HPL and the modernists

The next three episodes of Cabinet of Curiosities present at least one contrast. Despite Guillermo del Toro's determination to couch each of these tales in some period of the past (as with Lot 36 being set during the Gulf War, despite easily carrying the relevance of a modern-day story), the first episode of this latest trio that we watched is an extremely modernist take on a horror story, whereas the next two, by early 20th-century master, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, are purposefully placed in his contemporary period to ensure that their flavor isn't lost.

The Outside: This episode is definitely the most subtle of any of the tales we've seen so far. While the rest are rather straightforward examples of demons from beyond the veil or alien parasites, The Outside focuses more on the social trials that exist in contemporary society, with the lead character, Stacey's (Kate Micucci), beat-up, old Gremlin being the only clue to the idea that this story isn't taking place in 2022 America, as it's probably intended to be seen, given the increasingly consumerist nature of our present times. Despite its more subtle message, that Stacey is so lonely and isolated that she finds more connection with the mysterious TV host selling her new lotion (Dan Stevens) than with her devoted, practical and well-meaning husband (Martin Starr) and that she's willing to destroy her "acceptable" existence in order to be on the same level as her shallow and broken co-workers, it doesn't really end up feeling "horrific." Yes, the social message is more relevant than rats feeding off corpses and grave robbers, but it's also simply not that entertaining. Stacey is well aware of what she's getting into and pushes forward simply for the thrill of the new experience, in contrast to her old life of eating dinner alone or effectively alone in front of her husband's poker shows. But the fact that her transformation isn't painful or traumatic, but simply irritating, leaves us only mildly intrigued at what's happening, rather than disturbed at the fact that she's proceeding or that she's suffering the equivalent of a bad rash in order to do so. Contrast this with the eerieness of "The Lonesome Death of Jody Verrill" from 1982's Creepshow, where the title character (Stephen King(!)) is obviously disturbed and then terrified by what's happening to him beyond his control. Perhaps just a touch more mania on Stacey's part or a feeling of her loss of control as she does the host's bidding might have generated more response from me and left me feeling a bit more satisfied at the only mildly macabre ending. Again, I appreciated the message, but it feels like the execution was lacking.

Pickman's Model: This is one of those HPL tales that definitely engages with his "things from other dimensions" theme, but largely avoids his namesake mythos, as the title character (Crispin Glover) is a solid mix of both unwilling servant to those unnamed dark forces and eager purveyor of their shadowy entreaties. Screenwriter Lee Patterson definitely was more direct than Lovecraft in his delivery of the material, taking more opportunity to show the viewers just what it was that Pickman was presenting (and encouraging) than the more speculative presentation in the original story. Those are two different horror approaches, certainly, with the original being more of the eerie and unnerving type, while there's no mistaking what's happening in this teleplay. I usually find myself more a fan of the former, but there's something definitely more satisfying about the latter approach in this instance (perhaps the contrast with the generally insufficient sensation from the previous episode?) Ben Barnes as Will Thurber (the narrator of the original version) does a solid job of being the supremely-confident artist who loses control of the scene in both encounters with Pickman and eventually loses everything he values to the more, uh, esoteric world presented by the artist. This is essentially the same message presented by The Outside, but feels more active and overt. That, again, is a different type of horror, so different people are entitled to be more interested in the varying approaches and it's a commendation of both the series and each episode to enable that flexibility within the genre of which it's already a hallmark. I found both the music and Keith Thomas' pacing to a bit more on the mark in this one, as well.

Dreams in the Witch House: This story, OTOH, is firmly rooted in the Mythos that is most famously connected to Lovecraft, as the other dimension that lead character, Walter Gilman (Rupert Grint, of a different HP fame) visits in pursuit of his deceased sister, is the home of the famed Elder Things. Teleplay writer, Mika Watkins, and director, Catherine Hardwicke, are both careful to not hit you over the head with it, however. Walt could be connecting with any, old-fashioned other dimension of plant people that just happens to be reachable by dosing oneself with really good peyote. You have to pay attention to see the hints that they've dropped along the way to really identify the Lovecraft notions that are embodied here, which is a credit to both of them for not having simply served up the obvious to his legions of fans (myself among them.) While I think they might have missed a bit of a chance to bend a bit more in the direction of the Demon Sultan and its mysteries by instead spending a lot more time on Keziah and Brown Jenkins, it's a fair turn to take (creature horror over the unknown of the powers behind it; again, covering all the variations of the genre here) and not unwelcome. I'm still waiting for a really good story about the Flautists, but this one at least mentions them. I can't say that Grint really excels in the role, but he doesn't do it a disservice, either. Similarly, I can't say that I'm as much of a fan of this kind of creature horror, but it's hard to argue against it when thinking of classics like the Universal Horror pictures that this draws from. A bit of a polyglot presentation, but still entertaining in the end.

The last two episodes might take a couple more days to get to (playing Napoli tomorrow, followed by going to see Triangle of Sadness, that I will doubtlessly be writing about here), but should have something up on Wednesday.

Cabinetmakers and the exercise of horror

The actual definition of "cabinetmaker" is "a skilled joiner who makes furniture or similar high-quality woodwork." That's a pretty fair definition of the creator of Netflix's new horror series, Cabinet of Curiosities, Guillermo del Toro, since he's done some pretty high quality work in recent years, including The Shape of Water. The majority of his output has been the kind of Gothic/grand guignol style that suffuses the series and which many modern fans would also refer to as "Lovecraftian"; appropo since two of HP's short stories are adapted for this series. I watched the first three episodes last night, since it is Halloween and this is about as far as I go in terms of celebrating modern American holidays, outside of watching the best Christmas movie ever made on that day every year (Bad Santa.) I think there's some worthwhile material in CoC and I'm happy to note that this kind of horror is becoming more of a regular thing and not simply the unusual exception like del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (still probably his best film.)

Lot 36: The immediate draw to this episode was the presence of Tim Blake Nelson, always and forever a favorite since the epic O Brother, Where Art Thou? (quite possibly the Coen Brothers' best film, from a technical perspective.) Adding in the Lovecraftian elements (tentacled nightmare that can't be reasoned with and will be determined to consume the world when Eddie (Demetrius Grosse) comes to open the shop the next day) was another cool aspect. I was a bit unsure about the political angle the writers (GdT himself and Regina Corrado) were taking in making the lead character, Nick, the typical American racist and making the old man who leaves Lot 36 behind be a former Nazi. Birds of a feather, I guess? Certainly, it's valid to keep making horror stories about the fascists that are currently overrunning the American political system, but this story was set in 1991, during Bush the Elder's Gulf War. It was done so in order to give some personal motivation to Nick for why he's so outraged at society (Vietnam vet), but I'm not sure that that kind of racism needs plot support, since it's often seemingly mindless just like the creature that Nick eventually releases. The plot was also boilerplate horror (magic books discovered, leading to trapped demon discovery, leading to idiot recklessly tramping across the seal and releasing demon.) It feels like there could have been more done with Nick's character in terms of personal struggle or transformation or even just more emphasis on the greed he has for the potential payoff from the fourth book. Similarly, Emilia (Elpidia Carrillo) was left to fill the final denouement of a horror tale, descending to Nick's level to get her final petty revenge. In this respect, the whole thing turned out to be Tales from the Crypt-level, but without the stylistic high points that HBO added to the original comic stories. I liked it, but it felt like there could have been more from even just a 45-minute episode.

Graveyard Rats: When I saw some friends talking about the series on ThereWillBe.Games and saw the words "HP Lovecraft" and "rats", I thought they might be doing the The Rats in the Walls, which is one of HPL's few "standard" horror stories that don't involve otherworldly demons. It's also one of the more overtly racist works he ever completed, which is probably why they didn't use it. Instead, this episode was similar in approach, but far more direct in application. Our lead, Masson (David Hewlett), is already aware of the problem that the vermin are creating, both in his regular job as caretaker and his side job as grave robber, so we lose the "discovery" moment which is often essential to horror stories. That comes later as we discover a subterranean temple which seems totally external to the whole problem with the rats, unless we're to assume that the only way the giant mother rat was created was by the fel magic of the single-eyed, tentacled god once worshiped at said temple (WoW players will instantly draw a parallel to C'Thun, which is Blizzard's ripoff of Cthulhu; it all comes full circle!) Just like Nick in the first episode, Masson's willingness to risk the tunnels of the rats is motivated solely by the money he owes to a local criminal outfit, which felt a bit like a retread, since both of our leads were driven by identical circumstances. Masson's situation ends up being a bit more horrific, since the concept of crawling through tunnels with no way to escape anything rushing at you (like, say, a horde of rats) is a daunting concept to most people, whether they suffer from claustrophobia or not. It's also interesting to note that there were two kinds of unease mechanics employed here in the telling of the stories. Lot 36 used discovery (the unknown books, the hidden room, etc.) This episode used implacability (the inability to deal with the rats, the constant approach of the former witch, being trapped in the tunnels.) I was less impressed with this one, most likely because I've still never found a horror story about rats that's as good as Stephen King's Graveyard Shift. (While overrated as a novelist, King may be underrated as a short story writer.)

The Autopsy: Like the first episode, this was immediately a draw because of the talent on screen, with F. Murray Abraham (I don't think anyone will ever be able to duplicate his Salieri in Amadeus) and Glynn Turman (Mayor Royce in The Wire.) We went non-linear in this one, as well, seeing the strange bombing of the mine that creates the circumstances for Carl Winters (Abraham) to arrive and examine the bodies left behind. Unlike the previous two, there's a bit more of the "alien visitors" vibe here, which is still Lovecraftian (Elder Things, etc.), but a different approach from the clearly supernatural trappings of what we'd seen before. That's fine, because horror is one of the more adaptable of genres, able to pick its settings from whatever is suitable and still able to conjure the eeriness that makes a good story. However, I have to say that the pace of this one was a bit slow. The time spent searching for bodies in the woods and then the time that Winters spent examining them are great build-up exercises, but it seemed like we could have cut out a couple minutes here and there to get to the payoff which, in itself, was also kind of slow. The payoff is great, from a horrific angle, as we figure out both what the alien is, what it does, and how Winters will attempt to deal with it when his friend, Nat (Turman) discovers him. This was a horror story, not just a scare story. But it just feels like we could have gotten there a bit sooner and still had the impact required, since the development of how Winters deals with the parasite is fairly drawn out. Also, I wonder at the idea of giving Winters a terminal illness, making his choice to confine the alien more of an act of resignation than outright heroism. It seems like it makes that a less traumatic choice for the character, which is generally not what you're aiming for in a horror story. Still, writing-wise, this was definitely the best of the three, although I have to say that Lot 36 was perhaps the most interesting from a suspense and story potential angle.

Hoping to get to three more episodes (The Outside, Pickman's Model, Dreams in the Witch House) tonight and then the last two another day.

Could watch it in my sleep

The title of this piece is perhaps counter-intuitive because most people's dreams aren't predictable. Indeed, what makes many dreams so memorable is precisely how unpredictable and bizarre they often are. They're potentially great stories, although sometimes lacking rhyme or reason (Let me be far from the first to state that Rick Veitch's Rare Bit Fiends was awful, self-indulgent crap.) House of the Dragon, in contrast, has been utterly predictable from the opening moments of the series. No one ever did anything surprising. Few enough of them did anything that one would connect with a human's often irrational and emotional reactions. Everything has been acted out precisely to form, as if we were watching a dramatization of the Westerosi encyclopedia entry of The Dance of Dragons. As I've mentioned before, that's essentially what the "novel" Fire and Blood is. But it's disappointing to see it conclude without a single deviation from expected form, to where you could recite the outcome of each scene (and its pedestrian dialogue) before it happened.

Now, I can see someone arguing that I'm complaining about the converse of what I was complaining about with regards to the finale of Rings of Power. But the problem with Rings wasn't that they stuck to form. It's that they savaged their encyclopedia (the appendices of Return of the King) for a cheap marketing trick. Theirs was a failure of approach and perhaps philosophy, rather than execution. The problem with House isn't that it was setting up for a stunt ending. It was that they weren't really interested in doing something even vaguely as innovative. Case in point is Rhaenys Targaryen. Eve Best has had the misfortune to play a non-entity for 90% of the series. Outside of one scene where she reproves the young Rhaenyra for having the temerity to think that women could make their own choices in Westeros, she's had basically nothing to do but be an add-on to whatever room she found herself standing in. She doesn't really do anything and, when she does, it's the most obvious reaction of scolding her overambitious husband or grieving the loss of her children. This all changed when she came bursting through the floor on dragonback. Suddenly, she had agency. She could make her own choices and people had to pay attention or get roasted or eaten alive. That is, of course, the prevailing theme of the series: women who lack agency, despite the intelligence and will to compete evenly with the men around them. But when she does achieve this agency, she uses the latter half of the finale to simply stand off to one side and smile knowingly at whatever Rhaenyra or others do to prepare for the coming war, almost like she could've predicted all of it because, well...

Now, you could say that part of the problem (which I've mentioned before) is that House revolves around one house (appropriately) and said house is made up of Targaryens who consider themselves to be above typical humans. Daemon certainly acts the part. In a way, it could be considered as the same problem that DC Comics has with its characters, who are superheroes first, humans second, in contrast to the far more successful and relatable Marvel heroes, who are almost always humans who just happen to be super-powered. When all you're writing about is demigods, it gets difficult to find ways for their very human readers to relate to what they're doing and how they act. But I'd argue that the Valyrians don't have to be presented as aliens among men and could, in fact, present a very human side that would not only make them into characters that people would find appealing (an Arya; a Tyrion; a Hound) but would also create genuinely interesting opportunities for the story. Aegon is the perfect example. Here's a man who is repelled by responsibility, is plagued by self-doubt, is an alcoholic, and is obviously depressed about all of that, but mostly about being dragged into the role of king. With all of this written plainly on his face, his doting mother hands the borderline suicidal king-in-waiting a dagger when they're riding to his coronation.

My immediate thought was: "Yeah, the best thing they could do here is have him wait until the crown he doesn't want is put on his head and then stand up, turn to the crowd, and slit his own throat with that pretty knife." Not only would that be his last attempt to show them his own agency and how much he's taking in order to not be forced into this thing that he fears and hates, but it would send all of their precious plans into a tailspin and force the writers to come up with a few more turns as to how they actually get to the big, impending conflict. Instead, what we got was the utterly unbelievable moment of the man who hates all the attention suddenly transforming into the king his family wants because he's given more attention by a cheering crowd. Wut? It will, of course, lead to the perfectly predictable situation of them having finally rid themselves of the king no one liked having on the throne (Viserys) because of how he wouldn't act kingly only to have yet another king no one likes because he's an alcoholic deviant who likes to watch kids claw each others' eyes out before screwing the victor. In other words, we'll just be in essentially the same situation we've been in for the first season where everyone plots behind the king's back because he either is incompetent or they assume that he is. Yawn.

Lighting up the table may have been the most exciting part of the whole episode

This is all so obvious that it's approaching tedium. I sat through a film last night (Ticket to Paradise) that was almost exactly the same: totally predictable; no character deviating from their assigned role in any way; boilerplate dialogue; and an ending that was almost too saccharine to be believed. House at least lacked the Hollywood ending, but it was still something that anyone could've seen coming from the opening credits: child dies, mother gets angry, war is initiated. There's nothing interesting here, except for a few moments of Matt Smith having to be the lone emotional outlier. The writers decided to capitalize on that for the almost baffling choking scene, which the showrunners later declared was the way they reminded the audience that Daemon was dangerous. I've reminded five-year-olds that coin flips are random, too. It's every bit as exciting.

The misunderstanding of subtlety in storytelling

Adaptations are difficult. Whenever you're translating something from its original medium to another one, you're going to lose something of it. That's why the achievement of Game of Thrones' first five seasons isn't to be overlooked, as they largely nailed the books that were intended to be "unfilmable" by their author. Sure, there were some technical issues, but the story usually came across just as it had been depicted on the page. That's a rare thing. It's even more difficult when you're trying to adapt something huge, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, and all of the little details that come with it. It's even more difficult when you're legally forbidden from telling the whole story that you'd like to present, as with Rings of Power, given the apparent greed of the estate that holds the rights. The other problem with adaptations is the vision of the producers/showrunners. Again, GoT comes out ahead here because Benioff and Weiss wanted to tell that story and so they did until the last couple seasons when they obviously just wanted to stop telling that story or were incapable of doing so without the guiding hand of George R. R. Martin. But it's often because people think they have a better take on said story that drives things off the rails. They're not beholden to the desires of lifelong fans of the material. They're not beholden to the history of the material. In many ways, they seem to lack respect for the material itself. They think they know better and can do it better than anyone has before. Kevin Smith has a brilliant story about this in regards to doing a Superman film. (It's perhaps the only brilliant thing Smith has done in the past 25 years...) And this may be part of the problem with the way that RoP's season ended.

Part of the marketing of the series was the Keyser Söze hook. All through the season, we were presented with little drops on various media outlets asking: "Who is Sauron?" That way, we were supposed to keep watching to see the big reveal of the Ultimate Bad Guy of the Second and Third ages. It wasn't sufficient for him to be the background malevolent force that Tolkien had created. The showrunners knew that he had come in disguise to the elves as Annatar and, just as the title states, taught them the craft of ring-making, so one of the conceits of the first season was figuring out who was going to be Annatar and how Sauron had managed to insinuate himself among our heroes. Except that there's a way to make a reveal that really works and then there's a way to just cheaply slip it in there so that some people can smack themselves on the forehead in awe while most people will just shrug their shoulders at the innocuous nature of it all. Turning a key story element into a publicity stunt is generally not the best way to approach these things if, again, respect for the material is actually part of your approach. So, yeah, spoilers to follow immediately.

Halbrand, nominal "king of the Southlands" showed up quite early in the series and actually was the most interesting of the lead characters for a while. In fact, the earliest clue to his true identity was shown on Númenor, when he demonstrated skill as a smith and a desire to join a guild. It was also an indication of his later desire to be present on the island to lead its already wayward people astray. This is where the writers think they're being subtle. "See? He's king of the Southlands aka Mordor... because he really does become king of Mordor later! See? See?" And, sure, that's all well and good if your story was written with the idea of pulling off the "big reveal." But if it was written to actually tell the tale of the Second Age, you've basically warped everyone's perception of both characters and key events in order to pull off your "big reveal." Tolkien doesn't go into extensive details (for once), but the impression he gives about the rings' creation is that Annatar remained with Celebrimbor and the elves for some time. He became familiar to them and taught the former how to craft the most important items since the Silmarils (which Amazon is contractually forbidden from using in their story.) In this case, all he does is inform an accomplished smith about the concept of alloys, as if somehow all of the metalwork in Lindon, from delicate chains to massive structures, has been done with nothing but raw iron and gold. You see how absurd this is becoming in order to pile everything about their relationship and still do the "big reveal" into a single episode?

But this is just part and parcel of how they've handled the character from the beginning. Halbrand was introduced to us floating on a raft in the middle of the Sundering Sea so that he could link up with Galadriel to do... what? Play a mind game? Learn something he somehow didn't know about her dogged pursuit of him for how many decades? Sauron is a Maia, which is the equivalent of an archangel or thereabouts in Tolkien's mythology. The Valar are one step below the creator god and the Maia are one step below the Valar. They're enormously powerful beings but this one, the greatest servant of the Valar, Morgoth, decided to float on a raft in the middle of the ocean so that his sworn opponent could have a moment of shock a couple months later? Eh? The grand scheme of Sauron to forge the rings was so that he could assume control of the mortal races and be the master of Middle-Earth. In the original works, he began that scheme by going right to Lindon and working with the foremost smith of his greatest enemies, the elves, not by traipsing around with one of them whom had never held a hammer and a bunch of humans with no connection to what he was doing. (Yet...) But, somehow, warping the story and the main villain in it to create the "big reveal" was more important than presenting the original material as it had been told.

Now, granted, adaptations are hard, right? How thrilling would it have been to keep checking back in on Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards as one of the more wooden players of a real forest of them, by the end) and his new pal, Annatar, as they figured out how to make some real bling? But that's part of the challenge of adaptation of the actual story. We went wandering off with the Harfoot so we could have hobbits and bring in one of the Istari a couple thousand years too early ("It's Radagast the Brown because he's always wearing a brown cloak? See? See?"), so we've already ventured pretty far afield from what the appendices talk about as the important events of the age. On the one hand, that could be an argument for the pseudo-character that was Halbrand. But it's also a counter-argument in favor of having some of the story stick to the original, while you get to wander around and do other cool things off the beaten path, as it were. Now one of the key elements of the entire premise of the series is reduced to a detail that takes place in a couple hours where some guy tells an immortal elf smith about the tenets of metallurgy. Thus are the master plans of an equally immortal demigod put into motion...

The key to Tolkien is the majesty and the lore. That's always been the essential hook of the story. Taken at face value, the One Ring is an invisibility trinket and that's probably what it was when Tolkien first wrote about it in The Hobbit.  But as he expanded upon what he'd created, he realized that it could be so much more than just a minor MacGuffin to get Bilbo out of a tricky spot. It was a thing of power because people believed that it was a thing of power, just like Tolkien's dear Catholicism. If Sauron is just some guy twirling a mustache in disguise, then he and the story lose a lot of the majesty that was built around them by the author and which has only been enhanced by decades of readers and fervent fans. If you want to get really nerdy about it, it's ridiculous that even Sauron's servants, from regular humans to the white-robed devotees of Morgoth, refer to him as "Sauron", which was a name given to him by the elves as an insult; a play on his actual name Mairon, "the admired", whereas Sauron means "the abhorred." But I can understand when you want to keep the casual viewers or casual fans of Middle-Earth hooked without having to explain to them that "the Great Enemy" or some other euphemism is "Sauron, the flaming eye dude" every other episode. But the commonplace use of a name that was only spoken in hushed tones in Peter Jackson's films and in the books demeans it to some degree and reduces the character to... a cheap disguise that was only used to pull off a marketing stunt. So, maybe that was the plan all along by the people who really didn't respect the material?

I don't know. One thing I do know is that, like GoT, Rings has diminished as it has gone along. When it began, it was visually resplendent and at least interesting to follow in a dramatic sense, as we got to see Middle-Earth in a very different state. But it ended with a cheap marketing trick and the polar opposite of what Tolkien's work has always been presented as: majestic. Does season 2 even have a draw at this point? Not from where I'm sitting.

Mixed messaging

I tend to enjoy David O. Russell's films. Three Kings, The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle; all good stuff. So when I saw the trailers for what looked like a rather quirky story loaded with talented actors and then later learned it was based on the Business Plot, I was instantly intrigued. And then I noticed the average rating on Rotten Tomatoes... I generally don't care about fan ratings, as we can see how those can be manipulated by man-sized toddlers not wanting their fantasy universes to be even more fantastic than they're comfortable with. But when an accumulator like RT is showing something in the range of 31% approval from critics, it's a concern. Accumulators tend to progress toward the mean, so a rating that's well above 50% is usually an indication of genuine quality, while one that far below is usually an indication of something pretty poor. But then our friend, Leigh, appeared in one of my brief excursions on Facebook urging people to see the film. Leigh and her husband, David, are regular filmgoers and volunteers at the theaters and film festivals in Traverse City, so that's an opinion that will carry some weight with me. So when Tuesday night rolled around, we headed to the State Theater, hoping to not be disappointed. We walked out with a relatively positive shrug of the shoulders. It was decent.

I tend to like my message films with a bit more subtlety than what seems to be the modern trend. I felt like Don't Look Up was constantly beating you over the head about the threat of global warming and the concerted efforts to either ignore it or cover it up. Of course, if there's one thing you might really take the time out to be concerned about, it's that environmental crisis, as Hurricane Ian aptly reminded everyone of once again (as the regular flooding of Miami Beach should do the same.) Similarly, Amsterdam is warning about the the same threat of money-fueled fascism today that drove the Business Plot in the 1930s. That, too, is something to be regularly concerned about, not just in the US but in many places around the world, as the ownership class continues to accumulate more wealth and, thus, more power. It's good to have cultural warnings like this because the more people talk about this threat, the more exposed it remains and the more people will be ready to confront it as the actual problem that it is. But the contrast with Don't Look Up in this film was that, instead of constantly yelling at you, it submerged its message in an elaborate whodunnit until the final act when it switched tacks to Christian Bale narrating the meaning of the whole story while Robert DeNiro kept providing public service messages to the audience. They even ran his speech alongside the speech by Smedley Butler at the Congressional hearings on the Business Plot in 1933 during the credits just in case you somehow didn't get the point and/or had fallen asleep for the last third of the movie.

The cast overall did really well. The three leads (Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington) all were on their game, with Bale at his quirky best, Washington the absurdly implacable stone wall for him to bounce off of, and Robbie carrying the emotional discourse for the three of them. I thought the biggest treat was Anya Taylor-Joy, as she totally filled the part of the mildly outraged bystander cum conspirator who acts well-meaning when its really about covering their tracks. Likewise, Michael Shannon and Mike Myers were excellent as the birdwatching spies. I also really liked Zaldaña as the winsome medical examiner who's among the most Wes Anderson elements of the story. And that's what was kind of odd. In contrast to most of his other films, where it was clear what the style intent was from the beginning, it really felt like Russell was, in addition to hammering the message home, trying to surround it with a story akin to Anderson's usual approach and kind of missing the charm that makes the latter's films really work. The pace was a bit too hectic and the characters spent too much time explaining themselves, either to each other or to the audience, instead of just carrying on with the behaviors that should've been perfectly natural to them as part of their identities within this semi-absurdist world. I appreciate Russell trying something different and I think he was aiming for something along the lines of the The Great Dictator and he kind of got there, but not without me thinking that he could've gone harder in one direction or the other and been more successful in delivering the message that he wanted to get across. Again, I think it's a worthwhile message and more people need to pay attention to it, but they might be better served by paying that attention to what's actually happening right now, rather than what happened almost 100 years ago, no matter how comparable the two eras are. Not a bad film, but not one I'd call required viewing, either.

The hand of the GM

I'm going to delve back into my Dungeons and Dragons metaphor because it works for this latest episode of Rings of Power in more ways than simply the subject matter. Yes, D&D and Tolkien are almost the standard-bearers of nerdism, hand-in-hand. The former is the outward expression of the genre that the latter almost introduced into modern storytelling. Fantasy was an aspect of storytelling from the time humans began sitting around campfires and entertaining and/or educating each other. But in the 20th century, it became a literary genre of note when Tolkien did his thing, even if it was long-preceded by things like Robert Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. That story (The Lord of the Rings) spawned the role-playing game culture as we currently know it. That, in turn, kept Tolkien alive and in the minds of kids who became adults and that's why we had Peter Jackson's films 20 years ago and why we now have this Amazon series. You can't really escape it and so it's often easiest to use the techniques that the game has both taught and presented to demonstrate how good and bad storytelling is conducted. I've referred to this before when I mentioned the difference between the good DM and the bad DM (dungeon master, traditionally, although "GM" (game master) is probably more appropriate these days.)

You have your group of characters and they're given a set of circumstances to react to and engage with. These are player characters, meaning that they're people involved in the story that, you, the GM is creating, but they're also other humans that you have to entice to play along. In the case of Galadriel and the people around her, the enticing circumstances are the eruption of Orodruín and the creation of what would be known as Mordor. We already know what this is and we know where it is. Outside of the fact that, in any normal situation where a volcano would release a pyroclastic flow, all of those people that it swept over would be instantly dead, we can at least follow along with this set of circumstances and see massive changes to one key figure, Miriel, and more subtle changes to others, like Galadriel. Miriel being blinded and the devastation wrought by the orcs and the mountain compels her to bring her people back from their island kingdom to make a stand on behalf of the other humans that have also been devastated by this. While this is kind of a stretch for any regular player characters, this is at least a premise that's been put in front of them that they can react to in a relatively reasonable manner. They've been wounded and those around them have also been, so it's easy to see how simple vengeance and/or a sense of justice would compel the characters to act in this way. Fair enough. It's a little on the obvious side, but a good GM could make this work, given that there's already been a character with a driving motivation (Galadriel) dropped into the midst of this scenario. The problem with that character is that she's been so monochromatic that it's more likely she's an NPC (non-player character) than someone who would naturally be inclined to act that way. She's a storytelling device, rather than someone who acts normally, like you'd hope a player would in response to what's happening around her. Miriel, Elendil, Theo, and the rest in this scenario are more like players and are the people you'd hope that the audience could relate to, given what's happening, and much of this storyline is made to work by them, rather than the obsessed elf. But it's still kind of a mixed bag and the producers do themselves no favors by not only providing the very obvious cues, but then providing the very obvious labels to everyone (e.g This was The Southlands and it is now Mordor, just in case you somehow didn't get it.)

Similarly, we were kind of hit over the head with the mithril story. Anyone could see what was coming, when NPC King Durin denied the desires of nominally PC Elrond and Prince Durin and Disa. They're given a bit more to work with, in that Prince Durin has to overcome the distrust of the elves that his father and culture have taught him and Disa gets to express her personal desire for power and how she and her husband will step into it when the old man is dead. Likewise, Elrond gets to express not only his exceptional character but his rueful understanding of the violence to come when Gil-galad is informed that the dwarves have essentially told him and his people to piss off and die. All of this is decent reaction to a very obvious situation that, again, we all could see coming from leagues (traditionally, the distance one could walk in an hour; roughly three miles; fantasy term) away. We also get to see non-traditional emotion from hardened dwarven warrior Prince Durin, so we understand how difficult this situation is for him on a governmental, cultural, honorable, and personal level. Similarly, we see the legendary wisdom of Elrond in his understanding of both King Durin and Prince Durin's choices, despite his dismay that they're making said choices. All of these are good storytelling choices by the GM and actions by the PCs. It all gets almost completely ruined by the "teaser" scene at the end showing the balrog incinerating the leaf at the bottom of the mithril vein. For some reason, the incredibly powerful servant of Morgoth isn't sleeping entombed in the ground with the departure of his master (what actually happened in the books) but is instead laying in wait for a dramatic moment next season...? It's right there and it knows they're right there because they just dropped a leaf apparently 50 yards down an open hole. As soon as they crack that hole a little wider and start grabbing the shiny stuff, it's ready to grab them with that famous whip. The importance of the whole story concept was that the dwarves were so greedy for the stuff that they dug too deep after centuries, not that they could drop a piece of paper down a hole after first discovering it and realize that an immortal fire demon is present. They basically just trivialized one of the eeriest legends of the whole Tolkien mythos and one of the trademark scenes of the standard-bearing novel to make a ham-handed teaser.

But the best GMing example is the storyline with the (sigh) Harfoots. Here we have multiple PCs that are allowed to make what seem to be mistakes but which actually just continue the story in the direction that the GM probably wants it to go. They brought the big man along, but then they sent him away because he seemed to be doing destructive stuff. Both of those choices moved the story along. Now several of them are setting out to retrieve him in the name of charity and understanding, which are also very human choices that may not make much practical sense, but are perfectly understandable and relatable motivations. On the practical side, it is kind of odd for them to give rousing speeches about sticking together being the most important thing to the Harfoots as a people, only for four of them to split off from the rest to pursue an adventure but, yeah, most people aren't always consistent even when trying to be noble. In fact, they're pursuing the big man because they don't know who or what he is, but they also told him to leave because of the actions of the trio of white-robed people whom they also don't know. And the best part about all of that is that we, the audience, the largest group of player characters, also don't know who he is or who they are, even as Tolkien fans. (I'm still kinda thinking that he's Beorn, especially since they sent him north to Greenwood (later Mirkwood), but I still wouldn't put money on that.) That's the least amount of recitation of history and the most amount of new story in the whole series so far. My only gripe is that it has to come via the hobbits. Again.

The way to keep your readers/viewers/players interested is to present them with stuff that they have to sink their proverbial teeth into. They have to explore. They have to discover. They have to question their own actions and they can't just have everything served up to them on a plate. That's boring. That's obvious. That's not the way to keep their/our interest. Riugs has run into a similar problem to House of the Dragon, in that we know all this stuff already and there has to at least be an interesting presentation of it to keep people coming back. I don't think I will be with House, but I can be convinced as long as Rings does away with idiotic moves like the balrog teaser and tries to make its leads a bit more like people and a bit less like devices.

It's a soap opera

Despite episode 6 of House of the Dragon being, by far, the most interesting of the season, since episodes 1-5 were nothing but prologue leading up to the actual conflict, I didn't get around to writing anything about it because, honestly, the whole series just hasn't been that interesting. In episode 6, we finally got to see Alicent and Rhaenyra become fully-fleshed characters being driven by something other than youthful uncertainty and teenaged angst. That's definitely a step forward. We also got to see the conflict upon which the entire story is based become (almost) fully realized, in that the lines were clearly drawn and the questions loudly asked. We even got to see the emergence of a Master of Whispers in Sir Larys Strong; the role which would go on to produce the eternally wonderful Lord Varys in Game of Thrones. But through it all I was left with an overarching feeling of disappointment with the knowledge that the 5+ hours we'd sat through to that point could all have been condensed into a one-and-a-half hour film that would have dropped us into the situation with adult Rhaenyra and Alicent much more quickly and we could have gotten the show on the road. Well, with episode 7 the show has largely arrived and... it's as tired as anything that has come before it. Oh, sure, we're back to the grisly deaths and Valyrian incest and millions spent on dragon scenes. That's all well and good if you're into that. But we can't really rise into the realm of GoT because House has the problem of its essential nature.

It's a soap opera. With dragons.

The compelling feature of GoT was its sprawling nature. It was a story that was steeped in history, not only because of the setting, with the ancient Others being in the background of a land that had just had a massive political upheaval after centuries of Valyrian rule, but also because each house and family were their own entities, with histories of their own and cultures of their own. This was a conflict with many angles and many roots and, 'lest it not be said too infrequently, compelling characters. By confining the story to just the Targaryens and their hangers-on, we're missing all of that sprawl that gave the story of Game its massive identity that could draw audiences in to find any number of sides to root for. It also meant that the grievances driving the central conflict had bases in something other than "He hit me first-!", which is what you get when you reduce everything to an intra-family squabble that lacks any other compelling theme like race, religion, geography, or history beyond whom was screwing whom at the right time and which person had the right body parts to get pricked by the dangerous throne. There's nothing expansive about this story. It's like Dallas, but without the oil business. They've tried to add in elements of interest to the kingdom as a whole, but they've succeeded in making all of it a sideshow by pushing those elements back into the background after the death of the Crabfeeder and going back to circling around children swatting (or slicing) each other in the courtyard. It's not too far from history to suggest that wars could be fought over the question of a child's parentage, but it's a lot more interesting when they're fought over the fact that the lord of House Stark was beheaded because he couldn't trust a minor lord from the Fingers who was better at manipulation than anyone else in the kingdom.

I mean, sure, some people love soap operas and dragons, so I'm sure those people are thrilled. And there's no argument that a lot of dramatic fiction, fantasy or otherwise, does carry elements of modern soap operas. But that's because most dramatic fiction in the Western world finds its roots in Shakespeare. It's still possible to tell a story without reverting to the devices that made shows like All My Children and General Hospital appeal to the lowest common denominator. At the moment, House is using most of said devices with a little incest thrown in to spice it up. Something tells me that CBS in the 70s and 80s wouldn't have gone for that storyline. But what they would've done better than this latest episode is properly lighting a night time scene. People were complaining on Twitter because it was "too dark." What they should've been complaining about was the use of a technique that hadn't been seen since those 1970s: putting a gray screen over the lens to make it "seem" dark, when it's actually broad daylight which everyone can, of course, easily see. Modern lighting techniques removed the need for that primitive trick about, oh, 40 years ago. And, yet, despite the massive budget behind this show, we get this trip back in time to when the audience had to play along with the director informing them that it was "night." I'm amazed that they thought this was a good idea. That is unless Driftmark had, uh, drifted to somewhere near the northern pole of the planet and everyone was heading to bed at 10 PM in the land of the midnight sun. Or did all of the scenes with Vhagar tap the SFX budget for this episode? If that's the case, there will be some really unhappy fans when it comes to the battles that happen during this conflict that are supposed to involve multiple dragons and thousands of warriors. At this point, I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to bother to be disappointed.

Yes, if you're well-versed in the lore of Westeros, you perhaps can take pleasure in the idea of the Hightowers angling the conflict in their favor to take what they feel is their rightful place above the Tyrells as one of the oldest houses in the kingdom because of how they were cheated of mastery of the Reach when Aegon selected the steward house for the destroyed House Gardner. You could be tickled by the idea of Aemond mastering Vhagar, dragon of Visenya, sister-wife of Aegon the Conqueror 150 years before. But taking pleasure in those things occurring is an example of being a fan of world-building, not storytelling. Something that Rings of Power has been attempting to do (with very mixed results) is to tell stories about the characters at hand and not simply do a slideshow of the big things that happened in the appendices of Return of the King. But that's pretty much all that House has been from the very beginning (see: Fire and Blood) and if their only way to give it character of its own is to reduce it to which family member is irritated over the lack of respect from another's children, then we're really kind of wasting our time here, just as we were through the interminable prologue that got us to this point.