Buffy v Angel: Dawn of Josstice

So, we’re currently binging Buffy & Angel. I’ve seen Buffy all the way through before, but I’d only seen maybe a third of Angel. We’re alternating between the two series, following a guide that ensures we see the episodes in the right order. I’m also following someone on Twitter who’s watching them for the first time, and their insights are often hilarious.

I love Buffy, even though some aspects of it haven’t aged well (especially the creator). Just a couple of nights ago we reached “Once More With Feeling” (s06e07), and it remains one of the greatest episodes in TV history. I still have the songs stuck in my head two days later. Okay, that’s partly because I put the soundtrack on my phone and listened to it at lunch. I’m also a big fan of “Hush” (s04E10), which is just an all-around amazing episode.

I’m not digging Angel, though. There are reasons I never finished it before. When you’re going back and forth between the two shows, the difference in quality is striking. Every night it’s like, “If we sit through an Angel, we get to enjoy a Buffy.” I’m glad we’re mostly alternating, because Angel is a real slog on its own. If I wasn’t determined to see it through this time, I’d have given up on Angel already. People keep telling me it gets better, and I hope they’re right. There’s several episodes I’m looking forward to, like the one where Angel gets turned into a puppet.

The character of Angel is just so incredibly mopey and dull. He’s easily the least interesting character on his own show. David Boreanaz has decent comic timing, but the writers don’t let him quip enough (so far). He just spends so much time standing around and looking sad.

They keep flashing back to Angel’s past, which kind of reminds me of watching the Highlander TV series. That would be fun, except Angel is just as uninteresting in the past. At least Duncan Macleod went to other countries and assumed new identities, palling around with famous people and having period-appropriate adventures. Angelus spent his entire past wearing the same clothes and terrorizing identical villages. No wonder he’s so depressed all the time. I seriously can’t tell one episode’s flashback from another’s.

The whole concept of Angel feels like the kind of spin-off people parody. They took all the characters Buffy didn’t need on her show any more, moved them to Los Angeles, and had them start a detective agency. Doesn’t that sound like something you’d see on the Simpsons? I do love Angel’s supporting cast, especially Fred and Lorne. But I also know not to get too attached to anyone, because the writers are known for killing off some of the best characters for the sake of easy drama. And it’s that much harder to get invested in a show when you know that.

Look, I understand that “dark & edgy” was popular in the 90s. But Angel’s not what I’d call dark so much as boring. “Let’s have Angel brood in this corner for a while. Now let’s have him wander off alone because he thinks it’s the only way to protect his friends. Now let’s have him obsess over his past sins. So entertaining! Oh, we’re losing viewers? Better kill off a character. Maybe they’ll mistake it for drama. People like it when their favorite character dies, right?” I’m honestly amazed it managed to last five seasons.

Anyway, we’ve got less than two seasons of Buffy left, and then it’s Angel all the way. I hope Angel’s strong enough to stand on its own by then. I remember Buffy gets pretty dark towards the end as well. But so far, the darkest Buffy episode is still more fun than the most lighthearted Angel episode. I hope to get proven wrong about that though.

The Marvels

Wow, that was fun! I'm not sure why this movie didn't do better, but I have some ideas. The Marvels is a great time, that doesn't take itself too seriously. No, it's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be. It's just an enjoyable popcorn-muncher like Ant-Man.

One of the things it does right is the way it handles Monica's and Kamala's origin stories. Since both were already told in the TV shows, the movie doesn't have to be bogged down explaining it again. They do sum them up, but it's given about the same amount of screentime as Peter's origin in "Spider-Man Homecoming" - the spider's dead, let's move on.

Which got me thinking - in a lot of superhero franchises, the second movie is better than the first. Sometimes the reason for this is that the first movie focuses on the hero's origin story, and doesn't leave much time for a deeper plot. Maybe Disney+ should be "origin story central" going forward. A hero's true fans can learn their origins on TV, and later their movie can just sum it up and get to the real plot. And the beauty is, they could shoot both at the same time.

For those that complained that Carol didn't have much personality in the first film, well, you're idiots - they explained that in-universe by way of her amnesia. Anyway, she's a lot less wooden in the sequel, and it turns out she can actually be pretty funny. Of course, some sexist pricks still won't be satisfied.

The villain in The Marvels is... um... honestly I don't even remember her name. And you won't either. She's basically discount Ronan The Accuser, and she's even less interesting than the bad guy in Thor: The Dark World. But it doesn't matter, the action scenes are still great, and the body-switching thing gives the whole movie an almost Gilligan's Island vibe.

Important: It has a mid-credits scene that you won't want to miss. Even if you're such an insufferable incel that you'd rather die than watch a movie with a female lead, at least look up the mid-credits scene. You'll want to know.

The bottom line is that it's a fun, if forgettable movie. It has a lot of comedy, but not a lot of substance. Nobody is going to claim it's the best Marvel movie, but it's more fun than at least half of them.

When The Trailer Is Better Than The Movie

I love scary movies where there’s a sense of “wrongness” instead of an obvious monster. You know, movies where the vibe is more unsettling than scary. However, most of these movies end up disappointing me by the end. It seems like nobody can write a payoff that lives up to the original concepts. Sometimes these stories would have worked better as short films than full-length features. For that reason, the trailers for these movies are often more interesting than the movie itself. In some cases, I’d happily watch the trailer over and over again, just because they’re like short films in themselves.

Lights Out was a great short film. I can’t comment on the full movie because I haven’t seen it, but from the reviews I’ve read, it wasn’t very good. And that makes sense. The concept of Lights Out just doesn’t work as a two-hour movie. The scare was based around a single special effect – a shadowy figure that only appears in the dark, and vanishes when the lights are on. I don’t think that concept would even work for a half-hour “Tales From The Darkside” episode. But as a 5 minute film, it’s pretty scary.

Vivarium had a really cool concept. A couple is in the market for a house, and looks at a place in one of those cookie cutter communities. When they’re ready to leave, they get lost trying to find their way out of the neighborhood. After dozens of turns, they end up back in front of the same house. They try again and again until they run out of gas, and always end up in front of the same house. At one point one of them climbs up on the roof for a better view, and just sees an endless neighborhood of identical houses, as far as the eye can see in every direction. The trailer for Vivarium pretty much sums up the first half hour of the movie, which is the best part. After that, it just goes downhill. The writers just couldn’t think of anything that could top the concept itself. It’s still not a bad movie, and it has a few cool ideas, but the full movie just can’t live up to the trailer.

Don’t Worry Darling is pretty much the same way. The trailer shows an ideal, almost utopian community from the 50s or 60s, but you can tell something dark is going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately, when you see the full movie, the actual twist is nowhere near as cool as whatever you were building up in your head.

Smile wasn’t bad. I enjoyed it, I really did. But it wasn’t nearly as creepy as the movie I thought I was going to see. It doesn’t help that the coolest scene in the trailer turns out to be a dream in the film itself. Given the title of the movie and all the smiling people in the trailer, I thought the smiling aspect was going to be a bigger part of the plot. But it’s more of a standard killer ghost story, and smiling before death is just one symptom of its curse. Note that Smile was also based on a short film.

A little off-topic, but I absolutely hated Cabin Fever (2002). It doesn’t really fit the “creepy and unsettling” theme of this blog, but it’s a great example of a horror movie with misleading trailers. I knew it was about a disease, but I thought the disease would make people attack each other like zombies. But no, it’s just about a quick-spreading flesh-eating virus. People catch it, they get sick, they die. I know it sounds like I was just disappointed that it wasn’t a zombie movie, but even for what it is, it’s a snoozefest. It never goes anywhere particularly interesting, and some of the characters are downright annoying.

The bottom line is, some movies just work better as short films. And sometimes the people who edit trailers are more competent than the people who write movies. But none of this is going to stop me from seeing the next cool-looking movie with a five-minute concept. You might say I never learn, but the truth is, I just have nothing better to do with my time.