Television

"There's a war coming to Gotham, and now there's no Batwoman stop it."

Well ... that's halfway true. After just one season in the cape and cowl, Ruby Rose rather abruptly quit the show. That's a pretty big red flag when you lose your titular star and character after just one season. For many shows that might have been the end of the road. Not true for Batwoman. They had several choices. They could have recast the part and just pretend it's the same character with a new look. They could have killed the character off and found a new one to replace her. Of course, with the multiverse now closed down, the most likely option of replacing her with another Earth's Kate Kane might have been the best option. The announcement came pretty much on the heel of Rose's departure that they would not recast the part. That turned out to be partially true, but more on that later. The choice was made to put an entirely new character into the suit.

It continues to amaze me how well Warner Brothers does with their DC products in the television universe but manage to execute so poorly with their films.  Despite being a bit formulaic, the CW DC shows are still a blast to watch but it’s the more adult oriented shows Titans, Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing that have left me most impressed.  Now they have released Pennyworth for the Starz Network, despite the confidence I have in the other shows I went into this one with cautious optimism.  The biggest question that bothered me was do we need another series that delves into the Batman universe? Gotham recently wrapped up, there’s a Batwoman series, Joker was only 2 years ago and a new Batman film coming next year, not to forget all the other incarnations of the Dark Knight. What had me interested though is the notion of finally getting to see Alfred Pennyworth as the former SAS officer in his prime and the chance to see how he became entangled with the Wayne family.  Was the series a letdown or yet another success for the DC television universe?

The series was brought to life by Bruno Heller, a writer with experience in this universe since coming off from writing for Gotham.  Now if you’re thinking you enjoyed Gotham and perhaps this is a prequel you can enjoy with the kids let me stop you for a moment and say, this one is not for the kids.  This series embraces its adult content with its over the top violence, an abundance of sex, drugs and profanity that more closely resembles a Quentin Tarantino film than a comic book series, and I love it for that. Season one was a fun little romp that sets up the story of how Thomas Wayne, Martha Kane and Alfred Pennyworth all met.  Season 2 delves deeper into the development of their friendships and relationships and in the process shows how Lucius Fox was brought into the fold.  This is all done while a battle is taking place between London and the Raven Union which is led by Lord Harwood (Jason Flemyng) whom we met in the first season.  Season two, while it does continue the story I’m a little disappointed with the direction it goes with this so much focus on a war and take over by the Raven Union, my disappointment is with how little most of it doesn’t involve Alfred at all.

I remember when The Golden Compass came to theaters. I know I saw it because I was a projectionist and had to screen the print, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember anything about the film. Perhaps that’s why that when I first heard about HBO doing a TV series adaption of the beloved book series His Dark Materials, I wasn’t all that thrilled.  I’d never read the young adult series, and considering the amount of awful YA film and TV adaptations that have bombarded us for nearly two decades, it too played a role in squashing any excitement I might have had in different circumstances.  I was definitely pessimistic about watching the , but when I finished Season 1, I was excited about where the next season would take us. I loved the characters, the daemons, and the worlds that the show took us to. Not since Stranger Things had I been more excited about a new series.  Season 2’s can be a make-or-break for a lot of shows. Expectations have been made by the audience, and sometimes things just fall apart, but sometimes there is the rare occasion where Season 2 manages to only get better.  I’m happy to say in the case of His Dark Materials, things definitely improve.

Season 1 left us off with a bit of a cliffhanger as we see Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson) stepping through portals from their worlds, and we’re just not sure where they’ll end up. Well, the pair end up in a city called Cittagazze, a place where there are no adults. Only a few children are living in hiding in the town because of these wraithlike figures called Spectres that basically suck the “dust” or human life-force from adults.  The set design for this new world is impressive, which is a good thing because a lot of time is spent at this location over the stretch of Season 2. Lyra’s daemon, Pan (voiced by Kit Conner) is still going through multiple changes and remains one of my favorite aspects of the show, though thankfully daemons are not in constant peril this season. Instead more focus is placed in the importance of Lyra and Will and how the pair fit into a prophecy that of course will impact the world and all its multiverses.

I’ll come out from the start and say how much I love the film Snowpiercer (2013). I was already a fan of Bong Joon Ho since I had seen The Host at a film festival, and I just thought his career would have exploded after the release of Snowpiercer. The tension created in that film as you see the tail section carefully move their way to the front of the train and the horrors they encounter along the way is engaging, and it speaks volumes.  The stories about cannibalism are heart-wrenching, and the violence is intense. You definitely feel the desperation and are rooting for the tail section from start to finish.  Sure, there was plenty of class warfare on display, but in the film it was very clear who was “good” and who was “bad”. Now we have a TV series inspired by both the graphic novels and the film, and this time those lines of good and bad are not so clear as it spins a new tale for us.  This isn’t simply a TV show version of the movie, which is something I’m thankful for, but instead this is another version of events that could have happened on this epic train that is essential to mankind’s survival.

The show kicks off with a brief introduction to the chaos as people attempted to board the train -- the savage cold that was taking the globe into its grasp, gunfire exploding at the station, and the immediacy to board as the doors were closing and the train was about to depart.  Because I’ve seen the movie and that took place 17 years after the train’s initial departure, I was looking forward to an origin story to see how sections were established and how the stowaways were handled.  Unfortunately we don’t get to see that here either, and I’m a bit disappointed by that.  This time around the show starts off seven years from departure, and the divide in classes has already been established. The first episode throws so much at the viewer that a scene where you witness a passenger take their own life just sort of loses its impact. What disappointed me most is that the show starts off as a bland murder mystery, where a body is found mutilated and the only one who can solve the crime is a former homicide detective who resides in the back of the train.