Nothing leads where I expect

When I started News For Wombats, I expected to be writing slightly different stuff than I did at Footnotes on Epicycles (my old blog).

I thought I’d post about politics, but I haven’t.

The present scene is alternately too depressing and too crazy. One example of a post that almost happened: I was struck, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, that the New York Times could still whinge about Trump’s “moral standing as president.”¹ I mulled it over a bit before posting, Trump doubled down on deferring to racism, and then the Time’s understatement seemed hardly worth mentioning.

I thought I’d write more capsule reviews, but I haven’t.

For example, the Netflix show Iron Fist is almost unwatchable. I ultimately soldiered through so that I could pick up the continuity of the Defenders. The biggest problem with Iron Fist is that the action scenes are terrible. I don’t just mean that the martial arts are technically poor (which they are) but also that they fail narratively. I am fine with fight scenes in old Star Trek episodes: Kirk takes out aliens with hammy rabbit punches, but it comes across that he’s supposed to be pretty good at punching. Silly fight choreography aside, the narrative is clear. In Iron Fist, Mister Fist is thrown around by even mook-level bad guys. The show doesn’t let me the viewer know that he’s supposed to actually be good at this.²

Hey, now I have written about those things. How about that?³

1. Here’s a link and a longer quote: “Even Mr. Trump’s allies worried that his measured remarks, delivered two days after dozens of public figures issued more forceful denunciations of the violence in Virginia, came too late to reverse the self-inflicted damage on his moral standing as president.”
2. The second biggest problem with Iron Fist is that life drains out of the whole story every time Danny Rand (played by Finn Jones) is on the screen. I don’t know whether Jones got poor direction or if quashing narrative gravitas is his super power. I am only a few episodes into the Defenders, but the effect sadly continues. In the new series, however, he appears less and the other actors generate enough gravitas to counterbalance the effect.
3. I also figured out how to put footnotes in the blog.