Just a Sort of General Pop Culture Check In

I would have made this post specifically about the pilot of Legion, FX's new show that is technically set in the X-Men-verse but looks to be trying to stand on its own. Unfortunately, the website gives you about an hour free to preview before you need to sign on with your cable provider (and as someone born in the 80s, I don't have one of those.) The pilot is longer than an hour, though, so I was able to see the first... maybe 6/7ths of the episode.

And holy crap is it right up my alley - hallucinatory imagery that asks you to question what you're seeing, a plot filled with conspiracy, and Aubrey Plaza having what looks like a really really fun time.

To do a little mini-article (without a conclusion I don't really know that I can talk too broadly about themes,) the story concerns David, a man who tried to hang himself despite the voices in his head telling him not to, and who wound up in a mental hospital, only for a telekinetic event involving his in-hopsital girlfriend swapping into his body and accidentally setting off his powers and killing presumably a lot of people to occur there. At some later point, David winds up in the hands of some shady organization that identifies him as potentially the most powerful mutant in the world, and they seem to either want to control or kill him.

The production design, editing, and cinematography are all outstanding, calling to mind a bit the third season of Hannibal, but with more forward momentum.

I'm curious to see whether they really judiciously avoid invoking the larger cinematic world or if they roll it in. In the comics at least, David is the son of Charles Xavier, but at least so far there hasn't been any mention of MacAvoy/Stewart.

Moving on to the main Marvel universe, I've been stuck on Fleetwood Mac's The Chain ever since I saw the latest Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 trailer. I got Rumors on iTunes and have been listening to it a whole lot (really, I should have gotten it a long time ago. That's a hell of a classic album.)

I rewatched Captain America: Winter Soldier and Civil War recently as well. I guess I need to see a symbol of patriotism that is in a firm anti-Nazi camp these days.

I'm also eager to pick up Doctor Strange. While I do think that the "he's basically Tony Stark but with Magic" criticisms are not entirely unfair, I really love the explicitly magical stuff in this story, especially as they've been careful to make all of Thor's stuff seem really more like "Sufficiently Advanced Science." (This in a series that had literal Dark Elves as the bad guys in one of the movies.)

And visually, Doctor Strange was really truly something I had never seen before. I'm a little bummed it didn't win for visual effects at the Oscars.

I find myself willing to forgive the whole whitewashing thing with Tilda Swinton, though I also recognize that as a white guy I'm not exactly in a great position to do so. Really, I wish that Hollywood would just cast some freaking Asian actors in these big movies so I don't have to feel guilty about liking them. I mean, as someone who is not even a big anime fan, I watched through all of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and I'm hyped as hell to see that movie. And I like Scarlett Johannson a whole lot. But... you know, it wouldn't be so bad to have a white person play a character from an Asian story if, you know, this wasn't like a constant problem in the industry.

I rewatched the Expanse's season one and have come away feeling confident in my liking of the show. SyFy (I still think it was idiotic to change it from SciFi) occasionally flirts with respectability, and the Expanse seems like its first opportunity to do so since Battlestar Galactica. Here's hoping they can hold on to that. (I haven't kept up with The Magicians. I read the books and they left a kind of bitter taste in my mouth.)

I watched the Oscars but I must confess that I hadn't seen any of the best picture nominees. I had heard that La La Land probably would win but Moonlight deserved to, and then... that kind of happened? Honestly the one that I'm most eager to see is Arrival (shocker, the one Sci Fi movie.)

I've heard about the plans for a new Dune adaptation. I tried to watch the David Lynch one, but after the first ten minutes of narration over kind of crappy still paintings explaining the world, I gave up. Dune is such a masterful book (if you haven't read it, imagine Game of Thrones where every character is as cunning as Varys or Littlefinger) that I think it really deserves a good adaptation.

I do wonder if it will work as a film, though. I think Game of Thrones and now other shows are demonstrating that television is actually a great format to adapt complex novels. I would love to see a Foundation series that does each time period as a separate season.

And of course I'm eagerly awaiting the American Gods series, which, at least in terms of production design and cinematography, looks precisely how I think an adaptation of that novel should.