Quarantine Control #145: The United Will to Rev Up
There was hope that the critical injuries of Damar Hamlin and Jeremy Renner would be aberrations instead of foretelling a bad year, but that hope appears to be quickly fading. Several high-profile deaths in the last week have made top headlines, the latest being legendary guitarist Jeff Beck. It, let’s be real here, feels like the last several years have been bad for celebrity deaths, but there’s potential for this one to be on par with 2016. That’s another fun topic to discuss in addition to all the diseases swirling around.
Geoffrey Barnes
Willow — Season 1 (2022)
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 8
It wasn’t unrealistic to expect the Willow series on Disney Plus to maintain the tone of the 1988 film, but I feel weirdly guilty for expecting that after finishing the first season. The movie was a worthwhile family fantasy film considered a memorable adventure at the time it released, especially for those who were younger children like me. But it’s clear right from the first episode that the series is gunning for a different audience, not solely due to focusing on a cast of characters in their early 20s. The writing tone suggests that Disney and Lucasfilm wanted to target a new generation of children. That in itself is fine, even if it’s not what I wanted to see. But that’s also not enough to prevent me from thinking the series is clumsily executed.
The new Willow is a sequel that takes place 17 years after the original, despite arriving more than 30 years after the movie released. The series focuses on the children of characters from its predecessor. Among them are twins Prince Airk (Dempsey Bryk) and Princess Kit (Ruby Cruz), the son and daughter of Queen Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) and Madmartigan (Val Kilmer — only seen through archived footage). The plot kicks into gear when Airk is kidnapped by representatives of the new threat to the world’s stability known as the “Gales.” From here, Kit teams up with her girlfriend and knight-in-training Jade (Erin Kellyman), the kitchen maid who’s much more than what she seems named “Dove” (Ellie Bamber), Prince Graydon (Tony Revolori), and snarky treasure hunter and swordsman Thraxus Boorman (Amar Chadha-Patel). They eventually run into Willow (Warwick Davis), in the show literally named after him.
The concept isn’t bad, even if it’s rudimentary for a fantasy show. It’s the presentation during the journey that’s peculiar. Willow distinguishes itself from the other fantasy shows this year by mixing modern lingo and music with its setting. If you haven’t seen the show and think this sounds awkward, know that the results are worse than you’re imagining. There’s nothing wrong with using Americans with American English in a fantasy setting, considering such shows are a bit too reliant on British English despite evidence that the manner of speaking was different during medieval times. But the implementation of modern slang is uncomfortably reminiscent of a CW-level fantasy, or Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess, albeit with a higher budget. Anyone who claimed Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time fit this definition should watch this show.
I’m not entirely against the use of modern music either, as some could fit within the confines of a fantasy show. Not the ones they picked, though, with lyrics clearly not about matters and issues relevant to a fantasy time. The instrumental music is fine, though hardly as remarkable as the movie’s soundtrack, but I raised my eyebrow every time I heard an ill-fitting remix of a popular music track.
The writing and character development fails the talent involved, though the actors try their damnedest to sell it through their charisma. The story developments, like the concept behind the series itself, is solid ostensibly, but the execution is often unconvincing thanks to underwhelming writing filled with peculiar lines, and the odd inconsistencies in the storytelling.
Willow is a flawed show, but it has its charms. The writing slightly improves in the later episodes, which contains solid twists even if they aren’t entirely unpredictable for fantasy fare. It took a bit for them to get there, but Kit and Jade were two of the better characters by the end, to perhaps little surprise considering the former receives a good portion of the character development — considerably more than the title character who often feels like he’s along for the ride. It’s fortunately the production values that prevent those Hercules/Xena/CW comparisons from going as far as they could, with solid CG use and special effects.
The adventure felt more digestible when I considered it less a sequel to the Willow movie and more someone’s elaborate Dungeons & Dragons campaign. (Just don’t tell the comically stringent Wizards of the Coast about that.) With that mindset, everything works. The show’s tone has more in common with Critical Role’s animated adaptation The Legend of Vox Machina, an awkward fit for a sequel to a classic family fantasy film.
The Willow series will apparently be three seasons, and I hope the creators get to fully realize its potential despite the first season being merely passible in quality by the end. Given the reception to this, outside the morons who think it’s “woke” because of a prominent gay relationship, I hope Disney doesn’t get cold feet about it. Too many shows have been cancelled just as they were revving up, and I’d hate to see this included as the newest evidence of the streaming bubble popping. My hope is that the producers are reading all the criticism and are planning a stronger second season.
Angela Moseley
I managed to watch one of the most anticipated shows of the 2022 Fall anime season. To be honest, my backlog is growing again, but I’m glad I’m slowly chipping away at some shows.
Chainsaw Man (2022)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
I never read the Chainsaw Man manga, but a lot of my friends on social media did and his appearance was immediately iconic. A man with a chainsaw for a head, one chainsaw on each hand, clad in a white shirt, black tie, and black pants. Even if I had no idea what the story was about, or just how many chainsaws were involved, this series was recognizable. When an anime adaptation was announced, I knew I had to check it out.
Denji is a teenager down on his luck. His parents are long gone, and because of them he’s forced to pay off their debt to the local yakuza. To pay the bills, he lives in extreme poverty having donated everything from one eye to his testicles for extra cash. He barely makes enough to eat by working as a freelance Devil Hunter with his long-time friend, a devil-dog named Pochita. One day the yakuza boss asks him to do a particular job, but it turns out that the boss has sold his own soul to a zombie devil. The devil wants the zombified gangsters to kill Denji and Pochita. They succeed, but Pochita uses the last of his strength and replaces Denji’s heart with his own. This turns Denji into a half-human, half-devil being known as a “fiend.” Notably, Pochita’s sacrifice completely heals the teen’s body, even the parts he previously sold off. As the Chainsaw Man, Denji wastes no time in cutting down the yakuza and the zombie devil.
His actions catch the eye of Makima, a high-ranking member of the government bureau responsible for hunting devils. She wishes to utilize Denji’s power and make him a Public Safety Devil Hunter. She gives the young fiend an ultimatum, join her or die on the spot. Happy to not be living in abject poverty, and horny for Makima, Denji gladly accepts. He’s assigned to the Tokyo Special Division 4 and partnered up with a regular human named Aki Hayakawa and another fiend named Power. Essentially their division is made up of many half-devils who are tasked with hunting down other devils for the Japanese government.
Given the popularity of Chainsaw Man, I’m actually surprised a smaller studio like MAPPA picked this one up, opposed to Bones or Wit Studio. Overall, the animation looks good, though the action scenes tend to be few and far between. The attention to detail is astounding, which helps a lot for the numerous slower paced scenes. I’m also awed at the fact that every episode has a different outro.
In terms of the story, I’m happy that this show has gone the seinen route, opposed to being a shonen series. This allows the anime to explore more mature topics and to generally have an older cast. The story isn’t unusual as people who make pacts with devils or are part-devils has been seen before. What makes Chainsaw Man unique is the point of view from a bureaucracy, whereas other works would probably take place from the freelance devil hunters’ point of view. Devils are also public knowledge and represent threats ranging from mundane to natural disaster scale dangers. Those working as government Devil Hunters aren’t particularly good people, and many of them are unhinged in their own ways. Not to mention making pacts with devils that, well, involved literal deals with devils. Whatever they traded for power won’t work in their favor in the long-run, and many of these government officials die young.
The characters in this show can be difficult to like. Denji is a stupidly simple young man with simple desires. He wants several full meals a day, a comfortable place to live, and an occasional boob to touch. For that, he’s willing to trade away his freedom and life. He doesn’t have a purpose like revenge driving him forward or even a desire to protect others. Power is as self-serving as one gets. Aki is a bit more interesting, as he seeks to kill the devil responsible for wiping out his entire family. He’ll do whatever it takes and ultimately does not care what happens to himself to achieve that goal. The rest of the cast introduced ranges mischievous to anxiety-ridden. Some of them would stab a co-worker in the back if that meant they got to live a while longer. On the upside, they can be exceptional hunters when needed. Not that it matters, as many of them don’t survive the first season. Even the nicest character of the bunch, Makima, is frightening in her own right.
The real appeal of Chainsaw Man comes from world-building, the adversity these characters have to face, and their unhinged natures. While many of these concepts aren’t new in anime, the way they’re constructed gives this show a fresh breath of air. The tricky part will be if it turns out to be a short, but sweet series or something that overstays its welcome. For now, I’m intrigued and looking forward to season two.
Joseph Daniels
When it comes to animated films, some studios are capable of putting out gold and some studios seem content to release whatever they can throw together. There are several different kinds of studios, too. At the top, you have studios like Disney and Pixar, who have the art of movie making down to a science, and who know what sells and what doesn’t. There are studios like Illumination, who understand that the Minions sell, but who also occasionally release a pleasant surprise like Sing. You have studios like Mainframe, who made a name for themselves when they first came out but who haven’t striven to improve themselves and are content to produce feature length Barbie toy commercials.
Having sat through one of those Barbie films, I’m not sure how parents manage it. Maybe they don’t, and they just put Netflix on for their kid and retreat. If you recall, in The Lost Birthday, Chelsea’s birthday mysteriously disappears from the calendar, but only because the family crosses the International Date Line while on a cruise. You would think there’d be some kind of plan for that sort of thing, and that maybe someone would’ve realized it would happen, but everyone’s kind of stupid in that film. Then, Chelsea goes on an adventure with her stuffed toys, one of which is her future fursona and the rest of which are the fursonas of her sisters in her own private head canon. Of course, the only reason I even watched it was because of the tiger.
Speaking of…
Pets United (2019)
Source: Netflix
Tigers?: Asgar (minor antagonist); coincidentally, there’s a character named Tiger who isn’t one
Yeah, this film isn’t worth it. There’s a tiger, but he only shows up occasionally to be a very ineffective minor villain as part of a trio of pointless minor villains. His portion of the film could easily be cut and nothing of value would be lost. Actually, that’s sort of how I feel about the entire film. For almost its entire run time, I was sitting here thinking to myself, “What in the world am I watching?” It feels as if I’ve been watching something written by the seat of someone’s pants during NaNoWriMo with no prior planning involved. I should know, I’ve done that. You only get garbage that way.
Pets United is a kind of spiritual sequel to a film called Animals United, but I doubt the two are related other than in the writer and director’s mind. It seems like an attempt to piggyback on the relative success of The Secret Life of Pets. The film stars a dog named Roger, who lives as a stray in a city with human residents and which is run by robots. The robots all suddenly take over, and Roger must lead a group of accidentally abandoned pets through the robot apocalypse to take the city back. I’d accuse it of also ripping off The Mitchells vs. the Machines, except that this film came two years prior.
The animation isn’t really up to snuff, the story meanders in several places and wanders completely off track occasionally, like when the characters just suddenly enjoy a dance break in the mall. In a better movie, I wouldn’t mind it and it would feel like a welcome little bit of character development. But this is Pets United I’m talking about. It doesn’t do a lot with its plot and it even randomly resolves plot points without adequately exploring them. Case in point, Roger apparently has forgotten his past, but then arbitrarily remembers it later and kind of confesses his past life as a pet to his new allies, and that’s all we get from that minor plot thread. It feels like someone took Chekhov’s gun, removed the magazine, made sure the barrel was empty, then gave it away to the first person they saw on the street.
Meanwhile, most people will be expecting the twist that Roger’s former owner is the main villain because the movie basically sets it up early and teases it a couple more times along the way. However, the twist ends up being that Roger’s former owner built a robot in his image who took over and became evil. It feels like a deliberate gotcha from the writer, like he was rubbing his hands together with glee at the notion that he was going to trick his audience with what he thought would be a clever twist. It just turns out to be eye rolling at best because there’s no foreshadowing, it’s another example of the NaNoWriMo style of seat-of-your-pants writing.
I’m still sitting here, thinking, “Did I really sit through this?” I’m in awe of how stupid a film this is. When we started Quarantine Control, I’d been imagining this to be a column where we could recommend shows and podcasts for people to watch and/or listen to in order to kill time while quarantining from COVID-19, but I don’t think Pets United is fit for anyone’s consumption. It’s bad, but it’s not the kind of bad that inspires a several thousand word essay full of hyperbole and colourful metaphors. Pets United is just bland. It’s like if you took the badness of a Barbie special and then removed the soul.
Do you remember a few weeks ago when I ranted about Santa Claus and the Three Bears in Naughty and Nice? Yeah, that book was the kind of bad that is pure, unadulterated awful, so far removed from good that if you took its absolute value, you’d probably get The Polar Express. Basically, Santa Claus and the Three Bears has an amount of bad equal to the amount of good that The Polar Express has. Pets United’s value is zero.
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Instead of Pets United, I’d like to point you to a short film that I think you’ll enjoy much more.
Far From The Tree (2021)
Source: Disney+
You know what? I think I’m going to mention at least one short film a week here at the end of my Quarantine Control contributions, and embed them if they’re found on YouTube. The trailer is below, but for the full film, you’ll have to log into Disney+.
Several deaths at the start of this year have been bad, but good ones like George Pell and Diamond sure don’t qualify. Just keep the meme in mind whenever someone tells you that speaking ill of the dead is taboo. Until the next Quarantine Control entry.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
