Falling Angels and Burning Bright

Saw John Wick the other day. Lots of action, interesting characters, with yet again a lot of John Wick's history and background exposed by how he is treated by the people he meets, including the surreal experience of a fanboy out to kill him.

If you liked the first two, go see it. Men of the West has an interesting, spoiler filled take on it and the relationships between boomers, gen-X, and millenials, after their initial teaser setting up the premise.

In short, go see it.

So, instead, I'm here to talk about my ipression of a few trailers I saw. Namely, Brightburn, Angel has Fallen, and Midsommar. Oh, and I won't bother discussing a sequel to the most recent It movie, that looks disturbing, and as much so about the minds behind it as the visuals. Looks to be the usual Stephen-King inspired dreck, depravity, and nihilism.

First, let's talk Brightburn.

It's a horror movie about a kid based on the premise of "what if Superman were evil?"

I'm not surprised it comes from James Gunn, but yeah, it looks like another unoriginal attempt by Hollywood to tear down our icons. Why? They could have made up their own supervillain, but no, they had to explicitly model it on not only Superman, but the iconic DC heroes in general, where every single one of them mentioned is an angry dark-world version of the hero (specifically Aquaman and Wonder Woman, off the top of my head).

In Angel has Fallen, Gerard has been blamed for yet another assassination attempt on Morgan Freeman and must break out to protect him from the FBI and rogue government elements.....

Wait, what? The government apparently after its own president?

I'm sure it will be white supremacists or something this time, instead of North Koreans or something else.

So, Midsommar. From Rotten Tomatoes:

Dani and Christian are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that render the pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing. From the visionary mind of Ari Aster comes a dread-soaked cinematic fairytale where a world of darkness unfolds in broad daylight.

Looking at the trailer, the meta-message appears to be traditionalism from whites has evil underlying it.

Yes, I know, mining pagan rituals for horror is an old thing, and of course the evil in such cases must appear at least intriguing and somewhat wholesome, but the trailer is a bit heavy handed.