As playful as the movie is, its central tale of persecution and resistance plays not like an allegory but like a communion, a linking of the times—the inspiration of conscience by the revelation of past heroism, political and artistic.
—
Richard Brody,
New Yorker,
27 Mar. 2026
But if these movies are progressive allegories of beings transcending their differences, then Hoppers is a surprisingly blunt pushback to that notion.
Coogan was poking fun at tech companies’ impulse to name themselves after myths and parables, even when those myths and cultural artifacts have negative associations.
—
Diego Lasarte,
New Yorker,
25 Feb. 2026
Plato’s prescient understanding of ICE agents arose during a discussion of the parable of the Ring of Gyges.
Meanwhile, in deep-blue strongholds, law-abiding people and small shop owners keep getting treated like background characters in someone else’s morality play.
—
Larry Clifton,
The Orlando Sentinel,
27 Mar. 2026
Meanwhile, in deep-blue strongholds, law-abiding people and small shop owners keep getting treated like background characters in someone else’s morality play.
Kratos and his son Atreus traverse the nine realms, dig up old traumas, and stand off against a whole bestiary’s worth of gargantuan, flesh-eating monsters.
—
Luke Winkie,
Vulture,
1 Apr. 2025
Their violence — in medieval bestiaries, unicorns are regularly said to have beef with elephants and take them down by goring their bellies — is contrasted with their gentleness towards maidens and innate understanding of purity.
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