Category Archives: Movies

Movie Review: Rocketman

A common thing I hear is to compare this film Rocketman  to last year’s movie Bohemian Rhapsody. Both movies explore the history of well know rock performers from the 1970s and 1980 but truly I do not think that these films are really all that similar. Bohemian Rhapsody   is a much more standard example of a biographical narrative film such as I Saw The Light  Hank Williams or Sweet Dreams  with Patsy Cline. In all three movies well respected actors take on the roles of iconic musical legends, either perform or lip synch some of their most famous songs while recreating those musicians musical performances this is not what happens with here.

Rocketman is a biopic exploring the life of rock icon Elton John but this movie is a full on musical using the best-known song from John’s catalog as their vehicle into his life. There are a few examples in the movie of ‘here’s Elton John performing at this famous venue’ but unlike the other films I have mentions these performances are the exception and not the form of Rocket Man. With little regard to the chronology this film has the characters bursting into these famous tunes as a method of exploring the emotional inner lives and this is not limited to Elton, but rather to a wide swath of the cast.  If you go hoping to find the source of the inspiration to songs such as Saturday Night’s Alright,  or Your Song, then you will be disappointed. This is much closer to a movie such as The Sound of Musicthan Bohemian Rhapsody.

t is very meta but also a wonderful tool using the music of Elton John to explore what it felt like to be Elton John. Taron Egerton plays adult Elton john and his performance is one that gut punched me. There are moments where with a single expression Taron fully involved me in Elton’s pain and torment as he struggled with his life, his music, and his identity. His acting is open, accessible, and raw, a very far cry from the performance I witnessed in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Jamie bell plays Elton’s long time collaborator and lyricist Bernie Taupin and together they give us a rare thing in today’s major motion picture, a deep, very emotional, and very real relationship between two men that isn’t built upon sex. Of course the movie explore Elton’s journey into his sexuality but the core dramatic issue if John’s battles with drugs and alcohol. In addition to using the famous tunes as entry points into the psyche of the characters the film also using the unreality of the medium to give visual poetry to their inner lives. In the trailers you can see people literally floating off the ground as they are lifted by his performance but the fantasy aspect run much deeper than that demonstration but rather the movie often becomes much more interpretive than descriptive and frankly this works much better than a simple linear narrative. When the movie ended I felt as if I had shared in the emotional truth of the character’s life though I doubt I learned anything of an actual factual nature. This is not a documentary with musical interludes but rather emotional exploration via images and music in search of tone, a feeling, which hopes to capture an essence that reflects Elton John. It is well worth seeing.

 

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The Worst Film Noir by the Worst Director

While exploring the content on some of the Roku streaming channels dedicated to Film Noir  I discovered what is possibly the worst Noir ever produced, Jail Bait  directed by what many consider to be the worst director of all time, the auteur responsible for Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Edward Wood Jr. Full spoilers follow.

Jail Bait(1954) has the elements of a film noir but like mayonnaise left in the summer sun it has gone quit bad. Don Gregor is the son of a wealthy, world-famous, Plastic Surgeon (This will be important later, putting Ed Wood ahead of Benioff and Weiss in understanding Chekov’s Gun.)  but Don, for *reasons* likes to carry pistols and hang around cheap hoodlums. At the movie’s opening Don’s sister Marilyn, played by Ed Wood’s girlfriend Dolores Fuller, bails Don out of jail after the police arrest him for carrying a revolver. After getting home and wasting time with stilted exposition laden dialog Don quickly takes his father pistol from its hiding space inside a book and leaves to hang out with his hoodlum friend, Vic Brady. Vic drags Don into a robbery of a theater that of course goes badly and end up with a retired cop dead and a woman shot. But it did net them 23,000 dollars which is over 200,000 dollars adjusted for inflation, so that theater must have been showing Avengers: Endgame. Within hours the radio’s exposition specific station is now broadcasting the news of the robbery, along with Don’s and Vic’s names and identities, here is where we learn that Don’s father is a ‘world famous’ plastic surgeon, but the reports even positively identify Don as the gun man who murdered the retired cop. Don goes back to his father, confesses to the crime and Dr. Gregor extracts a promise from Don to turn himself over to the police later, it has to be later for *reasons*. The police arrive and Don scoots out the back way. The police seem to know everything except the location of the back door but because Dr. Gregor is such a great upstanding citizen they don’t press him on anything. By the way the junior police lieutenant is played by legendary muscle man Steve Reeves but I doubt this is the movie Frank-N-Furter had in mind when he suggested an ‘old Steve Reeves movie’ in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Any who Vic nabs Don coming out of Dr. Gregor’s officer and forces him back to Vic’s hideout where Vic’s girl Loretta is waiting. There more tedious dialog and to shut him up Vic kills Don. To escape the law, Vic decides that he needs a new face because apparently only the face is used to identify people as fingerprints an apparently lost tech in this alternate 1954.  Threatening to kill Don, who is of course already dead, Vic forces Dr. Gregor is perform surgery and give him a new face. Ed Wood apparently could not afford a hospital set in his budget, nor an operating room staff, so the doctor performs this major reconstructive surgery assisted by his daughter and with Vic chloroformed on a living room sofa. Now before the doctor could perform this living room plastic surgery he needed a basin of hot water, apparently facial reconstruction and delivering babies have the same equipment requirements, and while searching for a basin in Vic’s kitchen he discovers Don’s *standing* dead body. Dr. Gregor completes the surgery and advises Loretta that Vic must come to him in weeks when the healing will be complete. The two weeks pass and the police are baffled how two people can just vanish as they have found neither Vic nor Don and that just seems impossible. They get a call from Dr. Gregor and leave to get to his house. Vic and Loretta get the doctor’s house and before the bandages are removed the police bust in. Vic is smug and confident that he’s in no danger, assuring the police he is not the man that they are searching for. The bandages come off and Vic is revealed to have Don’s face. The police go to arrest ‘Don’ and there’s a gun fight which ends with Vic/Don dead face down in the house’s pool, a vision shameless stolen, poorly from Sunset Boulevard.

For those of you who have seen Ed Wood’s magnum opus Plan 9 From Outer Space you may have considered that the man had little talent as a filmmaker but I assure you that Ed’s skills had matured by the time he produced, wrote, and directed Plan 9. Jail Bait,and despite the poster the title has nothing to do with the women of the film, in addition to a most laughable surgical scene posses the dullest car chase ever committed to celluloid. Many noirs  have a nightclub scenes where the romantic interest of the protagonist performs some sultry song and while Jail Bait  has a night club scene in the middle of the movie it involves none of the characters, has no torch singer in a slinky dress but instead presents that most offensive of all club acts an honest to god white man in blackface minstrel show. So this move is not just bad, it’s deeply racist and has been, until the advent of streaming and YouTube, justifiably forgotten.

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Movie Review: Brightburn

Sunday morning I ventured alone to see the new film Brightburn  as this movie held little interest for my lovely sweetie-wife. The one line description of this feature is ‘The Superman origin story done as a horror film.’

This is a modestly budgeted movie, R-rated for horror, graphic violence and imagery that succeeds on its own terms. Produced by James Gun who is best known widely for the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy  franchise inside the massive machine that is the MCU, though for those of us more familiar with his body work Brightburn  represents a return to the genre where we first discovered his unique vision, horror. Brightburnis also a family affair with Gunn’s brother Brain and cousin Mark writing the screenplay while David Yarovesky directed.

Elizabeth Banks and David Denman star as Torie and Kyle Breyer a loving couple living on an farm in the middle of Kansas struggling with infertility and desperate for a child when a spaceship, more of a pod than a ship, crashes on their property its sole occupant a infant boy. Passing the child off as one that they had adopted Torie and Kyle raise the boy they named Brandon as their own. When Brandon reaches the edge of adolescence his begins to manifest powers and abilities  unlike anything found in nature and the Breyer’s suddenly have to confront the reality behind their fairytale of adoption.

Brightburn  knows what it wants to achieve wastes very little screen time with subplots or extraneous stories focusing on its core theme, what if someone with fantastic powers was simply evil? Jackson A Dunn who plays Brandon caries off the role with a subtle and creepy performs managing to convey menace with only body posture and his expression. David Denman is perfectly adequate as Kyle but the real star of the movie is Elizabeth Banks as Torie, she walks that line portraying a mother who loves her son, does not want to believe the worst is true, and yet has the strength in the end to face reality.

The production design on the film is outstanding. Normally when someone is aware of the production design it is because it captures some sort of beauty, usually an unaffordable one to the audience or an unearthly one such as in Thor: Ragnarok  but neither case applied to Brightburn. The Breyer’s home reflect a reality I recognize, despite having inherited a sizable farm with a large home they are not people of wealth, not even solidly middle class but rather they exist towards the lower end of the middle class. Too often in Hollywood productions this is either made to look much richer than the characters are, with stylish furnishings and art works, or it is made to appear cheap and trashy, but Brightburn  avoids both extremes, presenting a realistic home, one I recognize from my own life.

The violence and injuries in this movie are graphic fully earning the R Rating from MPAA. This movie may not be suitable for younger audiences, certainly children should not see this movie, the themes of vengeance and parents turning against their children in addition to the bloody scenes are too intense for most children, for younger teenagers, depending on their level of maturity, caution should be exercised. Over all I enjoyed this movie and for anyone who is a fan of horror this should be on their list of movies to see.

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Movie Review: Aladdin (2019)

Disney continues their adaptations of classic animated feature into live actions productions with Aladdin from 1992 now exploding across silver screen as a ‘bollywood’ inspired musical staring Will Smith and a cast of new faces. I am a major fan of the original animated Aladdin, I was blown away in the theater, grabbed the soundtrack at once, added to that with an album from Lea Salonga who provided Princess Jasmine’s singing voice, and of course the DVD. To give the 2019 feature a fair shake I did my best to set aside expectation and memories, judging the film on its own merits but the very nature of the movie and its production history makes that nearly impossible.

Perhaps the most famous stand out element of Aladdin 1992 is Robin Williams’ memorable vocal performance as the fantastic Genie but critical to that character and its integration is that fact that writers from the very start envision Williams performing the part and when he signed to do that molded more of the script as well as allowing serious latitude in Williams famous propensity for going off-script, something that became a seri9ous challenge for the animators. The match of concept to performer is a large part of the alchemy of film production. Will Smith in Aladdin 2019 has been hampered by the fact that not only will his performance be compared to Williams but that too much of the original Genie character remains in the script, forcing Smith to perform a character that was designed for a singular performer. At times this is a great weight holding back Smith from his own winning charm and screen charisma and at other points in the film he’s given a character more tuned to his performance and there he soars but the see-sawing between the two styles hurts the overall production and is unfair the Smith.

Sadly the other weight dragging down this movie is Mena Massoud as titular character Aladdin. let me clear it is not because Massoud is a bad actor or even a bad singer, were he paired with actors and singer of a comparable quality I doubt I would have seen him as a fault in this movie but caught between Will Smith and Naomi Scott his performance suffers. Naomi Scott is the break out actor of this movie. She is compelling, convincing, and her vocal talents as a singer are on a par with Lea Salonga’s iconic and mesmerizing voice. She commands the scenes she appears in, delivers dialog that at time is written flat with a realized character’s voice, and project a charisma that filled the theater, compared to her quite a few actors would have been found wanting.

Aside from those hard to ignore elements Aladdin 2019 over all is a decent film. Not one that I loved but certainly an enjoyable evening at the movies. The major beats and story elements remain unchanged, though a few have been given a twist. Jasmine now instead of existing solely as a prize has her own goals and gifts beyond wanting select her own husband and the reason for her isolation in the palace is more fully developed as part of her back-story. Jafar is given a little more to want but frankly it wasn’t quit enough and I think another writing pass on this character, just a few lines here and there, would have done wonders for fleshing him out. The CGI animation is spot on and the CGI tiger and monkey are amazing. A new subplot has been added concerning the new character of Dalia, Jasmine’s hand maiden, but essentially this is the same story but expanded and now with impressive effects. Aladdin  2019 is worth seeing at least once but it is unlikely to find a home in my video library.

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And Now Our Watch Has Ended

Spoilers Follow

So, Game of Thrones, that cultural moment when so many joined the geek community and discussed dragon, zombies, magic, and noble houses has reached it conclusion and many are left — well not the way that they thought they would be left.

As a viewer/consumer of the series I have feelings and as a writer I have feelings and those two identities don’t always agree on how things need to go down. I started the series about the time it began airing. A friend brought over a recording of the pilot episode and I was intrigued but certainly not completely sold and for the first few season that’s how it went. He would record bring over a disc and my sweetie-wife and I would enjoy, once HBO Now launched we got our own subscription stayed up to date on our own.

Over all I enjoyed the series, the shocking turns with Eddard’s Stark’s demise, followed by the Red Wedding, and a rich tapestry of political and social forces that constrained the character made for compelling storylines. (Side note: I speak only of the series, I never read any of the books. In general I read more SF than fantasy.) However once the show outpaced the novels the stories seemed simplified. Great houses fell and the positions seemed vacant, prizes to be awarded without any pesky ‘Bannermen’ seeing their shot and moving in for an increase in station. Winterfell seemed to burn down and rebuild with alarming speed and the vast distance that occupied entire episodes compressed to ‘down the block’ trips. Ravens carried news with the speed of the Internet and rescue missions from Dragon Stone to beyond the wall hardly earned a mention. Now we have come to the end, the final resolution to all this blood, fire, toil, and death and how do we feel?

Eh.

It was okay but hardly a great ending. For me endings are very special things, it is often in the ending that I feel we see the real point of the story Personally I cannot write a short story or novel unless I know how it ends, that is my north star, the reason for setting out on the journey to begin with and what did we end up with at the end of GoT? A decent person sits on the Throne, but that itself a somewhat inconsistent characterization. A season ago Bran was so disconnected from the rest of humanity he was unable to see the emotional trauma he left in his wake, dismissing people who had borne great sacrifices without even a thank you and now he’s a wise and compassionate rule? This is an ending that has been hammered into place and not one that grew organically from the characters and the theme. I never fell into the Daenerys is a hero camp. She never actually seemed to care about the people she ‘liberated’ and instead they only seemed to server her ego and inflating her reputation as a breaker of chains when in actuality she simply broke and re-forged them to herself. Her cruelty laid the groundwork for her eventual turn, but as with the vast distances of Westeros it was compressed beyond any sensible recognition. Arya I liked much more but in the end her story was also cut short and badly constructed. Her deep motivation was seeming abandoned by one ‘special episode’ chat and that broke with season of suffering and drive that had brought her to this place and time. It could have worked had they taken a little more time and performed the emotional transformation as a consequence of the final battle at Winterfell when Arya truly seemed to meet the god of Death and learned that when we say ‘not today’ we mean not just for ourselves but for those we do not kill today. She then could have left Cersi to others ready to find something other than death to live for. Jon’s ending seemed under paid. If Daenerys was the love his life and yet his duty compelled him to kill her he needed to pay a far higher cost than exile. Peter Sagal, host of NR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, had an alternative ending for Jon that worked wonderfully. Basically after killing his love Jon would sit on the throne and order Drogon to melt it and kill him. Sansa had the best and most character arc satisfying ending, she learned from everyone who tormented her and became a powerful figure of the north.

Still, I have seen worse endings and overall I enjoyed the ride but I will view D & D future project with some suspicion as it seems clear that best elements of the show came from Martin and not their minds.

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More Thoughts on Noir

Recently I have been re-reading my SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge  in anticipation of editor’s notes as we proceed towards our early 2020 publication date and, along with watching classic noirson streaming while reading some of the classic works in their original forms, I have been thinking about the nature of the genre and what really makes up this beloved form.

In previous posts I have discussed how one of the principal driving factor of noiris to me is how characters are consumed by their appetites and I still hold that this is an essential elements in noir  fiction, be it film or literature, but I am now thinking there is an additional element, beyond the stylized ones, that feels central to the genre and that is the conflict between the character and their culture.

In noir  fiction characters are often immoral and that immorality is judged against the larger culture that character comes from.  Murder, theft, and unsanctioned sexual activity are the hallmarks of noir  movies and from the classic period running through the 1940s and 1950s acting on these desires places a person firmly beyond the boundaries of ‘polite society.’ Even when the heroes of noir fiction aren’t murderous insurance salesmen but rather the hard-bitten border-line alcoholic private detective they still transgress far beyond anything accept my society at large. Sam Spade before being entangled in a hunt for the ‘black bird’ and temptation of great wealth it represents is betraying both his partner and societies morals by his affair with Archer’s wife. Time and time again the main characters in noir  reject society’s conformity, sometimes they do so with an internal code such as Spade or Jeff Bailey in Out of the Past  or in other instances they simply violate society’s rules out of greed and lust such as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.

All of this prompts the idea, that I am sure is far from original with myself, that a close reading of noir, either in a film or prose piece, can also been seen as a commentary on the society surrounding those characters. This is doubly so when the noiris combine with another genre such as fantasy or science fiction where the society is likely to be as fictional as the protagonists leveling an additional responsibility on the creator to be detailed and thoughtful about their narrative and what it says about human nature both at the individual and societal levels.

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And Now My Birthday Has Ended

Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. I started the day by driving to court and reporting for jury duty. I have often been summoned to jury duty but I have never served. As a writer I think it would be good and as a citizen I think it is my duty to do such service but alas it seems for the most part lawyers do not like the look of me. Yesterday it was not the lawyers but rather the lack of courtrooms. There was but one available for trail and so after they called a single jury pool away the rest of us were dismissed. Because so much of the day remained the rule for my day-job compelled me to report to work. So my birthday was split between a jury lounge and my cubical, surprisingly this was not the dullest birthday I have experienced.

In 1981 I was enlisted in the United States Navy and served my one and only Western Pacific Deployment, or WestPac. On my birthday we were no floating about the middle of the ocean, no for that special day we had found a spot even more boring than endless sea, Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its strategic location makes it perfect as a base for long rang aircraft and there is a tiny tiny US Naval station there. Personnel who volunteer for duty at Diego Garcia, at least when I was in the service, have that duty count as sea duty, and one year is credited as two. You see, unlike other Naval Stations around the world, there is nothing at Diego Garcia. No native population, no city or town, just the military men and women on a sliver of land with a lagoon that often hosts sharks. Going ashore there, and even with nothing you still go ashore when you can, I watched a shark come out of the water to get a flying fish. The big entertainment on my birthday there was sitting on a beach watching my friend Dean Amick, and it was his birthday as well, struggle trying to work out how to split a coconut open. Ahh, good times.

So you see yesterday, in comparison, wasn’t bad at all. Not to mention I now have a nifty blu-ray stuffed with bonus material for the British horror film, Night of the Demon, one of the many films referenced in the opening song to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

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Avengers: Endgame – The Second Viewing

Because I had a routine eye exam slated for Tuesday it made sense to take a day off from the day-job and that allowed me to go se a later night showing of Avengers: Endgame.

The movie works just as well on a second viewing as it did on my first. Though I did have a free large soda and popcorn, due to this being my birthday month and that’s an additional perk from the AMC A-List subscription, I still did not leave the sheening for a restroom break.

The timing of the screenings Monday night meant I attended a 3-D showing of the movie. While the 3-d effect was for the most part well done it was not effective. The Russo brothers shot the film for 2D and nothing in the framing or shot set-ups made the 3D effect any more important to the narrative. As it was shot on 2D that also means that the 3D version is a retro scan created by digital means and while it did not suffer from the sort of glaring errors other movies had presented, yes I am looking at you Clash of the Titans where an actors hair was in a different focal plane than the actor, not all of the 3D shot in Endgamewere flawless. In a number of shots actors in deeper focal planes looked as though they had been composted into the scene. There is absolutely no need to see this film in 3D.

Overall though I had a great time, even if I did get back home around one a.m.

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Sunday Shudder: The Car

For my Sunday night movie I decided to take a chance on one of those bizarro horror movies from the 1970s, The Car.Now if you did not know the 1970s were a very odd time for Hollywood and the global film industry. Between the collapse of the classic studios system but before the rise of the mega-corporation analytic and franchise driven system of today there existed a brief window where personal auteur driven films were produced such classics as American Graffiti, The God Father,and Taxi Driver  all hail from this unique era of motion picture production. After the success of Rosemary’s Babyand The Exorcist  the public also seemed tohave developed a taste for demon and evil oriented horror. So in 1977, the same year as Star Warsand two years following Jaws, the film that created the summer blockbuster, Americans were treated to the unique cinematic experience that is The Car.

Set in a remote small town/county in Utah The Caris the story of Wade, a sheriff’s deputy, divorced dad, and general all around good guy dealing with the mysterious murderous motorcar rampaging along the deserted desert roadways. The car, a black two door without any branding, no doubt no automobile manufacturer wished to be associated with such implied carnage, spends the moving mowing down random cyclists, hitchhikers, and lawmen. The film has a number of subplots, Luke the deputy with a drinking problem, Amos the despised abusive husband and general contractor, the old flame relationship between the county sheriff and Amos’ suffering spouse, but none of these are brought to any sort of resolution and as ‘color’ they fail to bring the story any sense of verisimilitude. The car itself looks fantastic, its lack of trademarks or hood emblems, along with the missing door handled gives it a sinister outline that suggests something not crafted by nor intended for human hands. The sequences of roadway violence of tame, even by the standard of late 70s film production and so the film is almost entirely bloodless, perhaps a major detraction to todays audiences. The cast gamely tried to play the scenes and the outlandish plot straight but hampered by a script that is neither bad enough to be enjoyable as a guilty pleasure not skilled enough to generate characters of depth the movie languishes in the mediocre middle ground that will reduced in audience’s memories to a few scenes and set-piece gags.

Most horror films fall into one of two broad categories, an evil with agency and therefore motivation, goals that the evil needs to achieve and ones where the evil represents a random, chaotic, and ultimately nihilistic universe. The Car  could not settle on either and thematically ended up as a muddled mess. The demonic car possessed enough agency to hold grudges and make plans, and yet there was no goal, no explanation for why this evil emerged on this rural community.

Over all the film was perfectly fine for a late Sunday night movie but not worthy of repeat viewings.

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Stupidity at WinterFell

Do Not Read if you haven’t seen episode 3, The Long Night, from season 8 of Game of Thrones.

The big battle for Winterfell between the living and the dead is over and all I can say is that on both side the commanders had no clue how to deploy and utilize their forces and the results are purely the invention of writers with no appreciation for military science. The episode had lots and lots of lovely actions, character scenes, and moments meant to inspire but the grad shape of things were horrid and damaging to any conception of our heroes as capable leaders.

The Dothraki are light cavalry and not the sort o force you send headlong into an enemy formation. (That would be heavy cavalry, you know knight in shinning armor and so on.) Their slaughter was wasteful and could only be ordered by a leader who cared nothing for the lives under their command. Positioning a massive infantry force *outside* of the castles walls to meet a much larger force is foolish, almost but not quite, as stupid as sending your light cavalry in a frontal assault. The whole point of the fortification is that you stay behind the high walls and rain death down on those poor bastards who have to climb them to get to you, particularly if you are outnumbered. If you have something in your possession that the enemy needs to claim victory, a crown, a location, a young man who speaks in mysterious phrases, you do not place your most powerful forces distant from the enemy’s objective. At night. With no method of communication between the prize and those forces.

So how should have the defenders of WinterFell have set out their battle plans?

One: The trenches of fire was a great idea, more of those so you can create ‘kill boxes’ to trap enemy forces that can be burned down by dragons or catapult fire. Concentric rings surrounding Winterfell that would break up the enemy forces. All infantry should be inside the castle defending it from the walls keeping the dead out. It helps that the dead do no have siege engines and towers. The Dothraki out on the wings of the battlefield, armed with dragon-glass arrows. Not to attack the main body of the enemy forces, but to exploit with their fast movement any opportunity to take enemy sub-commanders, the white walkers, and neutralize much larger factions of the dead that way. The two dragons stay close to Winterfell and victory conditions, Bran. They supply close air support burning the army of the dead as the fire trenches trap them. They stay together so that if countered by the enemy dragon they have a 2 to 1 advantage.

So how would all this go wrong for the heroes creating a mood that they are going to lose?

First off the fire trenches have a more limited utility, as the dead are willing to create those corpse bridges allowing more of the enemy to reach the walls. Next, the Night King uses his air power to strafe the battlements, forcing the two dragons riders near Bran to abandon their positions, opening Bran for assault by white walkers. Once the Night King has drawn off the dragon riders and sent the best warrior scrambling for the Gods Wood to defend Bran he circles back and uses his air power to lift and drop troops behind the wall. They’re dead can be deployed in a manner no living person can use. Just drop from as you swoop over the interior court. The white walkers ‘retreat’ from Bran, drawing out fighters armed with the magic steel that can kill them leaving bran with only a token defending force. Air combat can give you the same results of separating the dragon riders as the episode did. Now the night king uses his dragon to breach the walls, as he did The Wall, sending massive forces into Winterfell. Jon is forced to defend the interior court, seeking the night king, but get bottled up by forces there, leaving the night king free to move against Bran leaving our favorite girl to win the day.

See, it didn’t have to be stupid.

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