Someone with major leisure time, and the first new taste of Marvel since 2019 - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

     Two items this week, only one of them new, the other just new to me.  
     Famed short story and screenwriter Drexel Jerome Lewis Bixby is probably most broadly famous for his 1953 short story, "It's a Good Life", which was immortalized when adapted into a Twilight Zone episode of the same name in 1961. That was the one with three year old Anthony Freemont (I believe they aged him to 5 for the tv show, so as to be a more believable match for young but not that young Billy Mumy) whose godlike powers and child's temperament made hostages of his family and neighbors after he seemingly made the rest of the world go away.
     Bixby also co-wrote the story for the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, about a special surgical team

miniaturized and injected into an injured scientist to perform a delicate, life-saving procedure to counter a brain injury. That was subsequently bought and turned over to Isaac Asimov to write the novelization of the screenplay, which led to me not knowing the Bixby connection for most of my life.
     Bixby also wrote four episodes of

the original Star Trek series, including the alternate timeline Mirror, Mirror, which has practically become a franchise unto itself, and Requiem for Methuselah, the latter bringing us conceptually to today's first item.
     The core concept is that of a man born thousands of years ago, who gradually came to understand that once he'd grown to adulthood he stopped aging, and whose body's renewal capacity seemed complete. As a consequence, he simply continued to live, and over the centuries moved on from place to place after so many years in order to avoid being discovered, adopting a long series of new identities as a matter of self-protection.

     The idea for this had been with him since the early '60s, though he didn't get around to finishing the screenplay for the full idea until he was on his deathbed in 1998. One, final reach for immortality: The Man from Earth.
     In 2007, it was finally filmed on the relatively small budget of $200,000. The film's producer ended up thanking users of BitTorrent -- video pirates -- for distributing the film free of charge as that had the effect of drastically raising its visibility, leading to sales of the DVD. Had the commercial release not been pirated and spread around enthusiastically, this very well may have remained in obscurity.
     It's a dialogue piece, nearly all of it occurring not only at one fictional location, but in a single room.
      A well-respected college professor has surprised a group of colleagues by suddenly tendering his notice after having been with them for a decade, and not saying where he will be moving to. Or, really, even why. They get together at his place for an impromptu farewell party, hoping to discover what's behind the sudden and completely unexpected decision by someone who seemed to be in a dream track for a college academician.
     He gives in to an impulse and begins to tell his friends that he's approximately 14,000 years old. It begins as something close to a joking evasion, and then turns into an academic discussion as his colleagues, representing an array of specialties, each try to poke a hole in his narrative.

     It's an engaging, talkative film, so much so that it didn't surprise me in the least to see indications that it's been adapted into a stage play. The film has a cast rich with "I know that face!" credits, most of them from tv shows, reaching back to the '90s and even '80s. Available on Amazon Prime (it's available through YouTube, too, but there as a pay item.)
     There was a sequel shot and released ten years later, in 2017 The Man From Earth: Holocene. That's also waiting on Amazon Prime, though I haven't watched it yet.
     Arriving today on Disney+ is the very first of the long-awaited Marvel Cinematic Universe shows, WandaVision.

     Initially wrapped as a retro sitcom - several scenes seem to be a 60:40 Bewitched: Dick Van Dyke Show blend, though other stills hint it'll continue to change rapidly, reflecting different eras - things are not as they at first seem.
     The first two episodes of this 9-episode series are being released today. If the rest hold true, these

will all be approximately half an hour long -- which I must confess seems a disappointing format, but so far they're using it well. (Yes, I've watched them and returned for a quick edit.) Clues have been dropped repeatedly so far, among them ones for both a well-known evil organization and a more benevolent, protective one from the comics that will apparently soon be introduced to the MCU.
     These represent the start of Marvel's Phase Four. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their big screen Avengers roles as Wanda Maximoff and the android The Vision. As the last time we'd seen Vision he had been destroyed as Thanos ripped the last of the Infinity Stones from his head, killing him back in 2018 -- our time.

     These streaming shows feature cast from various Marvel/Disney big screen productions, and are attempting to weave their cinematic universe between their streaming shows and the big screen productions. The pandemic curveball that dominated most of 2020 and is still strongly in play here may further impact some of the plans, as we've yet to see how they're really going to handle product originally aimed for the big screen as we roll through 2021. I'm about as big a Marvel fan as you're likely to find - my roots going back into this for nearly my entire life - but I don't care what they release I don't see myself heading into a theater anytime in the next few months.
     Anyway, considering that the last hit of new MCU material we received was back in early July 2019 -- when Spider-man: Far From Home hit theaters and brought Phase 3 of this project to a close -- I'm interested to see how this gulp of new material will go down. Have we learned any patience?
     The series will develop Wanda in particular, better developing her rather difficult to explain abilities

and possibly giving us signs of mental instabilities that became part of her development in less sympathetic hands. It will also both expand the MCU, and introduce us to the grown-up version of Monica Rambeau, who we met as a child back in Captain Marvel. If it rolls out as generally expected, it should be engaging to to the casual fan while dropping names and references to set off those odd lights behind the eyes of those of us steeped in decades of the source comics. These include the beekeeper imagery and hexagon symbol - referencing the same organization - and key elements of the each of the single commercials embedded in each episode. I'd be happy to kick any of that around with someone - maybe in the Comments below, but it's so early I'm trying to be cautious about spoiling anyone's time.
     One other, broader note concerning Disney+ and their Marvel section, is that I've seen that they've taken another big step in curating the content. Now they've split it into separate rows for Phase One, Two and a mix of Three and Four (because WandaVision's all there is to Four so far, so there was no aesthetic way to give that its own row), and even have a long row that puts all of the MCU big screen items (well, the ones that Disney has full control over, so still no Incredible Hulk nor either of the Spider-man films set in the MCU) in timeline order.
     While (so far) the week went better than I'd feared - particularly a work event Thursday that I let tie me up in knots for much of the week - it's left me a bit dazed and drained. Probably the same for you.
     Go forth and recharge! -- Mike