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The Kang Dynasty is set to begin in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but where will he conquer next in the MCU? Dan assembles the Council of Kangs to determine what Marvel movies and tv shows the Conqueror could be popping up next on today’s episode of Nerdist News!
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The post What Will Kang Conquer Next After Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania? (Nerdist News w/ Dan Casey) appeared first on Nerdist.
Avatar: The Way of Water is one of the most beautifully designed movies in cinema history. Avatar: The Way of Water is also one of the emptiest pieces of media in cinema history. James Cameron’s technologically developed sci-fi epic is actually quite terrible. It looks great but has little to no substance. This wouldn’t be an issue, except it pretends it does. This is the try-hard movie of the century and fails everyone it presumes to represent. Did I mention how pretty the movie is? I hope that I did because that is all this movie has going for it. There is something lost in the translation of what the movie thinks it is and what it actually is. It begs the question the first installment did, is this a visual homage to precolonial civilizations or appropriation as a means for a white person to tell indigenous stories? That’s what we’re going to unravel. Welcome to the roast of Avatar: The Way of Water. [Yes, we’re about to roast some water.]
Everything That Glitters
Make no mistake, seeing this in 3D was incredible. It was like watching a giant 4K television in ‘vivid’ mode for three hours straight. The movie is smoother than the silk pajamas from the TLC “Creep” video. Shot in a few different (very high) frame rates, you’ll find it looks a hell of a lot like a video game. So yeah, the movie is for all intents and purposes a glorified and gratuitous cutscene. Cameron is a believer in the immersion that 3D visuals offer audiences, so much, in fact, that film technology had to catch up to his vision to even make this movie. What Cameron thinks he’s doing is resurrecting a format that will reinvigorate an industry that took a major hit from Covid. What’s actually happening is a very privileged director who made these studios a lot of money is making something look good in order to get money back for spending a lot of money to make it.
The meticulous attention to visual detail is spellbinding. Every fifth finger, every strand of hair, every Na’vi facial expression, all of it – is gorgeous. In the aftermath of the first Avatar, folks were left with a phenomenon called the ‘Avatar blues.’ A feeling of depression swept viewers after being immersed in the beauty of Pandora and returning to their regular lives. Such is the vision of James Cameron, for viewers to be brought into his idea of how film should be and it’s kind of a three-card Monty. For all of the things your eyes can be drawn to, the beauty of it allows you to forget the context of what you’re seeing. Vibrant blues and vivid greens of nature in sharp contrast to the grey and matte colors of the military and industrial tell a story plain as day, old as time.
Cirque Du Volume
Performances in Way of Water are top-notch. There’s no way around it. Doing green screen and blue screen was not easy. Motion capture with some animatronics and things that aren’t really there, not easy. Working in ‘the volume’ (filming actors in a closed space and mapping it into a digital version, like a video game) allows performances to go right from the moment into the CGI character. To be able to catch every single microexpression means the acting moves seamlessly into what audiences see. Translating that into a coherent narrative that audiences can believe in, is also not easy. Cultural competency aside, there are no bad performances in this movie, only misguided direction. Sam Worthington is the exact same from the first movie to this one as the savior Jake Sully. Zoe Saldaña returns as Neytiri and gives way more ferocity in her second turn in the role.
A good amount of the previous cast returns to play a smaller part of the larger story, and it feels like they never left Pandora. Sigourney Weaver returns as both Grace and her own messianic daughter, Kiri (who was seemingly born immaculately like Anakin Skywalker). Cliff Curtis is a brilliant presence in any role and does not disappoint as the chief of the sea people, Tonowari. Shoutout to the younger actors playing the ‘Sully’ tribe and sea people kids. They got a lot of screen time and put forth great performances. Also new to the franchise with standout roles are Brendan Dowell who plays the whale hunter Mick Scoresby and Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Concords fame as marine biologist Ian Garvin. They were absolutely the highlight of the film for me. This says a lot and brings me to some issues with some of the cast.
Mocap Me Like Your French Girls
How is Kate “Never let go, Jack.” Winslet cast as the matriarch of the sea people? Did she fall off that door in Titanic and end up evolving into a Na’vi mer-person? This is just another of those things that took me out of the spectacle of the movie. Not that the race of an actor needs to matter completely to the role being played, but when it looks like this it doesn’t take reality into account. Mind you, we can see cell division on the fake, blue skin of the fictional characters but can’t consider why a white British woman shouldn’t play a Polynesian-based character. Not that she can’t (she did great), but why she didn’t need to. It brings to the surface that attention to some details was more important than others in Avatar. Over and over again.
Handling Indigeneity
Spoiler: it isn’t handled very well. What folks don’t know immediately is the impetus for James Cameron’s writing of Avatar to begin with. It becomes difficult to see this movie through any other lens after this moment.
That said, Avatar: The Way of Water presents a clumsy and hamfisted version of indigeneity. It reads very much like someone made a child’s book report about indigenous people into a movie. Add the appropriated and misused cultural elements and you can make that book report into a MadLibs. To be honest, it left me with more questions than I had when I walked into the theater regarding the production process. Questions like, “How did a white Earthling become a tribal leader on another planet?” Also, “Why does that family take the Sully name when Natiri is the next matriarch?” Lastly, “How Na’vi Jake got legit locs for hair when he had braids in the first movie and no other Na’vi has locs?” I don’t even want to get into Spider, played by Jack Champion, who looks exactly like you’d imagine Disney’s Tarzan to look in real life. I’d rather they’d taken the footage from Brenden Fraser’s George of the Jungle look over that mess.
These are the kinds of questions that make it obvious that white folks should no longer be allowed to write from the perspective of, or in regard to, the people their ancestors have oppressed. Avatar is so out of touch with the people it appropriated from that it has little to no grounding. The first movie combines so many North and South American indigenous concepts and cultures to create the ‘forest people,’ the Omatikaya. In this second outing, we are forced to witness a mashup of Pacific Island cultures for the creation of the ‘sea people’ called the Metkayina. It’s cute and pretty, like the movie itself, and ultimately empty, like the movie itself.
The True Danger
When the inevitable war reaches the Metkayina and they begin to rally themselves, they start to stomp and stick out their tongues. Clearly referencing the ceremonial Haka, but done with no cultural competency. Herein lies the motif of this review. So much is sampled is so little care. Not at all surprising, given how many indigenous people have been asking the public to boycott it via social media. The issues facing the indigenous are not the fault of this movie, but many of the ideas that create a negative climate for them to incubate are encouraged by the narratives of the Avatar universe. *IG Post here*
Way of Water borrows and steals from people to make a point about the fate of those same people without ever including those people’s points of view. It’s an insult, a large and expensive cultural faux pas that only exists because it can’t be held accountable. Unless it wins an award for visual effects and a hologram of Sacheen Littlefeather accepts and scolds the Academy. Then, at least, the performance of accountability is on the table.
[PS: It really disturbed me how Jake and Neytiri’s kids had these AAVE inflections to their speech without ever coming in contact with Black (sky) people in any meaningful way.]
Not My Avatar
The only thing worth seeing this movie for is seeing this movie. A weak and repetitive story that recycles every single beat from the first movie, down to the same villain (yep, Stephen Lang returns as Colonel Miles Quaritch). Often, it is said that there is nothing new under the Sun, but goodness gracious this movie is a copy of a copy and doesn’t even have the wherewithal to know it. Appropriation and privilege run rampant throughout the development of this entire franchise. And it won’t matter. It made money hand over fist and has five more sequels planned to follow.
Unless there are more indigenous and non-white people behind the camera and in the writer’s room, we can look forward to a lot more of this from the Avatar universe. I feel about this movie the way Cameron and Scorcese feel about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, except the Black Panther movies explore indigeneity and indigenous futurism with more dignity than either of them knows how to muster on film.
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The post ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Derry Girls is back for its third and final season on Netflix. Check out the trailer below for the shows long awaited return (from its original home on the UK’s Channel 4).
For those of you who haven’t seen Derry Girls before, it follows a group of teenagers coming of age in ’90s Northern Ireland, their comic adolescent foibles taking the foreground against the backdrop of the sectarian strife of the Troubles.
Created by Lisa McGee, season 3 sees Northern Ireland hopeful that The Troubles are finally over. That doesn’t stop our main gang of loveable eejits from getting up to their usual hijinks.
Derry Girls is incredibly well written by creator McGee, but the quality of the ensemble from the kids to the adults is what makes the show unmissable.
Saoirse-Monica Jackson (The Five, The Flash) gets to flex her dramatic muscles as Erin as well as her comedic ones this season. Louisa Harland (The Deceived) as the “subnormal” Orla is hilarious. Orla may be a bit simple, but she provides a lot of laughs. Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) as Clare is chatty, very chatty. Clare is keen to find herself a lesbian lover this season. Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Screw) as Michelle is a brash character, extremely open about whatever is crossing her mind. Dylan Llewellyn (Big Boys) is James, aka The Wee English Fella. James is the subject of plenty of anti-English jokes, which work very well.
Siobhán McSweeney (The Fall) as Sister Michael is the secret weapon of the show. She may go slightly under the radar but her straight faced interjections are hilarious. McSweeney’s comic timing is perfect.
Storylines in the third season include stress over GCSE results, a talent show, a haunted house, trying to get Fatboy Slim concert tickets and even the disposal of a dead rabbit. The storylines are a little ridiculous but that only adds to the comedy. The wit is very quick and dry. Fans of British comedy will enjoy Derry Girls.
The fifth episode of the season, “The Reunion” focuses on the parents and goes back to 1977 where we see younger versions of the parents at school. This was probably my least favourite episode of the season. It had some decent jokes, and the younger versions of the parents were well cast, but I missed the regular cast members. An average episode of Derry Girls is better than most comedies though.
Derry Girls features a lot of music of the time, including Spice Girls, Fatboy Slim and Jamiroquai. Good memories for anyone who grew up the in 90s, especially those from Britain.
It’s impressive how the show balances its humour with touching on The Troubles and what that meant for the people of Northern Ireland. Derry Girls also features some tough individual moments for the main characters separate to the issues of the time. It’s not all giggles in season 3 and it’s well balanced.
There are six 25-minute episodes and one final extended episode, approx. 50-minutes. The finale was a great way to end it. The extended runtime helped them wrap things up without having to shortchange any of the regular characters.
Derry Girls is absurd but heart-warming. The cast does a great job and it’s well written. It’s one of the best British sitcoms around and season 3 is a great way to end the show. Highly recommend you check it out.
Derry Girls season 3 is available now on Netflix
The post ‘Derry Girls’ Goes Out in Style appeared first on The Nerd Element.
Pets bring so much joy to our lives. It’s hard to replicate in robotic pets, but companies keep trying. For those who are allergic or kids training for a real dog, robotic dogs have been on the market since 1999. The latest is called Dog-E and it comes with a million possible combinations of lights, eye shapes, and sounds. While that mostly includes pastel colors and shapes like hearts and stars, it still somehow looks unsettling. We’re not sure this is a snoot we want to boop.
Dog-E certainly has some interesting traits though. Its tail conveys written messages through the same optical illusion used in those spinning wands that were popular in the 2010s. The 10-inch-tall pup has sensors that respond to being pet and a tongue that sticks out. Families can create their own profile with one Dog-E. The dog looks and acts differently based on who it’s interacting with. There are four options for the dog’s main personality: licky and loving, sweet and lazy, protective and hungry, or playful and energetic. If you want to add one to your family, it’s available for pre-order. It costs $80, with shipping expected in September 2023.
Gizmodo reports that the E-Dog is just one of many headed to the market that were shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Robo-dogs aren’t the only colorful tech to come out of the convention, BMW also debuted their trippy E Ink concept car.
We’ve seen a lot of variety when it comes to robo-pets. In Japan, there’s stuffed animal robots that nip your fingers and dinosaurs that serve ice cream. One company has developed robotic dolphins intended to replace those in captivity in theme parks. And of course there’s the Boston Dyanimcs robo-dogs, some of which work for NASA. Or people who don’t own pets could simply head to the local dog park or cat café to make a new friend.
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.
The post Dog-E the Colorful Robot Dog Looks Friendly But Also Creepy appeared first on Nerdist.