A20 O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| WEDNESDAY,NOVEMBER13,
D
isney+, the huge and much-
anticipated streaming service,
launched Tuesday in the U.S.,
Canada and, for some reason, the
Netherlands.
It was a mess. A technical mess of
malfunctioning log-in attempts and
movies and series failing to load. For
a lot of people, their introduction to
Disney+ was looking for hours at a
logo and an error icon. You would
have more fun watching two flies
mosey up and down the screen.
Disney released a statement: “The
consumer demand for Disney+ has
exceeded our high expectations. We
are working to quickly resolve the
current user issue. We appreciate
your patience.”
Patience? Are you mad? This is an
era when consumers expect instant
access with a click. The sound of frus-
trated moaning across North Amer-
ica may only have been drowned out
by the sound of cackling coming
from Netflix execs.
It was odd to witness a mistake by
the massive Walt Disney Co. It spent
billions accruing the content and
amassing a library of new and old
movies. The service has almost 500
movies and 7,500 episodes of televi-
sion from the Disney, Pixar, Marvel,
Star Warsand National Geographic
libraries. If you wanted to stay home
and watch what Disney likes to call
“beloved stories,” you might not
leave the house until next summer.
After, that is, you get logged in.
Even odder is the fact that the
marquee original series for Disney+,
The Mandalorian, is a massive disap-
pointment. The live-action spin-off
from theStar Warssaga is hokey,
hackneyed and about as sophisticat-
ed as a B-movie western from the
1930s. Nice visuals, for sure, if you’re
still easily impressed by CGI effects.
The adventures of the Mandalor-
ian (Pedro Pascal fromGame of
Thrones, although it could be any-
body inside that tin can of an outfit)
are set “after the fall of the Empire,”
which means it takes place after
whatever it is that happened inRe-
turn of the Jedi. This Mandalorian
fella is a bounty hunter, going about
the galaxy finding varmints, for a fee.
He’s a Clint Eastwood type, saying lit-
tle and fast with the firearms.
How hokey like an old-timey
western is it? Well, it starts with a bar
fight, just like ancient western
movies began with a scene in a sa-
loon, an argument and the introduc-
tion of the hero gunslinger. The
Mandalorian fella finds the guy he’s
looking for and announces, “I can
bring you in warm or I can bring you
in cold.”
The varmint opts for warm, so
there’s a trip across what looks like
the frozen north to a flying gizmo
that will transport both of them
away. A monster arises from beneath
the ice, by the way, but pay it no
mind. Our anti-hero deals with it the
way a gunslinger dealt with a pesky
rattlesnake.
Stuff happens, most in what looks
like a mash-up of a medieval village
and a town in the Old West, as imag-
ined by Hollywood in 1923. Anti-hero
fella takes an assignment to capture
a person or critter out in the
badlands of the galaxy. He accepts
the assignment from a dubious guy
(played by Werner Herzog, no less)
who has a passel of stormtroopers
protecting him. Off goes our anti-
hero on his mission to the badlands.
There he is set upon by a couple of
angry Blurrgs, those critters that
look like a big fish perambulating
around on two fat feet. He is saved by
a local old-timer, the sort of wizened
figure of the Old West that would
have been played by Walter Brennan
in a horse opera set in a place called
Cactus Creek, or such. Anyway, old-
timer teaches Mandalorian to tame
and ride a Blurrg and off they go,
more or less yelling “yee-haw!” as
they set off.
There follows a shootout at the
varmints’ encampment, the intro-
duction of a chatty robot and more
gun action and attempted banter
than we have seen sinceThe High
Chaparralwas on TV 50 years ago. All
that’s missing are the tumbleweeds.
There’s a twist at the end, when
the Mandalorian discovers what he’s
been paid to bring back to the
dubious guy. There is an insertion of
the cutes that would make your
teeth ache.
If you’re aStar Warsfanatic, it
might pass the time. But as the mar-
quee show for Disney+, it is shock-
ingly juvenile, loaded with fastest-
gun-in-the-west clichés and very,
very male. There’s a lot to consume
on Disney+, but this particular item
on the menu is like a very badly
cooked spaghetti western.Disney+launch
isamess,and
itsmarqueeshow
isamiss
JOHN
DOYLEOPINIONTELEVISIONT
he light turbulence on the airplane jostles
135 tired co-workers as they jet south
through Alberta’s famously big sky at 650
kilometres an hour. A short 75-minute flight
is all that’s required for 135 millwrights, shift super-
visors and other engineers like myself to shed their
navy-blue, fire-resistant fleeces and operator-
branded ball caps, metamorphosing back into hus-
bands, parents and partners. In 10 days, we will meet
again at the crack of dawn and jet together once
more to the promised riches of Northern Alberta’s
bituminous black earth. This is my 57th flight of the
year.
I wanted to be a journalist. But my always-want-
ing-the-best-for-me parents reminded me that math
makes money, so off to engineering school I went. In
my post-university young-adult life, I’ve managed to
emerge with “conventionally successful” stamped
on my forehead: 24 years old, female engineer, work-
ing for a big oil company, homeowner. My life was
laid out in front of me like a long stretch of highway
with no off-ramps: settle down with
another engineer, who probably
drives a respectable truck and spends
weekends on the golf course; return to
a business-casual office environment;
eat quinoa salad out of a Tupperware
container at my desk five days a week;
take weekend trips to lake country; get
a dog (probably a golden retriever);
have a rustic wedding with reclaimed
wood and mason jars; have two kids;
retire in lake country.
The realization that the rest of my
life could be measured in “volumes of
Tupperware quinoa salad consumed”
stifled me with the force of a wrecking
ball. So, I did what any respectable 24-
year-old with a history of black eye-
liner and punk-rock preferences
would do–Irebelled against my own life.
I saidsayonarato my now ex-boyfriend and pulled
out my suitcase. Armed with an extremely efficient
packing philosophy and a couple excellent playlists,
I threw myself solo into the world with the grace and
beauty of a baby deer taking its first steps with skate-
boards taped to its feet.
In Austin, Tex., I zipped from taco shop to taco
shop on the back of a moped. I bloodied my knees
mountain biking through Utah’s red canyons. I shiv-
ered, soaked to the bone on top of a mountain in Pe-
ru and splashed around at a thermal bath rave in Bu-
dapest. I contemplated modern art in Vienna’s cul-
tural core and danced to ABBA at a goth bar in Den-
ver. I sipped wine from the bottle at a campground in
Yellowstone I never planned to be at and spent four
days trudging through grizzly-bear country with 50
pounds on my back. I pranced around a grassy Seat-
tle music festival covered head to toe in glitter, then
let the cold September rain settle on my face in a
steaming hot spring in Jasper.
This would be the part where I talk about how
some transformative realization crashed over me at
“Sightseeing point of interest A” or “Historical land-
mark B” and changed my entire outlook on life. But
at points A, B and C through Z, I had no big moment. I
bought all these flights so that I, too, could walk
away from Machu Picchu a changed person, just likeI had seen everybody on Instagram describe. My
transformation was not a supernova. My a-ha mo-
ment was a million flecks of space dust influencing
one another in the dark with an imperceptible grav-
itational pull. It took me an eon to realize the dust
had – in fact – finally turned into a light source.
It wasn’t Machu Picchu that made a difference,
but the two Peruvian women along my Andean trek
who taught me how to roast coffee and stayed up
helping me practise my Spanish until 1 a.m. It wasn’t
Vienna’s culturally renowned core of museums; it
was a sunny patch of grass beside the Danube river
with someone from my hostel, changing our narra-
tive from strangers to friends. It wasn’t Yellowstone’s
Old Faithful geyser launching into the air; it was
charging through Montana’s extremely unremarka-
ble landscape blasting music so loud the car win-
dows shook. The truth is, I didn’t actually need to be
abroad to have almost any of my favourite experi-
ences. They were just everyday moments that hap-
pened to happen abroad, leading me to realize that
the true value of my flight tickets were
not the landmarks, it was learning to
be a more attentive participant in my
own life. No more coasting allowed.
I now spend less time online shop-
ping and more time lying alone on the
floor listening to an album cover-to-
cover without distractions. I call or
FaceTime my friends to ask them how
they’re doing; sometimes, I surprise
them with flowers simply because I
want to make them smile. I bought a
ukulele and practise it loudly (and ter-
ribly) in public. I tell everyone I inter-
act with to have a good day. When I
woke up and decided I wanted another
piercing, I went out and got one (then
didn’t get too upset when it ripped out
in a mosh pit at a punk show within a
single month). I spend time with who I want, when I
want. I sit in the sun a lot. Every day after work, I pick
one song and have a dance party in my beige camp
room. I have never been publicly weirder than I am
today, and that’s totally cool with me.
Now, as I board the plane to go to work, I smile to
myself as a bleary-eyed co-worker texts his girlfriend
three heart emojis and “I’ll miss you so much.” For 10
days, we will lose ourselves fussing over pipe specifi-
cations and production volumes. When he comes
home, he will probably go golfing and maybe even
make some quinoa salad. I think about how maybe
when he quietly steps off the golf cart at the seventh
hole, the sun will peek through the clouds – the mo-
ment is so perfect it causes him to raise his face to the
sky and exhale as the rays suspend him in five sec-
onds of pure bliss.
Maybe I’ll continue to be selfish for the next five
years and touch down in dozens more countries.
Maybe I’ll stay grounded in my home city, but I’m no
longer stifled by the idea. Armed with my new per-
spective earned in a year of travel, mistakes, laughter
and too many missed hours of sleep, I know with
complete confidence that there’s adventure hiding
in any permutation of my life – as long as I’m awake
enough to look for it.NathalieCarsonlivesinCalgary.HAVELIFE,
WILLTRAVEL
ILLUSTRATIONBYDREWSHANNONAyearabroadmademeweirder,moreappreciativeandfeelingfree.
Andthat’sthewayIlikeit,NathalieCarsonwritesFIRSTPERSONArmedwithan
extremelyefficient
packingphilosophy
andacouple
excellentplaylists,
Ithrewmyselfsolo
intotheworldwith
thegraceandbeauty
ofababydeer
takingitsfirststeps
withskateboards
tapedtoitsfeet.Haveastorytotell?Pleaseseetheguidelinesonourwebsitetgam.ca/essayguide,
[email protected]FirstPersonisadailypersonalpiecesubmittedbyreaders| NEWSTODAY’SSUDOKUSOLUTION TODAY’SKENKENSOLUTION