Welcome again to We Have Always Live 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 month’s posting schedule, but first, here are some thoughts.
We are at a pop culture crossroads. Both movies and televisions have seen the end of eras with Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame and the final season of Game of Thrones. Disney and Fox have merged into one mega-being that is likely the prelude to Mickey Mouse rising again to unleash his wrath upon us all, but for now, represents a seismic shift in the industry whose true impact probably isn’t even clear yet. Peak TV has seen many of its stalwart shows come to an end, and is likely transforming again as the media watching landscape somehow manages to become more fractured and uniform all at the same time (which is both depressing and truly impressive). So where do we go from here?… No, seriously, I’m asking.
What!? You thought I had an answer? Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. There is no easy answer.
Maybe we’ll all burn, but we might as well fight the inevitable anyhow. What else do you have to do?
We are entering the unknown, and while I have a lot of doubt that this will end well in a lot of ways, at the same time there are a lot of opportunities right now. The opportunity to be more diverse in our storytelling, the opportunity to continue to push for new stories in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, now that both have claimed a foothold in not just nerd culture but also pop culture as a whole. The opportunity to push as much as possible, even if ultimately you get held back from the true finish line. Sure, corporations are going to use all of this for their own selfish gains, but fine, so can we as creators and audience members. I have long ago given up thinking that most people in power will do anything good for any reason besides, well, not looking bad, but progress is progress, even if it is built on bad intentions. So while we can all wallow in how everything is changing, and likely not for the better, why not instead just let it rip and see what happens? The time to push is now. Maybe the future where all of entertainment is called by the generic term disneys is inevitable, but until that time we can all work to make this inevitability a little less terrible–or who knows, maybe we can stop it from happening altogether. There are certainly worse things to hope for.
From the depths of the Kraken, here is what we are bringing you this month.
Life in the Kraken: Westeros Edition concludes with one final episode, as everyone grapples with how they really feel now that Game of Thrones is finally over.
Disney released their slate of upcoming movie releases through 2027, an event which we here at the Kraken are referring to as the Disneypocalypse:
- In part 1, Kyu covered the upcoming Disney movies in this very year, 2019.
- In part 2, Kyu covered the upcoming Disney movies scheduled for 2020.
Catch of the Week Month:
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 Month.
Kyu: This month I’m recommending Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch. This gorgeous, warm-hearted 3D (well, mostly) platformer is so good it may have knocked Super Mario World (SNES) off the top of my list of favorite Mario games, and that’s no small feat. What makes Odyssey so good? Start with the perfectly responsive controls and gorgeous graphics, which together finally deliver on the promise of the innovative-but-clunky Super Mario 64. As usual for Nintendo, the music and sound effects are top notch. But what really makes the game shine is the way it marries its design sensibilities to a story and ethos that (for once) are whimsical without actually being nonsensical. Mario’s entire odyssey is, as usual, a matter of questing to save the kidnapped Princess Peach (in fact, Odyssey doubles down by giving hero and damsel a corresponding set of gendered hat-people with the same motivations as Mario and Peach), but the game frames this through the idea of a literal World Tour, where Mario, new character Cappy, and the player are all able to stop and smell the Piranha Plants on their way to trouncing Bowser. Every world you visit features a gushing brochure and atlas describing the area, including its culture, economy, people, landmarks, and points of interest, and the game gradually becomes really about the idea of meeting different people, and different kinds of people, including the kind of meeting where you throw out your hat and possess their body and walk around in their skin for a while (don’t think about that part too hard, it gets super dark). The upbeat narrative flow of visiting each world with a tourist’s curious eye perfectly matches the treasure hunt design of each massive level, where creative and colorful environments are dense with secrets, interactions, mini-games, and other hidden methods of the game’s main collectibles, Power Moons. Rarely has a 3D platformer featured such a rewarding intuitive flow of play, or had such success both celebrating and translating its 2D forebears (with the New Donk City 2D festival being a game and honestly series highlight of pure nostalgic joy). All in all, Odyssey once again demonstrates that Nintendo makes some of the best games around. If you haven’t played it, get in your airship and go. Now where the hell is that last Moon hiding…
David: The CW continues to be a weird network that is willing to just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. That’s how it does things like remake shows that have only been off the air for 17 years (actually writing this down makes me realize this is much longer than I had thought) and wasn’t even that popular to begin with, in the form of Roswell, New Mexico. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. Maybe it is because the show has managed to tap into making this show as much about domestic aliens, in the form of illegal immigrants, as it is about extraterrestrial ones. Maybe it is because all the show’s characters treat sex as natural parts of life and don’t feel the need to act as if people don’t have casual sex all the time, and then continue to function as normal people and not morons. Maybe it is simply because the show is just good. I don’t know, but what I do know if you are looking for a guilty pleasure that won’t make you feel all that guilty, you should go ahead and give the first season a watch now that it is on Netflix and you can binge it in all its crazy, sexy glory.
That’s it for this month’s notes. The Kraken is getting ready to head on vacation, so you may find yourself thrown into the void so he can get some peace and quiet. Don’t worry, we’ll be back for you… probably.