Jokershorts — Pop culture round-up for 19 July 2017
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What’s caught the blog with long-reads, cartoons and a smirk’s eye over the past half-month?
This Jokershorts: SDCC kicks off, the waning Batfleck, turning an eye to next generation, phasers at the ready (set to stun), winter only bloody came, Macca filth — maybe, a Gate reopens, Bond gets company, SDCC changes everything, Tron gets real, the Doctor makes a change for the good, Supergirl baffles us in a great way, things start Spawning and… Did we mention SDCC?
Yep, it’s the mid-SDCC warm-up edition… So, let’s kick off with some comic book stylings. Or re-stylings….
Jokershorts
De-Benning the Batman: A wonderfully optimistic view on Batfleck’s response to the changes here… Any chance that Matt Reeves can work just some of the magic he brought to the last two Planet of the Apes films is worth a shot. We’re glad he bargained hard with Warner Bros to get the gig:
Murmur and rumour that Ben Affleck may have a measured exit from his blockbuster role are gathering pace over SDCC. Makes us think back to when the former Daredevil was cast as Batman…
Wonderful signs: Meanwhile, the DCEU is sitting pretty… none too shabby performance by the other side of DC’s trinity. And a wider, more equal distribution this blockbuster season, away from continuing misgivings about genre dominance, is a fine thing.
Must be time to look to the next generation…
Looking for Bludhaven: Chris MacKay’s let slip a little about Nightwing…
Magic words: While Shazam’s slated to begin production in late winter 2018… With the only solid piece of casting, apparently, catapulting the original foe out of the film and presumably over to the Superman end of the spectrum like… A rock?
Yellow alert: SDCC’s promising to be a big moment for Star Trek: Discovery. These posters should help to ease Star Trek back to the front line… They’re rather stunning.
As is the kit… (may mention this a bit later on as well…)
Winter came and… Did something return this week? Game of Thrones served up its usual sketch-based crowd pleasing, high budget fun in the Season Seven premiere. There’s now only 12 parts left in the screen saga, and the perfect time to analyse character screen-times…
Catching ice: And if anyone’s not plunged in yet, GoT recap anyone?
“Bran? Bran trippin’”
Leave it: Take step back with Lit Hub to the first book’s reviews two decades ago…
Teething problems: And back to the birth of the series
Rebuilding the gate: As a genre giant slopes off to the distance, a sleeping giant wakes. Can lightning hit the Stargate brand again? And just what happened to that film reboot? And just when will we get round to watching Stargate:Universe?
Crossing the screen: We’re well used to disparity between critics and audiences now (although Dunkirk may merge the two this summer) but what about last year’s most complained about films?
Sh-eon: Remember Harry Palmer? Wasn’t EON, though. Just Harry Saltzman setting up a mini-franchise on his own. The great Bond production machine have only made two non-Bond films, and rather strange fish (laser-free) they are too. Looks like they’ll sort it all out with the introduction of a spy who may just put off those ‘female Bond’ debates a tad longer. There may be room for a considerable franchise before the next Bond film appears…
Sprawling Spawn: Todd McFarlane may never change his hard-ball ways. We’d love to see the end result of his terms… It’s never been done… But can he do it?
SDCC teaches us not to speak too soon…
Singa-quality: The Eisners are warming up:
Starting alternate engines: Back to Gotham and one of those are only alternative takes on the DCU… Garage City Gotham…
While AMC are clinging on to the rating winner, snarls and snaps about the last series excepted, seems Robert Kirkman’s enacting the four-colour endgame:
More Carpenter: he’s back, something Snake Pliskin struggled with. A guide to the Escapes that never were…
Not easy being green: A sad revelation from the Henson-verse…
Oh, whatever did transpire may roll on…
They rubbed the lamp: After last week… some comfort for an odd Disney proposition.
Back to the Planet of the Apes: A rugged end for this segment of the Apes — not that it’s ever been the cheeriest, seems it’s succumbed to the nihilistic coda that hit Nolan’s Bat trilogy. Both of supreme nihilistic quality, mind you. Really curious what’s next for Fox’s superb and modern blockbuster franchise
Aping up: Reminds us of one of our greatest retrospectives — tracking the franchise from page to screen up to the most recent reboot:
More than frizbee: Been awhile since we leapt into the theme park business like a tycoon (real-life, life-size Mario Kart?), but it’s worth considering slipping into this mainframe… Tron persists.
Not Beyond awards: Some kind of justice for one of the greatest Star Trek films
Macca Laws: On music, clear prepping for the great #WhiteAlbum50 next year
Of course, there’ll be something to listen to… Or maybe not…
13 times lucky: Before SDCC kicked off, there was only one major story. A brilliant decision from the BBC and new production team. I mean, Jodie Whittaker just looks right. And the simple reveal, light branding, and a move away from the live theatrics that dogged the 50th year — just feels like a change is a’coming. She could keep that costume — in all its Man who Fell to Earth glory — for all I care…
Crucially, we can escape the vagaries of misogyny, sexism and engage in some simple Yorkshirephobia aboard T’ARDIS… the “First Yorkshire incarnation of the Time Lord”.
And on the gaming sphere, looks like Tiny Rebel have been buoyed by their four years of Doctor Who Legacy. There’s a new Who game in the works (don’t think Return to Earth, don’t think Return to Earth)
Arrest the slump: And there’s bit of a climb. The consolidated ratings for Doctor Who’s tenth series are in
Winning start: Thank goodness the new Doctor’s achieved over 16 million views already.
Tonal regrets: And one final word for something we’re really going to miss — the razzled modesty of outgoing executive producer Steven Moffat.
Trailers of the Now!
A moment for this, please?
Blade Runner: A new Blade Runner trailer — and that’s much better. Sure, the other one was as pretty as it was reassuring. But this ramps up the excitement for something new as much as it gets the old ’80s nostalgia tingling.
The Disaster Artist: Anyone actually seen The Room? The art behind the Room. Hurry, before it eats itself.
And on that note, the return of del Toro with a film many are pining to be connected to Hellboy. Sounds a lot like the surprisingly interesting, undeniably bizarre World War II found footage film Frankenstein’s Army we saw the other day…
RIP

George Romero: As runs through many of the plaudits and epitaphs that have spilled out this week in the wake of George Romero’s death, there was just something about the films he made. Summing him up as the father of the zombie genre simply isn’t enough. What he achieved with his original undead trilogy is remarkable, definitive, satirical, persistently-relevant and unmistakably his. It was a pleasure to see him at a couple of events around the release of Land of the Dead last decade. Even more so, anytime I plug in one of his films, which are far more than his epic Dead trilogy, or even rolling Dead sequence. A passionate, visionary film-maker whose mark deserves to be remembered as long as there are films.
* Spoilers here on in *
Been Watching
Broken
Recently caught up with Jimmy McGovern’ latest BBC masterpiece. Superbly acted with beautiful moments as it weaved through characters, often tragically, and none more so than Sean Bean’s tortured priest at the heart. Such a beautiful conclusion, it is absolutely impossible to see how that character’s story can continue. But Broken 2, surely primed, and hopefully capable of escaping the early demise of The Street… Superb, complex, needed storytelling that’s sneaked right near the top of our dramas of the year. Maybe the top. Not alone…
As we started saying last week, it’s that time of year when cramming American TV series finales is de rigueur.
Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD — Series Four

While it’s earned a fifth season, SHIELD is being chipped down to make way for Inhumans over at ABC. And that’s a shame. Whether it was a simple case of shaky beginnings or perhaps hubristic slavishness to fight on the same level as the big screen MCU, SHIELD never recovered for the half season of its first year. Neither ratings nor the reputation clawed back for what quickly became the twistiest genre show on the box.
Series Four may have been the fruition of its long game, and in typically awkward fashion, might just be SHIELD’s finest hour.
It took the inhuman storyline that’s dominated the previous two years to launch and shape a tri-partite series that played like a greatest hits of the past four years but also illustrated one of its trademarks: a growing sense of maturity.
Every year, SHIELD gets better at feeding in secondary characters, some with comic book ties to be tugged on or snipped (Patriot?), while it constantly works at spinning a greater web of threat. There’s always some new hi octane threat around the corner, and broaching Hell, magic and evil duplicates this series, it relished the broader scope. It’s almost the post-arc show, stringing monster of the week episodes and sweep shows through mini-arcs. Not to get too Mirror Universe, there’s a distinct later Star Trek vibe to Series Four. It’s a fair contender to be one of the most Deep Space Nine shows of the last 18 years.
With this year split into three segments, there was a superb pace that dragging us into the world of the best screen Ghost Rider yet, then the Darkhold fuelled AI story that managed to right some Age of Ultron wrongs before surprisingly sucking us back into the world of Hydra.
Surprising, risky, far more than the sum of its original irritating parts, SHIELD is a bit of a jewel. If only the game to get there hadn’t been so perilous.
Supergirl — Series Two

If SHIELD has, rather ridiculously, become the new Deep Space Nine, we’re still unsure what to make of Supergirl. Through circumstances mainly prompted by the network rush to claim their own superhero, it’s become one of the most fluid four-colour adaptations on the box.
One of the most expensive television productions of all time, its first series looked smashing and stormed through a rather gentle and odd pace as it packed in a full run. It was necessarily a bit hokey. It went further than many other shows to meta — there’s barely any other genre show that doesn’t exist in this universe (Doctor Who jokes, yes!). A real sense that it could do anything, crazy or boring, and would be comfortably saved in the ever-watchable comfort of Melissa Benoist’s superb central performance. One of the highlights of that first year was how they dealt with Superman’s presence without showing him (here’s a boot! He’s in the distance! Hilarious).
And then, Supergirl shifted network and changed completely. Sets were gone with throwaway lines, recurring characters and even last series’ big bad disappeared. Calista Flockheart’s Cat Grant swanned off between premiere and finale. Even more astonishing, the world completely changed. In a parallel Earth to the one shown in stable-mate shows on The CW, it was now an Alien Nation style universe, where extraterrestrials lived among us, the President was mainly concerned with the issue (duh, she is one!), and there was an obligatory alien speakeasy, where EVERYBODY IN THE SHOW drinks.
I’ve no idea what some of the cast felt as their character arcs stalled and diverted. Just as well CatCo was trashed considering the way James Olsen was running it. But even when you take some of the phenomenally camp-clunky dialogue (“They’re a peaceful race of aliens” — reasoned the alien J’onn J’onzz alien at one point late in the series) — you’d trade it all for it’s confident-yet-seat-of-its-pants switch to LGBT and immigration storylines.
Highlights were the opening Super team-ups, channelling the Reeve films of old, as Superman was finally granted an appearance (and well cast Tyler Hoechlin was too) and the finales epic, menacing smack-down between him and, thanks to some silver kryptonite, Zod.
Huge props to Chris Wood‘s Mon-El who swung in with some brilliant comedy and, basically, fill in for quite a few characters from the first season. Also respect for its continued devotion to ramp out proceedings with as many Superman alumni as it could. That’s set to continue next year with Erica Durance joining the cast as (recast) Supergirl’s Kryptonian mum..
Supergirl’s found the freedom to do pretty much whatever it wants, spinning off major changes with throwaway lines of dialogue with abandon. That’s a hell of a place to be. With a far more serious direct competitor appearing in the shape of Krypton, Supergirl needs to hold on to that extraordinary niche in the Arrowverse, its superb lead actors, and have fun with the DC universe.
Well, when we say we’ve no idea what actors thought… I mean really, a character from the comics brought to screen with every association with Superman removed who calls himself Cyborg Superrman. Hahaha. Good on them.
Doctor Who Series 10
the game’s up and what a roller coaster it’s been, not quite in the way we were hoping. A season of some exquisite highs, particularly during episode 12 (naturally), and some blithering, inexplicable lows. As all excitement heads to the future, relive that Series finale.
Find the complete set of 12, reviewed and graded right here…
That’s been our rolling half month… Fill the gap until your next fix with just about 200 long-reads, cartoons and features running the gamut of Pop-Culture at Jokerside.com. See you in two! :)

