Patreon Letter: 7th March 2019

Hey,

Jackson here, finally getting current with the Patreon Letter. I know, I know. After last week's very sad letter about mental health it's time to be fully normal today and just talk about some things I have on my mind. Here we go. 

The Dragon Prince

I've been watching the netflix cartoon The Dragon Prince this week, and it's really good. Every one of these shows gets immediately compared to Avatar - this more than most given how much it is actively inviting the comparison with its staff and its structure - but I think it puts a much, much better foot forward than its forerunner. Avatar took the bulk of its first season to really get going, but The Dragon Prince starts immediately engaging with its world and its themes in a much more direct way that reflects the changing times of television. 

The point is: it's rich, each season is nine episodes, each episode is twenty two minutes, so it is just one of the most watchable shows ever made. Plus, and this was my biggest takeaway, it's really funny. It's funny because there are jokes. For something currently releasing it is shockingly banter-free. I didn't realise, until I watched it, just how much my body had been primed to expect every piece of modern pop culture to just sound like a Marvel movie. I love Star Trek Discovery to bits, you know me, but even it sounds a little like a Marvel movie from time to time. It was super refreshing to see a show that just had characters say lines and those lines sometimes form jokes. It's nice, and good.

Aside from that, the show has (so far) been a really good fantasy story. Its story of a world that is fundementally broken in its distribution of power and the difficulty of navigating that has been handled really well. The usual "humans invent dark magic because they want power that the elves just get to fuckin' have" plot is contextualised with a strong sense of history and I'm excited to watch where all the pieces fall over the rest of the seasons. If they manage to stick the landing the "is it as good as Avatar?" talking point will hopefully go away because Avatar ended by the show inventing a reason for all the problems to be magically fixed four episodes from the end. I have hope that TDP will not sidestep its thematic questions in the same way. 

Yeah that's right I think the ending of Avatar sucks. He shoulda just murked the Fire Lord where he stood. What do you mean it's a children's television show.

A Legendary Gundam Movie

That doesn't bring us anywhere close to the wordcount so instead I'm going to talk a little about the upcoming Hollywood Gundam Movie. Me and Em have already publically drawn swords on twitter over the exact kind of cynical movie we think they will make, so instead of taking us down the road of Bad End, I'm going to think a little about the world where... it might be good?

To be clear: this going to happen. For a multitude of reasons. But let's entertain the possibility.

Anyway. A Hollywood Gundam Movie that actually brings over Gundam's politics is straight up not happening even in this unrealistic best end scenario, but I do think it is within the realm of possibility that they could make something with the sort of neoliberal self flagellation that defines the current run of modern Star Trek. Section 31 are just the Titans. Mirror Georgiou would absolutely faceciously draw the blood from her hand to swear bullshit loyalty to this fake ass pencil pushing fascist. It's not likely, it's not what we're going to get, but it's not absolutely impossible. But then Bright Noa will turn Pike-like to the camera and say The Earth Federation is a promise. You will get both worlds. 

I think Brian K. Vaughn is a better choice to write it than most, but the only work of his I've read is Y: The Last Man so I could just have an unfairly positive sample. But Y: The Last Man is a mainstream american comic that legitimately acknowledges Israel as a settler colonial project desperately justifying its own existence through violence. Which is straight up not a thing that ever happens in american media so y'know, there are worse people in Hollywood that could be writing a movie based on Gundam.

If all the stars align just right (they won't) and a good script is written (it won't be) and survives the Hollywood adaptation process (it definitely won't) then it's not impossible that the Gundam movie could be interesting! But enough of that, it's time to ask the better question: what does the (never happening) good version of this even look like?

Well if you got me to make it, and it had to be a UC adaptation, I would lean harder on everything newtype. The audience needs to feel that Zeon's dream of a new future for humanity is a certainty until he is assassinated and everthing goes to shit. If you only have two hours and not 42 episodes, I think leaning into newtypeness as this monkey's paw strengthened connection to everyone who has died pointlessly is the clearest way to scream what gundam is about to people unwilling to do the close reads of the show. 

Unfortunately they didn't get me to make the movie, and also all of my friends are probably yelling at me for being wrong for writing that. And they're yelling because none of us come to Gundam for the same reasons, it's so many different things to so many different people, and we're all the people who agree. And that's just one of the things that makes Gundam so utterly impossible to adapt. 

Anyway. Enough living in fantasy land. The movie will be bad. Let's just hope it is the more interesting kind of bad than the cynical, boring bad. It'll probably be coming out during our Year Of SEED and it will be the only time we break our watch order. Unless they make a sequel before we're done. 

Alright that is the wordcount hit. I hope you enjoyed my babbling, see you in a week for a hopefully??? on time??? letter????

Well. We shall see.

-Jackson