Thor: Ragnarok

"Thor: Ragnarok" delivers on its promise. Do I believe for five seconds that Asgard is a self-consistent alien culture? No. But it's a fun movie.
Thor Ragnarok did not disappoint. It lived up to the promise. You get to see Thor and the incredible Hulk in a gladiatorial situation
Sibling rivalry with Loki; Jeff Goldblum is hilarious. He’s the evil meia mogul who runs a corrupt, entertainment obsessed planet that behind the gladiatorial games. He delivers his evil disctator lines as, well, Jeff Golbulum and it’s hilarious 
The ovie strikes a nice balance between being a working class comedy – a lot of it’s just comedy
Thor is dealing with his ister, hwho happens to be the goddess of death, who’s escaped from the Phantom zone or Asgard maxium security or whatever) she’s the ultimate female gdaass. He throws the hammer at her she gtrabis it; the hammer shatters like glass.
Essentially, it’s the plot of the Shane Black’s iron man movie. Thor’s stripped of his powers , doesn’t have his powers, is exiled, imprisoned, and 
Not the king of the mountain.
Various things revealed later
But a nice comic dynamic – put him at the bottom of everyuthging in this trashy planet that’s strewen with literal garbage and garbage entertainment. He’s not the king of the mountain. He’s got a control device on his neck straight out of Star Trek 
It’s all in the grailer
Working class comic moments interspersed with a gumbo of Shakespearean/Lord of the Rings serious moments. 
Genuinely suspenseful on own terms
The bcillaineess is basically the evil queen from Snow White and the Seven Drwarfves.
Graeat female heroes and female villains it’s a post woneder  woman movie and the XX chromosome pair gets its due representation (Finally) Loki goes from being the dark creep of the second avengers movie to more of a trickster. 

Review: The Orville

Drive-by review: The Orville.

To boldly go where Gene Roddenberry and all his imitators have gone before.

OK. Finally started watching director/producer/lead actor Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville. (Checked out the pilot and 11 minutes of the second episode.) So here’s my reaction …

All-righty then. Yeah. Big Family Guy fan that I am, I want to like it. I see what MacFarlane s trying to do. I see what he actually succeeds in doing. So I want to give him a chance …

But a rude inner voice says, “You see what this is? This is Star Trek cosplay. That’s what this is. You see it, right?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You see the flaws?

My inner nitpicker points out the show’s synecdochal inconsistency*, the derivative nature of the experience, the creation of look-for-look’s sake (as opposed to internal logic) and the flat-out bad logic and bad design.

A starship captain would have some kind of monitor/interface at his station; it wouldn’t be in the armrest of his bloody chair. He would know if a certain single-sex species laid eggs. He wouldn’t joke about it with omelet references. Pseudo-Star-Fleet's important, remote science station would be able to send encrypted communications to HQ. (And if it were that important, it wouldn’t be that remote and vulnerable.) The interstellar bad guys would destroy, interdict or commandeer a shuttle on a rescue mission; they wouldn’t accept a killer device on the promise of an access code. On top of that ...
A futuristic hallway full of fluorescent lights? A science station that looks like a mall? What is this, Logan’s Run? 
Etc., etc.

My inner asshole points these things out. What can I say?

He’s right.

But there are things I like ...

The dynamic of making the starship commander’s unfaithful ex-wife his second officer is clever. Basic screwball comedy. Love it. Her tryst with a blue alien was hilarious—a nice reversal of the Captain Kirk trope.

I also appreciate the comedic rabbit that MacFarlane pulls out of his hat. Or dog.

As in the dog from MacFarlane’s Family Guy.

Captain Mercer is essentially Brian the Dog in space. (Close your eyes and listen to what MacFarlane’s character says. Imagine it’s Brian speaking. It’s funnier that way.) 
Good stuff. Though ...

My inner nitpicker has a point. I can't argue with the flaws he indicates. Each little flaw can be fixed.
But they all flow from one big flaw. 
An essential dilemma that might be unfixable.

The logic of comedy demands that Mercer be bad at his job. If it’s a Star Trek lampoon, the show must poke a pin in all the classic tropes.

The logic of fantasy role-playing demands that MacFarlane deliver a Captain Kirk imitation. Captain Mercer can’t be a f***-up. He must. Do. What must be. Done.

Either-or.

You can’t have it both ways.
Thus says my inner prosecuting attorney.
But my inner jury is still out. I'll give MacFarlane a chance. Who the hell knows?
Maybe he can.

*In written or filmed SF, synecdoche is a good thing. Take Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction.” The citizens of his future, irradiated New York City use subway tokens as currency. Leiber never says that these future New Yorkers hid out in the subway when their city was being A-bombed; he doesn’t have to. It’s a part that stands for the whole—synecdoche, my friends. A very good thing when done right. A very bad thing when the parts don’t add up, fit together or form a whole.