Tag: George R. R. Martin

The 1996-2012 Cultural Zenith, and the 2012-2024 Cultural Nadir

For a number of years now, I have claimed that in Britain there was a cultural high-point that ended at the end of 2012, and that ever since we have been in a cultural wasteland. In this post, I would like to prove it.

One of the early indicators I got of this was the decline in good fantasy and science fiction shows on the BBC. I remember in the late 2000s we had both Merlin and Doctor Who on television at the same time. Both of these shows were great – I remember being so excited for new episodes, and upon seeing each new episode me and my friends would spend hours and hours talking about them. We also had the BBC’s Robin Hood series (which was flawed – just as Merlin and Doctor Who were – but still great).

Robin Hood ended in 2009, and Merlin ended in 2012 (with a finale that rather frustratingly lacked closure). And the thing is, I don’t think I know of any good fantasy television shows that have been on the BBC since Merlin ended. Doctor Who has continued, of course, but it has steadily gotten worse, and is now completely unwatchable. A lot of people liked Matt Smith’s Doctor, but I started to notice the cracks from his very first episode. (That’s a niche joke there. (And that’s another niche joke there – one for the etymologists.)) Matt Smith took over in 2010, and by the end of 2012 the show had really deteriorated – whenever I rewatch those 2000s episodes of Doctor Who, I often don’t make it through all the Matt Smith ones.

So by the end of 2012, Robin Hood was gone, Merlin was gone, and Doctor Who was crumbling. From 2013 to 2015, the BBC gave us Atlantis – a show specifically designed to fill the gap left by Merlin, and created by many of the same people. But despite having some AMAZING actors – including Robert Emms, Sarah Parish, and Mark Addy (one of my all-time favourite actors) – it just wasn’t very good. It just wasn’t written very well.

Quite frankly, the BBC seemed to give up on fantasy and science fiction. It was as though they thought it was too hard to make – or they looked down on it as a genre, as a number of middle class, not-quite-as-intelligent-as-they-think-they-are people do.

Of course, we had Game of Thrones to keep us occupied, but even that seemed to fall to the post-2012 corruption in the end. The last two seasons of that – it is generally agreed – are quite flawed, and some would say even season six had quite a few issues. That takes us back to season five, which aired in 2015 – only 3 years after 2012.

Another early indicator I got was the decline in good comedy shows on the BBC – and on other British networks, actually. This decline has been much sharper. In the 2000s (including 2010), we had Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look, Come Fly With Me, The Armstrong and Miller Show, Harry and Paul, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, Newswipe with Charlie Brooker, Peep Show, Green Wing, The IT Crowd (apart from the special), Gavin and Stacey (again, ignoring the specials), The Office, Extras, and even Coupling. That is A LOT.

What’s more, back then, Live At The Apollo was actually good. (I haven’t watched any of Live At The Apollo in years – they just kept inviting people on who weren’t very funny.) Back then is also the golden era of Mock The Week. Mock The Week continued for many years afterwards, of course, but it always seemed to be struggling to survive.

The first two series of Miranda were also in the 2000s (again, including 2010). The third series and the specials for Miranda were nowhere near as good as the first two series – something strange happened there. The early series of Not Going Out were also in the 2000s. (That’s had some great later episodes, but the early ones, for the most part, are better.)

Would I Lie To You was started in the 2000s – and again, those early episodes were great. (I haven’t watched any of the recent stuff – it just felt like it was going on and on.) QI! That was great when Stephen Fry was hosting it – again, mostly in the 2000s. I’ve watched almost none of it since Sandi Toksvig took over – it’s just terribly boring. (And think, all of the famous moments from the show – the ones that get watched over and over again on YouTube – are from Fry’s era.)

And Have I Got News For You was better back then too. Brian Blessed’s first appearance – which I think is the all-time high-point of the show – was in 2008. Nowadays HIGNFY is just awful – I can’t watch it. It’s mostly not funny – there’s just the odd weak pun that at most elicits a thought of ‘That’s funny.’, but no actual laughter and not even a half-smile. It feels like they’re just going through the motions. Ian and Paul know that the BBC’s never going to cancel it, so they’re just going to sit there, occasionally making a witty remark, until they’re too old and frail to walk on set anymore.

And what else have we had since 2012 that’s been any good? I mean we’ve had all of the Philomena Cunk stuff (where it’s her own show) – that’s been good. We’ve had 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown – a lot of the early stuff from that was good, although it’s deteriorated. There was also, briefly, 10 O’Clock Live and Live At The Electric – but those were quite early on since 2012. Other than that, what has there been?

The main comedy show that the BBC seems to have been pushing since that time is, of all things … Mrs Brown’s Boys. Jesus Fucking Christ. That show is one of the worst shows to have ever been created. Fuck it, it’s one of the worst things to have ever been created. I could write out a lengthy argument as to why it’s so absolutely fucking awful, but the reality is if you don’t already know why it’s awful, there’s no helping you. It’s the exact thing that was parodied by Ricky Gervais’ Extras – which the BBC themselves had aired just a few years before – but apparently having that template of what not to do did not help them.

Mrs Brown’s Boys should never have made it to air in the first place, and yet it seems to have been the BBC’s flagship comedy show for several years now.

So when it comes to comedy, we really are living through an absolute dearth of it.

I think I have already demonstrated that 2012 marks a boundary point – lots of good things had already finished by that point, and there aren’t that many good things that have come about since. But actually, the very first sign I got that we were entering a cultural nadir happened just a few minutes past midnight on New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day going from 2012 to 2013.

2012 had been a great year for Britain. We had hosted the Olympic Games – at which we had won an extraordinary number of medals, and the opening and closing ceremonies were some of the best we’ve seen since the turn of the millennium (though they still had quite a few flaws). It was also the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Now, even though we got to see a Platinum Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth, the Diamond Jubilee was better – the Queen was able to do more for it, and the celebrations themselves were better. (I remember the barge.)

It felt like Britain was at its all-time peak. It felt like we could do anything. But I remember staying up ’til midnight on New Year’s Eve to watch the fireworks on television. (The fireworks have long since become tedious and obnoxious, but that’s a rant for another post.) Once the fireworks were over, the BBC played their new ident for 2013. ‘Love 2013’ it read. It was so underwhelming. I knew at that moment that we were about to start a decline.

So 2012 is the end-point of the zenith – when did it start? I put it in 1996. 1996 was the year that Pokémon came out. (Granted, Pokémon is not a British cultural creation, but we still had it here – and it was BIG. Everyone who is around my age remembers it from school – we all played the games, swapped the cards, and watched the movies. It had a profound cultural impact on my generation.) Also, the first Harry Potter book came out not long after – in 1997. And thus began the intense craze for Harry Potter. People who have grown up after that time could not possibly imagine what that was like. The obsession with and adoration for the Harry Potter books and films was like nothing we’ve seen ever since.

The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997, and the last Harry Potter film (with the films always lagging behind the books, of course) came out in 2011 – almost perfectly bookending my proposed era.

There has been nothing like Harry Potter in the years since – either in book form or movie form. Game of Thrones came close – and might well have gone down as one of the all-time great television series, had they not screwed up the ending. And of course, George R. R. Martin himself has not published any more of the book series (the last one being published in 2011 – making my point again). He is never going to finish that series. He’s had 13 years and he still hasn’t done the next one. He is never going to do it.

The 1996-2012 cultural zenith also includes the Lord Of The Rings movies, of course – which will be classics for many centuries. It even includes the Matrix films – which again were not a British cultural creation, but they still had a big impact here. (And of course, there are only three Matrix films.)

And my goodness it even includes the Star Wars Prequels. Some people don’t like the prequels, but their cultural impact cannot be denied. The number of iconic lines, characters, and pieces of music greatly outstrips the ‘sequel’ films that Disney made. I’ve long thought that you can tell how culturally impactful a movie is by how many memes it produces – and the prequels are used in memes every day.

And gosh, now that I think about it, this era mostly overlaps with Star Trek: Voyager. Again, a number of people don’t like Voyager, but I think it’s almost as good as The Next Generation, and certainly far, far superior to anything that’s been made in recent years.

And actually, that just shows how post-2012 has been characterised not just by an absence of good television shows and movies, but by a presence of bad ones. I’ve commented on this sort of thing many times, of course, but to list just some of the awful shows we’ve had post-2012 (and much of which is after about 2015/2016): Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks (and I’m sure the other Star Trek stuff has probably been shit as well, but I haven’t seen it), the Star Wars ‘sequels’, the Han Solo film, the Kenobi Show, The Acolyte (and again, I’m sure lots of the other Disney Star Wars stuff has been shit too, but I haven’t seen it), all of Doctor Who since Jodie Whittaker took over, all of the Fantastic Beasts films, most of the MCU films since Endgame (a common observation), Amazon’s Rings of Power, The Matrix 4. I could go on but really what’s the point.

Of course, much of this can be attributed to the deterioration of Hollywood that’s been going on from about 2015 / 2016 (although the process started much earlier). There’s a lot to be said about the interplay between American and British culture, but I won’t say it in this post.

But what has caused this current cultural nadir? Well, thinking specifically about Britain, I think it is in part because of a deterioration at the BBC. I have long thought that the BBC has lacked the ability and the determination to make good fantasy, science fiction, and comedy. A game show, a quiz show, a travel show, a cookery show, a dancing show, a soap opera, a rerun – these things are not difficult to conceive of. Good science fiction requires true insight, and a willingness to do what no-one else is doing. The BBC has long seemed far too conformist for that.

I think there are other, nebulous reasons for this cultural nadir too. Britain is not doing as well as it was in the 2000s. It is a grimmer place. This is partly economic – our economic situation is worse than it was 12 years ago. (I will not defer to statistics here, but I think we all sense it.) Britons are less able to take chances on creative projects. The causes of our economic misfortune are manyfold.

When will this current nadir end? I don’t know. It could go on for a LONG time yet. I couldn’t say if we’re past the worst of it. I think I’d know it if I saw the beginning of the end, but perhaps not. But I do think the solution has remained the same throughout: bringing about a new cultural zenith requires extraordinary determination and discernment from talented creatives.

All that is left is to name these eras, but I can’t think of any good ones – yet.

For the sake of clarity, I have listed below many of the aforementioned television shows and books that belong to this pre-2012 zenith and post-2012 nadir. (There is, of course, a certain ‘fuzziness’ to these endpoints.)

The 1996-2012 Cultural Zenith

  • The Vicar of Dibley (1994-2007)
  • Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)
  • The Harry Potter Books (1997-2007)
  • The Men in Black Movies (1997-2012)
  • Pokémon Red and Blue (EU: 1999)
  • The Star Wars Prequels (1999-2005)
  • The Matrix Movies (1999-2003 – there is no fourth movie)
  • Coupling (2000-2004)
  • The Office (2001-2003)
  • The Harry Potter Movies (2001-2011)
  • The Lord Of The Rings Movies (2001-2003)
  • Shrek (2001)
  • Look Around You (2002-2005)
  • That Mitchell and Webb Sound (2003-2013)
  • Little Britain (2003-2004 – the first two series)
  • Peep Show (2003-2015)
  • QI (with Stephen Fry – 2003-2016)
  • The Catherine Tate Show (2004-2007)
  • Green Wing (2004-2007)
  • The Incredibles (2004)
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)
  • Extras (2005-2007)
  • Doctor Who (before it became shit, 2005-2010 (-ish))
  • The Thick Of It (2005-2012)
  • Mock The Week (2005-2022 – its golden era was earlier on)
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
  • That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006-2010)
  • Hyperdrive (2006-2007)
  • The IT Crowd (2006-2013)
  • Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe (2006-2008)
  • Robin Hood (2006-2009)
  • Harry & Paul (2007-2012)
  • The Armstrong & Miller Show (2007-2010)
  • Gavin & Stacey (2007-2010, ignoring the specials)
  • Merlin (2008-2012)
  • Newswipe with Charlie Brooker (2009-2010)
  • Miranda (2009-2010 – first two series only)
  • Avatar (2009)
  • Come Fly With Me (2010)
  • Him & Her (2010-2013)
  • Twenty-Twelve (2011-2012)
  • 10 O’Clock Live (2011-2013)
  • Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee (2012)
  • The London Olympic Games (2012)
  • Live At The Electric (2012-2014)

The Post-2012 Cultural Nadir

  • Mrs Brown’s Boys (2011-now)
  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
  • Doctor Who (Whittaker and after – 2017-now)
  • The Mash Report (2017-2022)
  • Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2024)
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
  • Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
  • Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
  • Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
  • Aladdin (2019)
  • Captain Marvel (2019)
  • Star Trek: Picard (2020-2023)
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-2024)
  • Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett (2021-2022)
  • WandaVision (2021)
  • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
  • Loki (2021-2023)
  • Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
  • Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)
  • Star Wars: The Kenobi Show (2022)
  • She-Hulk (2022)
  • Amazon’s The Rings Of Power (2022-2024)
  • Star Wars: Ahsoka (2023)
  • Star Wars: The Acolyte (2024)
  • and more …

Wicked Part 1 – Astonishingly mediocre – 6/10

You might think it odd that I went to see this movie – given that the Wicked musical is famously more popular with women than is typical for fantasy, and it’s not exactly hard fantasy either. But when it comes to movies, really I’m willing to give anything a shot if it’s sufficiently ambitious and if the basic idea is interesting.

It’s worth stating at the outset that this is a review of the movie as an isolate work. I have not seen the musical it’s based on or read the book that that in turn is based on. I detest changes from source material, and I’m sure if I knew of them and saw them I would mark the movie down for them, but here I am judging it as a movie on its own.

I have heard many great things about the musical over the years (though as I say, I have not seen it). On that basis, I was expecting this movie to be quite good. But then also, the lead-up to the release of this movie has been disastrous. The lead actress criticised a fan for making a version of the movie poster that looked more like the poster for the musical. And then we had the endless series of interviews where the two lead actresses just started crying. It was just pathetic and repulsive. On the basis of all of that, I was expecting this movie to be a complete disaster.

So I was expecting either something brilliant or something disastrous. What I wasn’t expecting was what it ultimately was: astonishingly mediocre.

I’ll start with the stuff that was actually quite good – because quite frankly that stuff is much easier to describe and so easy to get out of the way first. The costume design was excellent – quirky and novel, but just managed to avoid being cliché. The set design was also excellent – exactly what you’d expect but also filled with many new things along the same lines. That train looked amazing. (Although I think it’s more properly referred to just as a locomotive, as it didn’t pull a ‘train’ of carriages behind it.)

The casting was also excellent. Jeff Goldblum was made to play the Wizard of Oz. As he tends to do in every film nowadays he just played himself, but in this case it was absolutely ideal. Michelle Yeoh was brilliant – I’m a huge fan of Michelle Yeoh whatever she’s in. She’s a phenomenal actress – she can take even very boring, cliché lines and make them sound great (which she had to do several times in this film).

Cynthia Erivo was actually very competent. Despite her insufferable personality in real life, she was actually very skilled – never underplaying or overplaying the part (which it would have been easy to do with that part).

The real star of the show, however, was Ariana Grande. Now, I don’t think of Ariana Grande as an actress – I think of her as a singer. I understand that she did actually start out as an actress, but I nevertheless think of her as a singer, and my general assumption is that singers can’t act. (And in fairness to me, that assumption is grounded – a lot of them really can’t act.) But she absolutely stole the show in this film. On a technical level her acting was flawless – every expression was exactly right. She was able to do the Connie D’Amico trope perfectly. And she also had lots of funny moments.

Some might dislike the idea of the second-main character stealing the show, but it’s generally more possible for secondary characters to be able to do this than the primary character, because secondary characters can often have more extreme character traits and be funnier, whereas the main character has to be sufficiently neutral for the audience to be able to project themselves onto them.

Some of the core ideas of the film were very interesting too. (Some, but not all, as I shall get onto.) The basic idea of expanding the world of the Wizard of Oz I really like – I always like that sort of thing. I’m a huge fan of the ‘lost knowledge’ trope (that George R. R. Martin always did really well), and the Grimmerie is part of that. Stories about dictatorships are often fun too.

So there were a number of things to like about this film. In fact, this film was particularly unusual – usually what lets a film down is its peripherals – usually the core story is a good idea, but the film is let down by its casting, its acting, its dialogue, its visual effects, and so on (think about the Last Airbender film – fantastic source material to work from – a great core idea – but let down by all its peripherals – the casting, the acting, the dialogue, and so on). This film was the other way round. All of its peripherals were good – it was let down by its core.

The main story is just, in parts, very stupid. A girl is born with green skin. Her parents – especially her father (although it is implied that he is not actually her father) – despise her for it, even though this is a land where magic is known to exist, even though a demonstration of her raw magical ability occurs moments after birth (if I remember correctly), even though they made an entirely green city – suggesting, as it does, that there may be a connection between greenness and magical ability, and so greenness would be revered, not detested – and even though this is a land filled with people who are already different shades of brown and beige, and even though this is a land filled with talking animals.

When she’s a bit older, some local children mock her for being green, and then when she first goes to the university, the people around her are absolutely mortified at the sight of her (although they get over it extremely quickly – just watch them in the background of the shots). It’s all ‘woe betide me, no-one likes me because I’m green’, but it makes no sense – the world we are looking at is filled with far more odd and unusual things than a person with green skin. It does not make sense for these people to find it as odd as they do.

‘But that’s the whole point! It’s not supposed to be rational! Discrimination isn’t rational!’, I hear an annoying person scream at their computer screen. Yes, discrimination between individuals on the basis of something that has no effect on the situation under consideration is generally irrational – the point is that in order for a difference to seem significant enough for people to hate you for it, it must be quite a lot different to anything else those people have experienced. Being green in a land filled with people who already vastly exceed Hollywood’s diversity quotas, along with talking animals and magic, should not be all that notable. In other words, how do you notice one odd thing in a room filled with odd things? When everything’s odd, nothing is.

It gets even stupider because as the film goes on they morph this idea of ‘discriminating against a person with green skin’ into ‘people with green skin are ugly’. This isn’t the first film to throw out this idea – I can’t remember what the other one was, but I’ve definitely seen it before, and it was stupid there too. It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of beauty and ugliness. Skin colour doesn’t actually affect beauty at all – and I mean that in the broadest possible sense. Blue skin, magenta skin, orange skin, gold skin, multicoloured skin – literally any colour can look good. What actually matters is bone structure – just the basic shape of your face, the size and position of your eyes, and so on – this is what actually affects beauty. (Skin tone and complexion also affects it, but that’s different from colour – the actual hue makes no difference.) We all know this. Of course we all know this. But here this film is pretending that if someone were green, everyone would think they were ugly. No they wouldn’t.

(As an interesting aside, there are actually real humans with blue skin. Some people take colloidal silver (which is not a good idea), and over time it turns their skin blue – look it up. These people are a curiosity – medical and experiential – but they are not hated.)

Elphaba goes to Shiz University to support her sister as she enrols. While there, however, she accidentally gives a display of her magical power, causing a lot of disruption. On seeing that she has true power, Madame Morrible decides to admit her to the university. Elphaba just accepts this – but this is weird – didn’t she have other plans? Didn’t she have somewhere else to go after this enrolment ceremony? She’s just offered a place on a multi-year residential course and she can start then and there? Doesn’t she have to tell anyone? It’s just weird. I suspect it’s a hang-over from the musical – in a musical it would be fine because musicals always have a degree of unrealness to them, but you can’t get away with that in a film.

The film then progresses into its high school section. This section might as well just be every high school drama ever put to film or television. It’s almost unbearably cliché. The popular girl doesn’t like the girl who’s different. The girl who’s different is nerdy, and she’s ugly because she’s nerdy, and she’s nerdy because she’s ugly – because Hollywood really thinks that nerdiness makes you ugly and vice versa. Eventually the popular girl feels guilty about the way she treats the unpopular girl and decides to treat her better (because god forbid a change of behaviour be based on rationality and not emotion). But of course, now that the popular girl likes the unpopular girl, the unpopular girl cannot be allowed to remain ugly – she must be given a makeover – because you can only truly transcend into the domain of popularity if you completely conform to it and change your appearance. It’s all about appreciating people’s differences – and the way they do that is by completely squashing those differences – you must be like all of the other popular girls. And THEN, on top of that, the makeover consists of taking off the unpopular girl’s glasses and letter her hair down, because in reality this ‘ugly’ girl was played by a very good looking actress and wasn’t ugly at all – glasses and tying your hair up do not, in fact, make you ugly. So the ‘ugly’ girl was not really ugly, she already conformed to the standards of the popular girls, but the need for this conformity had to be emphasised to the audience by having her have a ‘makeover’ anyway.

I mean, it’s just so stupid isn’t it? Almost every idea is undermined by the next idea that’s presented. It’s unbearably cliché – every single part of it was parodied by Family Guy over a decade ago. There’s no meaning to it – it’s just flawed cliché after flawed cliché. I think it would be fine if the film accepted itself for what it is, but it (and its core audience) seem to think that it’s making some deeply profound statement.

We then learn that the animals in this world are discriminated against – and over the course of the film this intensifies. This doesn’t really work because when animals can talk what really sets them apart from humans? In the real world, a goat and a cat seem roughly equally different to a human, because neither can talk, but if they could both talk, surely they’d seem as different to each other as either would to a human, because speech is no longer a defining factor between the three. In other words, how does this category of ‘animal’ exist in this world? It doesn’t matter so much for the kind of easy fantasy of the Wizard of Oz, but since the film makes a big fuss about it it’s worth mentioning.

Jonathan Bailey shows up. Now let’s none of us kid ourselves – we all know why Jonathan Bailey got this part. He got it because he was in Bridgerton. Now, I tried watching Bridgerton. It was shit. Truly and utterly shit. It’s what happens when an American author tries to write about the British aristocracy. Americans do not understand aristocracy or royalty. But it is popular with women who want to fantasise about the Regency Era but who don’t care about facts or historical accuracy. Jonathan Bailey is the object of desire in the show.

And he’s the object of desire in this film too. He’s there because he’s good looking. It’s interesting how a gay actor has been selected as the object of desire for heterosexual women. I could go on a rant about the trend of gay males being treated as pets for women in media (particularly in fiction), but that’s for another post. Bailey’s character is, quite frankly, largely irrelevant in this film. (This is just part one though – perhaps that changes in part two.)

Eventually Elphaba and Glinda go to the Emerald City. I really liked the story of these kind of ancient magical beings who once inhabited the land of Oz and created the Grimmerie. I also really like all of the hints of what it is actually like to live in Oz – which is in far greater turmoil than many would have our main characters believe. All of that was great, but it did really need more worldbuilding.

And then we get a semi-conclusion. I didn’t know before going to see the film that it was only going to be part one, but that’s fine.

All of these story issues really make the film fall flat. Some of them could easily have been resolved – particularly the worldbuilding stuff – that’s easy to fix. But some of them couldn’t have been. The core story between Elphaba and Glinda revolves around the ‘popular girl’ trope, and there’s nothing you can really do with that that doesn’t change the entire story.

On top of that – and most egregiously for a musical – the music was actually pretty shit. There was A LOT of autotune used for some of the singers – I could hear its distinctive tone all the time. But even worse, the music was, quite frankly, forgettable. You can tell how good the music of a film is by how many tunes you could hum when walking out of the cinema. I could only do two: Defying Gravity and Popular – but that’s because I already knew those two beforehand. The rest I can’t remember. Pathetic, for a musical.

And also rather sickening was the dancing. God the dancing was shit throughout. It was that typical ‘Yeaaahhh I’m dancing so hard because I’m so passionate and emotional and kewwwlll!’ style of dance that only Hollywood actors who are desperate for their big break can do. It’s a style of dance that only someone who thought the word ‘rockstar’ was aspirational would come up with. Utterly dreadful.

And you know the film that this one most reminded me of was High School Musical. It’s easy to see why this story is more popular with women: it’s a story about someone being accepted by a social group despite her differences, and winning an attractive male over the (ostensibly) more attractive female.

So overall: not great. Not outright shit either – there were some interesting and fun parts to it – but it was flat, and gave itself much more credit than it deserved.

I probably will watch it again at some point. I put it in the same category as a film like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – that wasn’t a good film – it had a huge number of core errors – but it had a few interesting ideas – particularly visual ideas – and I like to return to it every now and then.

So it’s a 6/10.