Thor: Love & Thunder

I must admit to reflexively preferring Star Trek's classification of the Gods, in the age old episode of The Original Series where the Enterprise's crew encounters Apollo.

He had to leave Earth long ago and set out to the Heavens in search of worshippers, along with his Greek and Roman brethren, eventually settling on an isolated planet.

Upon encountering the crew of the Enterprise, he seeks to coerce their admiration, but the imaginative space-faring ill-disposed citizens soon find a way to outmanoeuvre him.

Thor is rather chill for a God preferring to sleep in and engage in horseplay, when the people need him he courageously responds but otherwise disdains regal pomp and pageantry. 

Thus, he fits in well with laidback demonstrative interstellar particularities, and is much easier to actively root for than someone demanding obedience and loyalty.

I thought it was cool that Marvel included the less widely known Norse Gods in its narratives, because it was fun to learn more about them while watching the athletically staged theatrics.

But Love & Thunder introduces every God the all and sundry you can possibly imagine (even Q: The Wingéd Serpent), it's out of touch with the creative genius that led to the X-Men and the Avengers.

The abundant Gods no longer seek worship but rather inhabit a far off realm, where they lounge about and entertain as decorum permits with unheralded alacrity. 

Thor fittingly disrupts their balanced order keeping in tune with contemporary shenanigans, functioning in a similar way to Captain Kirk in that Star Trek episode from long ago.

Marvel and D.C's creative brilliance has no doubt been proven time and again, but as their films continue to exponentially multiply has Star Trek's multivariable imagination been overlooked?

Gods no doubt exist within the diverse multilayered Trekkian sagas, but the emphasis is usually on how human ingenuity can resourcefully outwit them.

Star Trek isn't as reliant on superhuman strength or exceptional idiosyncrasy, to find a logical working solution to the crafty predicaments it faces week after week.

Rather it champions science and the ingenious solutions expediently found, by a group of curious travellers who search the universe to expand their minds.

Marvel and D.C etc certainly deserve a place in the forefront. They've dynamically carved multiple scenarios overflowing with daring and remarkable teamwork.

But something's lost if Star Trek's focus on the human factor loses its cinematic edge.

Not just human, alien as well.

Interactively engaged in inclusive environments (where you'd also find Thor). 

Zardoz

Imagine COVID-19 as reflective of desires to keep demographics stratified, with no intermingling amongst different collectives, even though at the moment isolation is paramount.

The title sounded cool and it stars Sean Connery.

I imagine John Boorman didn't like ivory towers much.

Or the politics of the left in the early '70s.

Zardoz expresses such sentiments anyways with blunt instinctual derision.

It's absurd menacing political satire.

Confrontationally conceived.

In a hypothetical future, the elite have sealed themselves off within an impenetrable exclusive zone, where they live immortal lives of plenty, or at least with everything they need.

Outer regions know only chaos in maddening woebegone conflict.

The immortals have struggled to achieve enlightenment and have compiled vast repertoires of scientific knowledge, but some of them have grown restless, bored, tired of the limits of infinite perfection.

Fortunately for them, an enforcer stows away on the giant head that travels between realms, hiding beneath the grain, intent on acquiring wisdom (Sean Connery as Zed).

He introduces a unique element.

Curious carnal contrariety.

The immortals have cast off emotion you see, and live within stoic reasonable boundaries, with no children or families or nurturing, just rarefied rational discourse.

Subversive intentions plaque somnambulistic.

Those in control have qualified everything.

Gross exaggeration pervades the rigid Zardoz, but I still wonder how it was received at the time? I've certainly never heard anyone discuss it and don't recall it ever showing up in rerun.

I imagine it was cutting edge sci-fi for the '70s, at least some of the visuals are quite impressive, not the giant head itself so scandalous, but there are noteworthy technical features.

I still wonder if it was meant to be taken seriously, on some level I don't quite comprehend, but so much of it seems like solemn farce, like barbarians inside the gates.

But what seemed like solemn farce in recent memory is trying to transform reasonable debate these days, and what used to seem absurd is taken seriously, the public sphere in free-fall flux.

If people are currently worried that desires to function self-sufficiently are threatening the proliferation of the nuclear family, perhaps they were in the '70s (and long before then) as well, although I remain to be sure uncertain, even if I'm leaning towards "they definitely were".

A future where people suddenly want to stop breeding, generally, no matter what ideology predominates, seems highly unlikely to me, however.

There's just too much comfort in relaxed recreation.

With agency attached to the conjugally bold.

Nice that the opportunity to not have a family exists though, medieval pressures must have been stifling.

Can't say I recommend Zardoz.

Although it's certainly out of this world.

Nezha zhi motong jiangshi (Ne Zha)

A couple committed to protecting their realm from demons who maladroitly arise, jests with the birth of a magical newborn, who's an ill-tempered god hellbent on partaking in routine village life, annoyed that his powers are quotidianly ill-favoured, too young to hold back when hospitably disposed.

He seeks friendship yet is prone to mischief and can't comprehend why he's consistently rebuked, which leads to volatile discontent declarations, and generalized feelings of mutual disaffection.

His parents are uncertain of how to raise their malcontent offspring, and trust a hedonistic immortal to both guide and provide active care.

But he responds too precociously to his loosely structured lessons, and the results are both disconcerting and counterproductive, things becoming much worse when he learns he'll live only three short years, and is indeed frenetically fated, to unleash wanton reviled ill-repute.

He meets his counterpart one day, who is destined for greener pastures, seaside pastures, a god of water secretly raised by dragons, who's also inquisitive and young, and seeking to make trusted oddball friends.

The divine proclamations which indisputably govern their predetermined constitutions have been cast in immaterial chrome, yet they're determined to follow different paths, to make their own fates, randomly preconditioned.

Listen for The Terminator theme music.

It's super deep, this Nezha zhi motong jiangshi (Ne Zha), with its lone bemused disposition, abounding with intricate detail, as it contemplates counterintuition.

In action, while it calisthenically unreels, as hyper-reactive as its nimble namesake, as unrestrictive as leaps and bounds.

Part tragedy as it generates sympathy for a youngster who can't help but cause destruction, yet longs for someone to play with, who isn't afraid of him, or easily duped.

Part comedy as symbiotic shenanigans cerebrally startle and delicately sway.

It's as if predictability were vehemently critiqued by innocent gifted youth, aware of their otherworldly powers and dismissive of fate and forecast.

As if it's comic that ties bind no matter how much agency's secured, and tragic that you exist apart especially if you're born romantic.

To be fated for mystic fortunes adds pressure to attempts to chill, as youth imagines the outer world while taxing mundane rhapsodics.

Nezha (Lü Yanting) gives 'er despite scorn and protest, as misinterpretation confounds.

The film's must-see animation for lovers of fantasy and robust storytelling.

Extraordinarily complex and profound.

Still innocent enough for younger audiences.

Downright quizzical.

Epically nuanced.