Quarantine Control #90: A Christmas Peril

DC Staff | December 23, 2021 | Animation, Features, Movies, Television | No Comments

Everyone with a clue about COVID-19 and viruses in general had been warning about a variant that could at least partially evade current vaccines for months, one which could originate in a territory with a low vaccination rate. Omicron, to no surprise, appears to be that variant. It apparently originated in South Africa, and is now wreaking havoc across the world’s so-called western territories. It almost feels like March 2020 has returned considering all the lockdowns and restrictions imposed in countries that aren’t content to let the virus wash over the citizenry. But at least we’re slightly better equipped to fight it. A shame it’s happening at one of the worst times of the year. Merry Christmas.

Geoffrey Barnes

Hawkeye: Season 1
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 6

Marvel’s had a, well, marvelous, year as far as Marvel Cinematic Universe entertainment has been concerned — perhaps too marvelous. A whopping five shows have aired on Disney Plus throughout the year, the first results of the investment Disney and Marvel Entertainment made into the platform around the time it launched in 2019. (And the number could have been higher if one of them wasn’t delayed into 2022.) Four movies have also released, all within the second half of 2021. It feels like overcompensation for the lack of any Marvel content in 2020, but it’s been a fun ride for anyone that doesn’t need all their entertainment to qualify as Cinema™.

The latest TV work is Hawkeye, which continues the adventures of Clint Barton following the events of Avengers: Endgame, and introduces young female Hawkeye Kate Bishop to the MCU. The many enemies Clint made following the death count he racked up as Ronin in Endgame (before they gave him hope) have come back to haunt him, though the true figures orchestrating the events from behind the scenes aren’t initially revealed. It doesn’t take long for Clint meets a big fan of his in Kate, who happens to be skilled in archery despite her inexperience in battle. She fortunately doesn’t hold him back despite Clint often thinking she doesn’t understand how much trouble she’s in.

Clint and Kate play off each other pretty well, thanks to (perhaps surprisingly?) good acting from Jeremy Renner and especially Hailee Steinfeld, the latter’s style fitting right into the MCU’s established tone. (And that’s not even the series’ best pairing.) The other acting talent is solid, including Vera Farmiga as Kate’s mother Eleanor Bishop, the deaf Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez/Echo (making her big acting debut here) and actors I won’t name thanks to requiring delving into spoiler territory. I know everything about this series is plastered all over the internet, but I’m trying to be respectful here.

The show takes place in a New York City plastered in Christmas decorations, with the show maintaining the Christmas theme through aspects of the storyline and the soundtrack. It ends up working well while not feeling overbearing. Anyone is free to list this as a favorite Christmas series from now on, perhaps on a future Naughty and Nice entry should a subject call for it.

Something I’ve enjoyed about all the MCU shows this year is how they’ve felt different in terms of their tones and aesthetics. This was a more of street-level show, with the story sequences and action occurring at various locations and within NYC, a fitting scenario for two heroes without superpowers. From the little I’ve seen of them, the tone and locations are closer to the Netflix Marvel shows, a fitting and perhaps intentional theme considering who shows up near the end. The action choreography for the series is a step above the usual Marvel fare. I’d be a fool to expect anything to touch Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings outside the movie’s impending sequel, but Hawkeye’s certainly better than other movies and shows that have depended on excessive jump cuts in this regard.

Hawkeye had a lot of plot threads going on at once, between the dealings involving both Kate’s mother and her foster father and the array of people who want Clint dead. But it resolves most of them a bit too quickly. There were so many outstanding by the fifth episode’s end that I wondered if the sixth episode would be comparable to the length of a feature film. The finale was the longest episode in the series, notably, with a runtime of a hair over an hour. But it still led to some plot resolutions feeling rushed. One character in particular introduced at the end of episode five didn’t get to shine as much as I’d hoped despite putting up a good challenge.

But I won’t hold that against Hawkeye too hard. MCU works are all about having continuing plot threads, and it’s clear all of the living characters will return for future shows and movies. The last episode was called the “series finale” during promotions and the official website identifies this as “Season 1,” meaning Hawkeye will return. Echo is also getting her own show. Other works are bound to take place in NYC, including the recent release of Spider-Man: No Way Home and the associated works like the Venom films, and, I guess, Morbius. Given Hawkeye’s quality, I wouldn’t mind if some Netflix shows were revived, regardless of whether the older ones were entirely canonical to the main MCU timeline. I’ll leave it there before going further.

Joseph Daniels

If you’re looking for a holiday viewing guide, I decided I would put one together this year. I didn’t put one together last year because I was too busy planning something which I was hoping to make a yearly tradition for myself, but this year, I was thinking that, since there are still two days left until Christmas, it would be good to offer a few suggestions for Christmas-related media that could be watched. I don’t subscribe to everything, but here’s a few suggestions based on what I do subscribe to.

NETFLIX

A Boy Called Christmas (2021)

If you’re looking for something that looks like a fantasy epic, look no further. The Winter setting of the story makes it feel like you’re watching another Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and hey, this movie has a talking animal as well, a mouse! So it takes the best part of the second Narnia film, too. The talking mouse Reepicheep was also in the third film, but it was a dramatic improvement over the second, so I don’t wish to make it sound like the third film was at the same level of quality as the second.

But anyway, this film tells a version of the tale of the origin of Santa Claus and is so epic that it helps you forget that the ultimate fate of Santa is to become The Doctor from Doctor Who and be reborn from the ashes, so to speak, every time he falls off a roof and has someone else put on his clothing.

Yes, I made a The Santa Clause reference.

Elliot the Littlest Reindeer (2018)

For more juvenile fare, try this film. Well, if you can get past having one of the characters wearing blue make-up and talking like Mel Gibson in Braveheart for no reason, it’s actually quite cute. A young horse decides he wants to be a reindeer, and in Zootopia, anyone can be anything, so since he probably watched Zootopia at some point – given the Braveheart pony, I’m assuming movie night is a popular pastime for the characters – the young horse travels to the North Pole for reindeer tryouts. From there, I don’t really want to spoil it, but it turns into a full blown conspiracy that threatens to alter Christmas forever. Yeah, it’s definitely a children’s film. But hey, I kind of had a crush on the goat, Hazel, when I watched it, so I’m adding it to the list.

If neither of these catch your fancy, a search for Christmas pulls up plenty of other options.

DISNEY+

Home Alone (1990)

You may recall I wrote about this movie last year. It, along with many other modern classics, have ended up on Disney+, whether through being bought by Disney or being made by them.

Home Alone, depending on who you talk to, is the tale of some rich and spoiled white kid who defends his stuff from burglars when he should’ve just called the police and be done with it, or it’s the tale of a child who learns the importance of family and realizes that he’s the only person who can defend his home as a safe space and prevent two burglars from taking that feeling of safety away. You probably know which side of the fence I sit on if you’ve read my article.

Home Alone is such good fun and is a very heart-warming film, so naturally it spawned sequels. Only the first sequel is good.

Home Alone II: Lost in New York (1992)

Taking place one year after the first movie, Kevin McCallister finds himself accidentally separated from his family for a second Christmas in a row. Instead of being scared and not knowing what to do in a city as big as New York, he lives it up and spends his family’s money to enjoy the Big Apple, but when he finds out his arch enemies Harry and Marv are at it again, he risks his own safety to prevent a toy shop from losing their entire day’s sales, which had been promised to charity. It’s basically a Die Hard style escalation where Kevin is more of an action hero here rather than just some kid who finds himself in a bad situation and must rise to the occasion after a bit of personal growth.

This film’s plot is probably a bit more palatable for those who didn’t like that he was just defending his own stuff in the first film, but the traps are a bit more over the top this time around, and definitely a lot more potentially lethal. Between electrocution and several falls from great heights, it’s a good thing this is just a movie, or the Wet Bandits would likely have been dead long before they ever caught Kevin in Central Park.

Oh, and yes, this film does feature Donald Trump, but unlike what you’d expect from him, it’s basically just a tiny cameo that doesn’t even call attention to him. I know he’s garbage in recent years and I definitely do not support him or his politics, but back in 1992, he seemed content with minor movie cameos and wasn’t trying to promote his brand to the detriment of everyone around him. And to be honest, it’s a blink and you’ll miss it cameo anyway, the movie doesn’t call attention to the fact that it’s Donald Trump.

The Santa Clause (1994)

Speaking of films featuring right wing personalities, at least Tim Allen knows not to constantly bait the left on Twitter. Unlike Kevin Sorbo, but I wrote an article on that, too. That said, a recent tweet quoting Epictetus does feel like it could’ve been a veiled reference to the January 6 insurrection, but very few of his followers brought that up in their replies, so I might just be acting like an overly sensitive leftist here.

Anyway, as mentioned above, The Santa Clause tells the story of an ordinary man who accidentally kills Santa and becomes the next one by wearing the suit and climbing into the sleigh. It’s a classic tale of someone who doesn’t read the fine print in the contract he accidentally agrees to and now must live with the consequences. He does require a year to grow into the role and warm up to it, but when he realizes that he’s the only one who can keep Christmas going, he rises to the occasion.

The franchise spawned two sequels, but like with Home Alone, only the first sequel is good.

Man, I can’t believe we’re up to six Home Alones. Come on, just let the franchise die!

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

I grew up with this Christmas special and would look forward to watching it every year on CBC along with Babar & Father Christmas and The Snowman. You might be able to find the latter two on YouTube, and I would recommend them as well.

Mickey’s Christmas Carol is pretty much the classic Charles Dickens tale but with Disney characters in place of the originals. It works quite well here, and this was likely most people’s first introductions to Scrooge McDuck, a character who was created almost forty years prior and who really was named after the character in A Christmas Carol, so it fit to cast him in the role here.

This may also be the reason he was cast as a main protagonist in DuckTales. Having undergone the change of character in Mickey’s Christmas Carol thanks to the three spirits, audiences would likely be more open to having a protagonist named after the most famous miser of all.

McDuck, the duck-billed spend-thrift! Had a very full cash bin! All that cash came to him ’cause, he kept his margins razor thin.

Yeah, I’m not continuing that.

Disney+ has a ton of Christmas classics, both old and modern, and has an actual Christmas section you can click on to see them all. Stuff like Miracle on 34th Street (both versions) and several versions of A Christmas Carol are represented here, so if these selections don’t tickle your fancy, something likely will.

~~~

So what am I going to be doing this year for Christmas? On Christmas Eve, I plan on celebrating Eorzea’s 2021 Starlight Celebration, their version of Christmas. It feels a little weird to have it happening when I’m currently in the middle of a story about the literal apocalypse, but the real world doesn’t wait for fictional worlds to be saved. I hear the celebration involves a new character called Rissai, the Squirrel of Starlight. They’re not a playable squirrel, but it appears that someone at Square Enix was reading our blog this year. It’s a start!

Also, as suggested earlier, I’ll be saving New York City again this year in Parasite Eve. If I can also locate last year’s save file, I’ll be able to visit the bonus dungeon in the Chrysler Building, but it won’t be that big a deal if I have to start a new file. My trip to New York to fight Resident Evil style mutants is going to be a yearly tradition from now on, and like last year, I plan on playing the game “in real time”, where events on the 24th are played on the 24th, events on the 25th are played on the 25th, and so on. My work schedule even helps me this year since I work on the 23rd and 30th, the day before and the day after the events in the game. I couldn’t have planned this better if I tried.

I hope you all enjoy your Christmas this year and find some way to be with your loved ones during this extended COVID crisis.

There’s data showing that the Omicron variant isn’t as severe with infections as previous variants like Delta, but don’t take this to mean it can’t still kill people. It was probably best for people to get booster shots before the holiday season began, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to get them. That is, assuming you’re vaccinated at all; but there’s no way any holdouts like that are reading this blog. Try to have a nice holiday season.

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