Welcome to Mythania

Welcome to a fantastical realm of steam, steel, and sorcery—a world where juggernaut war machines ravage the landscape, where stupendous air fleets dominate the skies, where astral mages battle enchanted automatons, and where the march of progress is moved as much by gears of iron as it is by the weaving of spells.

Welcome to the World of Mythania.

– Mark William Chase

Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series is coming to HBO! Although some are hesitant to call the world of “His Dark Materials” steampunk, it carries a great many steampunk elements, being set in a Victoria-era alternate history, with clockwork gadgets and airships. There’s also magic, non-human races, parallel universes, and sentient armored polar bears. Who doesn’t love sentient armored polar bears?

I also enjoyed the movie “The Golden Compass,” which came out 2007. It certainly wasn’t perfect–no move adaption is–but with the upcoming HBO series, there’s a lot more screen time to work with. Here’s hoping for the best!

Valentine’s day, 2019, will see the release of the (hopefully) awesome Hollywood adaptation of Battle Angel Alita, titled (backwardsly) Alita: Battle Angel.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau, this movie has all the making’s a major blockbuster. However, the source material is pretty obscure. Back in the day, I was a huge Battle Angel Alita fan, as were some of my friends (we were all into anime and manga in the 1990s), to the point that I even wrote a little world book for the GURPS role-playing game systems. I still have the nine original manga graphic novels, which I’m now in the process of re-reading. Even so, Battle Angel Alita is almost completely unknown outside it’s limited fan base, and I fear that will work to the detriment of the movie.

The movie appears to loosely cover the first four graphic novels, which is good, since there probably won’t be a sequel. I honestly wish this was a streaming series for Netflix or Amazon, or maybe HBO or Starz, as it could be so much more than a one-shot movie. But it is what it is, and the latest trailer looks absolutely marvelous, and shows that the movie will at least touch on most of the key elements and themes of the manga.

There is now an even newer trailer out for Mortal Engines, based on the book by Philip Reeve and directed by Peter Jackson. I have a feeling this is going to be great! At least, I certainly do hope so.