Teen Wolf 101: An introduction to the eighth wonder of our world.

Anyone who follows me on Tumblr will know that the past month of my life has been a rapid downward spiral into Teen Wolf obsession. Circa June 2012, I was still innocent of the wonders of Teen Wolf; completely unaware that it is the Shakespeare of our era/Twilight for people who enjoy emotions that make sense/set in a beautiful alternate universe where homophobia doesn't exist. My life was empty and barren, a tragic wasteland wherein I laboured under the assumption that Teen Wolf was a mediocre MTV show populated by a cast of bad actors with great hair. The real honest true truth is that every actor in Teen Wolf has brilliant comic timing (in addition to, yes, great hair), and one of the main characters is played by a guy who, despite having zero previous acting experience, is so talented his that his very presence onscreen is like an icecream scoop directly out of my heart. One day he will be showered with Oscars and Emmys and adoring fanmail from around the world, but in the meantime he'll have to make do with people like me reblogging 40,000 gifs of his face every day. This actor is Dylan O'Brien. He plays Stiles.

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If you watch Teen Wolf, you love Stiles. If you don't watch Teen Wolf, you are merely living through a brief period of confusion prior to the inevitability of falling in love with Stiles.

An accurate illustration of Teen Wolf fans & their attitude towards Stiles. (source)

I won't even attempt to write about the events of Teen Wolf in their entirety, partly because it's impossible to summarise a show that amounts to the distilled essence of perfection, and partly because that would take about 50,000 words. Because I'm a really good-hearted person, though, I will provide a brief 10-point guide to the defining points of Teen Wolf as it stands as the cultural touchstone of my generation.

(N.B. This post contains no direct spoilers for recent eps but since I'm writing it midway through season 2, you can assume that it's not suitable for people who are intensely invested in the idea of watching the series ~completely pure~. I've posted links to sources for all gifs, but if you made one of them and would prefer different crediting or for me to remove it from this page, just comment.) 

1. Scott McCall, the main character, is a moron. Bitten by a werewolf in episode 1, he proceeds to get into trouble and stupidly ignore Stiles' advice on a regular basis. He is played by Tyler Posey who, when asked about Scott's "black and white" attitude to loyalty, replied, "Scott's Mexican, I think." There is no such thing as a non-awesome interview with a member of the Teen Wolf cast.

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In real life, Tyler Posey and Dylan O'Brien live together. If you want to see a video of Tyler Posey answering fan questions while Dylan O'Brien cooks dinner and lays the table in the background, then this is your lucky day because that is a thing that exists in real life.

2. Stiles is beautiful like a timelapse video of a blossoming flower, and is the best mother any young wolf could possibly hope for.

A painting. (copyright rubdown.) (source)

Stiles is the emotional heart of the show. His mother died a few years ago, and now he lives with his father, the sheriff. Stiles' relationship with his father is a source of unending delight because they're so funny together (Stiles is Veronica Mars!!) but occasionally super upsetting as well because Stiles is the only person in the show who has a mature, functioning relationship with a parent but still has to lie to his dad almost every day. The worst thing is that since Stiles' dad is the sheriff, he knows that Stiles is involved in something dangerous but can't work out what it is because "werewolf gang-war" is kind of hard to deduce from the information given. 

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Aside from "every single moment of Teen Wolf", the best moments in this show are the moments when Dylan O'Brien is onscreen, doing anything whatsoever. His face is a painting and his comic timing is perfect and his pratfall abilities are on a par with Hugh Laurie's. The thing about Stiles is that you first get sucked in by Dylan O'Brien's dorky charm and ability to fling his whole body into his comedy scenes, but after a few episodes you begin to realise that not only is he the best actor in the cast, Stiles is basically the most lovable character ever. Stiles is the planner, the strategic thinker, the researcher.... basically, he's the Hermione Granger of the show. He's the Hermione and the Willow Rosenberg and the Giles.

3. Derek Hale is a lonesome werewolf whose main hobbies are shirtlessness and being sad because his family were viciously murdered by an anti-werewolf racist "hunter". He has a lot of emotions but sometimes they take a long time to float to the surface via the murky depths of his damaged psyche because he is so deep and dark like a well full of sadness and anger and abdominal muscles. (This is the reason why there are some episodes where he doesn't have any facial expressions.) Derek Hale is a CGI creation who was originally designed for videogame cut scenes but was deemed too distracting because he's so attractive.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

This is the one gif in existence wherein Derek Hale smiles. This is the complete opposite of the actor who plays him, Tyler Hoechlin, who smiles all the time and is an adorable furball who records adorable Teen Wolf adverts with Dylan O'Brien:

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4. The Argents are a family of werewolf hunters, headed up by the intensely terrifying Gerard Argent, who is played by Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. Allison Argent is our primary view into the family, a fresh-faced teenager (played by an extremely fresh-faced 27-year-old) who, at the beginning of the series, has no idea that her family are professional werewolf hunters. Because Teen Wolf is fraught with fraughtness, Allison is in a relationship with werewolf Scott McCall. It's all terribly Romeo & Juliet.

Allison's parents are Victoria and Chris Argent. Victoria Argent is the polar opposite of Stiles because she's the worst mother of all time + a werewolf racist + hates everyone. She looks like a cross between Cruella DeVille and a velociraptor, and her greatest wish is to put Scott into a meat-grinder. Chris Argent is marginally less unhinged and is possibly being set up for some kind of role-reversal because unlike his father, wife, or sister Kate Argent (who is extra unhinged and thinks torturing people is fun), he follows a hunter code that only allows him to kill werewolves who are a) adults, and b) murderers. Important Teen Wolf factoid: According to Tyler Posey, the actor who plays Chris Argent has extremely soft facial hair that he, Tyler, enjoys to touch and stroke. Remember what I said about there being no such thing as a non-awesome Teen Wolf cast interview? Yes.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

5. Lydia is a lady and a genius and a role-model, but her life is a continuous river of tears and awfulness because she's preyed upon by the Tom Riddle of undead evil werewolves, plus none of her friends have explained to her what's going on re: the existence of Actual Real-Life Werewolves. She's the "popular girl" and Stiles is tragically infatuated with her because in addition to being stunningly beautiful, she's a math and science genius. Every instant of Stiles hopelessly crushing on Lydia is a moment that stabs an icicle directly into my heart and sends tiny ice-particles through my veins to travel around my body and eventually turn me into Mr Freeze.

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6. Jackson is the last of the primary teenager-aged main characters (although he is played by a 24-year-old), and is the Draco Malfoy to Scott's Harry Potter because he's rich, malicious, and obsessed with being better than Scott at quidditch lacrosse. Aside from the fact that he looks exactly like an Abercrombie & Fitch model, Jackson is a black hole when it comes to redeeming features. He is a rage-douche and a lizard, and unlike with Lydia almost everything bad that happens to him is 100% due to his own hubris. He desperately wanted to become a werewolf so he could be better at lacrosse (Everyone in Teen Wolf is obsessed with lacrosse. Don't question it.) but instead of becoming a werewolf he began to grow an Evil Manicure that drips paralytic poison and led to his eventual Pokemon evolution of transforming into a giant lizard.

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In season 1, Jackson had three settings: Shirtless, Ragedouche, and Being A Dick. In season 2 a fourth category was added: Lizard. His favourite things are ruining Scott's life and playing lacrosse by himself at night because he's angry about how hard it is to be a super-hot millionaire teenager who is only co-captain of the lacrosse team instead of just captain. He's played by Colton Haynes, who is second only to Holland Roden (Lydia) for most ridiculous Hollywood stagename in the Teen Wolf cast roster of ridiculous Hollywood stagenames. Colton Haynes was almost cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies (just as Tyler Posey was almost cast as Jacob Black; Teen Wolf is full of Twilight rejects), but was thrown over for Robert Pattinson, possibly because when you google him you find pictures of him making out with other dudes. He is a sassy Ken Doll and likes to take ridiculous photos with Holland Roden and cries when he listens to Adele.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

7. Aside from his near-supernatural ability to be unintentionally hilarious while shouting at people, the best thing about Jackson is his best friend Danny. Danny is sensible and wry and generally delightful, as well as being the least convincing teenager in the entire show. He's also the only character whose life isn't an unending series of disasters and melodrama, because he purposefully remains ignorant of the whole werewolves/murder/peril thing about which Stiles, Scott, Allison and Jackson are so obsessed.

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Danny isn't really a main character but his role is representative of one of my favourite aspects of Teen Wolf: the showrunners' attitude towards the inclusion of LGBT characters. LGBT people are ridiculously unrepresented on TV, and although we're now getting past the point where all such characters are stereotypes, most of their storylines still centre around "issues" episodes and/or LGBT themed storylines like coming out or dealing with homophobia. But Teen Wolf? Exists in an alternate universe where homophobia has pretty much been eradicated. Really the only problem I have with Teen Wolf in this regard is that I'd like there to be a couple more female characters next season.

Teen Wolf is the only show I have ever seen that contains "gay jokes" that don't revolve around gay panic and/or internalised homophobia. The sports coach -- stereotypically one of the last bastions of 1950s-style homophobia and masculinit -- tries to fix Scott up with a guy in one of the several scenes that strongly imply that characters in the Teen Wolf universe don't expect each other to be "straight until proven otherwise" but are open-minded to a degree that rarely exists in real life. With regards to the treatment of gay characters, Teen Wolf seems to me like a new breed of TV show, the next step on from LGBT themed series like Queer As Folk and shows like Torchwood that contain a lot of queer themes but are still riddled with "issues episodes" and homophobia-based conflict. Obviously this wouldn't work for every show, but for a lighthearted comedy-drama show like Teen Wolf it's ideal.

gif from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

8. The wolf pack. Isaac, Boyd and Erica only show up in season 2, so this section is slightly more spoilery than the rest of the post. Derek bites them because he wants a pack of his own to help fight the growing numbers of hunters coming to town, which turns out to be a terrible decision because Derek put precisely zero thought into who he should bite. Prior to The Bite, Isaac and Erica are alienated and afraid, but because Derek told them that being a werewolf would make them powerful, The Bite has the placebo effect of making them take on the characteristics of that which they think is most empowering. So Isaac goes from being an awkward, frightened abuse-survivor to being an assholish highschool burnout, and Erica goes from being an antisocial outcast to being a sexxxy vamp who shows up to school wearing a leather bustier and tries to control boys with the power of her cleavage. According to Isaac and Erica, the primary symptoms of becoming a werewolf are to start wearing a lot of black leather all the time, and to act real sassy.

SERIOUSLY. THEY LOOK LIKE THIS.

Derek's pack is a complete fiasco because Derek is too busy brooding to competently teach his kids how to function as werewolves. It turns out that the best way to form a loyal band of followers is not to recruit emotionally damaged teenagers whose main goal in life is to be popular. Who knew? (Stiles, probably.) Derek may look like he was carved out of granite to the specifications of a romance novelist (TYLER HOECHLIN FOR CHRISTIAN GRAY!!) but he's kind of a Zoolander when it comes to leadership skills and forward planning.

Boyd is the third of Derek's puppies, and if there's any justice in the world he'll end up being Derek's second in command. Part of the reason why Isaac and Erica are so terrible at werewolfing is because Derek never gave them a "The strength of the wolf is the pack; The strength of the pack is the wolf," pep-talk, but Boyd is smart enough to infer this for himself. He actually seems to have a survival strategy in place, and exhibits signs of having some common sense. Maybe this is because unlike Isaac and Erica, the implication is that his everyday life requires him to far more independant.

9. Teen Wolf realism. I'm going to be referring to this a lot in future reviews, so here's a basic rundown of how reality works in Teen Wolf. At one end of the scale we have basic worldbuilding facts like the existence of werewolves and the absense of homophobia: totally fine. At the other end we have weird, laughable details that make you go "WTF" because they're so clearly not grounded in reality. For example, this week's episode -- cleverly titled "Raving" -- took place at a warehouse rave, which cost $75 to get into. $75 per ticket, for a warehouse party populated by teenagers? No. If I spent that much money to go to a party then it'd better involve trapeze artists and complimentary class-C drugs at the very least, not just a bunch of people half-heartedly dancing to Teen Wolf's ever-present soundtrack of dramatic dubstep.

A more consistent example of Teen Wolf "realism" would be the mysterious absense of city-wide panic in Beacon Hills. As of season 2, the body count in this town (plus break-ins at the school, and the mysterious "animal attacks" that regularly cause widespread property damage) is worryingly high, yet no one seems to be freaking out about it. Even Sheriff Stilinski doesn't seem as worried as he should be, considering the fact that he shows up at every crime scene and sees his son hanging out at those crime scenes as well. I can only assume that season 3 will bring some outside law-enforcement into the mix to stir up more trouble.

10. The boys' locker room. Hopefully you already have enough reasons to watch this marvel of a show, but if you need any more persuasion and are of the attracted-to-men persuasion, here's a Teen Wolf PSA for you: in addition to the show's disproportionately tiny quantity of shirts vs torsos, a truly stupendous number of scenes take place in the boys' locker room. Scenes in the boys' locker room are the "Why is Dr McCoy on the bridge of the Enterprise??" of Teen Wolf. The boys' locker room is needlessly home to so many dramatic fights and plot-points that it gets its very own rule in the Teen Wolf Drinking Game that my brother and I selflessly invented for the good of humanity.

Viewing guide: If you're still unsure about whether or not to embark upon Teen Wolf, I advise watching episodes 4 and 9 of season 1. With the basic info from this primer you don't really need to watch the first few eps, but skipping directly onto season 2 would mean missing out on too much awesomeness!

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The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2.

Previously: Henry IV Part 2.

This post is gonna be wayyyyy less in-depth than the one I wrote for Henry IV Part 1 because nothing happens in this play. I'm serious. Maybe there was some heavy editing going on or something but as far as I can tell the only things that happen in Henry IV Part 2: Electric Boogaloo are:

• Random soliloquays about how hard it is to be king.
• The world's greatest collection of Rude Mechanicals, indicating that "LOL, he's a women's tailor" is a joke that remains hilarious for 500 years.
• An extended sequence of Tom Hiddleston's oiled and gleaming torso.
• Sad Falstaff.
• The King is dead; long live the King.

"I just can't wait to be King!"

It was like one of those situations when there's a really awesome, successful movie, and then someone's like, "OK, let's get a sequel up in this joint!" except instead of writing a whole new story they just erase most of the character development from the first movie and try to do it all over again a second time. Although this time round there's little to no plot, and the supervillain was defeated at the end of the last movie so instead of a battle there's just an awful lot of tragicomedy scenes involving an old fat conman slowly sinking into gout, despair and failure along with his new collection of comedy sidekicks. I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the writing of this play, but I can easily imagine Queen Elizabeth writing to Shakespeare all, "More of this Falstaff fellow, my man! He makes one LOL!" and Shakespeare sobbing into his inkwell as he tries in vain to think up something interesting that happened to Henry V in the years leading up to his coronation.

Unlike in Part 1 when Prince Hal was front and centre as a modern coming-of-age protagonist, Part 2 saw Falstaff in the foreground as a kind of decaying Captain Jack Sparrow figure, unwillingly succumbing to his many debtors in his old age. Simon Russell Beale struck a pretty good balance between playing a sympathetic Falstaff and being outright unlikeable (the first being rather difficult and the second being all too easy), partially because the people Falstaff was taking advantage of were so damn stupid. I spent a significant chunk of this play throwing rotten turnips at Mistress Quickly's head because she just kept getting taken in by Falstaff's wafer-thin scams. I wanted to like her because I'm a Strong Female Character myself and feel a duty to the sisterhood, but sisterhood only goes so far when girlfriend is letting Falstaff eat her out of house and home again instead of letting him be sent to debtor's prison. Also, the girl who hangs out in Mistress Quickly's tavern? Why is she into Falstaff all of a sudden! He obviously has no money, he's super unappealing in every conceivable way, and just last week she was getting to make out with Golden Prince Hal himself! There's a pretty strong implication that she's at least a part-time prostitute, but that kind of just brings me back to the whole "Falstaff has no money" thing. On the whole, the person who consistently had the best reaction to Falstaff was this guy:

This kid was the Henry IV Part 2 equivalent of the hilarious reaction-shot characters we saw in Richard II. Throughout Falstaff's gradual deterioration into the realm of true awfulness, this boy was on hand to remove Falstaff's boots and pour him more wine, apparently for no pay whatsoever. (Which, come to think of it, sounds alarmingly similar to the type of internships my generation are currently suffering through en masse.) All the while he is barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes at every person around him, presumably because his keen young mind is as-yet unmarred by decades of alcoholism. I have no doubt that he'll grow up to be an excellent Calm Thou Tits character, of which this play has many. Shakespeare loves to include these guys: bit-part characters who show up to say "Are you really sure you want to murder the King?" whenever one of the protagonists is foaming at the mouth about love, kingship, patriotism, etc. Henry IV Part 2 saw the old King Henry followed hither and yon by a whole troupe of Calm Thou Tits courtiers, including Ser Jorah from Game Of Thrones. (Which was super exciting for me because whenever Ser Jorah appears onscreen in Game Of Thrones, I immediately sacrifice a gallon of tears to the gods of romance because his slavish loyalty to his Khaleesi is food for my soul.)

"Calm thou tits, my lord!"

Aside from our nameless hero, Falstaff's Boy, this was a play about distinctly unappealing people. Prince Hal's evolution from carefree adolescent to royal hero in Part 1 seems to have regressed a little in the interim, leaving him to lounge around with Poins while he waits for father to die. I feel like the Hal we see this time round comes across a lot more feckless because we've seen that he can do better, but he still goes back to his old ways of spying on Falstaff and failing to live up to his duties when his father needs him the most. He tells Poins that he's upset about his father's illness, but his younger brothers are all either by his father's side at court or busy fighting rebels while he and Poins oil each other up and giggle. When it finally comes to it, Hal's rejection of Falstaff gives every appearance of being needlessly cruel. All through the play King Henry's messengers have been hounding Falstaff down as a bad influence on Hal when he and Hal are barely even in touch any more. Falstaff is a moocher and a con-artist, but Hal really doesn't seem like someone who needs outside help to get into trouble.

If you enjoy scenes made out of pure, nail-biting frustration, look no further than Prince Hal taking the crown from his father's pillow. Look, if you're going to take the crown from your father, check to see if he's dead first! This is basic shit, dude! As it is, there's this long scene that contained what I can only imagine were some potentially enthralling emotions and soliloquays and what-have-you, but the audience are paying way more attention to the door because clearly the still-breathing king is about to burst in at any moment and demand his crown back. By the time Jeremy Irons did lurch into the room, my friends and I had all practically shouted ourselves hoarse from yelling "Take it off! Take it off!" at Prince Hal. And not in a Magic Mike way.

I have no idea if Hal's brothers have a larger role in Henry V, but this scene really made me hope that they do. Prince Hal, who up until now has spent the majority of his time getting drunk and playing pranks on people (interspersed with semi-regular bouts of navel-gazin), has rolled up to the palace to ponder the meaning of kingship in the couple of hours prior to his ailing father's demise. And then he nabs the crown before his dad's even kicked it. I realise that this is a powerful scene and that the brilliant thing about Hal is that he isn't quite ready for power, and that power changes him irrevocably, but -- what do the brothers think? Are they bitter about the fact that they've been standing by their father all this time while all Hal has to do is waltz in and claim the throne? What? Has anyone ever written a fanfic play about Prince Hal's little brothers? Is it like Game of Thrones? Enquiring minds want to know.

To no surprise whatsoever, Jeremy Irons' role was even more impressive here than in Part 1. Now close to death, his frame seems to shrink in on itself, partly helped along by the fact that he spends most of the play in ragged nightgowns rather than the more imposing robes of office he was wearing in the days before Hotspur's rebellion. Also he only appears at night, murkily lit to a grey pallor as he staggers around the throne room by himself, lonely and exhausted. Dressed in a soft, closely-fitted velvet jacket, Prince Hal looks even more lithe and youthful by comparison, and far more subdued than he was before he entered the palace. The most significant difference, though, was the lighting. The scenes we see of Henry IV's rule all seem to take place during the witching hours, with everyone's skin looking drawn and haggard in the grey-blue light. As soon as Hal is crowned, though, the throne room takes on the red-gold tones it had during Richard's reign, and Hal himself seems to glow with youth and vitality.

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Some hopes and dreams for The Dark Knight Rises.

I'm a little concerned that I'm not going to like this movie. Christopher Nolan's Batman films make great action-thrillers but they're not exactly fun. In fact, it occasionally seems like Christopher Nolan actively avoids fun. Good luck with your franchise of Serious Grown-Up Movies that attempt to legitimise a billionaire's decision to fight crime in a bat costume, dude.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But the first one came out when I was fifteen and far less critical than the hardened nerd you see before you today, and the second one is 37 hours long (that's about 30 hours of car chases, 5 hours of Christian Bale growling angrily, 1 hour of Heath Ledger, and 1 hour of "other") so I've never managed to rewatch it all the way through. There's no denying that Heath Ledger's Joker is one of the best movie psychos of all time, but my main memories of The Dark Knight are of extended sequences where cars and bits of rubble crash into each other while Christian Bale howls his manpain at the moon. So I'm kinda trepidatious when it comes to The Dark Knight Rises. Without the helpful cushion of fannish delusion (Christopher Nolan's neverending quest to tell a "serious" superhero story has resulted in some of the most sterile and humourless comicbook movies ever, which isn't exactly conducive to geeking out), I'm unlikely to ever be as enthused about TDKR as I was about the Avengers.

The thing about Christopher Nolan is that he's brilliant at making high-budget blockbuster movies that look fantastic and are intelligent enough that non-geeky "adults" can admit to watching them, but he's absolutely balls when it comes to emotions. Particularly emotions that involve women. Nolan's a big fan of the dead love-interest, and if the leading lady is still alive by the end of the movie then chances are she's still a beautiful enigma rather than an actual human person. Rachel Dawes in the first two Batman movies fulfills both of those critera, actually -- idealised by a man who barely knows her or spends any time with her and eventually killed off for the purposes of adding another brick to Bruce Wayne's tower of manpain. I'm not trying to say that Bruce Wayne shouldn't have manpain -- manpain is more or less the entire purpose and driving force of the Batman story -- but Chris Nolan has proven time and time again that while he understands how to make his protagonists cry sad tears because their girlfriends are dead, he's kind of useless when it comes to making audiences do the same thing. Even in The Dark Knight when Rachel Dawes is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal (ie, an actor several orders of magnitude more accomplished than Katie Holmes) she's little more than a collection of disappointed looks. She's no Pepper Potts. In fact, it's almost as if Bruce Wayne thinks she's his Pepper Potts when in reality she's just the proverbial Somebody That He Used To Know.

Sorry if you've got Gotye stuck in your head now.

So, what am I hoping for from TDKR? Not for it to be like The Avengers, don't worry. I'm primed to prefer the Avengers franchise because I enjoy stories about friendship and personal growth, but comparing the two is pointless because Nolan's Batman movies aren't trying to be that kind of superhero story -- they're the ultimate gritty reboot. So, judging TDKR on the grounds of it being a gritty crime thriller rather than a trad superhero movie like Spider-Man or Captain America, here's what I'm hoping it will provide:

1. A decent character for Marion Cotillard. You already know my feelings on Chris Nolan's idea of what constitutes a good female character, so first of all I'm hoping that Miranda Tate will seem like a fully realised person rather than a few lines of clunky dialogue held together with good acting. Apparently part of her role is encouraging Bruce Wayne to continue his father's legacy as a philanthropist, and I'm interested to see how Nolan handles this. In the sillier Batman adaptations of the '80s and '90s it's easy enough to swallow the fact that Bruce Wayne's solution to Gotham's crime rate is to become a costumed vigilante, but the Dark Knight trilogy's relentless pursuit of gritty realism means that Batman teeters dangerously close to the edge of the superhero-ridiculousness Uncanny Valley at all times. If he could be putting his billions to good use as a philanthropist, then why bother being Batman in the first place? The argument is that Gotham's justice system is so hopelessly corrupt that only Batman can properly deal with the city's organised crime problem, but the more the film draws attention to the fact that Bruce Wayne could be solving these problems with money instead of his fists, the more self-indulgent Batman seems as a basic concept.

2. A decent character for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I admit I'm immediately biased against John Blake because if there's anything the Dark Knight trilogy doesn't need, it's a 30-year-old white guy who starts off as an idealist before (presumably) having his spirit crushed by the horrors of grim reality. What a fresh new story to tell! He's going to have to be pretty damn awesome for me to believe it's worthwhile to create a brand new character when the Batman extended universe probably has like a zillion to choose from already. Especially since our previous look into the lower echelons of the Gotham PD was Detective Anna Ramirez, a corrupt cop who was written out at the end of The Dark Knight, removing the only substantial female side-character in the series.

3. An awesome Catwoman. Catwoman is the only superhero/villain who can get away with wearing stiletto heels all the time, but that only really works if she's something more than just a two-dimensional vamp. I like Anne Hathaway and I think Catwoman has the potential to add some much-needed playfulness to the Dark Knight franchise, but for obvious reasons I'm a little wary of Nolan's ability to write her properly. Considering the lengths he was willing to go to make the Batsuit and Batmobile as "realistic" as humanly possibly, I can't wait to find out how he legitimises Selina Kyle's decision to climb things while wearing five-inch heels and a leather catsuit.

4. Maximum possible quantity of Tom Hardy screentime. QED. 

Edited to add: Aaaand, this last point, it turns out, is far less positive than I previously thought. Someone just reminded me in comments that Bane is another instance of Chris Nolan whitewashing casting. I'm not very familiar with Batman comics canon and had forgotten about this, but apparently Bane is canonically latino despite the casting of a white actor in this role. :/

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Jean Paul Gaultier: Resort and Menswear 2013.

Previously: Jean Paul Gaultier Couture: Dandies, Decadence, and George Sand.

A Jean Paul Gaultier triple-bill! I probably should've posted these first, as an aperitif to the high-end extravagance of the Couture collection last week, but I got too excited and forgot about them.

The Menswear and Resort collections had far more in common with each other than with the Couture show, both taking inspiration from two of Gaultier's favourite design themes: sailor suits and Indian fashion.

The main thing that impressed me about this collection was that it was so recognisably Gaultier without actually including any of the things that I traditionally think of as Gaultier -- corsetry, drag, and structured eveningwear. Gaultier isn't a designer that I associate with relaxation so it's honestly a bit of a disconnect to realise that he can put out a resort collection that looks wearable, comfortable, and interesting. With most big-name designers, resort collections either turn out looking too extravagant and couture-like (ie, Alexander McQueen) or are little more than high-street clothes with a designer label.

Maybe this is a no-brainer, but I really feel like Gaultier knows how handsome works. A significant proportion of all menswear shows include at least one tux, but Gaultier's slight edge of femininity in the cinch-waisted trousers and short jacket makes his tux stand out from the crowd.

I'm not sure what to think of the turbans. In Western womenswear there's a certain tradition of headwraps and turbans dating back to old Hollywood, but it seems somehow more daring for a man to wear a turban for non-religious purposes? Obviously people wear what they wear for any number of reasons, but I'm pretty sure that Gaultier's inspiration for this collection was explicitly Sikh. Maybe I'm just overly touchy about these things but when clothes have some religious connotation it always makes me a little uncomfortable when they get repurposed as "fashion".

I think these are... kilt shorts? Which sound kinda terrible on paper but turn out to look awesome. Instead of the flat front of a kilt, they split into shorts with a pleated skirt at the back and sailor-buttons at the front, in keeping with Gaultier's perpetual love of sailor suits.

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS OUTFIT. Black utilikilt? Awesome shoes? Gradated stripes? I wish more guys felt comfortable wearing kilts and skirt-like outfits because this is SUCH a good look.

Of course, it wouldn't be Gaultier if there wasn't a little silliness thrown in as well. When an outfit is made up of nothing but stripes, it's practically inevitable that you're going to end up looking like a mime. Or in this case, a turban-wearing sexy sailor mime. I'm sure someone can make it work.  Eugene Hutz, maybe?

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The Hollow Crown: Henry IV, Part 1.

Previously: The Hollow Crown: Richard II.

I was a little more prepared this time round because unlike with Richard II, I'd actually seen this play before. And, perhaps, Prince Hal's story is easier to follow than Richard's because he's a less ambiguous protagonist -- a character you can root for. Richard's flamboyant incompetence was entertaining to watch, but was distinctly unheroic. For all that Richard II was aesthetically pleasing, it didn't have the same gleeful excitement of Henry IV, with its clear-set coming-of-age journey for Prince Hal and its cast of crowd-pleasing comedy sidekicks. Falstaff's constant supply of old-fat-coward jokes may have been designed for an audience of 16th-century drunks, but I'm easily pleased and found him hilarious. (Possibly because I have the spirit of a 16th-century drunk.)

Tom Hiddleson as Prince Hal was, put simply, totally awesome. I'd been looking forward to this play in particular both because I love Henry IV/Henry V story, and because Tom Hiddleston was clearly such brilliant casting. And having seen it? I'm now coming to understand why Tumblr is basically a giant online shrine to Tom Hiddleston. Within about fifteen seconds of him coming onscreen I had little hearts in my eyes like an anime character, like, what was even happening. Hiddleston's Prince Hal is so charming and handsome that I'm now desperate to see him play a genuinely unappealing character. Because, you know, the only other thing I've really seen him in is his role as Loki in Thor and The Avengers, who despite being a villain is still pretty lovable. I found myself comparing the two, and the one thing that stands out between them is Hiddleston's ability to play royalty. The level of automatic, commanding entitlement both Loki and Hal display is wonderful, although they show it in very different ways.

It didn't take me long to realise: The Female Gaze is strong with this one. Seriously, the camera loves Prince Hal. And, you know, virile young men in general, most of them dressed in tight leather jerkins unlaced at the throat. In Richard II there were a lot of luxurious panning shots of Richard's gold-plated everything, but it wasn't really... affectionate? Richard was an intrinsically weak character, protected by his royal blood and riches as he teetered on the brink of being deposed by stronger men. Prince Hal, on the other hand, has the potential to be a strong and charismatic leader but hasn't yet been given the chance to fulfil that potential. I feel like the director of Richard II was taking a rather unlikeable character and trying to make him as entertaining and sympathetic as possible while still highlighting and mocking his flaws, whereas with Henry IV we had a protagonist who was already really appealing, being played as sexy and fun as possible by an actor who is apparently able to conjure charisma out of nowhere.

Here we come to one of those moments when it becomes abundantly clear why I'm not a "real" reviewer, because this whole next part is going to be about how Tom Hiddleston is super dreamy. (Oh, if only this were an exaggeration.) First of all, that thing I was saying about the Female Gaze? Look no further than the costuming. This quote refers to Henry V rather than Henry IV, but I think it's still relevent:

"...while I wanted it to be set in the period, I wanted it to have some kind of modern feel. Things like Tom’s jackets. And I didn’t want him to have a bowl haircut, I wanted him to have a look that wasn’t just accessible, but attractive. He was in “Avengers Assemble”, for goodness sake! He’s an amazing, beautiful-looking man." -- Thea Sharrock, director of Henry V.

The costume designer for Henry IV Part 1 must have taken a very long look at Tom Hiddleston and thought, "What looks good on this guy?" He's tall, he's slim, his performance is very energetic and physical, and they put him in a form-fitting leather jerkin and trousers, with the jacket open at the neck at all times. The result? Large portions of the film are scenes where the camera lovingly caresses Poins and Hal's exposed collarbones as they share drunk LOLs about their latest prank on Falstaff. I think Shakespeare would approve.

Another reason why Hiddleston was perfect casting: his age. I assume that in the original setting Prince Hal was intended to be significantly younger, but at 31 Tom Hiddleston is ideal for our modern perception of an over-priveleged man-child. He looks boyish, but he definitely isn't a boy. This Hal isn't so much forced into adulthood by Hotspur's threats of war as he is waiting for something to force him into adulthood from the very first scenes of the play. From the start there's a certain feeling of melancholy, as if Hal already knows that he's coming to the end of his time as a wastrel in the streets of Eastcheap. It's practically a coming-of-age teen/college movie cliche. It's easy to interpret Hal's pranks with Poins and Falstaff as immature and thoughtless, but in this adaptation it was almost as if Hal was being set up as a future king from step one: charismatic, able to command the respect and affection of his followers, and with an actual brain in his head (even if he's only using it to fool his father's messengers and play tricks on his friends). Compared to the aging, angry King Henry, it's surprisingly easy to see Hal as future leader of men. This is, I suppose, the luxury of television: they can cast the same actor for Prince Hal and Henry V, and show all three plays in quick succession, which onstage would be more or less impossible.
I can't wait to see Jeremy Irons in the next play. Towards the end of Part 1 he looked like he was on death's door, grey-faced to match the morbid darkness of his clothes and castle. It was very easy to imagine this Henry as the aging, frustrated continuation of the Henry Bolingbroke we see in Richard II, his gloomy court a direct reaction to the frivolous extravagance of Richard's reign. This play may have been set before the reformation, but King Henry was practically a protestant before his time -- surrounded by rigidly black-mantled courtiers in a huge, empty grey stone throne room with no lit candles, and swaddled up to the chin in thick black furs and scarves. I particularly loved this aspect of Henry's costuming: imposing but not exactly kingly, what with the ratty grey scarves and knit cap.

HAT FACTS: according to Jeremy Irons, bobble hats were invented for soldiers to wear under their helmets, with the bobble acting as a cushion in the top point of the helmet. I really hope this is true, partly because it's interesting and partly because I want Jeremy Irons to be a secret knitwear expert.

One of the reasons why Henry IV Part 1 is my favourite is the plethora of drunk rap-battles. I mean, if you don't appreciate Falstaff and Prince Hal exchanging insults in front of a baying audience of drunks and bar-wenches, I don't even know what to do with you. And, of course, there's Prince Hal's impression of his father. Tom Hiddleston is known for doing excellent impersionations of his co-stars, and his Jeremy Irons was brilliant. Pictures barely do it justice. He even added a scarf and hat. Even moreso than the scene where King Henry gives Hal the "stop being a wastrel" speech, Hiddleston's Jeremy Irons impression convinced me that he really was the King's firstborn son. 

Was it just me or were some of Hotspur's scenes cut from this adaptation? I'm not particularly familiar with the play, but I'm pretty sure that when I saw it onstage Hotspur had far more scenes, particularly with his wife. Either way, Hotspur and his wife were H I L A R I O U S. They were 100% that annoying couple who are always macking on each other and/or having loud, public arguments all the time with no consideration for the people around them. Michelle Dockery (as Hotspur's wife) didn't get much screentime but boy did she make the most of it. One of the things I love about this play is the quantity of opportunities for humour outside of the typical Shakespearean comic fixtures, and the Hotspur/Kate relationship is totally one of those opportunities. In the Welsh Wife scene, which in earlier times might have been a chance for some straight-up "LOL, Wales" jokes, this time round we get Kate making hilarious bitchfaces at Hotspur, a mixture between, "Why aren't you like this, huh?" and "What the hell is up with these two lovebirds, anyway?" And of course, they then proceed to make out in front of everyone as all the other characters politely look at the walls and wait for them to go away. PERFECTION.

I don't feel like the movie suffered from the seeming absense of Hotspur, though, because this adaptation seemed to focus so closely on Prince Hal's own journey rather than the Hotspur/Henry conflict. If anything, until we reached the final battle Hotspur seemed more like a secondary character than a major antagonist. That battle is also the moment when we finally see Prince Hal begin to harden into something more like his father. Before that he's very emotional -- either joking around with his mates at the tavern, or emoting tragically at the camera because oh boy is Tom Hiddleston good at that. But when we reach the battle with Hotspur and the Northerners, Hal seems to age ten years, finally taking up the burden of kingship. 

Regular readers may know that I enjoy armour. There's a tag for it and everything. The armour worn for the Battle of Shrewsbury appealed to me for two reasons: its basic utilitarianism and its relationship, character-wise, with the costumes of last week's Richard II. Although this play takes place a generation after Richard II, in many ways it seems like it's set in an earlier period of history. Richard's court was a place of luxury and beauty, and even his armour was a complex work of art, glistening gold from head to toe. His enemy Henry Bolingbroke, however, was the precise opposite:

Maybe I'm just looking too closely at this because I'm an armour fanatic and have a Game Of Thrones tattoo on my face and am secretly married to Loki on the astral plane, but I can totes see the evolution of the Richard-Henry-Hal reigns in the way they dress for battle. First of all, the young Henry Bolingbroke barely does dress for battle. He's always ready. And taking into account the fact that Richard II and Henry IV had different costume designers and very different aesthetics, there's surprisingly little difference between the appearance of the young Henry Bolingbroke and the Henry we see in Henry IV Part 1. The Northern practicality and toughness of Henry Bolingbroke (which in Richard II seemed like such a stark contrast with Richard's sparklicious, un-dented armour) has aged into a kind of chilly, monochromatic austerity, which in the battlefield translates to the King sitting stiff-spined on horseback in his grey woollen hat, trying not to show any evidence of his unspecified terminal illness. At the end of Richard II it was almost as if Henry Bolingbroke didn't want to be king, and in this play it certainly doesn't appears to be enjoying it. While Hal, it seems, is a golden prince who was born to rule.

Prince Hal seems distant from both Richard and his father: neither frivolous nor grim. He's young and fun-loving, but he's still a capable warrior for all that he breaks away from his father's sternness. His armour is flexible and lightweight and, I think, considerably more period-appropriate than the intricate costume armour worn by Richard in the previous installment. Call me weird, but I really appreciated the simplicity of Hal's armour, and that it didn't particularly set him apart from any of the other knights -- although, of course, the commoners only got chainmail or leather. I'll be interested to see how that continues in later films, because Thea Sharrock, the director of Henry V, mentioned specifically that she and Hiddleston had tried to make their version of Henry V as much of a man of the people as possible.

Oh, Falstaff. Finally we come to you. Falstaff's a tricky one because he's just. So. Preposterous. The humour of Falstaff is so bound by old-fashioned slapstick that the filmmakers must have decided to put extra emphasis on the tragic side of his character this time round, giving him a hint of Sam Gamgee loyalty as he half-seriously begs Hal not to abandon him at the end of the rap-battle scene, complete with an emotive soundtrack. I expect some people would find this maudlin, but I was OK with it, particularly since the next film should build on that. We already got some closure to the Falstaff/Hal relationship at the end of this film, though, as Prince Hal, fresh from battle and finally coming into his own as an adult and a warrior, allows Falstaff one final deception. Also, one final Tom Hiddleston grin, something I doubt we'll be seeing as much of in the next two films.

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