Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle movie review

Here's what you need to know; after witnessing the true enormity of their opposition, Haruo and what remains of his crew find that they are not alone on this alien Earth, and that even in the shadow of Godzilla, humanity still found a way to carry on. More miraculous however is the discovery that buried beneath the ruins of the old world is an ancient weapon that was once the solution to the King of the Monsters, and that even after twenty thousand years, might still hold the key to ending Godzilla's reign for good.
And so, after rather strongly disliking the first, I decided to carry on this masochistic adventure of the Godzilla Anime Trilogy by watching City on the Edge of Battle, the much hated sequel to Planet of the Monsters. But after finding Planet of the Monsters to be complete doo doo and hearing that City on the Edge of Battle was even worse, I still wanted to see for myself, because I'm just so loyal to my favourite monster, more loyal than he deserves in this case.

City on the Edge of Battle picks up right where the first left off, where *spoilers* they kill Godzilla, only for another, bigger Godzilla to appear out of nowhere and completely fuck them up, a twist that I thought was really dumb, like there being two Megs in The Meg, it's just an excuse to give the trilogy's first act a finale without actually being creative. But the immediate aftermath of Godzilla's attack does start out kind of interesting, with the crew of the Aratrum panicking at the idea of Godzilla noticing them in orbit and shooting them down, and Haruo having a run-in with a native, which, like the first, opens a Pandora's box of fascinating and completely wasted potential. For some reason the film throws out exposition about how these humans aren't actually human, but a kind of insectoid de-evolution, which is another one of those things that's never explained and never serves the plot, that is unless you consider their telepathy and culture of worshiping "The Egg," which I can only assume is Mothra. But sadly, despite being a massive revelation that Earth can in fact support human life, the natives don't serve much of a purpose outside of helping them film Mechagodzilla city and being all foreboding about the "poisonous" Nanometal of the "Shining Valley". What bugs me (pun intended) is how the film pontificates about these natives like it's some kind of philosophical exploration, every time the natives are on screen or referenced, it feels like the film is trying to say something, but I don't know exactly what because this film isn't as clever as it clearly thinks it is, inferring things like a "Genetic Monster Factor," whatever that means, and endlessly pontificating in its finale about how man must surrender its humanity to kill Godzilla as the only way to defeat a monster is to become a monster, which sounds clever on paper, especially considering the philosophical gold mine that is the Kaiju genre, but again, the film isn't as smart as it thinks it is so it comes across as the film just wanking itself off. This all ties into Mechagodzilla and the Nanometal, but that's further down this rabbit hole. Like the first, this film tries to consider some of the genre's philosophical overtones, but it fails because it doesn't really know what to do with those overtones; man not being the lords of creation and being struck down for their arrogance is just a tiny stem of an idea that's never allowed to grow, Godzilla being the lord of creation is literally only implied one time and never brought up again, nature overcoming and surpassing all of man's technology is another idea that never goes anywhere, and technology being a threat to the order of nature, despite the film's desperate peddling of it, only comes out half baked, and is used instead as a lazy dramatic device.

Did I say drama, well I guess it's time we talk about characters. Haruo is exactly the same as he was for the entirety of Planet of the Monsters, he's still an angry, emotionally driven fool on a quest for revenge, which makes one scene when someone gives him shit all the funnier, because while the film tries to make this guy sound like an idiot, he isn't wrong as it is Haruo's fault that they're stranded on Earth because he led them into a battle they couldn't have won, this is Last Jedi levels of self-destruction, minus the forced conflict, trying to make someone out to be in the wrong when they irrefutably are not. And on the other side of that coin is Haruo, the idiot whose fault it is that they're probably all going to die, and the film still treats him like a competent and heroic leader, still kind of reminding me of the thing I hated most in The Last Jedi, and when you're being compared to Admiral Holdo, that's a very bad thing. At least the film gives him a bit of development in the final act by forcing a moral choice on him, one relating to the idea of abandoning his humanity in order to save it, but like everything else, the potential is wasted, and two acts into this trilogy and I still wouldn't care if our main hero died. The big issue here is that people actually do die in this film, characters that the film wants you to care about, and the film tries to go deep with the Bilusaludo as they embrace this film's philosophical Monster factor and attempt to force Haruo into doing the same; this gets people killed, including *Spoilers* Yuko, who becomes romantically attached to Haruo for some reason, even when that love isn't reciprocated until after she dies, making it feel forced. Yet again there are places the film could have taken this; like Haruo mourning that Yuko will never get to see this Earth that she's only ever heard about in stories, or a more philological angle on the lines between man and monster, and how innocence and humanity, while morally just, are weaknesses in the face of evil, but I very much doubt that was the intention, it's clear that Haruo is mourning out of love, a love that was never expressed or even hinted at for the previous three hours of this trilogy. But at least the film does start to flesh out its characters a bit more, at least we see, for example, that Haruo and Metphies are in fact friends, that the Bilusaludo aren't just people with spiky faces, they actually have an outlook on the world that is different to that of humanity and the Exif, one that kind of comes out of nowhere upon the discovery of Mechagodzilla city. And as weak as the romance is, at least there was a slither of effort put into making you care, not that it worked.

The film's presentation isn't much of an upgrade from the previous film; the CG anime style still looks cheap, the film still has an ugly colour pallet, only now with a bit of orange thrown in with the green and grey, until the finale that is, where we get some admittedly very pretty blues and reds, the ecosystem of Earth is still dull and empty, seemingly populated only by Godzilla, the natives and the Servum, once again, the opportunity of creating a weird and wonderful Monster Planet rich with biodiversity and crazy creations is wasted. In fact it's so lifeless that while I was at work I dreamed up a scenario that would have killed three birds with one stone. How's this; rather than Yuko kissing Haruo in Mechagodzilla city, she kisses him in the natives' little valley where the air is breathable, while there maybe they could run into some monsters that resemble normal Earth animals, let's say a herd of deer monsters, Yuko could be mesmerised by the creatures, she could think that they're beautiful. At that point you could have some cool monsters and a deeper philosophical meaning all at once, as Yuko is now not just a forced love interest, but a symbol, a thing for Haruo to fight for that isn't revenge, so that the people born aboard the Aratrum who never set foot on Earth can have a future and know what it means to truly have a home, which would have given her death some actual weight as with her dies not just a love interest, but a dream. But no, rather than kissing him in a scenic valley surrounded by animals, she kisses him in the dull, dark, grey, lifeless waste of screen time that is Mechagodzilla city, a place that, despite repeated claims to the contrary, feels more dead than my hope of enjoying Doctor Who again. I know that I've just spent a bit of time complaining about what isn't the film, but what I hope I'm explaining comprehensibly is that even with the shitty framework this film shambles around on, a trim here and expansion there could make all the difference, but that doesn't happen. The music's better this time at least, which isn't saying much given how inconsistent and weird the first film's soundtrack was, and this film also has a pop song; The Sky Falls, and while it isn't as annoying catchy as White Out, it's decent enough, and some of the returning musical cues from the first film are used effectively. And while Godzilla's design is still decent, the film is never given a chance to fuck up any other monsters' appearances for the sake of forcing change, sort of.

But what does that mean, sort of? Well, Mechagodzilla is in this film, except he isn't; like his cameo appearance in Planet of the Monsters, he's nothing more than a name in this film since we never see him and since they abandon their original plan of rebuilding him in favour of an unbelievably boring climax. But in a way, this is a blessing because the design they created for Mechagodzilla in this film is fucking hideous. I'm not kidding, Mechagodzilla is completely unrecognisable, he's just a mass of metal with a shape that's practically impossible to describe, and that only bears a vague, faint, maybe noticeable if you squint, resemblance to Godzilla, which defeats the point of Mechagodzilla being a robot Godzilla. I mean, just look at him on the poster of the film, if you didn't know that it was supposed to be Mechagodzilla and saw that on the poster, would you even be able to tell, the answer is no because the design is horrible. This is all also going on the notion that it even matters, which is doesn't because he's not even in the film. Oh yes, despite the amount of fun you could have with Godzilla having to take on a robot version of himself, the film instead has Godzilla being lured to a trap point and shot at by stationary artillery guns, and if that sounds familiar, it's because this film is so original and different that it is in fact exactly the same as the last one. I am baffled that they would even consider this a good idea, absolutely baffled; promise Mechagodzilla, create a design that looks like something vomited up a pile of scrap metal, and then rip off the first film by having the heroes use the exact same strategy as before, only bigger and with big metal domes somehow being an even less appealing backdrop to the dull, boring jungle of last time. Granted, the strategy worked in the first film, barely, and at the cost of far too many lives, but when you have access to an unlimited supply of magic metal that can do literally anything, how could the best thing you come up with be some guns and couple of flying mechs, and I say this not to the characters but to the writers, how could you have so little fun with the Nanometal, especially since you promised Mechagodzilla, and since with an unlimited supply of magic metal you could create something completely insane, and the most insane thing you could come up with was the hoverbikes from last time, only now they're mechs and there's only three of them, fucking genius. Maybe I'm getting a little too personal with this, but it genuinely annoys me that they took the Nanometal, a substance in unlimited supply that can literally become anything you tell it to become, and they turned it into a boring contrivance and pseudo-philosophical crutch.

Oh, did I not mention the philosophical aspect of the Nanometal, well then buckle up because you're gonna love it. Like everything else in the film, City on the Edge of Battle loves to wank about how brilliant and deep the Nanometal is; throwing around names like "poison" and "wicked" while heavily implying that it's somehow alive, which could be awesome couldn't it, a city made entirely of a material that is alive and can think, there are so many directions you could take that. You could have it becoming its own master and choosing its side; it could decide that Godzilla and humans both need to go and that Earth would be better if it was all just Nanometal, or it could decide that humans are more useful as processors and start trying to assimilate Haruo and his crew while also attacking Godzilla, which kind of happens, but it's the Bilusaludo controlling the city who tell it to start eating people, forcing them into a villain role that makes very little sense. Or how about it decides that the best way to kill Godzilla is a rebuilt Mechagodzilla, resulting in a completely autonomous Mechagodzilla that's as big a threat to humanity as it is to Godzilla, which could then give the subsequent battle some actual stakes. Or since it's apparently a living city, you could also have Godzilla attack the city and have the city attack back, as in have the city itself attack Godzilla rather than just growing guns and shooting at him, that would be interesting, that would be original, and it would be immensely more interesting to watch than Godzilla moving down a straight path while guns shoot at him and he spams his atomic beam. And what I find completely laughable is how while Godzilla is lured through a narrow, straight path, we are told, not shown, told, that he is attacking his surroundings, which is utterly laughable, as if animating Godzilla swinging his tail at the walls of the trap was too much, instead lets settle for a shot of him moving his tail, then cut to a wide of degree flying about like he actually did something. This is a problem that Godzilla had in the first film; that he doesn't interact with his environment in any meaningful way, but it's exacerbated in this film because of his size, and this film absolutely, demonstrably proves that bigger is not better. Godzilla in this film is three hundred meters tall, making him the biggest Godzilla there has ever been, nearly triple the height of the previous tallest, and while that would be very menacing were he looming over a city, in City on the Edge of Battle, he never even enters the titular city, and spends most of the film roaming around in the surrounding jungle, standing literally dozens of times higher than the trees. This makes his lack of interaction with his surroundings even more boring to look at because there simply isn't anything big enough for him to interact with.

It's such a strange problem in a kaiju film, or at least you'd think, because when it comes to giant monsters, surely bigger is better, but that isn't the case with this film because for all I care he could ten miles tall, it still wouldn't make this boring, empty excuse for Godzilla entertaining to watch, it still wouldn't fix that he has absolutely no personality, that he displays no intelligence or cunning despite the film wanting us to believe he does. And like the first, the plan is simply to lure Godzilla into a trap, destroy his shield and blow him up with EMP probes, only now the EMP probes are EMP harpoons, and in place of the spider tanks from before are big domes with guns sticking out of them, it's the same finale as the first film, the exact same, only with more colours and bigger guns, which is not enough to save it, especially with the unlimited potential of the Nanometal, which would at least be more entertaining as a lazy justification for the film not having rules than as a lame dramatic and philosophical device. And to add insult to injury is the mere knowledge that the plan won't work; we saw the plan just barely work in the first film, only for it to all be made pointless because it was just a babyzilla, and we know that this is part two of three, which means that Godzilla will survive no matter what, unless they honestly want to make a Godzilla film with no Godzilla in it at all. This is a problem that literally every film has though, the inherent knowledge that the heroes will win, only in this case it's inverted, we know that the heroes will lose and that Godzilla will win, but that doesn't matter because we can still become invested, we can still have our heart strings pulled by an inevitable ending if it is executed well, shit, if it's executed well, people will lap up a disaster of an ending where all the heroes lose and most of them die, yet Infinity War this film is not. People were shocked by Infinity War's ending because of the build up to it and the execution of it, sure, the heroes all losing kind of sucks, but it hurts because we like these heroes and because even against the insurmountable threat of Thanos, there's still a chance that they could win, making their battle so much more intense, and their eventual defeat so much more powerful. Meanwhile City on the Edge of Battle has written this trilogy into a corner, one that almost certainly will not be sorted out in an emotionally satisfying way because we don't care. By making Godzilla so powerful to the point of being literally unkillable, not only have you made the entire film pointless, but you've put the heroes in a situation where they either win by incredibly convoluted means, or they don't win, one of which would almost certainly be stupid, and the other would render the entire trilogy pointless, and because I still don't have any emotional investment in the story and characters, I'm not going to care how it turns out, even when you throw in Ghidorah, or rather the space spaghetti that's supposed to be Ghidorah.

Are the Passing Crows Wings of Death?
Planet of the Monsters was underwhelming and boring, but City on the Edge of Battle isn't just that, it's a mess of a film through and through, one plagued by all its predecessor's shortcomings as well as its own painful lack of substance and wasted potential. Once again the film fails to deliver on the simple promise of its title; giving us a city that is lifeless and uninteresting and a battle that's just one long bout of Deja vu. But more egregious than that is the film's handling of its monsters and themes, giving us the same weak and unenjoyably dull portrayal of my favourite movie monster, and a Mechagodzilla so ugly and poorly handled that it beggars belief. But instead of being entertaining, the film instead tries to be insightful and meaningful, the only problem is that it fails there too, its deeper themes are half baked at best and completely ridiculous at worst, and none of it is able to amend for the absence of this genre's biggest draw, entertainment. City on the Edge of Battle is an uninspired and boring film, but it is a terrible Godzilla film, and I don't know which I find worse, I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters movie review

Here's what you need to know; after two decades drifting aimlessly in the cold expanse of space, the last remnants of Humanity make the fateful decision to return to their home world. There's just one problem, the reason they abandoned Earth in the first place is still alive, and in the twenty thousand years it's had alone on Earth, it's become a more formidable threat than anything the returning humans could have prepared for. Now the war for Earth has begun, between a hopeless and ill prepared human force and the king of this strange new planet; Godzilla.
After a few weeks of people constantly telling me to watch The Haunting of Hill House, and the mounting desire to just get Netflix, I finally did it, I set up a Netflix account, and the first thing I watched was not The Haunting of Hill House or any of the Marvel shows or even this, it was Jack Whitehall: Travels with my Father, which I watched with a friend over a stack of Domino's Pizza. Fast forward a few nights and I decide it's finally time to sit down and watch Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, the Netflix exclusive Godzilla anime, because such a thing somehow came to exist. And as I'm sure you know, I am obsessive about Godzilla, so I was very interested to see just what this film would offer.

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters has a fascinating first few minutes that set up a film that I'd very much like to see, setting up the very good basic premise of the film. To sum it up, mankind was at war with Kaiju in its final years on Earth, a war that it lost miserably at the claws of the King of the Monsters, resulting in what was left of humanity opting to leave Earth and let Godzilla have it, a decision that we later learn was a very, very bad one. More interesting than that though is the intrigue the film the plays with regarding Humanity's new life among the stars, a life that is cold and lonely and dark, where food is a luxury and where the weak die, this is a scary idea that the film never develops, only hinting at the psychological and societal effects of losing Earth, it's nihilistic and kind of heart-breaking in concept, but that's all it is, a concept. I really like the first few minutes of this film however, as we are shown through flash backs the evacuation of Earth, a sequence that packs a harrowing punch thanks to it's amazing use of music and through its demonstration of just how malicious this Godzilla is, making him a frightening creature, at least at first, and making Humanity's decision to leave an emotional one, one that you feel. Also considering that Humanity had to share the ship and its resources with two other alien species, it's amazing that the ship wasn't torn apart in a race war in the twenty years they've been adrift. I'm not going to lie, I found this idea really intriguing however, Humanity losing its home and in a way, losing what made it human in the first place, no longer able to take air for granted, no longer able to feel the comfort of home, and the shame of surrender, not because Earth was taken by Godzilla, but because they packed their bags and ran out of fear. It's a shame that the film doesn't really play with this story as much as it could have, and while you'd think that's because they need to get back to Godzilla, to the fun shit, you wouldn't nesseccarilly be right.

Before I start talking about where this film really disappoints me, there are some things that are worth mentioning, first of all, I am conflicted about the film's presentation. When I first saw the trailer and saw the CG anime style they were going for, I thought it didn't look that good, it looked cheap and janky and I thought I wouldn't like it. As it turns out though, I do and don't; the animation does indeed look cheap and janky, and the visual style of Anime translated to CG animation looks about as weird as I'd expected it to, but it didn't end up bothering me all that much. In fact, when you're not looking at a person, but instead looking at the very cool sci fi machines the humans bring to Earth, the animation is actually surprisingly good, this style ends up working with Spider tanks, not so well with people, and even less so with monsters. Also, the film looks dull, from a colours standpoint it is so lifeless looking; the jungle they land in is just a huge grey and green expanse; there are no vibrant colours, there are no funky animals, it's just dull green ground on a dull grey sky, and for some reason the humans seem to like that colour scheme because that's also what the inside of their ships look like, lots of greys and lots of greens. Like a few things we'll be discussing, this film has so much potential and opportunity to do some crazy shit; why can't there be indigenous animals like deer or wolves that have evolved over the years into monsters, or pretty plants, giant flowers, carnivorous bastards like that thing from Jumanji. Something tells me this was down to the film's tight production budget, hence the recycling of assets and everything on earth looking the same, but given the complete lack of vision the film has in other areas, it's very possible that they just didn't try. At least the machines are cool; the spider tanks are cool, the landers are cool, the mechs are cool, it does appear that whoever designed and animated them was having fun doing it, why the rest of the film is so dull then, I don't know. I don't talk about music that much in films either, but this film has one of the weirdest soundtracks I seen as of late, with some tracks being really good and others being complete garbage, some tracks fit the action and are effective, others are just noise, and I swear that one track in particular uses the Nintendo DS start up sound, I'm sure of it. The film also features a pop song recorded specially for the film, something that's been coming back in recent years for some reason, and this one; White Out, isn't bad, I wouldn't play it at a party, but I have walked to work listening to it a few times, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Leading the charge for most of the film is Haruo, one of three names that I don't need to IMDb in the film, and I'll be honest, he's not all that great. His motivations are very clear, his sole intention being to get revenge on Godzilla, but the problem is that's all he has, that drives him for the entire film, meaning we get very little in the way of any kind of relationships he has or doesn't have with his crew, or what kind of fears he harbours, his entire character is getting revenge on Godzilla, so when the film tries to force him, the most unstable, irrational and emotionally driven character in the whole film, into a leadership role, it makes absolutely no sense. But Haruo, despite being a boring and one-dimensional character, is actually the most well developed one in the crew. Metphies is a religious leader, and that's his character, Leland is a cowardly leader who *spoilers* goes out like a hero, there's a second alien race in the film, and all of the members of that group are so flat as to be interchangeable, there's a girl who's probably going to be a love interest, and who wants to be big and strong like her heroes, so that's a love interest and naïve kid double bill right there. Outside of Metphies, Haruo, Yuko and Leland, I honestly don't know any other names, and I sure as shit couldn't put faces to them even if I did. Godzilla films having boring heroes is nothing new, even the 2014 film, which I still regard as one of the best ones, stumbled with its characters, but this isn't simply a stumble, this is a fall, down a flight of stairs, out through the front door and down the street, this is Shin Godzilla levels of boring, and as such, when they 'win,' I wasn't very invested, and when the rug inevitably gets pulled out from under them, I still wasn't very invested.

Sadly, the disappointment does continue as we now talk about the film's monsters, or rather, its lack of monsters. For a film titled "Planet of the Monsters," it's very disappointing how when they arrive on Earth, there aren't many monsters. Before the film came out, I'd heard that Rodan, Orga, and probably others would be in the film, and yet despite indeed featuring monsters like Orga, Rodan, Kamacuras and Anguirus, and even more obscure ones like Dogora, they're all relegated to cameos in the film's prologue, which is a complete waste, and worse, Rodan and Anguirus are unrecognisable in the one image they're shown in, and not just because they're skeletons, but because even as skeletons, they just don't look like their classic counterparts, but since I know what Mechagodzilla and Ghidorah look like in this trilogy already, it's not worth getting mad about Rodan's design, there's bigger fish to fry. Fortunately, all the other cameos; Orga, Kamacarus, Dagahra and Dogora, look pretty good, it's just a shame that they weren't in the bloody film. What we do have in the film is Godzilla and a bunch of bat things, and again, it's weird that for a film called "Planet of the Monsters," the crew only encounter two monsters, and sadly, neither of them are very exciting. The Bat things, which are called Servum according to the wiki, are the most numerous monsters the crew encounter in their mission, and while the film could have been smart and built a bit of tension with these things' first appearance, they just kind of show up with barely any build up, making the resulting action sequence feel gratuitous and suspenseless. Why the planet's ecosystem is so dull and absent of any kind of diversity is a mystery to me, and it feels like a huge missed opportunity to give us a "Planet of the Monsters" that only has two kinds of Monster on it, especially when Toho has bug kaiju like Kumonga, Megaguirus and, oh I don't know, Kamacuras, in its arsenal, kaiju that would fit pretty well into this film's alien jungle setting, or how about Biollante, a plant Kaiju, or is one already too much. Instead we get the Servum, bat things with none of the nostalgia of a classic monster and none of the weird, fun wackiness of something like Legendary's MUTO's. But as far as monsters go in this film, there's obviously a big one that I haven't discussed yet, and if you don't know who that is, how have you gotten this far.

It's obviously Godzilla, and Planet of the Monsters' portrayal of the big G is something I'm conflicted about. I do prefer this design of Godzilla to the one used in Shin Godzilla, which, when he stopped looking like a lungfish, looked like a scab with legs that had broken into the Patty vault. But while Shin Godzilla was completely proportionally off with his dinky arms, curvy hips and comedically long tail, anime Godzilla is off in the complete opposite sense, he's apparently been hitting the gym every day for the last twenty thousand years because he's fucking huge. But not only is Swolezilla the most hench Godzilla to ever even lift, he's also a plant, and what's even weirder than Godzilla being a plant is that this is never brought up in the film, it's never explained, and it never serves any purpose to the plot. Other differences include how Godzilla's atomic breath no longer fires from his mouth, but is a concentrated beam of energy that charges around him like a bubble, which, don't get me wrong, is a cool thing to look at, but like Shin Godzilla's atomic breath being purple, it just feels like change for the sake of change, and the same is true of him being a plant. But the biggest issue with this Godzilla is how boring he is. This Godzilla is big, but while a film like Pacific Rim or the 2014 Godzilla succeed in selling the size of their monsters while also making their battles very entertaining, Planet of the Monsters' approach to showing size is just to make Godzilla move really, really slowly, the same is true of Shin Godzilla, but to a lesser degree, and the obvious issue is that it drags. But this would be less of an issue if Godzilla did anything in the film, but he doesn't. In the film's prologue, Godzilla is portrayed as purely malicious and evil, yet when he finally shows up again half way through the film, all he does is walk forward and spam his atomic beam at Haruo and his crew, in fact the first casualties of the battle don't even come as a result of Godzilla, but as a result of the humans desperately scrambling to get away from him. It's annoying to watch in some ways because this is an anime which makes so many things possible, and which makes Godzilla's complete lack of personality insufferable. This is also the fourth Godzilla to be entirely CGI, and yet despite being a complete bastardisation of the monster, even the 1998 Sony Godzilla has more character and is more involved in the plot of the movie, even though in that film it's treated comedically that he's less dangerous than the army trying to kill him, that's right, even the Sony Godzilla, a dumpster fire of a film, was more true to Godzilla and more compelling in its portrayal.

This becomes a huge, huge problem in the film's battle sequences, of which Godzilla features in two; the first one where the humans end up crashing one of their own ships in a mad dash to escape, and the second where they attempt to trap and kill Godzilla. In both of these battles Godzilla behaves the same; walking forward and spamming his atomic beam while the Humans buzz around him like ineffectual bees on hoverbikes. This makes Godzilla in this film little more than an obstacle for the Humans to overcome. It also occurs to me now, while I watch the film on my phone while writing this, that Godzilla no longer firing the beam from his mouth removes another facet of his personality, his mouth; Godzilla now firing the beam from his face rather than out of his mouth makes his already lifeless face look even more lifeless, especially since this Godzilla doesn't do any biting thanks to the lack of monsters and his own sloppiness. It's actually rather fitting that he's plant, because, like a plant, he has no personality to discern, he doesn't interact with his environment in any exciting or compelling way, he just kind of stands there and gets shot at, which isn't exciting, even less so since, despite being called "Planet of the Monsters," there are no monsters on Earth big enough for him to fight, making the already boring primary threat of the film even more boring. This is all in the shadow of the prologue in which Godzilla mercilessly attacks the evac shuttles, refusing the let Humanity escape even as they attempt to leave, and since those seventy seconds of are so effective and haunting, everything else that he does, literally everything, is a snooze. This obviously also makes the battles not all that exciting; with Godzilla just kind of standing there, with the boring Servum attacking the landing shuttles, and with monsters like Orga and Rodan completely wasted in the film's prologue, meaning we don't get to see them either. This film somehow manages to waste all its potential with regards to the monsters; featuring cameos that waste a stellar line up of Toho Kaiju, and only featuring two monsters in the actual film, one that's boring, and another that's offensively boring. There's a reason I keep bringing up the film's title in quotations; "Planet of the Monsters" does not deliver on the monsters, and what little it delivers on the planet is underdeveloped, meaning that by the time the film's credits role, once you have the exciting Stinger for the sequel, the film you just watched is rendered basically pointless, because you realise that the heroes have missed the point for the entire film, just as the people making the film clearly missed the point of what they were doing.

This planet can go to hell
I suppose you know how I feel about this film, but in case you don't, or just skip to the end of my reviews because you can't be arsed to read the whole thing, I am not a big fan of Planet of the Monsters, and that annoys me way more than I thought it would. The film's opening prologue is great, setting up a heart-breaking tone and a compelling narrative, both of which the film wastes by being boring. It's characters are underdeveloped cut-outs that fail to be compelling, it's world, despite being outstanding on paper, is wasted by being underdeveloped and poorly executed, its action is dull and suspenseless, its visuals are dull and inconsistent, its ending makes the entire film pointless, and worst of all, it ruins Godzilla, it turns him, both figuratively and literally, into a lifeless, boring, innominate tree. There are things in this film that could work if they're done right, but that isn't this film, it's a feature length prologue to a trilogy that's already off to a boring, uncompelling and dull start. And to my horror, when it comes to the biggest thing in a Godzilla film; Godzilla, the 1998 train wreck which turned Godzilla into an asexual mutant Lizard created by the French, demonstrated a better understanding of what Godzilla is and how to make him entertaining. I went in cautiously optimistic, but I'll be going into the sequel in abject dread, because this film is pants and I wouldn't recommend it.

Overlord movie review

Here's what you need to know; the date is June 5th, 1944, the allied invasion of Nazi occupied France is just hours away and it is the mission of a squad of Paratroopers to help make that invasion possible by destroying a radio tower. But when their plane is shot down, they land in a hell that's worse than anything they could have anticipated, buried beneath their objective is one of the Nazis' greatest and most terrible secrets, a secret that could ensure the Reich reigns supreme if it isn't destroyed.
What better film is there to watch on Remembrance Day, a horror film about American paratroopers vs. Nazi zombies, yeah, it is a bit much. But I've been pumped for Overlord since back when it was Cloverfield 4, I always hoped that this film would be what I wanted it to be; a creepy, violent, gory war film with zombies and Nazis and Tommy guns, and having watched it in the tiny, sweaty back screen of my local cinema, I was left very, very satisfied by what I watched.

Overlord's first moments dispelled any idea that the film was going to just be B-movie shlock, with a loud, violent action sequence as the plane is shot down, a sequence that felt less like Call of Duty and more life Fury, which is never a bad thing. And when I say loud, I really mean loud, I don't know if it was just Screen 9's sound system or the film itself, but the ground was literally shaking, my seat was rumbling for the entire runtime of the film, and every gunshot was felt, literally felt, and literally every shot, and I somehow got used to it, in fact, intentional or not, it almost certainly added a lot to this film's effectiveness. The film does an amazing job of throwing you into the conflict right from the start; purging any notion of safety or relief within the first ten minutes, there's one death in particular that comes out of nowhere, right while the guy was talking about his ambitions as an author, which is not just a punch in the balls, but a clever way of letting you know that no one, not even our main hero, is safe. In not exactly a ground-breaking move, we have Boyce, our main guy who, over the course of the film, goes from soft and weak to a hardened hero, an archetype? yes, does it work in Overlord? yes, but as I've said before, archetypes exist for a reason. Then there's Chloe, who I love simply because there's a scene in the film where she takes a flamethrower and torches the shit out a monster, is it weird that I like brunettes with flamethrowers so much. In all seriousness though, she makes most of the film's quieter moments; unlike some women in films these days *cough* The Predator *cough,* her involvement in the conflict is done with subtlety, as we are both told and shown what the Nazis have done to her, making the moment she finally picks up a gun very satisfying, and making her motivation for doing so very human. Then you have the rest of the squad, and you already know what to expect, the arsehole leader who always follows orders, the snarky shit talker, the inexperienced kid you want to root for, the gang's all here. Like Boyce, they're archetypes, but like Boyce, they get the job done, the shit talker has some really funny lines, and the arsehole leader was a lot of fun too. One subversion, and a twisted one at that, is the inexperienced kid, though to go any further there would spoil the moment.

Then you have the villains, and they're Nazis so you already know the drill; they're sadistic, heartless brutes to whom the most unimaginable cruelty is just another day at work, and oh boy does the film not hold back. Overlord's setting, the small French town, is a place that feels wrong from the minute they arrive, the Nazi occupation having transformed the quaint and pleasant environment into a dark, oppressive prison, and the film has no hesitation in reminding you just how dickish the Nazis are, being antagonistic and abusive to the French civilians under their boot like a gang of school yard bullies; it is implied that our main villain, Wafner, has a 'relationship' with Chloe where he comes and rapes her whenever he wants, yeah, this film really holds nothing back, and surprise, you end up really, really hating this guy. And seemingly taking a page from Wolfenstein's playbook, the film has a lot of fun in its horror, playing off of the fucked up shit the Nazis did and taking a sharp turn into science fiction that feels straight out of something like Wolfenstein or Black Ops Zombies, and there's even a creepy old castle, how fitting. But what's interesting is that while film has and absolutely delivers on the Nazi zombies, that's not the entire film. Overlord is a war film first and a science fiction film second, which might sound like a bummer, but since the action scenes are so intense and fun, it doesn't matter. The climactic assault on the compound is awesome from beginning to end, delivering on both a creepy and gory horror film and an intense war film. But this does come with a catch; the film's first half only delivers on the war and horror in short bursts, taking place mostly around Chloe's home in the village as the Squad hide from the Nazis and plan their attack. Things are still going on however, as we get a very, very creepy tour of the compound and an awesome demonstration of the power of the Nazis' zombie juice, and even in the slower moments as the squad try to sneak around the Nazis, I was entertained thanks to the film's excellent grasp on how to build atmosphere.

And that leads us into my favourite thing about Overlord, the horror. Overlord isn't just a film that's 18 because, it really earns that rating, because this film is fucked up, and I adore it for that. Granted, it's not a very subtle movie, the vast majority of its horror is the result of graphic imagery and jumpscares, but for once, I actually don't mind the jumpscares because of how they are used and the imagery that accompanies them. The scene from the trailer with the wall is a scene that I wasn't expecting to the scared by, since I knew that he'd look in the hole and have something pop up at him, but what popped up was downright disturbing, far more so than I was expecting. That can be said of most of this film's graphic imagery, which, like the film's portrayal of the Nazis, holds nothing back, the experiments Boyce finds in the lab are creepy as all hell, and the violence is brutal and unapologetic. The zombies in this film are some of the coolest zombies I've seen in years, unlike mere rotting, shambling corpses, these fuckers are fast, powerful and absolutely insane, their bodies mutilated and deformed into uncanny monsters, I mean, just look at the guy in the trailer who breaks his own neck, the way his neck then snaps back into place at a crooked angle, tearing and compressing the skin around his neck and face in the process, it's amazing and disgusting. The trailers might have actually given too much away in the horror, but I don't mind, because when you're seeing it on the big screen, it's effective as shit. That's the kind of horror you're in for in Overlord, gore, lots and lots of gore, a showcase of amazing visual effects and a collection of fucked up imaginations. But as I stated earlier, the zombies aren't the whole film, so while the imagery is disturbing, it never gets stale or overstays its welcome, giving you just enough nightmare fuel to keep you going while plodding along with our heroes' main goal, destroying the tower. But for how unpredictable the films starts out being, the film does have a fair few conveniences in its finale, perhaps too many, and the film falls back on a couple of clichés that do distract from the overall film; such as the heroic sacrifice and the dumb kid who, for some reason, decides to just idly walk out onto a battlefield, which has always been a completely retarded thing for anyone to do in a film, even a dumb kid.

They have been given a purpose
Overlord really scratched an itch for me in a way I was hopeful but doubtful that it would. For once, I went into a film with a clear image of what I wanted and walked out completely satisfied; it delivers on the horror and then some, it delivers on the action and then some, and that's really all I wanted. The film isn't perfect thanks to some of the trappings it finds itself in, especially in the finale, but that doesn't change the fact that I was on the edge of my seat for most the film, that I winced about a dozen times at its imagery, and that when I walked out of the screening, I had a massive smile on my face. Overlord is fucking awesome, and it's definitely worth watching.

Slaughterhouse Rulez movie review

Here's what you need to know; Don's first few days at the esteemed Slaughterhouse Boarding School are proving every bit is unbearable as he'd feared, but things are about to get a whole lot worse thanks to a nearby fracking operation that accidentally opens a door to hell. With the school deserted aside from Don and a handful of other students and teachers, it's up to them to stay alive as the school comes under siege from an army of monsters.
I didn't know much about this film outside of what I knew from the trailers; that it was a very, very British horror comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. More importantly I was getting the impression from said trailers that this film was intended to capture the brilliance of Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy, three masterpieces if you ask me, and while that is a sweet idea, it means this film already has an uphill battle ahead of it, but will it still make it?

Slaughterhouse Rulez starts off unusually slow for a Cornetto rip-off, as we are introduced to Don and his family as his mum jumps for joy over him going to Slaughterhouse, all the while he struggles to get a word in about his discomfort at the prospect. When he actually gets to the school is when things pick up a tad, but not really that much in all honesty. The school is, expectedly, horrible; while the grounds are gorgeous and prestigious, the film really pulls no punches in its mockery of the British upper class, and as such, the posh twats that rule over the school are the poshest and twattiest of posh twats, ruling fascistically over the plebeian underclass of the students, all the while figuratively and literally wanking each other off about how amazing they are. If that sounds funny, it's because it kind of is, but it isn't really as funny as it should be, the tyrant serving as a sort of secondary antagonist in the film, Clegg, has some funny moments, but more often than not he's just a dickhead, which is the point, but the film really can overcook it. Taking on the monsters from below and the monsters of the British upper class however is a decently enjoyable collection of heroes; you have Don, our hero, the normal person thrown into this world of wankers and monsters, Willoughby, the weird, awkward roommate, Clemsie, the love interest and her best friend Kay, and in the remarkable absence of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, these four really have to carry this film's torch, and they do so moderately well. There are naturally a few subplots to contend with with these characters; Don falling in love with Clemsie for example, but an interesting subplot for the film's first half is the mystery of people putting up school tie nooses around the grounds, which we learn is over a suicide that happened last term, one which we later learn took a massive emotional toll on one of our four heroes, and this actually goes to a surprisingly sincere place, though the film abandons it the instant the real threat, the one trailers sold us, is revealed. Don's lust for Clemsie is less sincere, but is definitely funnier, granted it's the kind of humour that would make a feminist cry 'Objectification,' but since I actually have a sense of humour, I found it really funny. Ignoring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg for a second, probably the funniest character in the film is Willoughby, thanks to his bizarre antics and the sincerity with which the film develops his character. I also really liked Clemsie in the film, partly because I found the romance element so funny, and also partly because Hermione Corfield is smokin'.

The elephant in the room however is naturally Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who are undeniably the funniest parts of the film, for the six or so minutes they have on screen. Yep, despite being all over the marketing for the film, the pair really aren't in the film much. It's a shame because they are the best characters in the film; Simon Pegg being the alcoholic, lovesick teacher on the outskirts of the school's ubermensch, and Nick Frost, a former student, now an activist opposing the Fracking operation from his forest shanty of drug-addled hippies. In the Cornetto films, these two would often be on opposite ends of some spectrum, for example in Hot Fuzz, where Pegg was the badass super cop who couldn't be stopped in his pursuit of justice, and where Frost was a bumbling man child vastly unqualified for the role of police officer. In this film, that spectrum seems equal parts societal and political, with the far-left druggie hippies hiding from 'the man' in their camp while sneering at the fascists of the school, a symbol of prestige and aristocracy. But the second biggest issue I have with the film is the lack of Pegg and Frost, they have a total of one scene together, and only make brief appearances in the film, which is a waste in my opinion. But if that's my second biggest issue, what could be number one, what could be worse than wasting a pair of comedy legends. How about taking half of your film to get to the monsters, that isn't hyperbole either, the monsters don't appear until the second half, with the first half dedicated entirely to the four heroes' school drama. I was honestly surprised by how long the film took to build up to the monsters, which makes when they finally arrive fun, but as solid as the character building of the first half is, that's not what the trailers sold us, making it a matter of expectation; imagine if the Zombies didn't appear in Shaun of the Dead until the second half, that's kind of what it feels like. Another reason this doesn't work as well as a film like Shaun of the Dead or The World's End is that while both of those films take time to develop their characters and worlds, said development is A+, the Cornetto Trilogy is a collection of films that literally never have a dull moment, whether it's an awesome action sequence or a side splitting comedy sequence those films are a joy from start to finish, and this film, in more ways than one, feels less like a homage and more like an imitation.

That's another issue I have with Slaughterhouse Rulez, its attempts to imitate Edgar Wright's trilogy. Slaughterhouse Rulez is full of snappy writing, it has some decent action sequences, and the big one, the editing, which, like Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz or The World's End, is very fast paced and filled with quick successive cuts and zooms. The problem is that while this is fundamentally the same, it compounds the underlying issue that this still isn't an Edgar Wright film. For all its efforts to look and sound like it was written and directed by Edgar Wright, it ultimately fails because it just isn't as good as an Edgar Wright film, even Baby Driver, which has no relation to the Cornetto Trilogy at all, still feels more like it than this imitation, simply because it comes from the source and this doesn't. Like the editing, the writing is snappy and comedic, but never as much or as consistently so as a Cornetto film, the film tries to go for some emotional moments and, you guessed it, the Cornetto trilogy has it beat. There's one scene in this film, one moment that had me and my friend in stitches, we loved it and found it absolutely hilarious, but even though I've watched Hot Fuzz dozens upon dozens of times and have even memorised most of it, I still find that film really funny, The World's End, again, seen it a dozen times, still think it's hilarious. But outside of that one scene where someone fingers a monster's mouth, this film can, at best, produce a consistent chuckle. It's not that the film fails to be funny, because I do think it's funny, the issue is that by putting itself in the shadow of the Cornetto Trilogy, it's setting itself up for failure, just as despite the merits it has on its own, the 2011 The Thing failed because it stands in the shadow of a masterpiece. In the event I sound like I'm bashing Slaughterhouse Rulez, I guess I kind of am, but that's only because I can see what it's trying to be, but unlike the people that made it, I recognise how monumental a task that is, especially since that is being used as a selling point for this film, one that, at least on the casting front, is another example of misleading marketing.

Children, save yourselves
Slaughterhouse Rulez is a film with a confused identity; the people making it very clearly wanted to make a film that would stand shoulder to shoulder with Edger Wright's Cornetto trilogy, and even though they've made a film that is by no means bad, they have still failed in that goal. The film has a collection of likable characters, it has cool monsters, or it does in the second half, and for a grand total of ten minutes it has Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, and the film does have some chuckle worthy comedy and one scene that completely killed me. But as I said before, despite all the things it succeeds in, it ultimately fails though it's desperate attempts to mimic its inspiration, while missing the spark that made said inspiration so good. I enjoyed Slaughterhouse Rulez for sure, but it does not live up to the legacy it's trying to piggyback on, that said, I'd still say it's worth a watch.

The Waman Who Fell to Earth (Part One)

For months now, I've been conflicted as to whether or not I'd even give Doctor Who's eleventh series my time, for reasons I will be going into today, culminating in what I actually think of the series itself, because I'm going to watch the whole damn thing like a masochist. And if I may say, in all honesty I'm impressed at the ratings episode one reached, eight million overnight viewers, not the highest the series has ever seen, but certainly the highest its seen in a while. How much of that was genuine interest or just morbid curiosity is something we found out very soon though as the show lost two million viewers in just the first two weeks. In all honesty though, that's not out of the ordinary for Doctor Who, perhaps a better indication of this series' reception can be found on Rotten Tomatoes, with the disparity between critics and audiences currently sitting at a whopping forty one percent, making it not only the largest disparity of any Doctor Who series since the revival, but also the lowest rated series since the revival at fifty five percent, what a cracking start that was. In this first instalment of our latest story, I'll de discussing why I love Doctor Who, what it is about series eleven that makes me so mad, and the build-up to the airing of the series itself, with a second instalment further down the line when the whole series has aired.

This is Dee, my first remote controlled Dalek that I got from a
motor rally a long time ago. He's old now, he still works but
one of his motors doesn't work properly, so he sits on top
of my bookshelf now, and looks damn fine doing it.

Like my Black Ops 4 rant, I'll be beginning with just where my apprehension and anger towards series eleven came from, it comes from a much younger, much more optimistic me who fell in love with a weird northerner and his magic phone box. The year is 2005, and apart from quintupling in weight and becoming more nihilistic and cynical, I really haven't changed much, I loved toys and video games and my two favourite things in the world were Godzilla and Thunderbirds- and Benji, love you boy. Unbeknown to an oblivious me however, the wheels were turning at everyone's favourite publicly funded national broadcaster, Doctor Who was making a comeback, and it was through my Dad that I was introduced to Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD, which was on TV the day before Rose, the first episode in Doctor Who's return to TV, was airing.

I told this story once before when the casting of Whitaker was announced, but it's worth going through here because this was where my love of Doctor Who started; I instantly fell in love with the Daleks, I thought they were so cool, and a day later we all sat down and watched the Doctor and Rose run away from plastic people for half an hour, I was disappointed by the lack of Daleks, but Rose did get me interested, I liked Doctor Who, and I was excited for each new episode. That was until episode six; Dalek, where Doctor Who really became an obsession for me, Daleks weren't just cool anymore, they were frightening, philosophical, sympathetic, and while eight-year-old me couldn't appreciate just what this episode meant, he was turned into the biggest Doctor Who fan in his primary school by it. This period of my young life is something I still hold onto, both sentimentally and literally, I still have most of my old Doctor Who toys; the Tardis playset, the console of which now sits on my computer desk, the RC K-9 shoved under the bed in the spare room, two RC Daleks, as well as a third I bought myself just last Christmas, the Doomsday set that included the Genesis Ark and the Cult of Skaro, I still have it all, I in fact kept buying even into adulthood, now spending my own money on even more Dalek toys and even a canvas poster of the Daleks, because would it be a poster of anything else.

This wasn't a result of my love of Doctor Who being kept alive by the ongoing run however, because this was at the tail end of Steven Moffat's reign as showrunner, which lasted from series' five to ten. Call me crazy, but I never liked Matt Smith as the Doctor, I always felt that he was less able than Tennant or Eccleston to play a Doctor who was both crazy and eccentric but also emotionally vulnerable and cold. The subtle role reversal in Dalek as the titular Dalek becomes more human and the Doctor becomes more Dalek would never have been so effective were Eccleston replaced with Smith because Eccleston was convincingly dangerous and Smith never was because he was too busy eating fishfingers and wearing a fez. But as far as the problems Doctor Who would run into are concerned, an underwhelming and overly eccentric Doctor is just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest issue Doctor Who came down with, at least to me, was that the show gradually degraded in quality over Moffat's run, the episodes got sillier and sillier, the characters became less fun and compelling, and, it being the BBC in the 21st century, gradually lost its subtlety and began preaching. I was never a huge fan of Amy and Rory, who never compared to Rose or Martha or Donna, Clara I liked in some ways but hated in others, and I'd tuned out entirely by Bill Potts. Then there was the Doctor himself, who I didn't like in the Matt Smith days. Peter Capaldi could have been a brilliant Doctor had he been given decent episodes to star in, but instead series eight and nine were a mixed bag to say the least, series eight had some interesting and fun episodes like Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline, but then it had Kill the Moon and In The Forest of the Night, two royal stinkers. Series Nine was the same, only now every episode was a two-parter, and they all had the same problem of interesting setups and underwhelming payoffs, I remember really enjoying The Magician's Apprentice and being disappointed by The Witch's Familiar, and that was one of about two and a half stories that didn't suck, unlike Sleep No More, Face the Raven, Hell Bent, The Zygon Invasion and Before the Flood, which were all terrible.

To tell the truth, I never even watched series ten, not a single episode. The roller coaster of quality had thrown me off at that point and I'd almost completely lost interest, then I heard Bill Potts was gay, and I was done. Another thing that changed as Doctor Who declined in quality during the Moffat run was I was starting to grow wise to the creeping social justice in media. I'd been oblivious for a long time, but it was in 2014 that I had my first run-in with a progressive, she was my girlfriend at the time, incidentally. It was through her that I was introduced to, or rather, warned of feminism, and through feminism that I stumbled across the likes of Sargon of Akkad on YouTube because I'd decided to dig into this strange new world I'd been warned of by the very person arguing its virtue, she wasn't very smart. Digression aside, as I continued to get a grasp on the sphere of identity politics, I started noticing red flags popping up in film and TV that I was watching, and though I could usually overlook it, there were times where I just couldn't, and Bill Potts was one of those times. Since I was aware of what manner of hiring quotas and discrimination was going on behind the scenes at the BBC, Bill Potts stuck out to me as someone to fill a checkbox, also bear in mind this was after the Master became Missy and a time lord regenerated from a white man to a black woman and then commented on male ego. At this point I'd gotten the picture; Doctor Who's priority was no longer just to be a good show, it had something to say now, something it wasn't going to be subtle about, and something I could not agree with.

What all these things; Missy, the time lord talking about male ego, Bill Potts being the Doctor's first openly gay companion, were the product of was a desire to forward a progressive narrative, to ensure that all the special groups and interests had their boxes ticked. What was also apparent was how Moffat and his writers had been sowing the seeds for a female Doctor, which was never just going to be a simple recast, but a symbolic ideological conquest, the complete domination of a 'male dominated' show, because as we know, to progressives 'white' and 'man' are dirty words. So yes, as everyone knows at this point, when the new Doctor was revealed to be Jodie Whittaker, the reaction was split with a great deal of the split going down political lines; between the progressives who wanted a female Doctor because muh Feminism, and people like me who saw the ideological motives behind it for what they were. Not that dissimilar to Battlefield 5, this got under my skin, and like Battlefield 5, the reasons as to why they did this weren't very well hidden and were soon out there in the world. Chris Chibnall, the show's new showrunner, had made it a requirement for his taking the position that the Doctor be a woman, which only sounds good if you buy into the narrative, considering that cutting the pool of candidates in half, well, cuts the pool of candidates in half, and does so along arbitrary lines that discriminate against people and are informed by the cult mentality of the BBC and their fanaticism for forced representation and diversity.



Question 6 in the interview Whittaker did on the BBC website after the announcement, easily the most telling

 part of the interview in which she states she's a feminist and that it "feels incredible" to not be "boxed in" and be

 told what to do, placing herself as both a victim and an agent of change. Also of note is how the answer is

worded, with her declaring that she's a feminist first and an actor third, whether intentional or unintentional,

a subtle but undeniable indicator of the progressive motivations behind the scenes.

This was apparent from the day Whitaker's casting was announced, in fact in my first post on the subject; Bring on the Meteor VII, I went through an interview Jodie Whittaker did on the BBC website, one in which she unambiguously lets slip the feminist narrative. What followed was exactly what you'd expect; the Doctor Who fanbase, what little sanity there is left in it, went through a schism, while the BBC and progressive media went on the attack by downplaying the backlash and dismissing it as trolls and misogynists, so Ghostbusters 2.0, called it. Meanwhile in reality the video the BBC uploaded revealing the casting, which currently sits at just over a million views, has a worrying ten thousand downvotes to seventeen thousand upvotes, though to its credit, the following trailers did see a more positive like dislike ratio. That's apart from the release date trailer, with an even worse ratio than the reveal trailer at fourteen thousand up to eleven thousand down, and don't worry, that trailer's coming up.

In fact, let's just get to it. The show's main trailers are all fine, Whittaker referring to her companions as her "new best friends," is disconcerting,  as is the hammy accent and Whittaker's even hammier delivery, but I can ignore that, I can even ignore the music choice in the second trailer being really out of place unless you were to go full Alex Jones on it and realise that the song is Glorious by Macklemore, a possible allusion to the self-righteousness of Chibnall and his crew. I can't say I was impressed by these trailers, but I can't say they were complete turnoffs, even with the second trailer repeating the slogan of the release date trailer, which makes me feel sick to read. Where I get pissed off is in that release date trailer, a brief teaser depicting Whittaker literally breaking a glass ceiling before the slogan "it's about time" is shown. This thirty second teaser has less subtly than the entirety of The Emoji Movie, in fact it's quite impressive just how totally they destroyed any illusion that this wasn't political in such a short amount of time. So what really needs to be explained about this, breaking the glass ceiling, this is a blatant allusion to the feminist delusion of the "glass ceiling," the notion that there are institutional barriers in place that keep women out of high paying positions, institutional barriers that haven't existed since when Doctor Who was new, literally. Let's take for instance equal pay, which was enshrined in law in the 70's, while feminists still whine about the so called pay gap of 19%, an average number that intentionally ignores factors like different jobs and hours worked, and also ignores that on average, young women are now out earning young men, something I, as a young working man, and not going to whine about because I don't see it as some slight on my identity, unlike entitled feminists. Like the pay gap, the glass ceiling is a myth, one spawned from a simple truth that in general, men and women prefer to work different jobs, but to consider that it might be the result of individual choices would wreck their collectivist victim narrative.

A photo I took of a local billboard sporting the offending slogan; "It's About Time"

Getting back to the trailer, "it's about time," there's a few innocent ways of interpreting this, such as a reference to the gap between the release of series' ten and eleven, or it could be a crappy pun, given that the show is about a time traveller. But we all know that's not what this really is, the whole "it's about time" thing is an expression of the [current year] progressive mentality. You know what I'm saying, their justification of "it's [current year];" the idea that what they're doing is making up for some kind of historical wrong, or as a justification for something being sanitised or arbitrarily diversified. Example; IGN, the bastion of video game journalism that it is, released their review of Trash Ops 4's Zombies mode, in which they sucked the game's dick for the entire review, but did criticise it for its racial insensitivity. They weren't happy that Takeo, who has always been an archetypal honourable samurai of unbending loyalty to the Emperor, is stereotypical and therefore offensive, and that "in 2018, video games can do better than this." Never mind that that's an entirely moralistic argument, never mind that Takeo has been like that for a decade now and has become so endearing to players precisely because of the wacky comedy that ensues from his uber-honourableness, and Tank's uber-American-ness, and Richtofen's uber-crazy Nazi scientist-ness, they're all wacky stereotypes, and it's part of what makes them great. To IGN in this example, Takeo struggling to pronounce words with the letter L in them is racist and should have been fixed because it's 2018 and because we should all be woke by now, it's about time, in Doctor Who, there having never been a female Doctor is a historic wrong that must be fixed because it's 2018, "it's about time," because history needed to be righted and they're the ones to right it and how wrong they are is irrelevant, because they've determined themselves to be right about everything and for there to be no possible answer besides theirs, because they're a cult.

And this is just from the marketing; like Battlefield 5; there's a saga of behind the scenes drama as the BBC and the usual suspects have been relentlessly defending Whittaker as the Doctor while failing to address and instead accidentally confirming the critics' real concerns, and downplaying and hand waving those critics as best they can. This isn't a surprising tactic, it's something we saw with Ghostbusters, it's something we're seeing with Star Wars and Battlefield, and it's a practice the BCC themselves have engaged in in the past. If people question the narrative, if the see through it and call it out, best to just ignore them, to stick your head in the sand, because that won't validate the critics and endear resentment and distrust towards you at all, they're all just misogynists, all of them, or at least the ones that aren't Russians looking to bring down western democracy by shitting on your flawless and perfect product, because you're not wrong, everyone else is. Once again, this is what we've seen before; Melisa McCarthy calling Ghostbusters' critics basement dwellers, J.J. Abrams saying The Last Jedi haters are just afraid of women, and now the recent comedy routine of the idiots who made The Last Jedi saying that it was the Russians, yeah, that was a real story, Star Wars is dying of the Russians, according to the progressive reality deniers. The BBC and media have been doing the exact same thing with Doctor Who, either ignoring the resentment swelling within the Doctor Who fanbase or belittling it as a minority of sad woman haters, because as we saw with Ghostbusters and Star Wars, that's a winning tactic, that won't result in a catastrophic failure at all. Fast forward to now and Doctor Who's ratings, as I expected them to, started high and then nose-dived, losing two million viewers in the first two weeks, also note the laughably low RT audience score of fifty five percent, only four percent higher than Ghostbusters and ten higher than The Last Jedi. Among the remaining viewers is my mum, who now doesn't let me watch Doctor Who with her because if I have nothing good to say about it, I can shut up and go away. Coincidentally this is the same mindset as the people making the show, who, like my Mum, would rather be ignorant of all the bad things people have to say, because the problem isn't the product, it's the consumer. The Consumer who doesn't have a choice in this one because the BBC is publicly funded, meaning that in addition to paying for the continued existence of a racist, sexist company staffed almost entirely by cultists, the British public also have to pay for their dogshit programming, which is one hell of a safety net; can't compete in a free market? no problem because you're exempt from it, you're payed for through taxes.

If I'm not already, I'll soon be talking myself in circles, there isn't much else that needs to be said here from me. As of writing this we're four episodes into series eleven's ten episode run, and I've seen two of those episodes so far, and I really hope those two aren't the good ones, because if they are, Jesus Christ, this will be painful. So rather than doing what I used to do with TV reviews and reviewing new episodes as they air, I'll be watching the entire series and reviewing it as a whole, but that does mean that A I can't do that until at least December, and B I actually have to watch the entire series, which is just going to be so much fun, I bought a fresh bottle of Whiskey just for the occasion, I'm so excited. So see you in December, or more likely, January, when I finish this story once and for all, until the inevitable twelfth series where things go even more off the rails, because if the last few years have taught me anything, it's that things can always get worse.