I read the trilogy of books1 around the time that this show premiered, in 2019. I think I had always been curious about the series, and figured that I would read it before jumping into the show. I ended up being disappointed at how the story progressed, so I didn’t feel the need to follow the show as it aired.
On my recent trip to London, I saw an exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum with some costumes and props from the show, which reignited my interest. Even if I wasn’t fully satisfied by the books, I still enjoyed a lot of it.
The TV adaptation is so faithful that my reaction to the show pretty much mirrors how I felt about the books. The first season is the best, with a great sense of adventure and world-building, but it becomes overly convoluted by the third, final season. However, even as I lost track of the plot and character motivations, the visual depictions of fantastical beings like angels and witches and armoured bears were still pretty cool. And I like the cast, especially Dafne Keen as Lyra and Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter.
All in all, I would still recommend the show if you want to see some cool magical concepts and special effects, as long as you’re prepared to be confused and frustrated by the end.
Footnotes
I got my hands on a copy of an omnibus version, which has the entire trilogy in one volume. I’ve always had a thing for this idea, of having multiple books in one. Don’t ask me why… ↩
A fun page-turner about a woman who visits “The Centre,” a place where people can go to learn new languages. Amazingly, you can go from complete ignorance to full fluency in only 10 days. All it takes is to cut yourself off from the outside world, sit in a cubicle with headphones on, and listen to a recording of someone speaking in your target language all day. There’s a dark mystery surrounding how the process actually works, and the novel gets a lot of mileage from doling out little pieces of the puzzle over time.
The protagonist is a Pakistani immigrant to England, and at one point, she visits her family back home; also, she befriends the manager of the Centre, and together, they go to India, where the founders of the Centre reside. These travels allow the novel to touch on the immigrant experience, as well as the fraught history of India and Pakistan, and how those two nations relate to each other.
Unfortunately, these digressions, while interesting, felt a bit disconnected to me. I enjoyed the book mainly because I wanted to find out what the twist was, and the relationships between the characters, and the accompanying cultural and society commentary, seemed engineered to allow the plot to reveal itself, and therefore not entirely believable.
Godzilla, Alien: Romulus, American Fiction, Oddity, Furiosa, Blink Twice
Over the Christmas holiday season, I had more spare time than usual and got a chance to catch up with some recent movies, as well as revisiting some older ones.
This is a moody film, about a pair of friends who bond over a fantasy-action TV show as teenagers. As they enter adulthood, it appears that one of them has disappeared into the world of the show, leaving the other one “stranded” in a miserable suburban life. When I say “moody,” I refer to the creative lighting choices and surreal editing (👍), but also to the acting style, which is monotonous and mumbly throughout (👎).
I understand that the film is an allegory for the trans experience, and I respect it for that. The friend who lives out their life in the “real world” is filled with pain and regret because they didn’t get to exist as their true self in the world of the beloved TV show. However, if I didn’t know ahead of time what the metaphor stood for, I don’t think I would have made the connection on my own, and the film would have really dragged for me.
What I could relate to was being obsessed with certain shows in my youth. I’m reminded of the time that a friend called me for homework tips during Seinfeld’s Thursday night timeslot, and I got mad and yelled at him to get off the phone. Or the time when YTV aired a mid-season cliffhanger of Dragon Ball Z (right before Goku’s first Super Saiyan transformation), and I got so impatient for the next block of episodes that I used the new-fangled technology of the Internet to write a pleading letter to the TV station.
My point is, I know what it’s like to be passionate about a piece of entertainment. But in the film, the performances are so (intentionally) dreary that the emotion doesn’t come through. I was left feeling a bit empty by the film, even if I admired what it was trying to say.
I recently tore through this fantasy series, which consists of the novels The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, and The Burning God. It tells the epic story of a young woman who discovers her magical ability to control fire, and uses it to rise to military power. It’s set in a fictionalized version of Asia, with parallels to China, Japan, Taiwan, and a vaguely European colonial power.
The series kicks off with the protagonist Rin entering an elite military school. It’s a fun way to get introduced to the world, and feels reminiscent of Harry Potter, with her making alliances and rivalries with her fellow students as well as the faculty. But then the stakes escalate very suddenly when war breaks out with a neighbouring country.
I got a kick out of the magic system in this fantasy world. Rin and the other “shamans” harness the power of gods; or rather, they act as conduits for the gods, and are never fully in control. The ability to wield magic is as much a curse as anything, and eventually, all shamans go insane because they’re constantly fighting to keep the gods from taking over their minds. It’s also cool how the interplay between magic and warfare is depicted: geography and natural resources play a big role in how they form military strategies, but as soon as a superpowered soldier enters the fray, it completely turns the tide.
I must confess that I didn’t quite finish the final book. I got a bit fatigued by the relentless violence, but even more than that, the character of Rin is motivated by such anger and hatred that it kind of wore me down. I think the story suffers a bit from being limited to only showing her perspective. As the series progresses, Rin shifts allegiances between the various political factions that are involved in the war, but she’s not driven by any ideology, only by rage against whoever happens to be her enemy at the time. I didn’t get a sense of what she was fighting for.
My read was probably hampered by reading the whole series back to back to back, and within the limited timeframe of library loans. If you want the best experience, I would suggest pacing yourself and letting it breathe.
I enjoyed the premise and the humour of this Nicolas Cage vehicle. (Am I childish because the biggest laugh for me came from a well-timed fart joke?) Cage plays a boring professor who starts to appear in many people’s dreams, even if he doesn’t know them. The first act setup is at its best when it’s showing the contents of those dreams—whether they be surreal or nightmarish, it’s always funny when Cage wanders in looking bemused and out of place.
The film loses me as it escalates into the second half. It tries to introduce social commentary about the temptations of fame, but its message wasn’t particularly enlightening. It’s too easy to mock college kids for being snowflakes who want to cancel everything. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s a stale stereotype.
I had heard about the buzz after this film premiered at Sundance. Mostly, the coverage focussed on how many people walked out of the screening, and made it seem like the film had nothing to offer besides a lot of gross-out bodily-function humour. It all added up to me being a bit wary going into the screening.
I’m happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised. I guess I was expecting an aimless, plotless slog where nothing happens, but instead, what I got was a compelling story with distinctive characters and a good mix of comedy and tragedy. If I have one criticism, it’s that the performances were not sufficiently animal-like. I kept mentally comparing them to Andy Serkis in the Planet of the Apes trilogy, which is admittedly a high bar.
