Welcome again to We Have Always Lived in the Kraken, a pop culture blog transmitted directly to you from the belly of the beast. Here in the Notes we’ll show you this week’s posting schedule, but first, a little Seafood for Thought.
Get ready to step up to superstardom, Felicity Jones.
Sometimes all I can do is shake my head. When the trailer for Rogue One hit this week, I was pretty excited. This is the closest thing I will probably get to a gritty Star Wars movie. It looks to be much more of a caper and war film than the sci-fi and fantasy fare of previous works (nothing wrong with those, of course, but always nice to see something different). I like Gareth Edwards as a director. The promise of little or no Force powers being used in the movie offered a unique chance to examine the world of Star Wars from a new perspective. But most of all, I’m excited because Felicity Jones is the star, and I am huge fan of her as an actress. She has always been great in the things she’s done, but I had grown worried that she was destined to be typecast into the role of wife or girlfriend or lover of the supposed interesting subject in the film, a la The Theory of Everything or The Invisible Woman, or at best the complicated romantic lead in films like Like Crazy or Breathe In. There is nothing necessarily wrong with those roles, but it always seemed like she could do more, especially if allowed to showcase the personality she showed in an episode of Doctor Who where she played a cat burglar. It seemed like in 2014 she was finally ready to get started on this path when she was cast as Felicia Hardy (aka Black Cat) in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but after that film failed just enough that Marvel took back the Spider-Man franchise, she lost her place in the series before she could even get a chance to really shine. Then last year it broke that she was cast in Rogue One, and her career looked ready to jump start again. After much anticipation, the trailer hit, and so far things are looking pretty awesome. The film has a distinct look and Jones looks ready to take a step forward into true stardom.
I had thought that much of the talk about this film would be how it fit into the Star Wars universe overall, especially in the case of Jone’s Jyn Erso. To be fair, there was a lot of that, but much of it was overshadowed by cries from sad fan boys (or just boys in general) angry about the fact that Star Wars had the audacity to make a second straight movie with a female protagonist. Hence the the shaking of my damn head. I don’t usually like to talk about things like this, and it is not as if this truly surprises me, because, well, people suck. Still, it’s sad, because besides the fact that we should all be past this shit at this point, this Star Wars film already has enough to deal with, seeing as it is going to be quite a different tone than pretty much anything else Star Wars has or will make in the foreseeable future. So having this extra layer of bullshit added on top of it is disheartening. Luckily, although the internet makes it look like this isn’t the case, these silly people are really in the minority. Most people are excited for Jyn Erso and all she has to bring to the Star Wars universe. Those that aren’t, well, might I point you to every other pre-Force Awakens bit of official canon Star Wars works that do, in fact, have male protagonists you can appreciate as much as you want. The rest of us will enjoy what the present and future are bringing. If that isn’t enough, I have already wasted too much time on you, so I am just going to shake my head and move on. The important thing is that Rogue One actually has me more excited than The Force Awakens did, and I can’t wait to see it, so keep bringing the awesome.
David Robertson
From the depths of the Kraken, here is what we are bringing you this week.
Monday: Nothing new today, as the Kraken is quite sore after taking part in a plyometric class when we told him he wasn’t ready. In completely unrelated and coincidental news, all those local seismic tremors will not interfere with your ability to enjoy our archives.
Tuesday: It’s career day over at The Loaded Die, where prospective trainees can try their hand at a new occupation. Will you make a great chef, a skillful real estate agent, or an inventive mad scientist? No need to achieve high levels of competitiveness in a complex global marketplace here, ’cause, you know, these are just board games.
Wednesday: Announcing a new feature from Atomika! Every other week Atomika will give us her unique perspective on a recent pop culture news item. This week, it’s Atomika vs The Wachowski Outing.
Thursday:
- Keskel is back with a good reason for not posting any Nothing But Trashes lately–a brief review of everything worth watching (and everything else) from the recent Winter anime season.
- Because TV Roulette likes to throw down bombs and watch the world burn, this week David gets to cover another penultimate episode in the form of the CW’s My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This show has managed to get past its horrible title to develop quite the cult following and win a Golden Globe for star Rachel Bloom. Will this eccentric musical comedy prove to be worth the watch or not?
Friday: Today’s content is missing/not found. To reapply for content access, please file form 378-BX in triplicate plus two forms of photo ID (not photocopies) with the Office of Content Renewal. Allow 2-4 weeks for processing.
Saturday: Baturdays are here again, as the second issue of Batman continues. I’m not going to say the Batman writers have run out of ideas at this point, but when the best thing you can think of for Batman to do is solve “The Case of the Clubfoot Murders,” I think you need to re-evaluate some things.
Catch of the Week:
Each and every week the residents here in the Kraken will offer one recommendation for the week that we think you all would enjoy. It might be a movie. It might be a book. Who knows? This is your… Catch of the Week.
David: This week I would like to recommend a new show, SyFy’s Wynonna Earp. Based on a comic and made by the creator of Lost Girl, this show is a fun combination of Buffy and Justified, and is worth giving a look. Jump in at the beginning, and be a part of the conversation before you are told to binge watch it two years from now.
Kyu: What’s the antidote to super hero fatigue? Why, more classic comix that aren’t about super heroes at all! This week I’m recommending Warren Ellis’s seminal Transmetropolitan. An absurdist satire of the future, the special ingredient leavening Ellis’ trademark cynicism is a healthy (if profane) measure of faith in the ability of good journalism to improve even the worst situations. Not only does ‘Transmetro‘ provide a vibrantly rich and detailed world (where there are hundreds of popular religions, fast food restaurants that serve panda meat, and communes isolating past cultures for the sake of reality TV) and one of the all-time great comic characters, bald and be-spectacled gonzo columnist Spider Jerusalem (“Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth!”), but it’s also a really thrilling tale of politics and press so prescient that there hasn’t been an election in recent memory without a Smiler and a Beast in play. (This year, Cruz and Trump, respectively.) It’s one of the all-time greats, and if you haven’t read it yet, I strongly urge you to pick it up.
Keskel: This week I recommended Dark Souls. It is one of the finest examples of games as architecture, games as experience, and games as narrative construction.
That’s it for this week. We hope you continue to enjoy your stay in the Kraken. Remember, in case of an emergency, you’ll be auto-teleported to a nearby and hopefully safer dimension, followed shortly by your luggage. The Kraken is not responsible for any luggage or visitors that fail to re-atomize during this process.