supportive army that day.

I bring this up because it showed how aware Marvel was of Loki's popularity at the time, as well as how keen they were to play to it. I think that contributed a lot to his role in The Dark World.

The filmmakers knew we wanted to see him turn good and team up with Thor. They knew we debated if and how he would die in future films, and they knew how much we wanted to see him succeed for once. Because of this, there was a real sense that they toyed with our expectations for Loki in the second Thor film, and the end result was perfect for his character.

Loki hit rock bottom in The Dark World. Not only was he disgraced before all of Asgard, but Odin seemed to disown him and left him virtually powerless by imprisoning him. Then, when Loki thought things couldn't get worse, he caused the death of his adoptive mother Frigga. The dark elf Malekith invaded Asgard, and when a henchman named Kurse found Loki in the dungeon, Loki told him the way to the throne room. He did this for revenge on Odin, but it was Frigga that Kurse killed instead.
 

This made Loki snap again. Now there really was no salvaging his life, and with Thanos no doubt hunting him down after his failure on Earth, he knew his days were numbered. This and his rage over Frigga's death made him decide to cooperate when Thor asked him to help stop Malekith. This would only mean temporary freedom for Loki, but that was all he needed to carry out his new plan.

His chance came during a fight between him, Thor, and Kurse on the dark elves' home world. Loki killed Kurse, saving Thor and avenging Frigga, but he was wounded in the process. Thus we got the scene we were expecting where he died dramatically in Thor's arms after redeeming himself. The twist was that it wasn't real.

To my knowledge, it's never been confirmed if Kurse really stabbed Loki, since Loki's powers allowed him to cast illusions of such things. Either way, he wasn't fatally wounded, but he took advantage of Thor's emotional state and faked his own death. Thor was forced to leave him behind and pursue Malekith, one of Odin's guards found Loki, Loki killed the guard and assumed his appearance (possibly even disguising the guard's body as his own), and returned to Odin. After that, he used his powers to trap Odin on Earth, assumed his adoptive father's appearance, and took on a new life as the King of Asgard. At long last, the God of Mischief had succeeded.

What's interesting is that he never sought further revenge on Thor after his brother defeated Malekith and came home. Thor had broken Loki out of prison and committed treason by leaving Asgard, so no one would have questioned a steep punishment for the God of Thunder, but Loki allowed Thor to go free and live happily on Earth with his human friends. Maybe he had made some kind of peace with Thor during their time together, maybe he couldn't properly restrain Thor since he didn't have any of Odin's powers, or maybe he thought that letting Thor leave Asgard on good terms would minimize suspicion towards himself. Whatever the reason, fully pardoning his brother after everything they had put each other through showed growth on Loki's part.



Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

It would take four years for Loki to show up again in the MCU. He was supposed to make a cameo in 2015's The Avengers: Age of Ultron when Thor had a vision of Asgard's destruction, but like a lot of things in that film, he was cut for time. Between that and all the questions that The Dark World had left us with, there was still a good amount of excitement for Loki's comeback in Thor: Ragnarok.

To put it simply, this Thor movie turned out to be very different from the first two. It's said that director Taika Waititi, best known for comedies, was given free reign with Ragnarok, so there ended up being way more emphasis on humor than drama this time around. For Loki, this meant giving us a more cowardly, inept, and silly God of Mischief than we were used to seeing.

In terms of the narrative, this character inconsistency can actually be justified. Loki spent his whole life seeking admiration and eventually power, and once he gained both at the end of The Dark World, he had no goals left to work towards. This caused him to lose a lot of his drive and his edge over the four years he spent disguised as Odin, and not having to worry about Thanos finding him anymore allowed him to become oblivious to the world around him. It made sense that after Thor caught on and exposed him as an imposter at the start of Ragnarok, Loki had to spin his wheels a bit before finding a new direction in life.

He hit rock bottom again after Thor made him take them to the real Odin on Earth. The brothers found their father moments before he died, and although Odin forgave Loki, his death was one betrayal too many for Thor to do the same. The final nail in the coffin came when Thor's half-sister Hela sensed Odin's passing and seized control of Asgard.

The best Loki could think to do was give up on his home again and simply look out for himself. When he and Thor became stranded on the planet Sakaar, he quickly schmoozed his way into favor with its ruler, the Grandmaster. He made one half-hearted attempt to help Thor, mostly so he could brag about his new social status, but when Thor still wanted nothing to do with him, Loki tried to betray his brother for financial gain. Thor outwitted him though, saying that Loki's refusal to be more than the God of Mischief had made him predictable, and escaped back to Asgard without him.

This marked the ultimate turning point for Loki. All his schemes of the past seven years had been for nothing, and having Thor completely give up on him this time made him finally realize what he had ruined between them. What was more, he had no guarantee that he would be safely hidden from Thanos on Sakaar. There was a chance he might die soon anyway, so why not die doing something genuinely admirable?

After making his own escape from Sakaar, Loki took his brother's words to heart and returned to Asgard to help Thor defeat Hela. This involved destroying their home like Thor had foreseen, and it was Loki who set that destruction in motion. Curiously enough, he had to do it in Odin's vault—the same room where he had first learned of his Frost Giant lineage. The ship that he had arrived on allowed Asgard's people to evacuate in time, and Loki further proved his loyalty by joining them on their voyage to Earth. It was during this voyage that he made his peace with Thor and watched his brother assume the role of Asgard's new king.

It seemed like Loki was finally a real hero, but in the midst of it all, he had secretly made another huge mistake in another moment of weakness.



The Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

And that brings us to the grand finale. Infinity War is still less than two weeks old, and it's already broken the record as the fastest movie to ever gross $1 billion at the box office. It's well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time, and I think that's largely because of how many upsetting character deaths occur throughout the plot. Fans want to figure out how the next Avengers film will resolve things, if it even can, and a good way to look for clues is by watching Infinity War again. And if that doesn't work, then at least they'll get the most out of what could be their favorite characters' final appearances on the big screen.

The film is shocking and bleak, and Loki's death in the opening scene sets that tone perfectly.

His huge mistake at the end of Ragnarok was stealing the Tesseract from Odin's vault before he escaped from Asgard. Loki did this on impulse as well, not because he wanted a peace offering for Thanos, but because he remembered how powerful the device was and couldn't resist the thought of possessing it again. Now that the Tesseract was away from Asgard though, Thanos could sense the Infinity Stone inside of it and was able to track down the Asgardians' ship in space. The Mad Titan boarded their ship, and in a horrible twist of irony, half the people that Loki had helped to rescue were slaughtered before his eyes.

Even then he wouldn't hand over the Tesseract, since he knew what his enemy meant to do with the stone inside. It wasn't until Thanos started torturing Thor in front of him that Loki revealed the device, though he still didn't give up. He stalled for time so the Hulk could attack Thanos, and when the Hulk lost that fight, Loki attempted to finish the job himself.

Loki often defeated opponents by distracting them with illusions of himself and then striking from behind. However, he didn't do that this time; perhaps he decided he was through with hiding. Instead he faced Thanos himself, pretended to offer his services again, and tried to stab his former ally in the throat. Sadly, the God of Mischief really had become predictable, and after stopping the blow, Thanos lifted him into the air by his neck while Thor watched helplessly. Loki declared that the Mad Titan would never be a god, then Thanos killed him with one squeeze. The last we saw of Thor's little brother was his body lying on the floor while the God of Thunder grieved over him.

~

I've heard complaints that this sendoff for Loki was anticlimactic, but I disagree. The scene pretty much covered all the bases it needed to for his story arc: proving that he valued his brother's life more than his own ambition, having him team up with two of the Avengers to an extent, showing that he'd accepted his past by stating he was Odin's son but not an Asgardian, and letting him get in a few last tricks and interesting lines. I even kind of like that his death was so simple and blunt this time. He already had an epic sci-fi spectacle death in the first Thor film and a dramatic Shakespearean death in the second, so it was fitting that his third death had none of those theatrics. That sold the reality of it so much more.

As for killing him in the first scene, I understand why it was done. We needed a reason to personally hate Thanos, and the film needed to show us how high the stakes had grown. Also, I'm not sure what else the writers could've done with Loki in this film. What made him so interesting was his moral conflict, the question of whether or not he would become one of the heroes. When he did that at the end of Ragnarok, he completed his arc. If he'd survived and been just another good guy throughout Infinity War, I think he would've been a lot less interesting, and if he'd become a villain or a double agent again, I think it would've felt too contrived. Besides, his death became Thor's main motivation to destroy Thanos, and since this was brought up multiple times, it still felt like Loki had a presence throughout the film.

Production photos of the fourth Avengers movie have surfaced since Infinity War's release. Because they appear to take place during the events of the first film and feature the characters wearing mysterious wrist devices, fans have speculated that the story will involve time travel to undo the final moments of Infinity War. It's possible that Loki could "return" that way, with Thor encountering a past version of his brother. There's also hope that he might come back from the dead as a result of the Avengers meddling with the past.

Personally, I think the best way to bring him "back" would be in spirit, with Thor either using the Infinity Stones to connect with him or by dying as well. It'd be a fitting and poignant end for the God of Thunder to sacrifice himself for the universe and then have his brother lead him to Valhalla as a reward. We'll just have to wait and see.

If this is the last time we'll ever see Loki, I'll close with this: When he first saw himself as a Frost Giant, he wondered if he was cursed. He was right in a way. His curse was that for all the cunning and strategic thinking he possessed, his emotions were always what ended up dictating his choices. In this regard, he was more like Thor than he wanted to believe, and since he never had the same opportunity as Thor to learn self-control, his emotions continued to sabotage him at every turn. When he saved the Tesseract from destruction on a whim, the penalties of this curse became cataclysmic.

Still, there was a way Loki could have kept the Tesseract out of Thanos's hands. All he had to do was keep it cloaked in invisibility, refuse to say its location, and let Thanos kill Thor. That would have been the more sensible choice in the grand scheme of things, since Thanos wanted the Infinity Stones to "save" the universe by committing genocide. However, Loki's emotions pushed him to reveal the device in exchange for his brother's life.

Several other characters, mostly the heroes, had to choose between someone's life and an Infinity Stone throughout the film. Most of them gave up the stone to spare the person's life. The only willing exception was Thanos, who tortured one of his own children and killed another to claim a stone. Loki may never have quite been a hero, but in the end, he had more in common with the heroes than he did with the villain. The son of Odin who had once tried to kill his brother and save Asgard by also committing genocide had replaced his rage with compassion, and his emotions made the better choice as a result.

In the end, Loki understood the value of life, and that's no curse.

Looking Back on Loki - Part 1

Well, it's been a little over a week since the premiere of The Avengers: Infinity War, and like many fans, I'm still reeling from the film and pondering what to expect in its sequel. I feel like enough time has passed that most people who wanted to see the movie already have, so a spoiler warning might not be needed, but to be safe, here's mine:

SPOILER ALERT!!

THE ESSAY YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ WILL GIVE AWAY THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY WAR.

YES. THIS MOVIE IS SUCH A COLOSSALLY EPIC ENDGAME THAT EVEN THE BEGINNING CAN BE RUINED.

--

With that said, I want to talk again about my favorite character, Loki. He's one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's oldest, most pivotal, and most popular figures, as well as one of its most compelling villains. That's why it came as a huge shock to a lot of viewers, including myself, when the Mad Titan Thanos abruptly killed him in the opening scene of Infinity War. It's probably one of the top three saddest deaths in the whole film, which is no small feat, so I'm writing this two-part essay as an in-memorium of sorts. It's a film-by-film look back on Loki's story arc throughout the series that hopefully does justice in showing what a terrific character he was.

We have five movies to discuss, so in the words of the late God of Mischief, "Send the rest."



Thor (2011)

According to screenwriter Zack Stentz, Marvel Studios gave the writers of the first Thor film a very specific instruction: "Give us a villain as good as Magneto." Magneto was the villain of the original X-Men film trilogy, and his goal was to wipe out humanity so that his people, the mutants, could inherit the Earth. This didn't stem just from a feeling of superiority over humans, but also from the horrors he endured as a child in a Nazi concentration camp. Magneto's goal was to protect his new people from those who distrusted them, which he couldn't do during the Holocaust, and the hate that drove him to pursue this goal turned him into the same monster that he was trying to defeat. He was a villain who thought he was the hero, and no one could tell him otherwise.

With this in mind, the writers of Thor gave us Loki. As Thor's jealous, overlooked younger brother, his goal was to lie, scheme, and manipulate in order to keep the God of Thunder from becoming King of Asgard. This type of villain may have seemed like a tired trope at first, but the writers knew how to make him more engaging as the story unfolded.

Hence, we got a scene where Loki discovered that he wasn't Thor's brother at all; he was the abandoned son of the Frost Giant Laufey, Asgard's enemy, and Thor's father Odin took him in as a baby and turned him into an Asgardian to raise him. What's more, when Loki confronted Odin about this, we learned that his adoption wasn't strictly an act of kindness. Odin also wanted to raise Laufey's son on Asgard as a way to eventually bring peace between their races. It just happened to involve lying to Loki about who and what he was for most of his life while always showing him less favor than Thor for reasons he couldn't understand.

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment when the whole Loki fan train started, it would probably be that scene. His tragic backstory was the kind that the protagonist usually had in a superhero film, not the antagonist, and Odin's flimsy explanation for keeping it a secret really made viewers side with Loki in that moment. And that's the core of what won us over. We could side with Loki. Unlike with Magneto, who was always pitted against people with a clear moral high ground, we were made to see Loki's view of everything very early on and could genuinely believe he was in the right.

Thor would make a terrible king. He was a complete loose canon who almost got Asgard into a full-scale war with the Frost Giants, and Loki getting him banished to Earth was probably the safest way to keep things from escalating. Loki didn't even really want to be king in Thor's place. He just didn't want the only home he'd ever known to be placed in the hands of an idiot.

It wasn't until much later in the film, after he'd learned the truth about himself, that we learned Loki's new goal. Along with wanting to protect Asgard, he now wanted to have Thor killed on Earth and impress Odin by wiping out the Frost Giants. He wanted to set up a crisis that would prompt Asgard to end their truce with Laufey, and with Thor gone, he would be the one to defeat their enemy. He would be the hero that everyone in Asgard admired.

If this had been Loki's goal from the start, we might have felt differently about him, but we saw what made him snap and decide to do this. That gave us hope that he could be reasoned with and brought back to his senses before going through with his plan. In the end though, he couldn't be reasoned with, and after Thor saved the day and Loki saw Odin's disappointment in him, he abandoned his home and sent himself hurtling into a black hole in space to his supposed death. Everything he had ever known was a lie and he saw no way to salvage it, so in a moment of weakness, he gave up.



The Avengers (2012)

Released one year after Thor, The Avengers was one of the biggest movies of the 2010's. Not only had it been hyped up for four years with a string of prelude films, but it ended up being every bit the action-packed, crowd-pleasing popcorn blockbuster that it had promised to be. It's made Marvel Studios pretty much the king of the box office to this day, and since Loki came back as the villain in The Avengers, he was bound to leave way more of an impact on viewers this time around.

And of course, he did. I would daresay he even gained a bigger overall fanbase than any of the heroes after this movie. It's easy to see why too; he was working towards a different goal from all the other characters, so he stood out, and since he had an underdog backstory, you still kind of rooted for him. Also, it was entertaining as hell to watch him try and maintain his dignity throughout his increasingly hilarious defeats. Loki had the same insecurities and emotional conflict as before, but instead of being depressed about his shortcomings, he was trying to stay confident and enthusiastic. You kind of had to admire that.

This wasn't to say though that Loki was totally eager to conquer the Earth in The Avengers. One of the human characters, Agent Coulson, even observed that the God of Mischief didn't have enough conviction in what he was doing for him to succeed. I didn't read many fan theories at the time, but my understanding was that Thanos found Loki floating in space after Thor, recruited him, offered him the chance to prove himself by stealing the Tesseract from Earth, and Loki took that offer in exchange for being allowed to rule Earth afterwards. He made this deal somewhat impulsively; he was still angry at Thor, so taking over the planet that his brother had grown to love sounded like the perfect revenge at the time. Loki soon realized that he was in over his head with Thanos, but it was too late to back out of the deal by then. We even got a scene in The Avengers where Loki was told that Thanos would torture him beyond imagination if he failed to complete his mission.

If Loki wanted to survive, he would have to reinvent himself and fully embrace his conquest of Earth—the "glorious purpose" that he was now burdened with. This seemed to work at first, so much that his mission even delighted him at times, but then Thor came to stop him. That was what stirred up Loki's conflicted feelings again and made him start to lose momentum. Thor wasn't just ordering him to give up his mission, he was offering to bring him home and help him pick up the pieces of his old life. It was extremely tempting, but since Loki still yearned for respect and feared punishment from Thanos, he did whatever he could to remove that temptation. That was why he tried to kill Thor in the middle of the film and then stabbed him during the climax when Thor was starting to get through to him. He didn't have the conviction to win those arguments otherwise.

Not that any of it paid off in the end. The Avengers defeated Loki's invasion army, the Hulk wiped the floor with him, and Thor took both his brother and the Tesseract to Asgard to be locked up forever. This was actually where Loki's story arc in the films was supposed to end, but once Marvel saw how much the fans loved him, they knew they had struck gold with this character. They had a villain who was better than Magneto now, at least from a marketing standpoint. They had a charming, mysterious, and sympathetic villain who added genuine dramatic weight to Thor's storyline even at the silliest of times. If they wanted to keep making successful Thor movies, then they had to keep Loki around.

To be continued in Part 2...

Whatever Happened to Dilophosaurus?

With its twenty-fifth birthday and its latest sequel both coming up this summer, I recently went back and rewatched the film Jurassic Park. It's obviously a beloved classic, and because of its success and popularity, all of its sequels have derived heavily from it. This includes featuring a lot of the same dinosaur species that appeared in the first film,  but there's one species in particular that's been curiously absent in the sequels. That species is the Dilophosaurus.

I can understand if a docile, barely involved species like Triceratops or Gallimimus never made a comeback after the first film (which they have, by the way), but why would one as memorable as the frilled, venom-spitting Dilophosaurus be left out? It's one of the most iconic looking dinosaurs in the whole movie, and it's the only species besides the T-Rex and the Velociraptors that actually kills someone. Heck, it's one of the only dinosaur species in the film that actually lived during the Jurassic Period. What's especially odd is that Dilophosaurus has appeared in several Jurassic Park video games and even had a cameo as a hologram in the fourth film, so it's not like the franchise has disowned it.

The only thing I can figure is that the filmmakers were leery about featuring the species in the sequels. I have two theories for why that is.

1. Too Overpowering

The central conflict in the Jurassic Park series is Man versus Nature. It's about mankind having to use all of its technology and intellect in a struggle for control over forces of nature that it was never meant to exist alongside. If the writers routinely feature a dinosaur species that can launch projectile weapons from its mouth, then they're essentially giving the dinosaurs guns. That's pretty much the end of the story; evasion has always been the human characters' strongest survival tactic against the dinosaurs, and pitting them against a predator that can cause harm from a distance would rub out that advantage and probably take a lot of the tension and thrill out of those scenes.

You wouldn't get as many of those exciting chases or harrowing moments where the predator's teeth or claws narrowly miss a character. If a Dilophosaurus sees someone and they're in spitting distance of it, then that person's dead. End of scene. One of the most entertaining parts of a Jurassic Park film is seeing the dinosaurs throw their weight around and cause physical damage, and a dinosaur that can spit venom at its opponents just wouldn't do something like that. I think the screenwriters were aware of this and found Dilophosaurus a lot less interesting to write about than the other dinosaur species as a result.

Speaking of other species, you could argue that its abilities actually make Dilophosaurus more dangerous than the T-Rex or the Velociraptors. Once again, those species are only as deadly as their ability to catch people, and Dilophosaurus doesn't share that limitation. If the movies threw it into the mix more often, I think there'd be a real risk of it eventually overshadowing T-Rex and Velociraptor as the biggest threat in the narrative. In fact, one of the reasons why it had such a small role in the first film was so viewers wouldn't confuse it with the Velociraptors due to their similar size. Dilophosaurus was only meant to be a side attraction with a gimmick in the story, not a major player, so the screenwriters may have felt they were better off not using it anymore.

2. Too Inaccurate

I'm sure this is news to no one, but the Dilophosaurus in real life didn't have any of the frills of its movie counterpart -- so to speak. It didn't have a neck frill that it flashed to scare enemies, and it didn't spit venom. That was all creative licensing on the part of author Michael Crichton and the filmmakers behind Jurassic Park. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but because of the timing of the first film's release and its cultural impact, it shaped the way that a lot of people viewed dinosaurs back then. Unfortunately, this also meant that it gave those people a lot of misconceptions about dinosaurs, and paleontologists have been trying to set the record straight ever since.

We've all heard the criticisms about the movie. "T-Rex's eyesight wasn't really based on movement," "Velociraptors weren't really that big," "Brachiosaurus couldn't really stand on its hind legs," etc. People rightly pointed out the inaccuracy of the Dilophosaurus's neck frill and venom as well, but unlike with the other dinosaur species, this one's inaccuracies were the most memorable things about it in the movie. Because of that, Dilophosaurus's biggest claim to fame for a while seemed to be that it was That Dinosaur That Jurassic Park Got Wrong. I actually remember reading children's books about dinosaurs that specifically called out the movie for this false depiction. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

To its credit, the series has tried to make its dinosaur designs a little more true to science since the first film. Most notably, it gave the Velociraptors feathers in the third film to reflect the discovery that raptors did have plumage in real life. It's possible that since a more realistic makeover for Dilophosaurus would involve stripping away all of the trademarks that the series gave it, the filmmakers may have just decided to not bring it back.

Whether or not these theories are correct, neither one seems to be the case anymore. Not only do we see a hologram of Dilophosaurus in the fourth film, but a tour video in that film mentions that the glass of the visitor vehicles is impervious to the predator's venom. This all seems to suggest that there is a Dilophosaurus exhibit in the newer park, or at least a Dilophosaurus population somewhere on the island. As if that isn't enough, it's now been confirmed that the species is supposed to finally make its comeback in the flesh in the upcoming fifth film.

Again, if my theories are correct, then why is it coming back now? I think it's because the Jurassic Park franchise has, for lack of a better word, evolved since its debut twenty-five years ago. Instead of being more ominous and philosophical, the films are now more lighthearted and adventurous. They don't take themselves as seriously anymore, so audiences today see them as something that's just trying to be entertaining, not as something that's trying to change the face of paleontology. And of course, the series carries a lot of nostalgia behind it now which the newer films clearly enjoy playing to. This could mean that the creative team behind the fourth film always planned to bring back the Dilophosaurus at some point, but maybe wanted to tease or even gauge the audience with a few nods to it first.

It would be interesting to see if the new film addresses Dilophosaurus's absence up to this point. It might even be able to make an in-joke or two about the species, saying perhaps that their frills and venom came from an early gene splicing experiment and that the old park had actually lied about scientists believing that the species had those features. I have a feeling we won't get any explanation, but really, just getting to see Dilophosaurus onscreen again after a quarter of a century would be more than enough for a lot of Jurassic Park fans.

And if its comeback should turn out to be disappointing, don't worry. It will always have that one terrific moment in the film that started it all.

Goodbye, Newman. That's one magic loogie.