The new Magic School Bus is not ruining your childhood (but it could)

The trailer for The Magic School Bus Rides Again dropped, you can see it here, and a common sentiment I'm seeing in response is "Netflix has ruined my childhood."  I think this statement requires a lot of unpacking to even get to a point where it is reasonable, and it still doesn't apply to this show anyway.  First off, I get that they mean "ruined a favorite thing from my childhood" not literally "suddenly my childhood, which previously was fairly happy and a decent upbringing, is now one filled with sorrow and abuse."  I get that.  Let's not have the "it's a metaphor" argument.  But I really want to look at what "ruining my childhood" means, because I absolutely think it is possible.  However, what you probably mean is "I was the target audience 20 years ago and now I'm not anymore, and I'm misdirecting my fear of death towards a children's show getting a sequel."  Bam! Children's show to existential crisis in under 160 words, that's gotta be some kind of record, right?

So the first thing you have to overcome in order to ruin something from 20 years ago is the fact that the thing already exists and is unchanged.  Unless you're George Lucas, generally nobody is going back and literally changing the thing, and even then, the original releases of Star Wars still exist and you can still enjoy them.  However, just because the text itself still exists, the subtext can be changed dramatically and this can definitely retroactively ruin things.  But before we get into negative examples, lets look at some positive ones.  How has re-contextualization made things better?

I think the most prominent example in recent pop culture is in Harry Potter, specifically Snape's whole story.  While you could argue that since the whole story was built with Snape's background in mind, it doesn't really apply here, it is a good example of how a more recent work can completely change previous ones.  Before book seven, Snape goes from being a dick to being an outright baddie.  Sure, he's got depth and isn't always on the wrong side of things (he famously did not get along with Umbridge), but all of that seems to stem from his innate dickishness (He doesn't like Umbridge because she took the position he was after).  But after the reveal about how James Potter treated him, what he was doing with Dumbledore, and most importantly, his feelings for Lily Potter, the way Snape treats Harry takes on a whole new dimension.  Snape's actions in the new context change the way we see his every interaction.  Rereading book one is a different experience after that.  This whole idea of re-contextualization is the one argument for how crazy people get about spoilers that I agree with, by the way.  The fact that Character X gets killed in three episodes doesn't change things for me, but the fact that the murderer is a close friend who has been plotting this murder for months does.

So how does this fit in with ruining a childhood?   Well, imagine if Snape's backstory wasn't a key plot point of book seven, but comes out in 20 years in a Harry Potter tie in novel by someone else.  Or worse yet, imagine if that book reveals that Snape never met Lily Potter, but Dumbledore had Gilderoy use his memory magic on Snape to make him think he was in love with her.  Then Dumbledore arranged for Gilderoy to be obliviated too much to cover it up.  Think of how much that changes everything again, and how that changes everything Dumbledore did in the books.  If that's not a character decision you get behind, then yes, you could argue that this book "ruined your childhood."  That totally makes sense to me, I'd probably be pretty angry too.

But to get to that point, a lot of changes happening to Magic School Bus are not this.  For one, Magic School Bus isn't about the story, it's a framing device for teaching kids about science.  The kids aren't really characters, they're just a diverse bunch of kids* meant to give the audience, also kids, someone to identify with and think "I can also learn about science!" and Arnold.  Wishbone never explored the deeper implications of what a world would be like if all dogs are well read, or the inevitable canine uprising once dogs read some Jack London. Because it's not a show about a world in which dogs love literature.  It's a show about literature and exposing children to it that happens to have a dog as a framing device.  Just like the Magic School Bus, a show about science, never really addresses the fact that they live in a world where magic is real.  They do laughingly play off how dangerous, silly the concept is.  Arnold dies because he takes his helmet off in space in like the first episode and is brought back.  This doesn't kick off a PTSD story arch for all the kids in Ms. Frizzle's class, because, and I can't say this enough, it isn't a show about that.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that there are people who really treat the show as more akin to "X-Men", "Transformers" and, I don't know, "Game of Thrones" instead of "Mister Rogers", "Wishbone", and "Dora the Explorer".  That these people care deeply about Magic School Bus canon, and whether or not the one kid grew up to be a doctor or something?  I'm having a really hard time putting this lens on, but lets go with it.  How does the new show ruin the original?  A sequel with a different art style doesn't really change anything about the original work, neither does introducing new kids or a new teacher.  That's like saying that somehow "The Batman" cartoon changes how you feel about "Batman: The Animated Series."  The two shows are a world different, and nothing I see in "The Batman" will change how good TAS was.

A big complaint I hear about the show is the new animation style.  I don't think it looks much worse than the original show, just different.  It's the style now.  If you've ever looked at Monet's Water Lilies and wondered "How could something this beautiful cause riots and make people angry," well, now you know.  All the people who grew up on Ruysch's Flowers in a Vase were like "Impressionists are RUINING MY CHILDHOOD.  VAN GOGH ISN"T CANON!!!!111!!!"  If they did a new Wishbone series that was animated instead of live action, or maybe had a different dog (like a Corgi) hosting, would that ruin the original show?  Or would that just be a sequel show?  We can just make new things, even things that are spin offs of old shows, without the old show suddenly being ruined.

They could ruin the original Magic School Bus.  There could be a flashback to how Ms. Frizzle was brought up in a fundamentalist family and denied science before having some sort of turn or whatever.  Some heavy handed attempt to try to give her narrative weight or something.   Or she's a witch, Liz is her familiar and the Bus is a Dark God giving her powers, obviously.  Boy, would that change the original show.  Field trips are less an educational experience and more a crucible to weed out the weak children so only the strongest and smartest are sacrificed to The Nameless Yellow, The Bus of Madness.

My point is that a sequel has a very difficult time ruining the original.  The worst episodes of Star Trek Voyager do not really change my opinion of Next Gen or DS9.  It's when you start messing around with prequels or "X was actually Y the whole time" that things get messy and very different.  Hell, "Battlestar Galactica" managed to have the main twist be "The weird, mystical being that claims to be an angel was a weird, mystical angel the whole time, you just didn't believe me" and people were upset about ruining the show.  So, from watching the Magical School Bus Rides Again trailer, here's what we know: the style is different and the target is a young audience.  It isn't a gritty reboot, it isn't taking a beloved childhood show and trying to target the original audience that is all grown up now.  If you want that, you can watch Michael Bay's "Transformers" and "TMNT" movies, to see how great those things turned out.  It's a sequel to a good kids' show aimed at kids, and a new generation will love them.  You're perfectly fine not liking it, you're well within your rights not to watch, hell, you can even complain about it if it does things poorly.  But don't say it ruined your childhood or the original, because the original still exists and you still have that.  Engage with the new thing in the proper context.  Don't become the "well in my day..." type.   Because as much as you struggle against the current, beating on ceaselessly into the past, you're being carried into a future.  A future where something special and educational for you is being reimagined as something special and educational for the next generation.  We might have a better future than past, celebrate it.


*And lets take a moment to shame all the people out there complaining about how the new show is too diverse and SJW-y.  The original show was just as diverse and that's a good thing.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Review

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2  was fun, I enjoyed it.It did the things Marvel does well very well, still did all the things that I don't like so much about Marvel, and clocks in at a solid B+ movie. Like most of the recent Marvel movies, it loses me in the third act.  Which is unusually frustrating in this movie because the reasons it loses me are things the movie goes out of it's way to avoid in the first two thirds of the movie.   I'll have a spoiler part of the review at the very end, but keep the rest free.

Random thoughts on Legion

Guess I'm going X-men heavy these two weeks, which is actually pretty good.  The X-men are huge, in comics at least, but they've never been my main thing.  Sure, I like them, I've read some, but keeping up with the X-men is damn near impossible.  There's at least 20 different titles, a convoluted history of alternate timelines, future selves returning, past selves living with their current selves for awhile, constantly changing allegiances, a whole bunch of space stuff, and everybody returning from the dead.  All of this, I think, is part of the make up of Legion. This brief history of how confusing the X-men are is necessary for understanding the show, anyway.  This is going to be a weird review.

Logan review

Logan is exactly the kind of Superhero movie I want more of.  That's not to say it's perfect, but it does so much right that I can easily overlook its flaws.  It is a solid action movie that holds up on it's own, remains internally consistent, and certainly presents a lot of action that is both thrilling and unique.  The characterization is solid, the acting is far better than it needs to be in a movie of this type, and I enjoyed it a lot.  All of this is completely removed from the fact that it ties into the X-men, how it interprets the characters, or any of that.  This movie stands up on its own. If that's all you need and want to avoid some minor spoilers (I'll do my best to keep major points out of this), stop reading now and go see it.  But beyond holding up as a good action movie, the way it ties into other Superhero movies and the way it manages to capture the core of these characters is really amazing.

Blog Update

Hey loyal reader(s?),  Sorry for the month and change of nothing.  I got distracted and put this on hold.  Some things had to get done and others were just things I wanted to do.  I want to write more, it's not like I have a readership base that's demanding content, I'm doing this for me.  But it's also work, like painting my miniatures (Nerd!) or fixing my house, which takes a lot more effort than Mass Effect or catching up on The Adventure Zone.  It's laziness, really, and I know nothing kills a budding journal faster than missing entries.  

So, to stem this tide, I'm going to lay out a schedule for posts.  It's a promise to my reader(s?) and a challenge to me to get things written and get things posted.

Mondays - Starting 5/15, the return of The Legend of Korra, with Jacob! starting with the season 3 premiere.

Thursdays - When Applicable - review of the latest movie/show I saw that I have something to say about.  First post will be this Thursday, 4/27, with my review of Logan.  Timely, I know!  I can't promise more often than that, I don't know how much I'll watch, but I have stuff for at least the next month.

Other sporadic updates will be posted.

Thanks all, I hope I can stick to this.

Jacob

Legend of Korra with Jacob! Episodes 25 and 26

I watched the original Avatar: The Last Airbender some time ago and I remember the basics of the world, but not a lot of specifics.  However, I remember liking it very much, so I thought I’d watch the follow up series.  Please no spoilers for this show, but if I’m forgetting something from the original series, feel free to remind me.  I will be spoiling episodes as I go along, naturally, so consider yourself warned.

Episode 25 - Darkness Falls
Episode 26 - Light in the Dark

These episodes really nailed it and if I could tell you why, I'd be successful writer.  Today is all about looking at these episodes versus lasts seasons finale and figuring out why this one worked so well despite being things that shouldn't work, while the last season finale didn't work for me, despite being things that should.

The first thing I want to talk about is the portrayal of magic in film, in general, and how it can be very difficult to make something magical dramatic, because it's really hard to relate to.  In a physical contest, establishing dominance is pretty straightforward and immediately makes the stakes understandable and high.  Think of Linda Hamilton standing next to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator.  Even if the Terminator were not a robot, but just a dude, the size and muscle difference alone immediately makes you view Sarah Connor as the underdog.  Jackie Chan does a similar thing in most of his movies where he starts all of his fights from the ground, with the bad guy standing over him.  Visually, you immediately relate that he has a lot to overcome.  Even if it's not a fight, but just an extraordinary feat, it's easy to relate to, such as in Batman Begins, when Christian Bale has to curl Liam Neeson back onto the glacier.  That just looks painful, physical, and amazing.  Compare that to Professor X in a psychic duel, and it's a guy standing there, staring intently.  It all comes down to the set up and the actors for the viewers to really understand how difficult something is.

I bring this up because psychic battle is pretty much all the finale of season 2 is, compared to season 1 which had a lot more physical fighting.  Sure, they throw elements at each other, but it's easier to follow who is winning and who isn't.  But yet that finale left me bored and disappointed, while this one had me excited, emotional, and invested.

The first thing this season got right, I think, is they gave the consequences more time to breathe.  In season 1, Korra goes from being stripped of her power to developing Airbending in a scene.  In season 2, they devote just as much time solely to the Avatar ancestors being stripped away.  It's a much more powerful scene and not the only consequence of the fight.  They spend a whole episode on developing this failure, so you really feel helpless.

Secondly, there's a lot more going on, but it's all focused around the big giant psychic battle, so you feel the stakes because every character is displaying them.  It isn't just Korra versus Ammon, its the whole gang filling different roles and I'm worried for all of them.  The Aang Gang (what I'm going to call Aang's family from now on) and Mako and Bolin are in a losing battle that you can tell is a last stand.  They're willing to die for whatever Korra is doing, so you know it matters.  Jinora is doing some spiritual stuff that while it really just amounts to glowing lights, had me convinced she was going to die or be trapped in the spirit world or something.  And Korra is a giant fighting another giant.

The third thing is that the ending is way more satisfying than season 1 because Korra actually smites that guy.  Season 1 ended with revealing Ammon as a fraud, but he escapes Korra. Korra doesn't really defeat him so much as drive him off.  Where as here, there is a full on vaporization punch.

Finally, and possibly the biggest, is that things really changed this finale.  That's something that bugs me a lot in so much modern media.  What we often get is a story arc of Status Quo -> Something Bad -> Hero restores Status Quo.  That's how basically every Marvel movie since the Avengers has been, so much modern television (CW superhero shows, I'm looking at you), and the first season of Korra went.  Sure there are little changes, like Korra gained Airbending, but because she is the Avatar, we always knew she would.  But now, Avatarland is open to the Spirit World permanently, and that is a huge and scary change.  Korra appears to have grown as a person, Jinora is some super spiritualist, and who knows what the political fallout of everything is going to be.  I'm really looking forward to the next season.

Stray Observations
1. I lost my notes from when I watched the episodes earlier this week, so none of these this week.  Sorry!

Legend of Korra with Jacob! Episodes 23 and 24

I watched the original Avatar: The Last Airbender some time ago and I remember the basics of the world, but not a lot of specifics.  However, I remember liking it very much, so I thought I’d watch the follow up series.  Please no spoilers for this show, but if I’m forgetting something from the original series, feel free to remind me.  I will be spoiling episodes as I go along, naturally, so consider yourself warned.

Episode 23 - Night of a Thousand Stars
Episode 24 - Harmonic Convergence

I'm kind of at a loss for what to say about these episodes.  I have a lot of little things to touch on, so today's entry is rather scattered.  They're very exciting, definitely building  towards a cool finale, but they don't really give me a lot more information about anything.  That's not a fault, it's simple story structure.

All the background details need to be in play already for the payoff to work, adding a crucial bit of information now would be cheating.  To keep things Avatar-y, the best analogy I can think of is a Shymalan movie.  The Sixth Sense worked because all the details were already there from that very early shot of Bruce Willis sitting alone with his depressed wife, not talking.  Everything you need to know about the rest of the movie is right there, you just don't have the framework to do that.  The character building and story of that film lead you to the correct interpretation.   It's a lot less stark here, where I don't think there's going to be a sudden twist, but it's still basic structure.  If they reveal now, out of the blue, for instance, that's there's a third major spirit force, it'd feel cheap.

There were some things I looked into because of these episodes.  Varrick really likes false flag operations, for instance.  A False Flag is where you pretend to be your enemy and do something to yourself, so that you get the political backing needed to go to war.  It comes from an old Naval tactic of flying the flag of the wrong nation on your ship to identify yourself as an ally.  Real world examples abound, but also conspiracy theories surround every major attack in the last 200 years.  A Google search lead me to some pretty scary places in just a few links and I'm really not interested in talking about ones that are pretty well established.  It's just depressing and it really doesn't add to the show in anyway.

Bolin's propaganda film is another thing that I thought was interesting, but again, I didn't find a line that really ties in with Korra.   Yes, those kind of serials existed, yes, they are even more ridiculous than portrayed in the show, but they are also, at this point, embarrassingly racist, misogynistic, and not for a good cause.  The film works in the show because Unalaq is literally trying to alter the fabric of reality.  Unalaq claims he's doing it for good reasons, but the show seems pretty clear cut that he's been driven mad by the dark spirit.  I give it credit for making him not evil for evil's sake, but he still is thoroughly corrupted.  Maybe it will surprise me and seasons 3 and 4 are all about adapting to the new spirit infested world, but I seriously doubt it.

Space is really something I get excited about, as most people who know me already know.  So seeing things like the whole solar system is great.  Avatarland is definitely not Earth.  8 major bodies make the syzygy that forms the Harmonic Convergence, although it's possible there are others that are not pictured.  The recent discovery of the Trappist system shows that you can jam a lot of planets into a small place.  I am fairly confident in my understanding of orbital resonance to say that an 8 planet syzygy as shown on the show is impossible in our universe, the system would not be stable and some of the planets would be ejected.  But, this is a magic world, so let's ignore.   The 3rd and 7th planet have rings and they get progressively larger as they get further from the sun.  Or perhaps its a trick of perspective and they're all the same size or something, the angle is not great.  However, that's a very different system from ours.  Also, as there are no rings visible from the ground, we know Avatarland isn't on the 3rd planet.  It does have a moon, though, and my early blog entry where I questioned if the world is round and how gravity might work is answered.  Despite the presence of magic and spirits, gravity appears to be generally the same.

However, unlike last week, where I think looking at how long 10,000 years really is helps to appreciate how long Avatars have existed and how much society must have changed under the guidance of an Avatar, I don't know that looking at the astronomy of Avatarland really helps the show any.  It's a magic, astrological plot point.  I could go off on Pluto's status as a planet or orbital ratios, but it doesn't meet my nebulous criteria of being related to the show.  It's just a thing that is happening.

One theme of this show that I do want to talk a bit is family strife.  I mentioned this towards the end of last season, when Amon and Tarrlok ended up being brothers, but it really continues to be a huge theme.  The brothers Unalaq and Tonlaq are ready to kill each other and I think they only reason they haven't is because this is a kids show.  Unalaq's children, creepy as they may be, are seriously having second thoughts about following him and the show seems to be further exploring the concept of this familial bond being tested.  How far does loyalty to your father go?  Korra had hers tested earlier this season when she sided with Unalaq against Tonlaq,    This theme of internal family fighting pervades everything and I'm not sure how to read it.  Tenzin has a very stable and solid family, his bickering with his siblings is just standard sibling stuff, it isn't anything that's going to lead to conflict.  So what do we make of this?  I don't know, I'm really interested to hear other people's thoughts on this.  Is it just a way to make the drama more intense, personal, and Shakespearean?

Stray Observations

1. I can't decide if I like Ginger or not.  I liked her when she was putting her foot down on Bolin for being a dope, but then she immediately reverses when Bolin is a hero.  
2. The First Lady is named Buttercup?
3. Varrick really gets away with it with everything, doesn't he?  I mean, he's in prison, but it's a palatial cell and he keeps all his comforts and assistant.  Sometimes Avatar just kind of skirts over some really hard hitting commentary, like how rich people never really get punished.
4. Amnesia making the break up go away?  Dammit Mako, Asami is going to be rightfully mad.  I really hope they have a conversation, I hate plot points that revolve around two people simply not having a conversation.  See, Marvel's Civil War (comic or movies).  Mako and Korra really never sat down while on the boat and talked out what she forgot?
5. Korra is the angriest air bender ever.  They're supposed to be all calm and stuff