Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Other Doctor Lives: Watership Down: Episode 2 – “The Raid” (2018)

Another Doctor, another miniseries. We’re following Peter Capaldi this time around, although I’m not positive how many episodes he’ll be featured in – it appears that the entire voluminous cast is credited for every episode, and I already discovered that Capaldi isn’t in episode 1. But for now, let’s get started.

A group of rabbits, led by All-Around-Decent-Guy Protagonist Hazel, have left their warren after Hazel’s little brother has a prophetic dream of death and destruction. They’ve arrived at Watership Down, where they’ll make their new home, but there’s only one doe among them and they know they’ll need a greater gender balance to survive. Hazel hesitantly leads a raid on a nearby farm to liberate their does, while another subset of the group gets more than they bargained for investigating a nearby warren called Efrafa.

I know I read the book at some point, but it was a long time ago and I think I was a little too young at the time to really get it. I just remember that it’s about a lot of rabbits with adorable names who spend much of their time dealing with inter-/intrawarren power struggles, there’s all kinds of rabbit mythology, and it’s incredibly violent. As such, my memories of the book don’t give me much to go on as to what’s ahead other than a vague notion that this animated miniseries (a Netflix original) appears to be pulling its punches on some of the violence. Certainly, violent things happen, but we usually “cut away” before the critical moment, and I feel like we probably ought to have seen at least one dead rabbit by now.

The animation, in my view, suffers under the same issue that The Lion King reboot did. Going for more realistic-looking CGI instead of a more stylized animation (CGI or 2D – doesn’t matter) presents two problems. First, there are serious limits to how well the rabbits can emote onscreen, and while the voice cast gives it their all, the effect is muted when the animation isn’t matching what they’re putting out. Second, most of the rabbits basically look alike, and unlike The Lion King, there are a ton of them with prominent roles to try and keep track of. Even two episodes in, I rarely know who’s onscreen until I recognize the actors’ voices.

At least there, we have plenty to work with. This cast is almost comically stuffed with talented British actors. Leading the pack is James McAvoy as Hazel, an everyrabbit who’s doing his best to hold things together in the face of enormous odds on all sides. We’ve also got Nicholas Hoult (who I’ve seen in all kinds of things now but who I love best as Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road) as Hazel’s little brother Fiver and John Boyega as Bigwig, an alpha-rabbit-type who keeps challenging Hazel’s leadership. And then, you ready? Because this cast features Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Olivia Colman, Mackenzie Crook (Gareth from the U.K. version of The Office,) Anne-Marie Duff (Fiona from the original Shameless,) Freddie Fox (who played the titular character in a good adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood,) Daniel Kaluuya, Rosamund Pike, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Mr. Eko from Lost.) Phew!

And where’s Peter Capaldi in all this? As you can see, he’s one of the few actors not playing a rabbit. Instead, he’s Kehaar, a bird that the group comes upon and tries to enlist in their search for more does. Kehaar gives off Big Tool Energy in all his scenes, making petty demands of the rabbits while having no intention of doing anything that doesn’t help himself. In the role, Capaldi does a fine job of making Kehaar delightfully terrible.

First impressions:

Accent Watch

Scottish. So Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Not necessarily. The excellent voice cast is turning in good work, in my view, for not a whole lot of reward, and even though I don’t remember much of the book, I can’t shake the feeling that this miniseries isn’t doing it justice.

Peter Capaldi – Possibly. I’m getting a kick out of selfish, irritable Kehaar so far. We’ll see how much Capaldi ends up being in it altogether.

Warnings

Lots of violence against rabbits, disturbing images, and strong thematic elements.

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