The Sand in Our Lungs: The Desertification of Our Imaginations

Hi, folks! Unfortunately, I've had to pause my weekly Andor posts due to some unexpected life circumstances, but I will finish up my deep dive with a final essay on the last two episodes in the near future. Until then, here's an essay about why two sci-fi films with deserts might not be the best for our cultural imagination. Thanks for reading!

The Sand in Our Lungs: The Desertification of Our Imaginations

 

In 2024, two major science fiction franchises produced blockbuster sequels: Dune Part II, directed by Denis Villeneuve, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directed by George Miller. Both films overlapped in their depictions of the desert landscape, cults of survival, and a desire to return to a “green place.” These respective deserts are not seen as their own habitats, as unique biomes and cultural spaces, but rather as something dangerous that must be made green. This utopic desire combined with the extractive activities in both Villeneuve’s and Miller’s deserts suggests an inability to imagine life beyond extraction in the heat of global warming but only in lush greenness, where even the air is purer. The impact of this cultural imagining can be seen in the recent political landscape, as President Trump released an AI-generated video depicting the West Bank as an “oasis” with palm trees, and when Elon Musk, while heading DOGE, reposted a Mad Max meme with the text: “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking whether the guy you’re dating has post apocalyptic [sic] warlord potential.” In current political imaginings, the desert can either be greened to create some type of utopia or is full of savage warlords hoarding resources.

Rather than focusing on how humanity has adapted and survived these places, Dune Part II and Furiosa depict progress as the desire to return to green. While this view of the desert not only supports the current imperial actions in the Middle East, it also limits the ability to imagine and pursue survival in the heat of global warming. These coincidental releases suggest a turn toward imagining hot, dry futures where the air is poisoned or changing humanity, as in the Spice sands on Arrakis. Rather, we must (re)imagine these desert futures as more than extractive places where the heat and air can kill.

Unlike its predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road, which I’ve argued in my essay “Mad Max and the Wasteland of Commodification” has strong ecofeminist and environmental justice themes, Furiosa reverts to a biblical story of the sinful woman. The first shot of the titular character is her reaching for a lush piece of fruit while another girl whispers they should hurry. Immediately after she picks the fruit, Furiosa sees that men have invaded their sanctuary. While trying to warn the others, she is captured, which prompts her mother to follow them into the desert to rescue her. She fails, and Furiosa is enslaved and raised by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) before she is eventually traded to Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) to be one of his or his son’s child wives as part of a deal for Dementus to run Gas Town, a petrol fortress. Indeed, it is the attempted rape by his son Rictus (Nathan Jones) that allows a young Furiosa to escape and hide among the War Boys, eventually growing up to become a mechanic and then learning to drive the War Rig alongside Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). They become partners—both romantically and in their desire to escape. Meanwhile, Dementus is scheming to take over Immortan Joe’s fortress, which features fresh produce, green gardens, renewable energy, and—most importantly—unlimited water from underground aquifers. Caught up in his schemes, Praetorian Jack and Furiosa are captured, Jack is horrifically killed, and Furiosa escapes to tell Immortan Joe in hopes of enacting her revenge. After a forty-day war, she tracks Dementus through the wasteland to kill him. The film ends with the History Man (George Shevtsov) suggesting that Furiosa didn’t kill Dementus but rather planted the seed of the fruit she took from the Green Place where she was captured while eating the fruit, and the film ends with Furiosa now played by Charlize Theron handing one of these fruits to the enslaved women that she escapes with in the next film.

In many scenes, Dune Part II mirrors the plot points of Furiosa. Like Furiosa, Paul (Timothée Chalamet) comes from a place utopic for its greenery and, most importantly, water—a sacred element on Arrakis. Furiosa and Paul both seek revenge against grotesque villains known for their cruelty. In Dune Part I, Paul’s family, who have come to rule the desert planet, are murdered by the villainous Harkonnens, and Paul and his mother flee to hide in the desert, where they are taken in by the native population called Fremen. Paul’s mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), is part of a galaxy-wide religious order that has seeded prophecies and propaganda about an outsider who will turn Arrakis green again and lead the Fremen. While Paul is perfectly positioned to fulfill this prophecy, he is hesitant at first, but in order to defeat the Harkonnens and avenge his father, he must use the native practices of the Fremen to not only survive the desert but to control their loyalty. By ruling the Fremen, he regulates what makes Arrakis so important: Spice production. The drug called Spice enables interstellar planetary travel, so it is a necessary and valuable resource required by the empire. Ultimately, Paul takes leadership of the Fremen to oust the Harkonnens from Arrakis by force, which prompts the other ruling families to threaten violence, leading to the Fremen intergalactic war off their home planet.

The desert is the prime visual for both these films, but in Furiosa there is no cinematic beauty in the desert, only fear, while Dune features long shots of the sun catching Spice in the air, the shifting sands, the decorated sietchs where the Fremen live, often overlaid with a stereotypical Middle Eastern soundtrack. While both films depict the desert in different lights, survival and exploitation are still central to the desert, primarily for various types of fuel, whether it’s petrol, food and water, or Spice.

Furiosa is unable to escape her captors because she has no resources to survive the desert, and resources are exclusively stolen, not shared. The apocalypse of the Mad Max franchise is summarized in voiceovers at the beginning of the film, and the first two instances of destabilization listed are the power grid collapsing and that “currency is worthless,” (Miller 00:00:30), once again proving the quote commonly attributed to Fredric Jameson that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” The voiceovers end with the final sentiment from the History Man: “‘As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?’” (Miller 00:01:21). The film’s answer to this question is revenge and the utopic desire to return to a green paradise. The cruelties that Furiosa survives depict what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor call “end times fascism:” “A darkly festive fatalism—a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy” (“The Rise of End Times Fascism”). Indeed, destruction—of both property and the human body—are moments of joy rather than horror, such as when Dementus orders a wasteland gang he’s overcome to fight each other for the honor of riding motorcycles attached to the body of their boss, pulling him apart (Miller 00:27:23). This destruction is linked directly to the desert because there is no alternative lifestyle presented in the sands. The only people living in this desert are destructive—except for our heroine, raised elsewhere, and her eventual romantic interest, who is murdered. Rather, the alternative lifestyle is rooted not in the desert but in an oasis of green where there are still trees bearing fruit, water, and animals.

In the first few minutes of Furiosa, what is called “the green place of many mothers” in Mad Max: Fury Road is depicted. In a rocky canyon, the few shots of daily life show men and women working together at chores while windmills turn in the background. In addition to human life, there is nonhuman life, from birds crying to the horse Furiosa’s mother rides in an attempt to rescue her. Shelters feature solar panels on the roofs, and the people use sustainable technology such as a pedal-powered whetstone and a solar oven (00:04:13). While they are not pacifist—Furiosa’s mother is a crackshot—they represent the opposite of the desert barbarism by incorporating advanced technology along with sustainable living to create an egalitarian community. This progressive community, though, is visually connected to the water and lush flora that surrounds them. Indeed, as Furiosa’s mother ventures deeper into the desert in her rescue attempt, she must take on more and more of the violent trappings of Dementus’s men—first abandoning her horse for one of their motorcycles, then putting on their clothes and helmets of human bone. Thus, the desert and its connection to scarcity—whether real or imagined—is the promoter of this savagery, not something brought to the sands. Indeed, as Imre Szeman points out, “We moderns are creatures of fossil fuels (if to different degrees in different places in the world)” (7). As she progresses into the desert, she becomes more a creature of fossil fuels by taking on the trappings and riding the bike. The focus on automobiles in the Mad Max franchise emphasizes this connection, and control of “guzzolene” is important to who rules the desert. Rather than adapt to the more sustainable and fossil-fuel-free life of the green place with many mothers, the people of the desert hold onto their desire for fossil fuels and the supposed modernity it produces, such as Immortan Joe’s brother, the lord of Gastown, painting a recreation of John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) while wearing a regimental coat (Miller 00:43:23).

Alternatively, in Dune Part II, the Fremen do present the desert as a unique environmental and cultural space, but their depiction throughout the film still connects to violence and is presented as uncivilized or lacking in empathy. Throughout both films, their martial prowess is partly what makes them unique, but early in Part II after a battle, Paul witnesses Chani (Zendaya) drain the water from a body of a still living Harkonnen, swatting away the Harkonnen’s weak arm (Villeneuve 00:11:19). This moment positions the Fremen as lacking empathy or respect for their enemy, by doing something brutal as they loot the water from the bodies, causing the pregnant Jessica to vomit. While Fremen violence begins and ends the film, there is worldbuilding around their culture and relationship with the desert. This connection is depicted visually through their eyes, which become a vibrant blue due to them breathing in and eating Spice. Additionally, the reason for collecting water from the dead is not only due to scarcity, but in the case of dead Fremen, their water is poured into an underground tank where it is being saved to turn the planet green. As Stilgar (Javier Bardem) explains to Jessica: “‘When we have enough water, the Lisan al-Gaib will change the face of Arrakis. He will bring back the trees. He will bring back a Green Paradise’” (Villeneuve 00:20:24). Even though they’ve adapted to live with the desert, have a culture intertwined with the desert, and have the ability to create advanced technology out of the desert (such as their stillsuits, which retain water), their religious purpose is to change the planet to a green paradise that they have no frame of reference for.

While Paul respects the Fremen and their understanding of the desert, they are still positioned as religious zealots willing to die for the Lisan al-Gaib in a war necessitated because the natural resource of their planet—Spice—is required for galactic travel. Indeed, the movie is framed around Spice, and its metaphoric connection to oil is emphasized visually. In a restructuring of the opening credits, sounds that do not necessarily mimic language seem to speak, with the words appearing on black screen: “Power over Spice is power over all” (Villeneuve 00:00:05). The production credits follow, creating an interruption of the story started with the truism on Spice. While Spice production happening on a desert planet being controlled by colonizers already prompts viewers to think of oil production, the connection is solidified by the main villain, Baron Harkonnen. He soaks in a black pool of liquid that clings to his white skin, the oily surface swirling (Villeneuve 00:49:02). While the Fremen offer an alternative few of the desert, the central conflict still revolves around the Harkonnens keeping the Spice flowing, thus limiting this imagining of the desert to an extractive space.

While Furiosa and Dune Part II come from very different franchises, the narrative of the protagonist’s revenge, violence, and extraction creates a unified view of “desert” as a space where scarcity leads to savagery. Another way this savagery can be read is a response to the question posted by Wilson, Szeman, and Carlson: “Energy transition will therefore involve not only a change in the kinds of energy we use, but also a transition in the values and practices that have been shaped around our use of the vast amounts of energy provided by fossil fuels” (4). Without these practices of modernity, these films suggest the only option when fossil fuels become limited is not adaptation or transition but violence, even though much of the Global South already does not operate with the same amount of energy usage as the Global North. While there are certainly other films that do not present the desert or its people in this framework, the release of two such blockbuster narratives in 2024 suggests the desertification of imagination in the U.S. and a need for alternative narratives, particularly for the masses. As Paul says of the Fremen to his mother: “It’s not a prophecy. It’s a story you keep telling. But it’s not their story; it’s yours” (Villeneuve 01:02:21). The Fremen are certainly more nuanced than the people of Furiosa, but because their values are created and manipulated by Paul and the religious order his mother Jessica belongs to, the Fremen’s agency is degraded. Their culture of wishing for a green utopia is entirely manufactured to make them more pliable in relation to collecting Spice. Additionally, the supposedly uninhabited and unlivable southern part of the planet being filled with a large population of “fundamentalists” who are mostly nameless and faceless, depicted as a mass, dehumanizes the Fremen. They become a tool for violence, another thing to be extracted from the desert in Paul’s galactic conquest.

As this violent and resource-drive depiction of the desert unites the movies, so, too, does the desire for a green utopia. The desert is not seen as a viable location, even though in Dune the Fremen have adapted to the desert. In Furiosa, the desert is not adapted to but rather something to be endured by scavenging and killing others in order to, someday, find what one of Dementus’s men calls a “place of abundance” (Miller 00:12:30). Both these narratives focus on a return to a green utopia, which suggests an imaginative reaction to global warming. As the climate changes and global warming causes places to become hotter and drier, this yearning for a green utopia will harm humanity’s ability to adapt. As the After Oil Collective writes in Solarities (2022): “Stories and myths are tools of immense possibility that provide powerful means of creating different worlds and making new futures, and of seeing the present in new ways” (61). While the releases of Furiosa and Dune Part II are coincidental, these narratives suggest we are struggling with “seeing the present in new ways” and instead relying on imperial, oil-driven narratives of scarcity, violence, and extraction in the desert. These narratives also reinforce the problematic idea that lush, green spaces are the only viable vision in the midst of climate change rather than presenting a diversity of flourishing landscapes and beings.

As the impacts of climate change continue to cause more desertification, our popular storytelling must adapt rather than react. Depicting deserts as spaces of scarcity and violence only serves extractive and imperial industries. Rather, we can use storytelling practices to imagine flourishing communities in the desert not beset by extraction. There is more to the desert than supposedly empty sands and oil; it is not a place that must be transformed in order to reach a more utopic state—and storytelling can develop our imagination in these directions as more of the planet experiences extreme heat and drought. At this time, we need our imaginations expanded, not limited by these imperial narratives.

Works cited

After Oil Collective et al., editors. Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice [U of Minnesota Press, 2022].

Dune Part II. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Warner Brothers, 2024.

Klein, Naomi and Astra Taylor. “The Rise of End Times Fascism.” The Guardian, 13 April, 2025.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Directed by George Miller, Village Roadshow Pictures, 2024.

Szeman, Imre. On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy [West Virginia U Press, 2019].

Wilson, Sheena et al., editors. Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture [McGill-Queen’s U Press, 2017].

POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.

Book Review: Blood of the Bull by Jo Graham

The third novel in the series takes Giulia and Rodrigo through a very rough patch in their relationship. Oh, and there’s a French Invasion too.

Jo Graham’s Memoirs of the Borgia Sybil series continues in this third book in the series. For those to catch up, Giulia Farnese, in this world next door, is not just the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI, the “Borgia Pope”), she has a connection to the spirit world that is exploited and used in book 1, A Blackened Mirror, and also in book 2, The Borgia Dove, where she is our viewpoint character to the infamous Papal Election of 1492. Now, not long has passed, it's near 1494 in fact, and Renaissance Italy is in turmoil. Not just because the French are invading, but the relationship between Giulia and Rodrigo has turned sour. Giulia finds out that the Bull (the symbol of the Borgias) is a literal metaphor, and the betrayal of what she thought was an exclusive relationship sets the pair at odds. Combine that with the French invasion, and you have the throughline for the story.

And therein, The Blood of the Bull, tells its tale. I am going to come to this story through a historical lens. This novel, like the second, is somewhat less focused on the supernatural elements of Giulia and her life and much more interested in the interpersonal dynamics of the pair. It takes a while for any real supernatural elements to come out of the woodwork. In the main, most of this novel, even more than the first two, is a richly done historical fiction novel. If the first novel was a coming of age story, and the second something of a mystery novel, this is more of a social conflict novel between Giulia and Rodrigo, with the French army as a leavening agent.

So, once again, we get Graham’s view of the Renaissance and its history. It is a considerably brighter view than some¹.As such, until Giulia leaves Rome after tempers flare between her and Rodrigo, we get the see the rich life of being the Pope’s mistress and how both Giulia and Rodrigo have to navigate it (we are, like the first two novels, always in Giulia’s point of view in the book). In our historical records, Giulia Farnese was one of the most powerful women in Rome with her relationship to the Pope, but not just for that. Graham makes it clear such a powerful woman has allies, clients, networks and in the course of a dangerous French invasion, Giulia needs all of them and they need here, and we get very much a social web. In a real way, Giulia is not just a partner to Rodrigo but an heir, a student, a pupil of him as well. And possibly the father of her child. The historical record is uncertain, but baby Laura, in the world of the novels is most definitely Rodrigo’s daughter. 

Having Giulia leave Rome when she discovers Rodrigo’s infidelity is an invention, as far as is well known in the historical records, she does not go off with Lucrezia and her new husband. This does give us a look at Italy outside of Rome for a while, especially with that looming threat of the French becoming a very real and potent danger as they move south. The threat of a seemingly unstoppable force, coming to erase all that she has come to treasure, is a real emotional button in the book that Graham presses well. 

Eventually the narrative joins the timeline we know again as Giulia goes to the estate of Capodimonte because her brother is dying. This happened in our timeline, but this story has Giulia go from Lucrezia’s estate to there, rather than from Rome, as what we know happened in history. We see Giulia at her most vulnerable and isolated here, feeling duty to her dying brother, and the strain of being apart from Rodrigo, and of course, the bloody French. The book keeps us in line with historical events when Giulia, heading back to Rome at last, is captured by a French officer, Yves d’Allegre, who ransoms her back to the Pope. Since we are only in Giulia’s point of view, we do not see the mysterious machinations directly that allowed Rome, and Pope Alexander VI’s papacy, not to be toppled by King Charles and his army. Graham does add a helping of her supernatural elements here to explain the motives and actions of some of the participants in this drama, and gives Giulia agency to oppose them.

The novel ends there, more or less, with Rome and the Papacy safe, Giulia and Rodrigo reunited, but the French are poised to rain down on Naples next. Interesting times are indeed what is in store for the next adventures of the Borgia Sybil. As always Graham is interested in the historical events and the allo-supernatural elements that help cause them to happen as they really did. Does this make her novels a magical secret history? Maybe! There is a little what-if speculation toward the end as Rodrigo’s fate is uncertain, and both Giulia and Rodrigo (but especially the magically talented Giulia) wonders if Rodrigo might have to be a sacrifice, a martyr, in the end. This ties nicely into the title Blood of the Bull. 

So who is this book for? Should you read this? Readers of the first two books is a rather flip answer, and that has the advantage of being true. I suppose you could start the series here, if you were really interested in this period of Italian history or wanted to get in on this series and did not want to read books one and two. But really this is a big narrative and a series that together forms a tapestry of a life (the choice of title Memoirs of the Borgia Sybil is a telling one).

But who is this series for, then? In general, if you want historical fiction with some supernatural elements that don’t change the history, and a strong sense and grounding in its point of view with a strong female protagonist (and other women as well). If you aren’t absolutely and resolutely anti-Borgia (and to be clear there is a case to have that point of view), then yes, this series may be your cup of tea. Graham is a hell of a writer and she is writing what she loves passionately about. It comes through with the intimacy she describes art in the papal apartments, the depth of feeling in her letters as she struggles with Rodrigos’ infidelity, with the blood and terror of the French invasion³. It’s here, should you want it.

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Highlights:

• Strong historical fictional grounding
• Excellent use of female characters
• Amazing immersive look at Renaissance Italy
• Yet another spectacular cover for the series

Reference: Graham, Jo The Blood of the Bull, [Candlemark and Gleam 2025]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

¹ This is going to be a footnote of some length but it is a diversion from talking about the main subject of the novel itself and is not essential to that part of the book review, but it is an essential bit nevertheless. So this is more of a Pratchettian footnote than, say, a Vancean one. Graham’s view of the Renaissance, and perhaps the Borgias in particular, is far more positive and bright than, say, the recent Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, and reading this book after reading Palmer’s book was an interesting experience. I also in recent history have read Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization volume on these times. So I have gotten several runs through of the events of these times and perspectives of these times. Palmer’s thesis is the clearest because she says it on the tin “The Myth of a Golden Age”. She makes it clear time and again that in research and perspective, which is formidable, that the Renaissance was no golden age at all and in fact was not the greatest time and place to live in. From invasions to plagues to the vicissitudes of life in 15th century Italy, it was no golden age at all--even if its remnants and products make it seem so.

The whole project of the Renaissance, too and its history and it’s historification as a golden age is a matter of manipulating history. The Durants take a middle course, since they never go to primary sources. They are a product of their time and place, reading texts written mostly contemporary with themselves, so they have a more positive view of the events, and see the end of the Renaissance and the decline of Italy after the French Invasion and subsequent wars (spoiler, the French Invasion is just the beginning) as a tragedy that extinguished a turbulent but fecund period. Graham’s view is far far more positive, and takes lots of pains to show the light, the art, the vision that the humanist faction under Rodrigo (and to be fair, Giulia) want to bring. She sees those forces as fighting as war of light against dark (which melds into her grand supernatural conflict). 

So who is right? All of them! None of them! (as Palmer points out, history is an ever refining project, and our own views are going to be looked at with shaken heads a century or two from now). 

² In a conversation between myself and Graham, she compared Giulia and Rodrigo to Mystique and Magneto. And I definitely can see it, Mystique learning a lot at Magneto’s knee in the way of mutant and worldwide power politics, learning intrigue and manipulation and social graces and skills but applying them ultimately in her own way. And of course having a sometimes thorny relationship with her mentor as a lover. We didn’t see much in the way of the thorns in book 2, Graham reserved them for book 3. 

³ Maybe someone like H. Beam Piper or Poul Anderson never lived long enough, but surely, one could do a space opera version of the papal election of 1492 and the subsequent French invasion and make it a high SF drama. Such rich and interesting characters, times, and conflicts. It would be hellacious to research (reading these books and the aforementioned works by Palmer and the Durants might get you some of the way there) . Doing it as a fantasy novel could also work but I kind of like a space opera treatment better. 

Film Review: KPop Demon Hunters

A fresh take on familiar themes, played out with bright animation and appealing characters

Netflix’s latest animated adventure, KPop Demon Hunters is a useful option if you’re ready to take a break from the weight of the world and enjoy bit of light adventure. On the eve of their greatest triumph, a trio of female K-Pop rockstars who moonlight as demon hunters find themselves thwarted by the arrival of a competing group of performers secretly bent on demon-serving, soul-sucking destruction. The story manages to be both comfortably familiar and freshly amusing, both laugh out loud funny and substantially tragic, and is filled with catchy tunes that will stay in your head long after the credits roll. Although aimed at a younger generation, older viewers will recognize the film’s familiar call back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jem and the Holograms, and other secret hero stories.

Musically talented orphan Rumi and her two besties, tough and cynical Mira and energetic rapper Zoey, are part of a super popular K-Pop trio named Huntrix. Beyond their musical success and millions of adoring fans, they also have a secret side job killing demons (hence the band’s name). All three young women are trained, fearless demon hunters, complete with magical blades and supernatural acrobatic skills. They are working towards achieving a final victory over the demon world via an event called the Honmoon (never clearly explained). However, just as victory seems close, an unexpected new enemy arrives to thwart their plans. They soon find themselves faced with an alluring boy band, the Saja Boys, secretly made up of super gorgeous demons. Their new competition is led by the seductive but internally tortured Jinu. Following a theme explored in the film Sinners, we learn that throughout time, variations of musically inclined hunters have used their special musical gifts to transcend the natural realm and fight demons. Huntrix gets much of their strength from the energy of those who cheer them on. The arrival of the Saja Boys creates competition for both Huntrix’s fans and Huntrix’s physical strength, even as the new arrivals secretly wreak havoc on the people of the city by stealing their souls. This may sound a little intense but the film is played out in bright neon colors and shiny computer animation. At times, the soul stealing is so subtle that it takes a moment to realize what is happening. But what makes the story particularly entertaining is the fact that Rumi, Mira, and Zoey immediately realize the Saja Boys are demons and the Saja Boys know the Huntrix singers are demon hunters. As a result, much of the film involves hidden hijinks and sarcasm as the two enemies publicly interact at press conferences, concerts, and televised events. And of course, there is a lot of music and a reminder of how influenced K-Pop is by American hip hop. The songs are high energy and bubbling with dual meanings, and all of this is wrapped up with ridiculously intense K-Pop choreography displayed in dramatic, big screen worthy animation.

In addition to the external battles, the film deals with internal elements of self-identity, self-hatred, guilt, and shame. It also reflects themes from contemporary popular fiction, including enemies to lovers and morally gray love interests, as Rumi and Jinu find themselves thrown together. The vibe of fierce but hidden female fighters is reminiscent of the vibe in Justina Ireland’s novel Dread Nation. The importance of music as a spiritual element in fighting and provoking evil is an interesting call back to Sinners. However, unlike those stories, the Netflix film is gore-free, safe for tweens, but still entertaining enough for adults who want something lighter and more amusing.

A key element of the film is the visual choices. The demon king is never really seen but appears as an amorphous pink cloud. The Saja Boys are each designed with extreme K-Pop beauty that creates a hilarious contrast to their true nature. Jinu communicates with Rumi via a show-stealing, enormous, teal blue, striped cat who travels with a bird who wears a top hat on its head. The big cat is the most understatedly fun and funny thing in the visuals and it roams throughout the plot unbothered by being both gorgeous and outrageous.

Despite the interesting set up and the seductive dynamic between Rumi and Jinu, the ultimate messaging of the film stops short of attempting a deep dive into, or a meaningful resolution of, the demon world. The demons are portrayed primarily as comically grotesque, generally evil, and mostly two dimensional. That approach is not uncommon in many demon hunter stories (such as Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer) but, in this film, two of the main characters have a significant connection to the demon world. So, it feels like a missed opportunity not to delve deeper into the identity and motivations of that world, especially since it defines and affects the two lead characters. Additionally, unlike Jinu, Rumi’s backstory remains mostly a mystery. We never hear the story of her parents or their demise although it’s a critical element in who she is. But this is a ninety-nine minute animated PG film and the focus is on the primary plot: achieving the Honmoon and defeating the demon world despite the efforts of the tortured yet seductive anti-hero. Does that happen? Surprisingly, you’ll have to watch and see, because KPop Demon Hunters has enough built in twists to keep viewers guessing.

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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Fun, likeable, characters
• Familiar explorations of classic themes
• Catchy music and animation, safe for the whole family

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Film Review: Lost in Starlight

 This Korean animated film on Netflix straddles rom-com and space adventure

Lost in Starlight begins on Mars, with an astronaut in a busy, vibrant housing facility for the team members recording a message to her daughter back on Earth. On the wall of her bunk, she has a small crayon drawing of an astronaut that her daughter made for her, and a vinyl record hanging up. But during the recording, a tremor shatters the entire facility, collapsing it on all of the astronauts inside, killing the entire crew.

Fast-forward some 25 years, and we meet the now-grown daughter who was to receive that message -- Nan-young. Despite losing her mom in that tragedy on Mars, Nan-young has pursued a career at NASA, as well, and she plans on being a member of the crew that will make humanity's first return voyage to the Red Planet since her mom and the others were lost. But her supervisors are worried about her -- not because she seems to emotional, but because she doesn't seem emotional enough.NASA removes her from the mission, believing that she never fully processed the loss of her mother, and that the psychological effects of arriving on Mars might prove overwhelming or unpredictable.

Upset by losing her spot on the team, Nan-young begins going through some of her mother's things, and finds an old, broken record player that she had decorated with crayon drawings as a child. She tries to find a repair shop that can tackle the record player, but has no luck until she literally bumps into Jay as she's going into a store and he's coming out. The record player falls to the ground, and Jay says he repairs machines like that. Some coincidence.

As Nan-young and Jay begin spending more time together, she opens up to him about how much she loves music, and one song in particular really helped get her through the long nights of studying in college. But she got the song off of a file-sharing site, and never knew who the artist was. She begins playing the song, and Jay confesses that he actually wrote the song with his old band, and he never knew anyone had heard it. Again, some coincidence.

As Nan-young continues her scientific work at NASA, she encourages Jay to get back with his old band and explore writing and performing again. He's reluctant to do so, but does reconnect with his old band mates, and agrees to play guitar live. Then suddenly, Nan-young makes a breakthrough involving plant-life on Mars, and earns a spot back on the crew. The public announcement goes out before she can tell Jay, and his feelings are hurt, leading to a rift before the mission.

Once the Mars mission begins, the film begins intercutting between their two narratives. Nan-young has to do a reconnaissance mission on the surface, and a windstorm comes up, seeparating her from the rest of the crew, shorting out her coms, and threatening her oxygen supply. Back on Earth, Jay has agreed to play and sing with the band at a festival date, and since he hasn't sung on stage in years, he's really nervous.So, one character is literally fighting for her life on an alien planet, and the other...has stage fright. 

This is where the movie lost me. The stacking up of coincidences early in the film was a little clunky, but I could get over it. For a good portion of the movie, it does play much more like a romantic comedy with a bit of sci-fi flavor on the periphery, so if it hewed a little more closely to rom-com meet-cute conventions, it didn't feel out of place. And the movie does a couple interesting things with the idea of the bifurcation of self in the face of past trauma, and finding ways out of that. But the climactic juxtaposition of a literal life-or-death, high-drama space adventure vs. taking a deep breath and singing a song in front of what looks to be about 100 people...it just didn't track for me.

In the end, I found myself reminded of movies that plowed similar ground, but which I enjoyed much more. Movies like The Martian or Your Name, where in the former dealt with survival on Mars and the latter with romantic partners trying to communicate across impossible distances, felt like they were big inspirations for a lot of the action of the film, and though I was reminded of them, Lost in Starlight never resonated with me the way those films did. Even First Man, about Neil Armstrong trying to compartmentalize his child's death while embarking on the moon mission, felt a little more emotionally impactful while dealing with very similar material.

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Nerds coefficient: 6/10

Posted by Vance K - resident cult-film reviewer and co-founder of nerds of a feather, flock together 

Three Ruminations on the Themes of Elio

Alex saw Elio and had some thoughts

I know that this blog has already covered Elio, but I have had scattered thoughts about some of its thematic depths. The first part of this essay is a response to the review my colleague and dear friend Arturo Serrano wrote on this site regarding that film. He is an astounding critic and one I deeply admire (and I’m working with him on a shared world project), but there is one particular aspect of Elio that I feel his piece does not consider. It is regarding Olga, the aunt of the titular character, and how she fits into the broader narrative of the behavior of parental figures in regards to their children. Secondly, I consider the fate of the third child in the film that is thrust into a role that he does not want. Thirdly, I consider a parallel between Olga and Grigon that the writers almost certainly deliberately did not address.

Arturo makes the case that Elio is an inaccurate depiction of children who rebel against their parents (or parental figure, in the case of Olga, who is his aunt, and who stepped up after his parents died in an unknown event). He argues, basically, that Elio is rebelling against her because he sees her as abusive, and that the film agrees with him, even when Olga didn’t do anything wrong. He therefore argues that the film is wrong to condemn Olga for doing what anyone in her station would do.

This is where I disagree with my colleague and friend. I would argue that the film is not portraying Olga as an abuser. Consider all of this from her perspective. We do not know if Olga ever intended to have children, but in any case, she lost a sibling and the sibling’s spouse in some sudden awful event, and at some point must have realized that she must take over caring for her nephew very suddenly. She appears to be single, and she has a demanding job with the United States Air Force. I can very much imagine Olga having a conversation with Elio that resembles a conversation in 2025’s The Monkey, directed by Osgood Perkins, where two brothers who have likewise lost their parents are taken in by their uncle and aunt. There is a scene where the uncle point-blank tells his nephews that he and his wife never expected to have children, are inexperienced in the art of parenting, and should adjust their expectations accordingly. I can easily imagine a more tender, less wry version of that talk some years before the events of Elio. It is also similar to 2022's M3GAN, where Gemma is an aunt who is struggling to take care of a sibling's child; that film is very good at showing that exhaustion, and brings it down a horrifying direction.

One of the things that I think ought to be considered regarding why Elio wants to escape his life with Olga is the broader situation of his familial arrangements. Raising a child is hard. Raising a child by yourself, without a partner, is even harder. Raising a child without a partner while working a demanding job for the United States Air Force is harder still. It is, then, quite easy to imagine that Olga is running on fumes, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and after a certain point she has only so much to give, and that those points come with disheartening frequency.

When put in that context, I think a comparison with another recent Disney film regarding the treatment of parental figures is relevant. I refer to the 2025 live-action remake of Lilo and Stitch, which I have previously reviewed for this very blog. One of the things I praised that film was for explaining how difficult it is for the teenaged Nani, living in poverty and having suffered the loss of her parents, to take care of her little sister Lilo. Nani is slowly being ground down, having to forfeit a promising future to ensure her sister can survive. Without the intervention of close family friends (an intervention entirely absent in the original animated film), both Nani and Lilo would be sentenced to lifelong poverty. 

Elio made the mistake of not making the weight of all this on Olga obvious enough. What the film risks imparting, especially to younger viewers, even more especially girls, is to portray women with a certain martyrdom complex. Reading between the lines, one could argue that the film is portraying Olga as naturally a mother by virtue of being a woman. She is frustrated with her nephew, yes, and she wants her nephew to be a bit more orderly, yes (as so clearly demonstrated by her choice to send him to a military school). Perhaps more clearly, she wants him to be a bit more normal.

This is a bit of a side note but I think in one particular aspect the film really fumbled a very obvious way it could have solidified its central theme: that of the fake Elio the aliens sent to take his place. So much of this film is about what parental figures want of their children, and this fake Elio is designed to disintegrate. To put it more bluntly, the Communiverse has created a sentient being with the express purpose of dying when it is convenient for them. Despite being a clone and a tool, he is a character in this movie. He has significant screen time, and is the instigator of a number of important moments in the story, and yet he is never given the chance to come up with an original thought. Instead of contemplating this fact, he allows himself to disintegrate, making a Terminator reference in the process, and does so to allow the protagonists to continue in their adventure. One child in this movie is ordered to be normal, and another is ordered to be violent. A third child, however, is literally ordered to die. It would have required ripping the guts out of the film to accommodate this, or maybe bringing it up to the length of a TV show, but it was such obvious thematic content that is just left at the wayside. Letting a child die in this way while others got to live left a bad taste in my mouth.

In terms of thematic potentials left unaddressed, there is a very obvious one that the writers missed in terms of contrasting Olga and Lord Grigon. Grigon serves a murderous, militaristic empire that cares little for life; that much is clear. What is less clear, when taking in the film’s framing as perceived by an onlooker, is that Olga also serves a murderous, militaristic empire that cares little for life, namely the United States military. Can you truthfully say that a military whose ultimate antecedents are genocidal militias in colonial times, and is currently leveling Gaza, cares about life?

I know that such things would never get into a children’s movie. I know that Disney takes plenty of money from the American military. I know that Disney is committed to a vague midcentury form of patriotism that likes to pretend everything is fine and dandy. I know that Disney, ultimately, is simply not brave enough to challenge American empire that openly. I know that this film had advisors from the military. Ultimately, though, the film is still portraying a menace to the world as benign, and ultimately good. Fighting Kessler Syndrome is undoubtedly good, but it ultimately comes off as akin to the time when America conquered Veracruz and focusing on when American doctors fought syphilis in that city. It’s a good act, yes, but it came out of a very particular context, and that context is not one of altruism.

The United States has ratified the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the militarization of outer space. The United States also has laws preventing it from providing weapons to governments committing genocide, and yet it does so anyway. Unfortunately, as long as the world is divided into competing empires, I expect the Outer Space Treaty will be about as effective as the Kellogg-Briand Pact was (indeed, the wide variety of objects cluttering the atmosphere may well violate the treaty in itself). What I worry is that many adults who may be firing those weapons at whatever poor country may come in America’s crosshairs, at poor, defenseless children, will have entered that grisly service because they saw Elio in theaters and were enchanted by space, and by the military.

On a basic narrative level I enjoyed Elio. I did, however, leave the theater feeling like there was fertile soil to have done even more with what had been laid out. The whole film, while enjoyable, felt like a massive missed opportunity to explore issues it merely raised. I know that this is wishful thinking and in one instance not particularly likely due to the interests of Disney as a company. But it stood out to me all the same.

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POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Film Review: Jurassic World: Rebirth

Herrrrrrrrrrrre we go again

It takes chutzpah to give the name "Rebirth" to a sequel that fails to make the case for why your franchise shouldn't stay dead. It takes even more chutzpah to admit as much in your movie's actual script: as our expert characters explain, people used to queue enthusiastically to see a good dinosaur show, whereas now they can't be bothered, and the only reason these bizarre abominations haven't been put out of their misery is that they're super expensive to make and the company still hopes something useful may come from them.

At least this time there's encouraging news: Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are mercifully out of the picture, and in their place we get actors who can act. But the spectre of those two still haunts Jurassic World: Rebirth, because the dialogues haven't gotten any better. Fortunately, the latter half of the movie is mostly action set pieces, so there's not much talking to cringe at, but the beginning, when the characters are convincing each other that returning to the land of people-eating monstrosities isn't an obviously bad idea, is full of tortured technobabble and predictable jokes.

The script sticks so faithfully to established movie tropes that the cast can be neatly classified as follows:

• Family of innocent bystanders who of course won't get eaten because they're adorable;
• Trio of heroes who of course won't get eaten because their names are on the poster;
• Suddenly introduced crew who of course will get eaten because someone has to.

That being said, the actual confrontations with various types of dinosaurs are put together with proper care for the rhythm of dramatic tension, so there are many moments when one truly fears for the characters who can't die. Also, after a shipwreck splits the cast in two teams, the editing maintains a good sense of when to cut between their respective subplots. The flow of action is consistent and engaging. As survival adventures go, this one is quite enjoyable. But the movie doesn't do the core part of the assignment, which was to justify its own existence.

When 2015's Jurassic World introduced the concept of hybrid dinosaurs, it was a clever allegory for the arms race that was taking shape between increasingly unimpressed moviegoers and increasingly desperate moviemakers. But the sequels that followed haven't known what to do with that idea, and became further incarnations of what that first reboot wanted to criticize. The moments of Spielbergian awe at the majesty of primeval colossi have ceded the stage to instinctive revulsion at uglier and uglier experiments that make for curious action figures but don't have a narrative reason for being in the story.

Rebirth closes off the opportunity that the ending of Fallen Kingdom created and Dominion squandered: the repercussions of a world where dinosaurs are running loose and interacting with today's ecosystems. The new status quo declares that, actually, dinosaurs aren't compatible with the environmental conditions in most of the planet, and they've settled in a narrow band of territory near the equator, where it's hot enough for their tastes. OK, I can buy that. But the excuse to visit them this time is too contrived: a pharmaceutical company needs living tissue samples from the biggest dinosaurs because something about their massive hearts can provide a treatment for coronary disease. Can you use DNA from their fossils? No, it has to be from living animals, for reasons. Can you make your own clones and take the tissue samples from their embryos? No, it has to be in the restricted island where every government forbids to go, for reasons. Can you use blue whales, which are actually twice as big as the mosasaur? No, it has to be from the scary ones that eat people. For reasons.

So the plot makes zero sense, but at least the characters aren't annoying and the action is competently directed. If only the script hadn't yielded to the temptation of adding yet another dinosaur hybrid for no reason. What could have been a thrilling ending to the adventure ends up delivering a titan-sized eyesore that turns out to be too easy to get rid of. There's even a prologue that foreshadows this monster, with a deadly accident that could have served to comment on the dangers of our modern way of life (a lab is destroyed because someone was eating a chocolate bar), but that plotline goes nowhere. If you can get past the mediocre dialogues, lazy comedy, and shoehorned character motivations, Rebirth clears the bar of not being terrible, which by this point seems to be all we get to ask of a Jurassic sequel.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Rebellions Are Built on Hope: Andor S2E10

In season two, I never expected to become such a fan of Luthen and Kleya.

In some ways, episode nine is the end of Andor season two in that it wraps up the Ghorman plotline and Cassian’s arc with Bix and his dedication to the rebellion. In the final three episodes, the season pivots to align with Rogue One and present the characters we expect to see in the movie (and wrap up the loose ends of the ones we don’t). While not as smooth a storytelling experience as season one, episode ten is an intense story that stands alone to show the beginning and end of Luthen and Kleya’s relationship. 

In “Make It Stop,” Kleya and Luthen prepare to meet Lonni (Robert Emms), their inside person at the ISB. This type of meeting has become even riskier after Mon Mothma’s speech a year ago. Back then, Cassian had urged Luthen to leave Coruscant because it was only a matter of time before the ISB found him, but Luthen has held on for another year. Even he recognizes the risk as he says to Kleya: “I think we used up all the perfect.”

When Luthen meets with Lonni, the plan that was revealed by Krennic in episode one becomes clear to Luthen. The energy program was a lie to obscure building the Death Star. Lonni was able to find this information by breaking into Dedra Meero’s files. Unfortunately for Lonni, Luthen’s dedication to the cause means Lonni cannot walk away with this information, and Luthen leaves him dead.

After Luthen walks away, the next shot is sideways, showing how this information has repositioned his worldview. Now, all that matters is that someone is able to deliver the information to the Rebel Alliance—but Lonni revealed to Luthen that Dedra is going to target him very soon.

Luthen leaves out Lonni’s warning about Dedra’s impending raid when he gives Kleya the information about the weapon and the engineer, Galen Erso. In a rare protective moment, Luthen insists Kleya leave with the information while he returns to the shop to burn their comms, knowing Dedra might arrive—and that she does. 

Watching Dedra and Luthen finally meet was a scene we’d all been waiting for and had a level of intensity that had me literally at the edge of my seat. After the violence of Ghorman and the espionage surrounding Mothma’s speech, this moment of doublespeak where they both, for a few seconds, play at not knowing the other, was a different kind of intensity. 

Luthen resumes his role one last time as the rare artifact salesman for the wealthy as Dedra walks in, claiming she has an artifact to sell him. At first, they test each other, such as when Dedra asks if everything is “real” and Luthen states there are only two pieces of “questionable provenance,” which is of course a reference to them standing there, but Dedra ends their conversation by revealing the Imperial starpath unit that had originally brought Luthen and Cassian together. Luthen knows this is the end for him, and Dedra revels in the moment, producing a memorable exchange between fascist and anti-fascist:

Dedra: “You disgust me.”

Luthen: “You want to know why?”

Dedra: “Everything you stand for.” 

Luthen: “Freedom scares you.”

He goes on to say one of my favorite lines from Luthen: “The rebellion isn’t here anymore. It’s flown away. It’s everywhere now. There’s a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.”

While Luthen has quite the bodycount to his name, one reason he’s good at what he does is because he is not exempt from this same violence. In order to take his secrets with him, he stabs himself. At this moment, the episode turns, and the second half focuses on Kleya as she realizes she must make sure Luthen dies. 

The second half of the episode is interspersed with flashbacks, including when Kleya and Luthen first meet. In a parallel to Cassian, Luthen rescues Kleya from another genocide committed by the Empire. He is complicit in this genocide as a Sergeant, his radio calling out the acts of violence being committed outside the ship he is currently hiding in: people are ordered to stand against a wall, followed by blaster fire and screaming. Other orders demonstrate the mass killing. It’s never made clear what planet this genocide is happening on, but it parallels Ghorman and Cassian’s planet of Kenari, where there are so few survivors. 

As Kleya prepares to infiltrate the hospital where Luthen is being kept alive by a machine, the flashbacks show them fencing antiquities and observing Imperial atrocities. At first, young Kleya, radicalized by genocide, is frustrated with their progress, but the more senior Luthen helps her keep from burning up in her rage: “We fight to win. That means we lose, and lose and lose and lose, until we’re ready. All you know now is how much you hate. You bank that. You hide that. You keep it alive until you know what to do with it.”

Even as a child, Luthen doesn’t call Kleya his daughter, and throughout the show, while there is care in their relationship, they appear more as partners than familial. Yet, Kleya’s careful mask comes down as she murders her way into the ISB-controlled hospital wing and reaches Luthen’s bedside. Without hesitation, she releases the machine keeping Luthen alive, but she does allow herself a brief show of affection before she hurries out, escaping back to the Coruscant hideout with the information about the building of the Death Star. 

While most of the episode is focused on Kleya and Luthen, Dedra is in the process of learning an important lesson about fascism—they eat their own. As Robert Evans and his co-hosts on It Could Happen Here point out in their breakdown of episodes 10-12, Dedra is a parallel of the spunky cop who breaks a few rules to take down the big bad, but Andor reveals the copoganda of this type of figure through Dedra, who is not someone we root for but rather a fascist who committed genocide. Dedra is arrested by the ISB even though she’s finally completed her longtime mission to capture Axis. She's worked hard to achieve this moment, but rather than be rewarded, she's immediately arrested by a man who used to be her underling and is now put in a position of power over her. She cannot breakthrough the fascist patriarchy even though she is a believer in their ideology.  

The episode’s final shot is a slow fade to black of Luthen’s body. Without him, it’s questionable if Yavin would have existed, and certainly, Cassian wouldn’t have joined the rebellion. While Luthen is not the most sympathetic character, he does dedicate everything to the cause, as he points out in his monologue to Lonni in episode ten of season one: “I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. […] I’m damned for what I do.” 

In perhaps a less dramatic tone, activist Dean Spade puts it this way: “Do I want to be in the fight until I die, even though I don’t know how it’s going to turn out? Because that’s how everyone who has fought for liberation had to BE. It’s being with the uncertainty. Part of that, for me, is shifting our sense of ourselves from some good outcome that can definitely happen towards just the pleasure of being with each other in the struggle.”

Many characters exhibit this sense of purpose, and the show demonstrates multiple ways of living in this moment, from Luthen’s loss of inner peace to Maarva’s speech at the end of season one where she describes how she’d live her life differently, declaring, “Fight the empire!” Luthen and Kleya are one of these paths, and the show makes few judgements about the different paths or tools to fight the Empire, but what it is important is that dedication to the fight.

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POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.