The Wild Robot (2024)

 "I do not have the programming to be a mother."

"No one does. We just make it up."

Little Miss Llamastrangler and I toddled off to the cinema so very pleasingly nearby to watch this film today, and a good time was had by both nine year old and forty-seven year old, the main thing. It is, of course, quite the time-jerker. but it's also interesting in more than the obviousways.

The quote sums up the main subtext, of course: the conceit of a robot accidentally ending up as mother to a little gosling allows it to be a metaphor for the reality of parenting- there's n manual, every child is different and not what the books say, you do a lot of improvising and hoping for the best.

And yet... for all the anthromorphism of robots and animals here, the humans, decadent in their robotised sci-fi society, are not shown as "people". We see them only as a decadent other, surrendering their agency to the robots who live their lives for them. For slavery- and that's what this is- is fundamentally decadent. history shows us this. Slave societies have no further reason to advance, or progress. Sooner or later, they will be out-competed.

Yet the animals of the island are free... and they do progress. To them, the robot is not a slave but a beloved friend and member of their community. And so they seem to slowly learn to live together and forswear rugged, predatory individualism.

But, pretension aside, this is a wonderfully animated, richly emotional film... and yes, I cried when she told him that she loved him. Wonderful stuff.

Black Panther (2018)

“It's hard for a good man to be king."

This is a hard film to review objectively. It's clearly a significant cultural artifact, far more so than a normal MCU film, and has connected with the African diaspora worldwide for its Afro-Futurism, a big part of a cultural movement that includes works such as Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid, and which constitutes a positive look at the potential of African achievement in spite of a background of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade.

The central conceit of the character of T'Challa has been, of course, for 52 years, that he's the king of a fictional African nation- Wakanda- that secretly defies all African stereotypes to be the most technologically and socially advanced nation on Earth. It's an African paradise, yet the cause of a central debate between the traditional view of the late T'Chaka- Wakanda is for the Wakandans, not for all Africa or the world, and it must be protected; and the view-,expounded with militancy by Erik Killmonger, that Wakanda must share its bounty with the world. This is an interesting central dilemma, but one fundamentally divorced from real world concerns. And, while it's good to see a positive portrayal of Africa and Africans, it's also a little disturbing to see Wakanda presented as a mish-mash of various West African, East African and South African cultures, not all of them Bantu, as though they were the same- and they are not; sub-Saharan Africa is huge and impossibly diverse. I'm not sure that the message that African cultures are pretty much the same is fundamentally a positive one, whatever the merits of the film's upbeat message. Is it only white and Asian people who are allowed to have distinctly different ethnic identities?

Still, the film works as entertainment in the traditional Marvel mould, and Chadwick Boseman's lack of charisma is well compensated for by an awesome and largely female cast. Ryan Coogler has made a film that looks superb in every way, with nothing in the visuals that I can fault. But, much though I enjoyed the film, with its black female Q, its James Bond pastiche antics and the big final battle with war rhinos(!), the film is merely good, not great.

Fantastic Stan Lee cameo, mind, though obviously bittersweet...