Random Thoughts about TV, Film and Media (Page 12 of 12)

My relationship with Dexter is a bit complicated.  While I might be one of only a handful of people on this Earth who didn't hate the finale, that isn't to say that I loved it.  Dexter did have a steady decline in quality after the brilliant season 4.  I do think that I have a better ending for Dexter in my mind (Dexter is captured and has a season where he's a Hannibal Lecter type advisor to his sister), but I think the story they told is a fine one.

I think New Blood was an appropriate next chapter for Dexter.  He's always wanted a normal life and stripped of all of his ties to Miami, he was able to live a fairly normal life.

What's strange about New Blood is that it doesn't do much of the things that Resurrection does.  Resurrection is a parade of returning characters and cameos to take Dexter through the journey of his life.  Resurrection forces Dexter to face the consequences of eight seasons in Miami.  New Blood, in a lot of ways, allowed Dexter to start fresh.  Resurrection doesn't really appear to let him do that.

The question with Dexter is always: "Is he a good person?"  Yes, he's a killer.  But can killing be used for good?  I don't know if New Blood really tried to answer that (or if it did, I forgot).  Resurrection comes out and says it - Dexter kills bad guys which saves good guys.  But he also involves himself with bad guys, bringing bad guys close enough to him that good people in Dexter's life are killed.  There's good and bad, and it would be almost impossible to settle Dexter's accounts to know if he's saving more people than he's getting killed.

I think I like the version of Dexter where he knows he's a bad person and he's just doing the best he can with that.  Where he acknowledges that he likes killing, and if he's going to kill, he might as well kill bad guys.  I don't really like the version of Dexter where he's some kind of victim.  He's not Batman - he's the Punisher.  The Punisher knows he's a bad guy who does good by doing bad things.  I don't know if the Punisher has ever had a sidekick or an apprentice, but I would assume he wouldn't want to raise anyone else to be like him.  Dexter has a son, but he's gone back and forth with whether or not Harrison even has a dark passenger.

I don't think Resurrection overturned anything I cared about.  If the original Dexter was the end, I would've been fine.  If New Blood was the end, I would've been fine.  I don't think we *need* Dexter stories, but the character is so compelling that I'm happy to get new stories.  I haven't had a ton of interest in the Dexter prequel because I think Michael C Hall's performance is 99% of the fun.

Is the revival plausible?  I'm not nearly educated enough on stuff like that.  Dexter was shot in the chest (I'm not even sure if where he was shot is a place you can survive), and from my memory of New Blood, the show was pretty clear that he was going to die in the wilderness.  But he was shot in the snow, and Resurrection says that the show slowed down his heart enough to keep the blood loss from being too severe.  Is that a thing that happens?  I don't know.  But it's plausible enough for this silly show in my opinion.

And yeah I did like it.  I liked that it gave us the parade of former villains.  I like that Batista is back and still looking into LaGuerta's death (one of the few deaths that paints Dexter as a truly bad guy).  And if Hall is going to keep playing this character, I'll watch.

this is kinda cool
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment … r-AA1IRWHp

I'm changing my answer.  I like Resurrection quite a bit.  They've had some fun guest stars and cameos, and setting the show in New York has brought some life to the show.

Although I the show might be de-canoninzing some of the seasons that Clyde Phillips wasn't a part of.  In this season (spoilers if you care), Dexter is potentially going to start dating a fellow serial killer.  Dexter says that it's new territory for him, but he's dated at least two killers.  There's a chance I'm misremembering the later seasons or he is strictly talking about a pre-established serial killer (and I don't think Lumen or Hannah were that).  But I found that interesting.

Going to see Naked Gun tonight.  I have been rooting for this one.  One of my favorites as a kid and would love to see the theatrical market support stuff like this (particularly this franchise).

Retcon: retroactive continuity, when series willfully and deliberately alters a story element of a previous installment. The first retcon I ever saw was when I was 10 years old and watching the Jackie Chan movies POLICE STORY and POLICE STORY II. POLICE STORY (1985) is one of the most popular action films ever made: Hong Kong police detective Kevin Chan and his acrobatic martial arts take down local crime boss Chu To as by chasing a hijacked bus on foot and singlehandedly bringing down every criminal aboard.

But when the murderous Chu To gets off on a technicality and frames Kevin for murder, Kevin finds himself pushed to the brink, hunted by both sides of the law. When Kevin returns to the police station for help, Superintendent Raymond Li offers no sanctuary and instead arrests Kevin -- who reacts by pulling a gun on Li, taking him hostage and stealing a car in order to escape.

Kevin then confronts Chu To and acquires the evidence to convict him in a hyperdestructive battle with Chu To's henchmen that destroys nearly every floor of a shopping mall in hand to hand combat. When the police arrive to control the situation, a deranged Kevin assaults Chu To's lawyer and an unarmed and defenseless Chu To with 11 punches to the stomach and the film ends on Kevin's former colleagues holding him back in rage.

Despite the satisfaction of pummeling the once untouchable Chu To into a shopping cart, Kevin's crimes -- resisting kidnapping, grand theft auto, aggravated assault on a civilian lawyer and a suspect in police custody -- will clearly end Kevin Chan's career in law enforcement. He has known from the moment he threatened Superintendent Li's life that the story could only end with him off the force and into jail. POLICE STORY ends with Kevin 'victorious' but his crimes mean he could easily end up Chu To's cellmate.

This bleakly ironic ending was Jackie Chan's grim commentary on law enforcement and criminal justice. POLICE STORY was an exercise in heroic bloodshed, the tale of a hero who knows he is going down but takes his archnemesis down with him in the process as he marches towards a certain doom in what was intended as Kevin Chan's one and only cinematic adventure. It is one of the most defeatist and nihilistic endings possible in what seemed, in the middle of the film, to be a lighthearted action comedy.

Except the movie was too successful to not have a sequel.

As a result, POLICE STORY II, released three years later in 1988, found itself in a difficult position. The logical outcome of POLICE STORY was that Kevin Chan would be tried and convicted. He was looking at a 10 - 20 year jail sentence for his crimes, likely to be released in 3 - 5 years for good behaviour, and he could never, ever, ever be a police officer again after kidnapping his boss and beating up a civilian and an arrested suspect.

But the movie was called POLICE STORY II, not JAIL STORY. As a result, POLICE STORY II engaged in a retcon so subtle, so deliberate, so skillfully underplayed that most people have never noticed it at all. POLICE STORY II opens with a recap of POLICE STORY: all the high points of each Jackie Chan stunt and action sequence from the initial chase of Chu To to the shopping mall battle, capturing Kevin's greatest feats of daring and fighting prowess.

However, the recap carefully omits any shots of Kevin taking Superintendent Li hostage, omits Kevin assaulting the unarmed lawyer, and omits Kevin punching Chu To 11 times. Instead, the recap ends on Kevin grabbing Chu To by the lapels in the shopping mall.

We then have Kevin in Superintendent Li's office, who informs him that while Chu To's arrest is a win, the property damage Kevin's battles caused came out of the taxpayers' coffers. The reprimand focuses almost exclusively on the destruction of Kevin's fights, while, like the recap, omitting any mention of Kevin kidnapping Superintendent Li or commiting two counts of aggravated assault.

Superintendent Li declares that he convinced his superiors not to have Kevin brought up on charges for "assaulting me" (as opposed to "threatening my life and taking me hostage"). Kevin is then demoted from the special crimes unit, instead to serve mundane roles in any branch that is short-staffed; he is a floater, and his first assignment is traffic duty.

Chief Bill Wong informs Kevin he's lucky he wasn't fired (as opposed to lucky he wasn't arrested, tried, convicted and jailed). POLICE STORY II, in order to do a U-turn out of the creative dead end of the first film, has used the recap segment to quietly retcon out the crimes that would make it impossible for Kevin Chan to be anywhere but jail in order to ensure that POLICE STORY II is actually a police story.

The interesting thing is: barely anyone seems to have ever noticed the deft, skillful retcon at play here. POLICE STORY II cautiously erases Kevin's crimes not by claiming they didn't happen, but by carefully not reminding the audience that they happened.

The recap of POLICE STORY touches on all the high points but not the darkness of Kevin's derangement at the end; it doesn't refilm the scenes that should land Kevin in jail to contradict the viewer's memories; it simply doesn't encourage the audience to summon those memories to mind.

The serious crimes that Kevin committed are struck from continuity. POLICE STORY II is not a sequel to POLICE STORY as it existed in 1985, but a sequel to a hypothetical version that wasn't about the sudden and complete destruction of Kevin Chan's life that turned him into a criminal headed for a jail cell, but instead about a difficult period that led to a career setback.

A retcon so effective that most people have never noticed it in order to identify it as a retcon.

I am glad you liked it!  Wasn't Leslie Neilsen Canadian?

And Pam Anderson is Canadian too.  I guess it's in the Naked Gun DNA.

Which is funny because SLIDERS and NAKED GUN are also creatively connected.  Robert K Weiss' sensibility in both.

It was nice to be in a theater where people were having fun again.

Yeah, I'd read that.  It's...better?

I don't know.  I wish they'd just say that game wasn't canon and release an apology game

Well, that is most gratifying. I would hate for it to have turned into some sort of X-FILES situation for you. It's nice that sometimes, a rival of a TV show can also revive its baseline of quality.

I've never seen ALIEN or ALIENS. How do they reconcile the retro approach of the first five minutes with the rest of the show?

Alien: Earth has been well received by many friends of mine who are Alien fans.  I won't have time to watch it for awhile.  It's a franchise for which you simply cannot take ANY canon seriously.  It's as valid as Friday the 13th's!  At the end of the day, it's a horror franchise just the same.  The films which tried to move it into some other realm failed.  And I loved Prometheus, but it just didn't work.  So I am not surprised that a return to suspense/horror is well received.

Hahaha I can't help it.  I really can't.  The past and the present and the future have to matter or none of it matters.  Headcanon to make it all work is half the fun