Quarantine Control #128: The Dragon Goes for Mortons and Thunder
It’s been a little over a week since Queen Elizabeth II passed as of this posting, a fact that you undoubtedly know given all the news coverage it’s received. TV channels have excessively dedicated hours upon hours to covering an extensive days-long service that has to cost billions despite the United Kingdom’s iffy economy. Plenty of people loved the queen despite having a tenure that should have been more divisive than it was, but this was enough that it overtook plenty of other news happening at the moment in volume. This, notably, won’t be over until Monday, so stay tuned.
Geoffrey Barnes
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 1 movie (the fourth Thor film)
Thor: Love and Thunder appeared to ostensibly have a winning formula. The movie was coming from Taika Waititi, who served the same role on the superlative Thor: Ragnarok, one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe films in the last several years and the best Thor film. Ragnarok was on par with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films (and Peacemaker) in terms of juggling both the serious and comedic aspects with efficiency, merging both together in a worthwhile fashion. This was also the movie to introduce Mighty Thor, and another solid villain with Gorr the God Butcher. I expected to enjoy this despite being aware that the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate was considerably lower than Ragnarok’s.
You can perhaps predict where I’m going with this. Love and Thunder is a significant step down from Ragnarok in every way, and one of the most disappointing Marvel films in Phase 4.
The quality is a shame considering the solid concepts. This movie brings back Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) after a nine-year absence (outside the voiced role in the animated What If? series). But her return begins with bad news: She has stage 4 cancer. This was absolutely the stipulation for Portman reprising the role one last time, but it was nice to have some stakes here that weren’t forgotten as the movie progressed. She travels to New Asgard on Earth to find that she resonates with the broken Mjolnir, which gives her the power to become Mighty Thor.
This Thor, of course, coexists with Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth), who uses the Stormbreaker axe instead of Mjolnir these days. He begins the movie fighting a threat with the aforementioned Guardians of the Galaxy, who make what’s essentially a cameo in this film. Thor himself continues to be very different from his comic book and animated counterparts, but that’s fine when he’s good comic relief. Other returning characters include Korg (voiced by Waititi himself) and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). They’re fighting against the aforementioned Gorr (Christian Bale), whose tragic backstory results in him wanting all the celestial Gods in the universe dead.
I was down on a chunk of the movie, but I enjoyed parts of it. The prior film and the otherwise-ignorable Men in Black: International established how Hemsworth and Thompson have good chemistry with each other, which continues in this film. But it’s also clear that Thompson has good chemistry with Portman. It’s just a shame the two of them don’t share enough scenes with each other, but the few they have are the high points of the movie’s comedy. Christian Bale is also great as Gorr. He’s not quite on par with Hela (Cate Blanchett) in Ragnarok thanks to the amount of screen time she received compared to him (hell, even Korg might have more lines than Gorr here), but Bale’s performance easily makes him one of the better MCU villains.
Those aren’t enough to prevent my disappointment with the overall film, because I cannot be blamed for expecting this to offer the same quality as Ragnarok given the same director. The jokes here, unfortunately, often fall flat, especially those from the male title character himself. Worse, the implementation of them isn’t as clever compared to its predecessor, which often leads to them dulling the impact of more serious moments. It feels like someone took the sarcastic quips from too many other MCU works and made an entire movie out of them. Gorr is largely free of this, which could explain why he was on the backburner compared to villains from other Marvel movies. This sticks out even more for anyone keeping up with the currently-airing She-Hulk series, which implements its humor more effectively than many other Marvel works.
It’s hardly a surprise by now that MCU works feature a lot of green screen material and CG use from horrendously-overworked VFX artists, but it’s too obvious when it happens here. But the green screen use could have been a result of filming during the pandemic, where big groups couldn’t be gathered indoors too often, so I can partially excuse this one. I won’t go easy on the script, though.
Love and Thunder isn’t the worst Marvel film around, nor is it the worst Thor movie. At least this film can still say it’s better than The Dark World. It is, however, the most disappointing. I was looking forward to Waititi’s take on Star Wars given the quality of his previous works, but now I’m nervous. In fairness, though, everyone has their occasional misses, and his future works could ideally demonstrate how he remains a quality director.
Angela Moseley
Rick and Morty, Season 6 Premiere (2022)
Source: Cartoon Network, YouTube
Episodes: 1
Season five of Rick and Morty had one of the strongest endings in the series so far. Evil Morty reset all of reality in the multiverses in his quest to find a universe free of all Ricks’ influence. Current portal technology was rendered too dangerous for the survivors of the rampage– a final “fuck you” to all Ricks from the ambitious and amoral teenager. It was unclear how the showrunners would start season 6. Turns out those of us who prefer a serialized approach received a huge gift for last week’s season premiere. “Solaricks” is easily one of the most continuity-heavy and consequential episodes of the series so far. It’s also my favorite season premiere, just edging out last season’s “Mort Dinner Rick Andre.”
Rick (C-137) and Morty have long fled the ruined Citadel, aka The Citadel of Ricks on an emergency escape vehicle along with other Mortys. Unable to return home without the use of the portal gun, the pair are close to succumbing to starvation. All hope seems lost until Space Beth rescues them. Upon arriving home, Rick decides to reset the portal fluid. Instead he resets every person who’s currently not in their home dimension. Rick, Morty, and Jerry are sent to their original realities. Summer is tasked with setting up a beacon on the Citadel to guide them home and her two mothers accompany her. Back in the Cronenberged reality which was once his former home, Morty has to deal with the awful consequences of abandoning his original family. In Rick’s home universe, he learns to move on from the past where his original family (Diane and a young Beth) were murdered. In the midst of everything happening, Rick learns where the Rick who killed his family is residing. Turns out he’s from Morty’s original reality.
Season 6 serves as a serialized, lore-heavy soft-reboot of Rick and Morty. The theme of this episode was essentially releasing one’s self from the past and starting anew. With the portal gun technology no longer an option for the time being, easy extra-dimensional travel is no longer possible. Our current Rick will either have to deal with this handicap or eventually invent new portal technology. Rick’s decision to give up on finding his family’s killer for the time being means a new portal gun isn’t high on his priority list.
In the side plot Morty has to deal with being forcibly cut off from the past. When he’s sent back to his Cronenberged reality, he finds there’s nothing left for him. His father harshly reveals that his actions in “The Rickshank Rickdemption” caused Beth and Summer to die. Basically, if he had not gone back to that reality to prove a point to his current Summer, his former family wouldn’t have been frozen in ice by the Citadel’s militia. Jerry makes it clear that Morty didn’t even see his family as people during that incident. He could have returned to safely thaw them out, but chose not to. As a result Summer didn’t survive being thawed out and Beth died of sickness afterwards. This left Jerry as the sole human of that Earth in a world of feral mutant humans that Rick accidentally created. To deal with his grief, Jerry read books and simply let go of everything including the concept of family. Morty eventually understands and is left to deal with his father’s rejection, having no rebuff to Jerry calling him out.
Things are much worse for Rick as the continuity train continues to wreck him emotionally. At the end of season 5, he revealed to Morty that his family was killed by Rick Prime, Morty’s original grandfather. Let that sink in for a moment. Our Rick (C-137) never had the opportunity to grow old together with his wife, watch his daughter grow up, or enjoy his grandchildren. Alternatively, he spent well over a decade hunting down Rick Prime, killing countless other Ricks as he went. In desperation he camped out in our Morty’s universe, passing himself off someone who walked out on Beth when she was a child– rather than admit what really happened in his reality. During that time he actually came to care for Morty and eventually the rest of the family.
Being back in his own reality doesn’t bring him any comfort. The haunting AI program he based on his dead wife is always one room away and mocks him relentlessly. And as a reminder that Rick isn’t a good person, we discover that he froze his reality in a time-loop for decades after the death of his family. Not only did this prevent him from even attempting to move on, everyone else was forced to relive that day as they aged. Worse yet, Rick forgot he did this to an entire reality. Fortunately, he does turn off the time-loop, admitting to AI Diane that he needs to move on. Morty further pushes him in this direction when they are reunited. Morty discourages him to seek revenge on Rick Prime. The teenager notes that Rick Prime may be HIS biological grandfather, but he considers Rick to be his actual grandfather. The theme of found family carries forward for the rest of the episode.
Jerry’s stay has been relatively mundane compared to Rick and Morty’s adventures. That said, we see how much the family has grown since season 2. The family he’s currently stuck with is nasty and argumentative. In contrast, his current Beth (who’s all smiles) and the rest of the family come to take him home. An adorable apocalypse causes them to all find a new universe, but they do so together as a family. This is in sharp contrast to the events of season 1, where only Rick saved himself and Morty from the Cronenberged reality. No thought was given to the original family left behind. The current family all hails from different realities, but they’re together now. I suspect this is the Sanchez-Smith family configuration that we’ll see for the remainder of the next two seasons.
In a darker turn, the show’s creators have set Rick Prime up as a future threat. In a brilliant twist, this Rick returns to Cronenberged Earth, the very Earth he abandoned decades ago. Jerry stumbles upon him. It’s unclear if Jerry saw Rick as a threat, or just wanted revenge on any Rick, but he attacks this man who doesn’t care about anyone. In return he’s unceremoniously killed by the narcissistic scientist. This truly severs all ties to season 1 and its reality. It’s also unclear how or if Rick Prime will meet with Rick C-137 and his new family. It’s possible that we may not even see him for a long while. On a quietly disturbing note, Season 2 Jerry is also dead, having been assimilated into the cute horror that is Mr. Frundles.
While Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have promised this season of Rick and Morty will be more canon-heavy, it still has both an episodic and serialized format. Episode two in this season has already returned to the episodic format, though it has more overall lore. It is anyone’s guess as to how strong season 6 will be, but for the moment my expectations are high.
Joseph Daniels
In our post-Capitalist world, there’s something you need to pay attention to when it comes to your food. We all know about “shrink-flation”, right? The practice of selling smaller portions of food for the same price. Companies hope no one notices when their product gets smaller, but sometimes it’s hard not to. Dare Ruffles changed the dimensions of their box a year or two ago in an attempt to try to get people to think the product actually grew. It didn’t, it shrunk from 300 grams to 250 grams and only dropped a few dimes off the price. But they changed the dimensions of the box so that it took up more space, the theory being that if people think they’re getting more, they’ll keep buying it.
However, not every change is to a product’s size. Life cereal changed the design of its box recently and although the product itself is still the same size, the ingredients are not. The formula’s been tweaked a bit, so it’s not the exact same cereal it was a year ago. Sometimes a product will advertise that it’s “new and improved” when the formula is changed, but more often than not, it won’t. They’re hoping that no one notices that it’s cheaper to make now, and that we’re eating something that probably isn’t quite as good for you.
In the case of Life, the box deliberately obfuscates the changes by showing you the nutrition information of 1 cup of cereal instead of 3/4 of a cup, but the math doesn’t even check out. Somehow, 3/4 of a cup was only 30 grams of cereal, but 1 cup is 49 grams. The inconsistency in measurement conversion makes it harder to tell what the true differences between the two versions of Life actually are, and this is by design.
Not only that, but since the amount of Life in the box didn’t change, the change to the nutrition information is trying to trick people into eating more of the cereal in one go, presumably because it’s easier than to do some extra math yourself, and thus buy more of the cereal.
Another recent and unadvertised change was to OXO bouillon. The jars increased in volume, but the product is in no way the same as before. There’s so much starch being used in the formula for the chicken flavour that you can’t add it to your soup or gravy as you used to, you need to dissolve it separately and then add it in as a liquid, or else the powder’s just going to clump up and not diffuse into your cooking. They also removed the parsley, which is a very noticeable change. What was their plan, that the public would just gaslight themselves into accepting this new OXO as the same product it’s always been?
Maybe that is the plan. I remember when Wheat Thins changed back in 2017 and no one I talked to about it even noticed, until I brought it up with a recent friend of mine who also noticed the change and also stopped eating the product around that time. Most people really are willing to gaslight themselves into accepting unadvertised product changes!
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So, last week was a strange week. With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, I didn’t feel like any of what I’d already written was appropriate for the day. The tone was sarcastic and lewd and I just wasn’t feeling like sharing it. So I swapped weeks. This week was originally going to be a kind words week and the following write-ups were going to run last week. Obviously this didn’t happen, but at least I have them to share with you now.
Seton Academy: Join The Pack! (2020)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Tiger content: Background decoration only
If you were to one day think to yourself, “Hey, Beastars is pretty good. What if I did my own, but didn’t take it seriously at all?” then you’d probably come up with something like Seton Academy. There must be a trend in anime lately where furry characters have to be at each other’s throats as if they were feral animals driven by instinct. If you think of Zootopia as taking place during a time when most of society has managed to dampen their feral instincts enough to coexist, and those who don’t want to co-exist use surprisingly human means to try to bring down society, Beastars exists during a time after evolution uplifted most animals but before those animals could learn to live with their instincts. They’re trying, but there are still incidents. Then there are the universes where these beasts coexist with humans. BNA has the beastmen acting ultra violent towards each other to the point where baseball is a blood sport and it’s expected that you might actually die on the field. Seton Academy is another world where humans co-exist with men-shaped beasts, but its conflicts are reframed to be more like high school drama between cliques. Very violent high school drama at times, but no one seems to be in danger of actually getting killed.
And then there’s Ranka, a lone wolf looking for a pack and who has a lofty goal of forming a pack featuring many different animals, working together. Her first inductees are Jin, a human boy who has grown to hate all animals due to childhood trauma, and Hitomi, the human girl he’s horny for. Although things are rocky for these three unlikely friends, Jin saves Ranka from a clique of zebra girls by sexually harassing the leader to prove she’s closer genetically to a donkey than a proud horse, and the series is basically all downhill from there.
Admittedly there are a few bright spots later in the series, but overall, I did not think it was very good.
Throughout each episode, the narrator will often deliver facts about a species of animal, so you’d think this is an educational series like The Lion Guard and Kemono Friends, but you can tell the narrator is taking this even less seriously than the writers. There’s a running gag in episode two about all the various ways in which a sloth can overdo things and die, and the gag continues for the rest of the anime, making Miyubi basically a plagiarised version of Hyatt from Excel Saga. Speaking of Miyubi and plagiarism, the familiar “hey, sloths are slow, so they’re going to speak slowly!” joke that you might recognize from Zootopia is used here, and it isn’t even the first time the joke shows up in anime, it predates both Zootopia and Seton Academy by a number of years. Jin is also surprisingly well informed about various animals despite hating them. Know your enemy, I guess. While sexually harassing the zebra, he delivers a lecture about the various ways in which a zebra is a donkey.
He gets away with lecturing everyone about biology because for some reason, the animal people themselves have no clue how their bodies work. I would blame the education system, as that’s often the scapegoat in the United States, but at Seton Academy, I’d blame how the girls are designed. One thing you’ll likely notice is that, as per usual, all male animals are depicted as western-style anthros and all female animals are depicted as eastern-style kemonomimi. Maybe someone got one erection too many looking at Juno, Haru and Els from Beastars and were very uncomfortable about it, so they looked for a manga where all the girls looked as human as possible and made it into an anime. At least here they have tails; I’ve seen kemonomimi ether have no tails, or have fake tails as part of their clothing.
Actually, it’s strange. The males are sometimes depicted as anthro-style and sometimes depicted as feral style animals, so not only do they not want to stick to one specific style of male, the females are a third style, the aforementioned kemonomimi. The implications are clear: the girls must be considered sexy for all the male viewers, but no one cares to draw the males with any kind of consistent character model, because they’re not who the viewers are supposed to be watching. We’re supposed to think of the males in as unsexy a manner as possible.
I really don’t like Jin. He’s supposed to be the main character, but he acts like a bigot for much of it, declaring his hatred for animals as much as possible. Sure, he warms up to them after a while and tolerates the presence of Ranka’s slowly growing pack as she fills the Cooking Club with members, but Jin really isn’t a likeable character. He also refuses to acknowledge Yena’s pronouns, although it’s played more like Yena’s too stupid to realize he was born a girl, rather than any real identity politics going on. Still, the scene plays out so much worse in the West than it probably ever did in Japan. The only thing that really saves Jin in my opinion is that he knows how to treat entitled Karen pandas.
That said, it reduces the sense of karma being served when you find out that the panda likes being treated like that, turning her episode into more of a Taming of the Shrew scenario, but then this series plays like a story written by someone who’s indulging their own fetishes while not wanting to imply that they’re into animals at all. Other than a pair of gay giraffes, every sexual aspect of the show is thrust upon the female characters.
Come to think of it, if all the gay representation in a show is given to non-human characters who we’re supposed to think of as unsexy, that says a lot about what the writers think of homosexuality.
Interestingly, when the show shifts focus from Jin and Ranka to literally any of the other characters, it turns into a bit more of an enjoyable experience. Almost sitcom-like. It feels like there was a lot of potential to this show that got squandered by focusing so much on Jin due to how garbage he is. It’s one thing to take no nonsense, but it’s entirely another to just be an asshole. The show also commits the most egregious cardinal sin upon tigers, and that’s to have them solely as background characters. There are tigers, but only if you’re content to leave them as decoration. I guess they couldn’t dig up enough semi-obscure and incredibly lewd facts about them to justify making one a part of the supportive cast.
I do admit to a little bit of perverse pleasure at seeing the honey badger getting thrown around a bit, possibly due to how much Bunga from The Lion Guard deserved to but managed to avoid receiving such karma. I’ve had a bit of a grudge against honey badgers ever since.
I think the bottom line is that I was very disappointed in Seton Academy and I’m amazed that I stuck with it. It was not as bad as Etotama, as I’ve still yet to watch any more of that, but I’ve definitely watched much better shows.
Dragon Goes House-Hunting (2021)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Like, for example, this show. Dragon Goes House-Hunting is the type of comedy I like better. It’s not mean spirited. Yes, most of the jokes are at poor Letty’s expense, but he’s still able to rise above them and enjoy himself a little bit before the next unfortunate business happens.
Letty, being a dragon, is basically a loot farm for heroes, but he wants to be more than that. He wants to be a homeowner. He wants a safe place to call his own, where wandering adventurers won’t bother him and he won’t have to worry about being cut up for crafting materials. The problem is, he’s a big and scary-looking dragon and few people want anything to do with him other than as a loot drop.
He eventually finds an elf who is willing to help him, for the elf’s also a real estate agent and he presumably knows all the best spots for a dragon to live. However, there’s a sense that either Dearia is being playful with Letty or the plot is, because nearly everything Dearia puts the poor dragon through feels like trolling. A tour of an abandoned temple has Dearia basically trick Letty into tripping every single trap in the place, and then Letty spends the night in a haunted castle, and spends the entire night being tormented by its residents.
This is an anime that is fond of its references. Everything from video games to classic literature has found their way into the show. At one point, when Letty is basically tricked into trying to survive in the arctic on his own for several days, he ends up drifting out to sea on a tiny ice floe and then eaten by a whale. Of course, since there’ve been stories written where people have lived inside whales, Letty finds himself sharing the whale with its prior victim. There are bedrooms, a kitchen, and various supplies to help one to survive for a long period of time inside the whale. It’s basically Pinocchio’s Monstro in all but name, but instead of Gepetto, the whale swallowed Davy Jones, and Davy just didn’t bother to try to escape.
Although Letty’s basically the butt of every joke, and some might find it irritating that he cries like a ten year old every time something bad happens to him – he is very weak and timid for a dragon, which is basically why he wants to find a secure home of his own – you can’t help but hope that he finds his home, that every time things start to look up for him and he tries somewhere new, that this might be where he settles down. Even the whale seemed promising, even though Letty would’ve had limited interactions with the outside world. Then again, that probably would’ve suited him fine. No contact with the outside world would mean no one’s trying to kill him, and Davy Jones seemed nice enough. He certainly isn’t an adventurer, so Letty wouldn’t be in danger, but there’s just something about living in a whale that doesn’t sit right with the dragon, so after he escapes, it’s back to the housing market for him as he continues his search. Does he find his permanent home? I’ll leave that for you to find out.
Dragon Goes House-Hunting feels like an affectionate parody of the kinds of tropes that are usually found in adventure RPGs, and is a far better comedy than Seton Academy.
The Queen’s passing has been such a dominant topic that plenty of otherwise worthwhile news is getting lost in the shuffle. Did you know that the world reported the lowest number of COVID deaths since the pandemic began last week? Probably not. The royally slow and steady fading into the next dimension will be over soon, but it sure has been prolonged.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
