I eagerly look forward to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 released this month as it highlights and furnishes the backstory of Rocket Raccoon, who director James Gunn describes as the “secret protagonist” of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies…
Now Rocket Raccoon is an iconic character, especially to those of us who identify as furry. In this film, we see his humble beginnings as a “street raccoon,” and Rocket was perfectly happy being an animal. His forced transition to a snarky biological weapon was fraught with pain, and we are shown those Dr. Moreau-type experiments that later led the character to remark, “there ain’t nothing like me except me.” There’s a lot more to Rocket other than the master strategist, pilot, weapons-master, and space maverick that we knowand love,and we see his vulnerability and terrible aloneness here…
Fortunately, it’s a commonality of trauma that binds The Guardians together, and in this their final ride as a team they appear to be going out in fine formin a movie described as both dark and hilarious.- – Long live Rocket Raccoon! 🦝
I have to admit that I was wrong in my earlier negative opinion of the rebooted Lost In Space series on Netflix that had been based solely on the initial episode that I was able to view at that time for free. I couldn’t connect with the redefined series characters at that time, and felt that the whole reboot was a pointless exercise. Since that time armed with a Netflix subscription and so able to get further into the series, I can say that the series does get appreciably better after the first episode, when they spent entirely too much time trying to get daughter Judy out of a frozen lake…
Now what really makes the series perk?
This guy! Not the “Robot” from the original series who looked like he was made from a vacuum cleaner and several kitchen appliances, but this sexy alien construction who looks like he was designed by H.R. Giger. There’s not a flat surface on him, nor facial features but rather a faceplate within which swirl colored lights, red if he’s going into “attack mode,” and blue if he’s becoming reflective and empathetic. There’s a bit of the T-800 Terminator in this robot as he does have a dark past, but has bonded with the ever-so-familiar Will Robinson, through whom he’s being schooled in such concepts as restraint and friendship. The Robot’s potential for destruction is channeled into defensiveness and protection as he incorporates human emotion. Heck, he even does primitive cave wall paintings! This Robot can knock down trees, but can also be calm and cool even if a tad unpredictable. He’s a work in progress…
The Robinsons are really much better off with the Robot, who is largely controllable through Will Robinson. Portrayed as a highly intelligent 12-year-old boy, Will is nowhere as annoying as say, Wesley Crusher. Father John Robinson, re-envisioned as a former Navy Seal, is a stalwart and dedicated family man and almost indestructible, capable of surviving in a drill pit after being impaled on a rebar stake, then returning to work almost immediately afterwards. Mother Maureen Robinson has had her IQ bolstered several dozen IQ points from the original character, and is an endlessly resourceful modern take-charge woman who can fix something with almost nothing, saving their backsides multiple times in the process. Major Don West is now a resourceful space smuggler and rogue, a bit like the early Han Solo, who will make the right decisions when the Robinsons are in jeopardy, which is often. Judy Robinson is an adopted daughter portrayed as 18-years-old, and although trained as a medic she can apparently perform almost any life-saving procedure. Middle-child Penny is highly intelligent, intuitive, and creative.
Aww! Isn’t this nice! The Robot at dinner with the Robinsons! This illustrates how while masquerading as science fiction, Lost In Space is essentially a sappy family drama. In almost every episode, there are invariably hostile planetary monsters, killer robots, or a disintegrating planet in environmental upheaval.You know that they will all survive, however, and that there will invariably also be, at the end, a whole lotta hugging going on!
I have to admit, though, that I’m really more interested in the killer robots depicted in the series. I’ve always loved robots, you see, and am willing to put up with the gratuitous hugging of family members if it gets me to one…
I’ve always felt that there’s been something a bit “off” about the character of Peter Pan. I mean, an ageless boy with elvish ears who can fly without wings, hangs out with “The Lost Boys” on an island called Neverland, and consorts with a fairy called Tinker Bell? Should we call the authorities now, or later?!
Well, the venerable 1911 children’s story by J.M. Barrie has now fallen into the public domain, and is going to get the same creative, horror-styled remake that Winnie the Pooh and Bambi have or will have coming to them. Peter Pan was always somewhat dark and sketchy, even in the original story. I mean, he practically kidnapped Wendy, and had broken into her house on a previous occasion in search of his shadow! Is that trippy, or what?! He almost killed the Darling children by forgetting to give them the pixie dust that conferred the powers of flight…
And don’t get me started on Tinker Bell! Sure, she looks innocent and cherubic, but she got jealous of the attention that Peter Pan was giving to Wendy, so much so that she might have done something. I think that Tink could be a real Prima Donna…
The Lost Boys are kinda interesting too, and very arguably furry. I mean, they are often depicted as in the image below, wearing fursuits, animal costumes to the uninitiated. Not great ones, to be sure, but fursuits nonetheless. According to the source material, the Lost Boys fell out of their prams while their Nannies were looking the other way in English places like Kensington Gardens. If unclaimed for a week, they were spirited off to Neverland to be with Peter Pan. There, they would fight with Peter Pan against pirates like Captain Hook. It was a good life, really, and you got to wear a fursuit. Pirates and a fursuit would have worked for me. Color me envious… *sighs* 🦊
So what can we expect out of the Neverland Nightmare as directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield? It will be a very dark tale, like the Winnie the Pooh and upcoming Bambi adaptations. You know good ole Captain Hook, who supposedly lost a hand to a crocodile? Well, perhaps Peter Pan just might have cut that appendage off! I do so love “bedtime stories for childrenyou hate… “ 🙀
So while this Neverland Nightmare might give us Peter Pan as a mini-psychopath, things could get really interesting in 2024, when the character of Mickey Mouse will supposedly fall into the public domain. We do live in interesting times, ‘ya know…. and now, I’m wondering if Peter Pan Peanut Butter contains pixie dust. Should we call the FDA? Eating peanut butter has always been a natural high for me, as well as a guilty pleasure. Perhaps unintentionally consuming pixie dust is why I write this blog. And does pixie dust contain actual pixies?- – Urg, gagg! 🦊
I have to admit that I am not a great fan of hunting. Perhaps that’s because hunters consider those of my kind varmints, and perhaps it’s because I abhor seeing the spectacle of lifeless deer strapped to cars during hunting season in my state. We all know what hunters did to Bambi’s mother. And I say that payback time is hell…
I have a personal history with the Disney movie, Bambi. It was the first movie that my mother took me to. Think of it, I was five years old, and my own mother takes me to see a stag flick! Is it any wonder that I would grow up to be a furry? But enough of my childhood trauma. With a number of beloved childhood classics now falling into the public domain, they are now subject to revisionist treatment, and what’s coming out is either darkly hilarious or simply horrific, depending on your perspectives.
And so from the folks who brought you Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, we have upcoming Bambi: The Reckoning! Let the hooves fall where they may, I guess…
Forget the 1942 Disney film with its tale of loss, life, and love..this is an extremely dark retelling of the original 1928 story, with Bambi retooled as a vicious killing machine on rabies. Yes, I…CAN…DIG IT!!!
Now the source material of the Bambi character is a 1928 novel by Felix Salten innocently named Bambi, A Life in the Woods. The original story passed into the public domain in 2022, and so is fair game for a horrormovie treatment. The 1942 Disney version is not. Film maker Scott Jeffrey will not be allowed to use any of Disney’s character design forBambi, but is rather drawing inspiration from a Netflix production called, The Ritual. In it, we will see Bambi’s transformation into a revenge-driven nightmare following the slaughter of his mother by hunters. One can hardly blame the guy…
Production begins in January of 2023, so no trailers are currently available, and all we have is a hint of the new character design. I, for one, will cheer on the exploits of this Rambuck. So bust ‘em up, Bambi! Let the games begin… 🦊
One can hardly do better, however, than this SNL visitation of the same theme. Enjoy!
The Great Wolf Lodge commercials can be somewhat disconcerting. They are enormous wolves, you see, of a size that makes even dire wolves look wimpy. Fortunately they are friendly, and you ride them like oversized horses to the Great Wolves Lodge resorts…
A mother leaves work to find a Great Wolf waiting for her, and so rides him to pick up her son at school, even though the son would be barely a morsel for the wolf should he turn predacious. But not to worry! These wolves are just the iconic mascots for the family indoor water parks, which started in Wisconsin in 1997, and now have 19 locations…
Nothing brings the pack together like a trip to one of their indoor water resorts, so the commercial’s tagline is to “strengthen the pack!” We may all be grateful that these fantasy wolves are both imaginary and quite docile… 🦊
We seem to be posting a lot about wolves lately, but hey, Halloween is coming, and we gotta run with the pack, so to speak. So much has been written about Little Red Riding Hoodthat it’s practically a cottage industry, which may be appropriate since Grandma kinda lived in a cottage, don’t ‘ya know?
Well, Little Red here might be little, but she’s kinda hawt as well, and she sure ain’t no fool…no Big Bad Wolf is gonna pull one over on her. Going through those creepy old woods to Grandma’s house, this Little Red (Mikayla Roberts) fears no evil. So when she reaches Grandma’s house, she whips out her cell phone and places an Amazon order, which miraculously arrives almost instantaneously in time for deployment.
The Big Bad Wolf arrives, too…a magnificent, snarling version in white. But when Red deploys the dog toy that she has purchased, Wolfie becomes a good boy, jumping and playing with the toy in total delight! We’ve seen a similar transformation in such films as The Bad Guys, when Mr. Wolf just can’t help wagging his tail when called a good boy. There’s no such thing as a bad boy, really, right?
The actress playing Grandma isn’t exactly an elderly, bedridden-cripple either, but looks to be a pretty hip and vital lady. Well-played update on an old timeless classic, Amazon!
I would be remiss if I failed to remind you that September 25th is National Comic Book Day! ‘Fess up now…how many of you grew up lingering over the pages of a comic book, and fantasizing about how great your life would be if you had a superpower…like, any one of them!
I had the rare kind of father who would actually bring me home a comic book or Mad Magazine occasionally when he came home from the store with the Sunday paper. It wasn’t just any comic book, either. Nope, it had to be a superhero one! My early years were spent paging through DC comics icons like Superman and The Green Lantern. Later, I would learn of the backstories of more obscure comic heroes like The Phantom and even Mandrake the Magician!“The Phantom is rough on roughnecks,” old jungle saying…
This led me down the rabbit hole in adulthood of discovering even more notable precursors such as The Shadow. When special effects reached a level where superhero movies were better than laughable, we were really off to the races with DC and Marvel characters, some more memorable than others, and renewing or finding new fan bases in the adult population…
And it all started with comic books, so remember this holy day. And I still have my Green Lantern ring, folks, two actually. If only the darn things worked, if only! Well, hope springs eternal, so they say…gotta keep trying! “In brightest day, in blackest night…”
The furries of summer are here! Originally conceived as an animated sequel to 1974’s Blazing Saddles comedy, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank took a long time coming to fruition, and was originally planned with the less cumbersome title of Blazing Samurai. At last we have our Wild West saga with a Japanese tilt that retains the legacy of Mel Brooks, who even voices the character of theShogun!
Now if you’ve seen Westerns (or “Easterns’), there’s a little bit of many things you’ve seen before here, with elements drawn and blended fromKung Fu Panda, The Karate Kid, The Magnificent Seven, and Zootopia. An evil cat warlord (voiced by Ricky Gervais) seeking to destroy a town of cats sends an inept canine (Michael Cera) to be their defender, knowing full well that cats and dogs tend not to get along, and anticipating to sow internal chaos and destruction. Canine Hank, however, truly aspires to be a samurai, and finds a trainer and mentor in the unwilling, grumpy person (furson?) ofSamuel L. Jackson’s character.Overcoming feline xenophobia against dogs, the aspiring canine samurai gradually acquires their acceptance and cooperation while developing his own skills, and the rest is history…
Paws of Fury is already playing in theaters, and I may borrow a kid as an excuse to go see it….
I had earlier posted on Here Come The Mummies, a band whose members perform swaddled in mummy wrappings. We now highlight Car Seat Headrest, an indie rock band whose frontman Will Toledo isa furry who on his recent concert tour sometimes performed in a modified fursuit as his character, Mortis Jackrabbit…
Now the band Car Seat Headrestis described as “furry adjacent,” as in not totally furry, but next to furry, with their Twin Fantasy album featuring furry art of two canids hugging, and the album dedicated to “nervous young inhumans”with a cut by the same name...
Mortis the bunny is quite a presence on stage, appearing as if wearing a gas mask with uncanny, changing luminescent eyes…
So check out Car Seat Headrest, a very different band full of emotion and angst, and rooted in the furry fandom… 🦊
Jurassic World Dominion, the sixth film in the franchise, is set to open June 10th, and so it’s timely that Progressive Insurance’s iconic Flo and Jamie characters are shown at a drive-in screening the film. What makes this viewing different, however, is that the dinos are apparently able to walk off the screen and into the real world, a T-Rex doing just that, smashing and flipping vehicles at the outdoor movie event…
Chaos ensues…Flo and Jamie, however, are totally nonplussed as they stand by their RV, trading quips about how stinky dinosaurs are. With home, auto, and RV insurance bundled, they’ve got the situation covered, and will handle the cleanup. It’s all cool, they’ve got it taken care of , and it’s just part of a day’s work for your insurance professionals. They’ve been there, and done that…
Jamie notes how this shows why you should always go to the bathroom before the movie begins…and Flo is probably scarier than any T-Rex, anyways… Rawrr! 🦖
FOXSYLVANIA 
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