tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49390013167177818422024-03-04T23:07:03.689-05:00The Ways of Tea and FailurePatrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-14613081813949641482018-11-02T18:00:00.000-04:002018-11-20T17:40:42.363-05:00How "DELTARUNE" One-Ups "UNDERTALE"The tenth-most-popular post I've ever written on here was a rant about "UNDERTALE", specifically with how it handled the ending of the so-called "Genocide Path" (which I opted to call "The Guilt Trip" for reasons I detail in <a href="http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-guilt-trip-why-i-hate-genocide-path.html">the piece itself</a>).<br />
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I do say, however, that I enjoyed "UNDERTALE" a great deal, and actually thought the ending for the "Neutral Path" was damn near perfect tonally and thematically. I thought the "Pacifist Path" ending was too treacly, and the "Guilt Trip" ending was too didactic and presumptuous. But really, the main thing that bothered me was how the game had important, story-relevant content that you could only access if you went along every route, and one of those routes permanently leaves a black mark of judgment upon your save file.<br />
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That said, I've always hoped that Toby Fox would continue developing video games, because despite my problems with some of his choices, "UNDERTALE" was kind of a triumph of interactive storytelling. It was self-aware without sacrificing narrative tension or immersion, the combat mechanics were clever and varied, the characters were distinctive and infectiously fun, the music was incredible, and like I said, one of the three endings is absolutely fantastic.<br />
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So I was very happy to find out that Toby Fox had released a demo of a new game he's hoping to make. It's still unclear whether or not the full version of this game will ever actually happen since he apparently needs a team in order for it to be viable, and he has no experience leading a team in making a video game, so there's a halfway decent chance that it will fall apart and this first part is all we'll ever get.<br />
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This game is called "<a href="http://www.deltarune.com/">DELTARUNE</a>", and in case it's not immediately obvious, that name is an anagram of "UNDERTALE". That name is fitting, however, because it's a good symbol for how this game is related to its older sibling. It's not a sequel or a prequel, but it involves familiar themes and characters, has similar mechanics, and definitely makes references to its predecessor throughout. It's not exactly an "alternate universe" either, because typically, alternate universe stories have clear points of divergence. "Red Son" is an alternate universe where Superman lands in Soviet Russia instead of the United States. "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" is an alternate universe where Voldemort is vastly more intelligent. But "DELTARUNE"? There's no clear point of divergence. It takes place somewhere new, but all the old, familiar characters are there. A number of the characters are doing what they were doing at the end of "UNDERTALE", but they may or may not know any of the characters they ought to know. And despite this universe greatly resembling the state of the world at the end of "UNDERTALE" (specifically the "Pacifist Path" ending), the presence of certain characters makes it seem almost like a prequel. So, like the name, it's "UNDERTALE", but mixed around until it becomes something new.<br />
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It's a bizarre choice given how invested the fandom was in the established timeline and characters, but it also makes the game accessible to a newer audience, even though you'll get more out of the game if you've played "UNDERTALE". Toby Fox advises that you play "UNDERTALE" first, but all that really means is that a lot of references will fly over your head. Nothing about the plot really hinges on your knowledge of the previous game, so I'd probably recommend trying out "DELTARUNE" even if you haven't played "UNDERTALE". You can probably get through it in about 4-6 hours and it costs nothing, so I recommend <a href="https://www.deltarune.com/">giving it a shot</a> before you keep reading this post.<br />
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SPOILERS beyond this point.<br />
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So now that we're on the same page regarding what "DELTARUNE" is, let me just say that I absolutely loved it pretty much from the beginning.<br />
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The game starts up with character creation, which immediately threw me. "UNDERTALE" had absolutely no character creation mechanics whatsoever, so it seemed like a big departure right out of the gate. I chose my head, my torso, my legs, my personality, and my name, and then the game... threw it all away.<br />
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"No one can choose who they are in this world," the game coldly informs you.<br />
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WELL THAT'S ONE WAY TO START A GAME, HUH?<br />
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And that's not the only time the game does stuff like this. Twice, a character asks you a question, but interrupts you before you have a chance to respond. Later on, you get to design a siege weapon, only to see it unceremoniously blow up a few minutes later. This game has a lot going on, but probably one of the biggest departures it makes from "UNDERTALE" is...<br />
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Your choices don't matter.<br />
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Oh, they matter a little. It'll change how certain characters respond to you, and small details about the ending will change if you make it through the game without killing anything, but by-and-large, the game doesn't give a crap about the player's morality. In fact, the game doesn't seem to care much about the main character, Kris, at all. The only character with a clear arc in the game is Susie, a new character and one of three characters that make up the party.<br />
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Yeah, that's right. Now there's a party system. Evolving from the scaled-down "Earthbound"-inspired combat of "UNDERTALE", "DELTARUNE" moves closer to "Final Fantasy" in terms of its combat. Now you juggle three characters instead of just one. In addition, there are now spells that can be cast that use up a new resource called Tension Points (TP for short), which refills when you defend or narrowly avoid obstacles during the bullet-hell segments, which are still very much a part of the game.<br />
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That said, despite these differences, the combat is largely the same. You can still FIGHT or ACT, and once your enemy is willing, you can SPARE them to avoid having to defeat them with violence. But having multiple characters means you can now do fun things like use Kris to ACT so that a different character can SPARE on the same turn, allowing you to finish up combat in a single turn under certain circumstances.<br />
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I really, really like the new combat system. The TP mechanic encourages you to be more daring during the bullet-hell segments, the new "Pacify" spell cast by the new character, Ralsei, creates alternate ways to non-violently (or at least non-lethally) defeat opponents, and having to play around Susie's initial inclinations to just hit everything that moves creates some pretty compelling challenges for players who want to avoid resorting to violence.<br />
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That said, there is one major flaw with this new structure, and it has to do with the first major departure that I mentioned. There is really no in-game incentive to avoid violence.<br />
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The game itself actually literally prevents you from killing everything. Most enemies will just run away instead of dying, and some enemies can only be defeated through ACTing in the first place.<br />
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In a post on Twitter, Toby Fox himself acknowledged this problem:<br />
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"I think [the lack of multiple endings is] part of the reason why the ACT / FIGHT system feels so vestigial in this one."<br />
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To a certain extent, he's right. There's really no in-game reason to have the ACT system, except, of course, for the fact that the ACT system was probably the most distinctive thing about "UNDERTALE". And yeah, if the choices don't matter for the story (as they did in "UNDERTALE"), why have them?<br />
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Well, one could say the same thing about the "Metal Gear" franchise. Almost every single one not only has a nonlethal way to play the entire game, it actively encourages you to do it. Playing that way almost never actually affects the story, but it's always there, and the games are all better for it. The same holds true here. No, I didn't NEED to use the ACT system over the FIGHT system, but I chose to anyway because I wanted to.<br />
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Furthermore, I LOVE the fact that Toby Fox isn't doing diverging story paths this time.<br />
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As I've made abundantly clear at this point, I thought that the multiple story paths idea in "UNDERTALE" ultimately hurt it, because if you wanted to understand the full story, you needed to experience all three playthroughs, but then the game itself chastises you for doing exactly that, mistaking your natural curiosity for sociopathy. And furthermore, despite HAVING multiple endings, it was pretty obvious that only one of them was considered to be the "true" ending, and thus, every other ending might as well not exist.<br />
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This time around, Fox decided it was better to just have one good ending rather than one good ending and a bunch of mediocre ones. Maybe he did that to keep an already complicated game from getting more complicated, but regardless of why he chose to take this direction, I'm very, very glad he did.<br />
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Even better, by including multiple characters, you still get to have multiple perspectives, essentially allowing you to get what you would have gotten out of having three different playthroughs all at once. Kris plays the neutral party, Susie represents the nihilistic "shoot first, ask questions never" attitude of "The Guilt Trip", and Ralsei represents the naive and treacly attitude of the "Pacifist Path". It allows the game to have the same moral depth found in "UNDERTALE", but without forcing the player to replay the game three times and then making them feel like a monster for doing it. Susie and Ralsei's ideologies regularly clash, and Kris is never really put in a position to have to choose between them. The game still has something to say about its own mechanics and the ethics of interacting with fictional characters, but by making Susie the focus, it can talk about those things without feeling like it's actively judging the player.<br />
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That's not to say that it doesn't seem to have some deep things to say about the player and the supposedly neutral Kris. The ending certainly suggests that Kris has a lot more going on than we might initially imagine. But for now, I'm going to judge the game based on this demo, which, again, may very well be the last we ever see of this project if Fox can't get a solid team together. There's no use pontificating on what the full game may or may not be like.<br />
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And based solely on this demo, I think "DELTARUNE" is quietly brilliant. It takes what worked best about "UNDERTALE", removed the excess baggage by having it all in a new alternate universe, and built clever, ambitious new ideas on top of it.<br />
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Now, that's not to say I liked everything about the game. Kris' pointed lack of agency allows Susie and Ralsei to shine, but I'm not sure if I really get the point of that. Maybe it would make more sense in the context of a completed game, but within the demo itself, it mostly just makes you feel like an outsider looking in. In that regard, I'd say "DELTARUNE" is a lot less immersive than "UNDERTALE" was, which is not necessarily a big deal-breaking problem. Not every game has to be immersive so long as it's still engaging in other ways, and "DELTARUNE" absolutely is. My only concern is that Kris' lack of agency might make it difficult to understand or relate to whatever conflicts they go through in the larger game (if it ever gets made). It's not a problem in this first chapter, but now that Susie's character arc is more or less finished, the rest of the game would presumably have to depend on delving into the mystery of Kris, and when the player has literally no ownership over the direction Kris takes, it might make it difficult to empathize with them.<br />
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But aside from that, I was really into "DELTARUNE" and it seemed to address my biggest problems with "UNDERTALE" while also improving the things I loved most about it.<br />
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I really hope Toby Fox gets to make the rest of it and that we don't have to wait 7 years to get to play it.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-66756535446085618142018-04-27T12:56:00.001-04:002018-04-27T12:56:35.450-04:00"Avengers: Infinity War" NitpicksSo I don't have a formal review for "Avengers: Infinity War" yet. It's another one of those movies that I need to watch twice so I can see if it works as well without the elements of surprise, anticipation, and peer-pressure.<br />
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That said, I probably loved it. I definitely think critics are underrating it, possibly because "Black Panther" made them raise their standards. Meh, critics also didn't much like "Doctor Strange", and that's easily in my Top 5.<br />
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...Oh, did I forget to review "Black Panther"? Crap. Well, it was amazing. And comparing it to this movie makes about as much sense as comparing a meal prepared by a 4-star chef to a "Ziggy Pig". They serve different purposes, is what I'm saying.<br />
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Anyway, though I'm not ready to review "Infinity War", I did have a bunch of spoiler-y nitpicks I wanted to run through because I need to get it out of my brain. Also, because I imagine some people will find it entertaining. Also, because it should be possible to love a thing and still be able to nitpick at it.<br />
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<b>SPOILERS</b> ahead.<br />
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- Really guys? Did you REALLY have to kill the black guy first? Heimdall couldn't have sent Hulk to Earth AFTER Loki died?<br />
- I'm annoyed that we just have to take it for granted that Thanos was able to take on the entire Nova Corps and steal the Power Stone without the Guardians of the Galaxy even hearing about it. I get that the scene with Hulk, Thor, and Loki establishes just how badass Thanos is, but this is still Thanos WITH the Power Stone. We never get a sense of what Thanos is capable of without any Infinity Stones, and the missing Xandar scene would have been the perfect way to demonstrate that. It also makes you wonder why Thanos ever bothered using Ronan in the first place if he had Ebony Maw on standby.<br />
- Where's Valkyrie? Are we just supposed to assume that Valkyrie, Korg, Miek, and everyone else just died off-screen?<br />
- Where's Kraglin? I saw in the credits that Sean Gunn was still doing the mo-cap work for Rocket, so why not also have him play Kraglin?<br />
- Where's Lady Sif?<br />
- I prefer Thor with the eye-patch (though I love that he gets the prosthetic eye from Rocket).<br />
- No offense guys, but we're never going to care about Scarlet Witch and Vision. It's not really anyone's fault. <strike>OK, it's Joss Whedon's fault.</strike> Trust me, I <i>wanted</i> to like them, and I do, just not enough to put them at the center of so much attention. We had a lot more time to get to know the other characters. Scarlet Witch and Vision were introduced in an Avengers movie (and also one of the weakest MCU movies overall) and the next time we saw them ("Civil War") it was <i>another</i> team-up movie, so they never really got time to develop much there, either.<br />
- Also, why can't Vision use the Mind Stone's mind-control powers? Probably would have been useful in a number of these fights. Do you need the Scepter for that? Or is it using all of its mojo to keep Vision conscious?<br />
- Also, where did Wanda's accent go? I mean, I'm glad they stopped trying, but it is pretty weird that it's just... gone.<br />
- How did Thanos know the Collector had the Reality Stone? Or that Doctor Strange had the Time Stone? Or that Vision was in Scotland? As far as we're aware, the only people who knew the location of the Reality Stone were Thor, Loki, Sif, Volstagg, and the Collector himself. And no one outside of Kamar-Taj's inner circle should know the Time Stone is even on Earth. And the only person who should know Vision's in Scotland is Wanda. Even so, Thanos was not only able to locate the Reality Stone before Thor could get to it, he also sent Ebony Maw to New York, where the Time Stone happened to be, and Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight not only find Vision, they manage to ambush him. They seem to have a way of locating the Infinity Stones, but it's never even mentioned, and it's never explained why they can't use it to find the Soul Stone. Hell, if they just shuffled the plot around a bit, they could have made the Soul Stone be the first Infinity Stone he got, and then they could just say he used that to locate the other 5.<br />
- On that note, if it was so easy for Thanos to find, why, exactly, did Loki think that the Reality Stone would be safe with the Collector?<br />
- And on that note, what exactly <i>was</i> Loki's arrangement with Thanos? We never really learned what exactly happened to Loki between "Thor" and "Avengers". We just know that Thanos trusted him with the Mind Stone to go get the Space Stone for some reason. But why use Loki at all and not, say, Ebony Maw? It just feels like Thanos' efforts to get the Infinity Stones were pretty half-hearted until now, when suddenly he just sort of casually collects them all without much apparent effort. I mean, what was Thanos even doing all these years? Was he just waiting for Asgard to blow up? But does that mean he grabbed the Power Stone AFTER Asgard blew up? I imagine it would have had to happen pretty recently given that the Guardians didn't hear about it, so if it was that easy, would Asgard really have posed much of a threat?<br />
- No, I'm not letting the Thanos thing go. This is basically what Thanos did: We know he was doing his genocide routine at least since Gamora was a kid (let's say 20 years in the past). At some point, he started targeting the Infinity Stones. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that he didn't have the Black Order yet. He sent Gamora to find the Soul Stone, she found it, but lied about it. At some point, he got the Mind Stone. He then stumbled upon Loki, who I guess found out about the Space Stone while tumbling through the multiverse after falling off the Bifrost. Loki presumably gets Thanos to lend him an army in exchange for retrieving the Space Stone, promising that the Earthlings would be easily dominated. By using the Mind Stone, he was able to create a bridge through the Space Stone and come to Earth. Loki opens the portal, army shows up, Avengers beat him, take the Mind Stone, and send the Space Stone to Asgard. Thanos decides Earth is too tough to beat so easily, so he sits on his hands for three years, then sends Gamora and Ronan to get the Power Stone when he finds out where that is. They fail, Gamora and Nebula betray him, and then he grabs an Infinity Guantlet and says "I'll do it myself". Except he apparently had to commission the Infinity Gauntlet from the dwarves, and when they finished, he killed everyone but Eitri and shut Nidavellir down. So he's got a gauntlet, he knows where the Power Stone is (and apparently it's not hard for him to get), he knows where the Space Stone is, he knows the Mind Stone is on Earth, and he suspects that Gamora knows where the Soul Stone is. The Reality Stone and Time Stone were apparently pretty easy to find since the movie never explains how he learned their locations. So he grabs his Infinity Gauntlet and... waits another two years. Why? I have no clue. If anything, wouldn't he want to be in a bit of a hurry? I mean, it's clear the Nine Realms were going to crap under Loki's rule, but it's pretty ballsy to assume that he wouldn't notice Nidavellir was shut down for TWO YEARS. It just makes no sense. <strike>Personally, I blame Joss Whedon for including that "I'll do it myself" scene after "Age of Ultron".</strike><br />
- OK, I'll say it. It's officially weird how the movie and TV/Netflix universes aren't on speaking terms. The movies keep acting like S.H.I.E.L.D. is defunct and that whatever remnants are left are led by Nick Fury and Maria Hill, but that's completely incongruous with the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." TV show where neither character has had any presence in the organization for a REALLY long time. At first, they seemed to at least try to make sure they didn't step on each other's toes, but this really feels like passive aggressive spite at this point. Can someone just put Ike Perlmutter in a nursing home already?<br />
- I'm fine with Stormbreaker being created to replace Mjolnir, and I'm even fine with it being an ax instead of a hammer, but I would still like to see Beta Ray Bill at some point.<br />
- We did not need, like, five separate scenes that all boiled down to, "End my life for the greater good!" "No!" "Do it!" "No!" "Do it!" "OK! Oops, it didn't matter anyway." Gamora did it, Vision did it, Cap did it, Thor kinda did it... I mean, I get it, sacrifice and loss and cost are big themes in this movie, but it's already a cliche. You might have gotten away with doing it once or twice, but not THIS much.<br />
- As much as I loved the ending, I kind of wish I believed that they'd actually make good use of it. We all know that the dusted characters are going to be fine eventually (though I imagine the other dead characters will stay dead). It would be rad as hell if they took their time bringing them back, made the next "Spider-Man" movie about Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker and made the next "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie about the classic team they teased at the end of "Vol. 2", but I don't think anybody actually expects that to happen. They're probably going to act like it COULD happen for the next year until "Untitled Avengers" comes out, but I doubt it will.<br />
- That said, if Marvel's big surprise is that they're actually going to stick to this in some capacity and they really do have a "Spider-Man" movie without Peter and a "Guardians" movie without Gamora, Star-Lord, Drax, Groot, or Mantis, and a "Black Panther 2" where either Shuri or M'Baku wear the mantle, then well-played, Marvel. Well-played. For now, though, I'm going to keep wearing my "skepticals".<br />
- Also, I'm guessing they'll reveal the title for "Untitled Avengers" at the end of "Ant-Man and the Wasp" with "Ant-Man Will Return In *INSERT TITLE HERE*" at the end of the credits.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-16422605721692500382018-03-22T20:30:00.000-04:002018-03-26T09:06:32.276-04:00Who Is Julian Dennison Playing in "Deadpool 2"?The full official trailer for "Deadpool 2" landed today.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D86RtevtfrA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D86RtevtfrA?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Looks good. In particular, I think Zazie Beetz seems like a great fit for Domino.<br />
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But I'm not just here to be excited. There's one other aspect of this trailer that piqued my interest quite a bit. Specifically, the reveal that Cable has apparently traveled back in time to hunt down (and probably kill or something) the character played by young Julian Dennison.<br />
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As of now, it has not been revealed who Julian is playing. The only hints we have are a few glimpses from this and other trailers where he appears to have fire powers (AKA pyrokinesis).<br />
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This, along with Dennison's heritage as a Māori (indigenous Polynesian/New Zealander) has led to the common speculation that Julian Dennison will be playing St. John Allerdyce, also known as Pyro.<br />
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This makes some sense. In the comics, St. John Allerdyce is Australian, which isn't QUITE New Zealand, but it's a lot closer than pretty much any other mutant pyrokinetic in the comics. Plus, Pyro is probably the most well-known pyrokinetic mutant character in the comics, so it would make sense that he would be chosen.<br />
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There is a pretty huge problem with this theory, though. Specifically, the X-Men film franchise already HAS an interpretation of Pyro that appeared in "X2" and "X-Men: The Last Stand". Granted, he wasn't Australian, but his name <i>was</i> John Allerdyce, and this version of Pyro was probably one of the best aspects of "X2", so ret-conning him would be a little... well, risky.<br />
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There are other problems with this theory, too. Why would Cable need to kill Pyro? He's not that powerful. Also, why would the marketing team keep his identity secret? It's not a huge spoiler or anything, at least not as far as I can guess.<br />
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So even though this theory is <i>probably</i> correct, as a big fan of Deadpool and comics in general, and as a weirdo who occasionally likes to indulge in overwrought, pointless speculation, let's consider less obvious possibilities for who Julian Dennison is playing.<br />
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The Other Pyro</h3>
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Since there's already a John Allerdyce in the X-Men film universe, they COULD go with the newer incarnation of Pyro, Simon Lasker. He's less well-known, but a Pyro's a Pyro, and I doubt anyone would care if Simon's heritage was changed. If John could go from Australian to American, then why couldn't Simon go from American to Māori? Still, this doesn't really change the problems with the character being Pyro (why would Cable care and why keep it a secret?), so I doubt this is likely.</div>
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Literally Any Other Pyrokinetic Mutant</h3>
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While we're at it, let's just knock out a bunch of other random pyrokinetic mutants that Fox would have had the rights to before the whole Disney acquisition thing. None of these are really any more or less likely than Pyro, but let's just get them out of the way:</div>
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- Ben Hammil/"Match"</div>
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- Germaine Caruso/"Hothead"</div>
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- Neal Shaara/"Thunderbird"</div>
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- Vincent Stewart/"Redneck"/"Skybolt"</div>
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Those aren't ALL the pyrokinetic mutants, but they're the ones that came up in my quick research that could be altered to fit the role. Keep in mind, Negasonic Teenage Warhead was not a major comics character when they made her a prominent character in "Deadpool". It's possible they'll be once again be picking an obscure character and building a mostly new character on top of the foundation. Again, not really all that different from just using Pyro, but it would at least keep people like me guessing if they just want to create mystery for mystery's sake.</div>
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"Bobby Wright"</h3>
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Now let's get into more interesting possibilities. If the character is introduced as Bobby Wright, there's a good chance most people in the audience won't know who that is, even among X-Men or Deadpool fans. And in truth, "Bobby Wright" isn't actually a real person at all.</div>
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See, there's this Skrull emperor named Kl'rt. He's also known as the Super Skrull. His history is... long and complicated, but essentially, he's known for being able to replicate other heroes' superpowers, most commonly the powers of the Fantastic Four.</div>
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Which would include the Human Torch.</div>
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But the other thing Skrulls are known for is shapeshifting. They're very good at infiltration and can go deep undercover for months, even years without detection, usually through implanting false or copied memories of the person they're masquerading as.</div>
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At one point in Kl'rt's character history, he pretends to be a young boy named Bobby Wright, who just so happens to get super powers and becomes "Captain Hero" for a short time.</div>
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This is not super likely, given that the Skrulls themselves have never been in any of the Fox films (even though they technically shared the rights) and the Captain Hero storyline is obscure and mostly connected to Iron Fist, not the Fantastic Four or X-Men. But this would at least explain why he's a serious threat and why they haven't revealed his identity in marketing yet.</div>
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<h3>
Rusty Collins</h3>
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Russell "Rusty" Collins was one character that just popped up in my research. I'm actually completely unfamiliar with him. Essentially, he was a member of X-Factor, he went by Firefist, he started out when he was 16 (about the same age as Dennison), and he was eventually killed by a being from the Age of Apocalypse (Earth-295) known as Holocaust, who basically sucked the life-force out of him to sustain his own.</div>
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Firefist isn't exactly a beloved character, so tweaking him won't piss anyone off. His age is about right, his power set is about right, and the Fox X-Men film universe has introduced Apocalypse. We don't know much about this version of Cable, so it's possible they've merged a lot of his history with the Age of Apocalypse stuff. In that case, Holocaust's nemesis in the Age of Apocalypse universe is apparently Nathan Grey, the Earth-295 version of Cable.</div>
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So to pull it all together, it's possible that Holocaust (or Nemesis if they want to use a name with less cultural baggage) is going to travel back in time, drain the power from Rusty, and then proceed to use Rusty's power to take over the world. In that sense, Cable could be trying to kill Rusty so that Holocaust/Nemesis' plan will fail and the future will be saved. Or, more likely, they'll just keep the same basic idea and replace Holocaust/Nemesis with Black Tom or some other Cable-related villain.</div>
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<h3>
John</h3>
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I know what you're thinking. "Who the Hell is John?"</div>
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Well, he's a young pyrokinetic mutant who appeared in only two comic book issues, died, and was never really heard from again.</div>
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So what's so special about that?</div>
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Well, those two issues were issues of "Deadpool".</div>
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Specifically, this was during probably the least interesting part of the first volume of "Deadpool". Frank Tieri took over for a few months, and his first arc was "Deadpool: Agent of Weapon X". During an interlude in "Deadpool #57", we're introduced to John (though we don't see him) as he accidentally sets his home on fire and accidentally kills his family and goes on an uncontrolled rampage throughout Iowa.</div>
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In "Deadpool #58", Deadpool and Kane (a former member of Cable's team Six Pack) are tasked with hunting him down. They do, but initially they're overwhelmed by John's uncontrollable inferno. After Kane fails to take him down, Wade tries to talk him down by making him laugh. This strategy works and he finds out that John is just a mutant kid who hasn't learned how to control his powers. As he starts to get to know the kid, though, Kane shoots him from behind, killing him.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This one's admittedly a long-shot. Tieri's run was short-lived and not fondly remembered. I honestly had forgotten about this character until he came up in my research for this post. But it's a character directly related to Deadpool, he's a kid, he's a mutant, he has pyrokinetic powers, and he was killed by a character closely associated with Cable. Also, calling him John would throw off people expecting Pyro.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It's hard to imagine why Cable himself would time-travel to kill this kid. Maybe he accidentally burns down something (or someone) important to the future. But in a way, that's kind of the point. Deadpool has to not be able to understand why Cable would want to hunt this kid down in order to want to defend him, and John is a canonical example of a young, pyrokinetic mutant character that Deadpool stuck his neck out for.</div>
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And yeah, that could just as easily be Pyro or any of the other pyrokinetic mutants I mentioned, but I like the idea of referencing a throwaway tragic character from a brief run nobody remembers. It would be weird, but so is Deadpool.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So those are all the possibilities. Again, it's probably just going to end up being Pyro or a completely original character, but I had fun speculating all the same.<br />
<br />
UPDATE: Screen Rant also floated another possibility that's way more plausible than any of mine: <a href="https://screenrant.com/deadpool-2-julian-dennison-identity-kid-apocalypse/">Kid Apocalypse</a>. I never read the "Uncanny X-Force" books and he didn't show up in Marvel's list of pyrokinetics when I did my half-assed research, but supposedly, Kid Apocalypse has the potential for any superhuman ability, so the apparent pyrokinesis on display in the trailers could just be misdirection. Given that the revised X-Men timeline involved Apocalypse and that Deadpool was a part of the Kid Apocalypse story in the comics, I'd say this theory is by far the most plausible I've heard.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-62652525773075827512018-03-16T20:30:00.000-04:002018-03-16T20:30:18.893-04:00How I'd Reboot "Clarissa Explains It All"I grew up in the heydey of Nickelodeon on TV. They say your earliest memories tend to be when you're around 3-5 years old, and for me, that would have been around 1991 when Nickelodeon dominated my early media consumption.<br />
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"Rugrats", "Doug", "Ren & Stimpy", "Pete & Pete", "Salute Your Shorts", and "Clarissa Explains It All" composed the vast majority of my early media diet. "Welcome Freshman" was there too, but I didn't care for it. All I can really remember about that show was how everybody always sat in chairs backwards because they thought it made them look cool or something. There was also "Hey Dude", but that show always bored the crap out of me and I usually just watched it when it was on before something else I wanted to watch. Oh, and of course there was "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" but I was honestly too scared as a kid to watch it. I didn't watch it until I saw reruns as an adolescent. There were also a bunch of game shows, but we can't be here all day.<br />
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Anyway... Those other shows? They were my <i>jam</i>.<br />
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"Rugrats" obviously had the most long-term success, even though the series pretty much lost my interest after the first three seasons.<br />
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"Doug" ended up migrating to Disney and, frankly, I thought that version was much more entertaining while it lasted.<br />
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"Ren & Stimpy" was pretty much the only show my dad enjoyed watching with us, and those early episodes definitely influenced my taste in comedy.<br />
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"Pete & Pete" was comparitively short-lived, but captivating and well-grounded in kid logic.<br />
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"Salute Your Shorts" was not the best, but I liked a bunch of the characters and thought their love-hate relationship with camp counselor Ug was fascinating.<br />
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But honestly, one of the shows I looked forward to watching the most was "Clarissa Explains It All".<br />
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That probably seems weird. And it is. Frankly, I have a hard time explaining it myself. There are a few smaller reasons why I suspect the show resonated with me.<br />
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1) It was the only show, other than "Pete & Pete", that depicted main characters who were siblings, and that was something I could relate to, especially once my younger brother was born. I think I related better to the dynamic between Clarissa and Ferguson than with Pete and Pete because the Petes were friendly with one another while Clarissa and Ferguson had more rivalry going on.<br />
2) You tend to see that a lot of TV shows aimed at younger audiences have protagonists that break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience. While the other shows I mentioned often had narration, "Clarissa" was the only one that consistently broke the fourth wall, and that probably made it easier for my younger brain to keep up with the show and the protagonist's shifting goals and feelings.<br />
3) It was probably tied with "Doug" for the catchiest theme song of the bunch.<br />
4) As a prepubescent boy with a STRONG distaste for romance, I was relieved to see a show where the female protagonist with a male best friend DIDN'T end up crushing on him.<br />
5) I'm a visual learner and Clarissa always outlined her problems through visual lists and images used to explain her predicaments in excruciating detail. Hence the title.<br />
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However, probably the biggest reason by far that I always looked forward to "Clarissa Explains It All" was because of one particular conceit of the show.<br />
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Specifically, Clarissa had a computer.<br />
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More than that, Clarissa would regularly figure out how to solve the problems in her life by creating a computer game based on her problem and playing it.<br />
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Now, in hindsight, that conceit is absolutely bonkers.<br />
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Making a computer game, even a pretty simple one, is insanely hard work and requires a lot of special knowledge. At no point in the show is it ever established that Clarissa even HAS this knowledge. Heck, she barely seems interested in programming at all. She spends more time obsessing over bands, cars, and eventually journalism. This was just a thing she did to essentially role-play through her dilemmas. It was the 90's. Nothing had to make sense yet.<br />
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<a href="http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-nick-arcade-and-clarissa-helped.html">I've talked about this before</a>, but that conceit drew my attention to the show like you wouldn't believe. My tiny mind was already blown by the mere idea of computers and video games, but the idea that you could just MAKE a video game and that they could reflect your problems and worries and help you work through them was an infectious one for me. Even during episodes where I might not have completely understood the problem or where I might not have otherwise cared, I still kept watching and wondering what video game Clarissa would make to help her tackle it.<br />
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Whatever, I was, like, 5.<br />
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That said, I think that this show (perhaps combined with the game show "Nick Arcade") really solidified my fascination and love of computers and video games from an early age. Similarly, I actually think these shows are one reason why I never thought of either thing as a strictly "male" activity, but I digress.<br />
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Point is, I have a lot of love for "Clarissa Explains It All", but it's less because it was a great show and more because it was very much a formative show for me. In an era where marketing executives still insist that boys can't relate to unapologetically feminine protagonists, the success of "Clarissa Explains It All" pretty much drives home the winning formula: Boys can relate to girls so long as they say and do things that the boys can relate to.<br />
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I couldn't relate to Clarissa's crushes or her dreams of being able to drive a car, but I could certainly relate to her struggles with her annoying younger brother and her continual interest in video games. And the fact that she had a best friend who was a boy made me feel like I could be friends with her and it wouldn't be weird.<br />
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So anyway, it looks like apparently Viacom is looking to reboot "Clarissa Explains It All". "Reboot" actually might be something of a misnomer, though, since it sounds like their intention is to have Melissa Joan Hart still play the title character, but as an adult matriarch of a family of her own.<br />
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There was also apparently a novel released a couple years ago by the original showrunner called "Things I Can't Explain" which detailed her post-high school life, including, yes, an actual relationship with Sam that eventually ended on weird, ambiguous terms. I haven't read it, but my understanding is that Sam got a gig in Europe, Clarissa couldn't stay with him and had to go back to New York, she didn't hear from him for years, and then she finally got a letter from him and... didn't open it.<br />
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So the novel doesn't really make it clear what Clarissa's mid-life trajectory would be. It would be fair to assume that she could have somehow eventually ended up with Sam, given that their platonic friendship eventually did evolve over the years. However, it's left so ambiguous that I'm not going to take it for granted.<br />
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Given everything I've said, here's how I think they should handle the reboot. Finally.<br />
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For starters, I like the idea of Clarissa now being a parent. The recent show "Girl Meets World" (itself a reboot of a different coming-of-age sitcom "Boy Meets World") took a similar approach where the former protagonists are now parents. However, while "Girl Meets World" kept the focus on the young character and made the older characters the supporting cast, I actually think the "Clarissa" reboot should retain the focus on Clarissa rather than be "Clarissa's Kid Explains It All" or something.<br />
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That might seem like a bad idea for a kids' show, but allow me to remind you all that I maintained interest in "Clarissa Explains It All", a show about a 16-year-old girl, as a 5-year-old boy. I'm pretty sure making her a couple decades older and giving her a couple of kids won't suddenly make her unrelateable.<br />
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Furthermore, "Girl Meets World" ended up getting canceled. I was also a pretty big "Boy Meets World" fan as a kid, so I can pretty easily tell you why "Girl Meets World" didn't have the same staying power: It was a retread. It was just "Boy Meets World", but with a female protagonist and with the old characters in the supporting roles. Frankly, unless you have a hard time relating to Corey and Topanga, there's very little in "Girl Meets World" that you couldn't have gotten from reruns of "Boy Meets World". Similarly, I think that if this reboot was just "Clarissa's Kid Explains It All", it would have a hard time not just feeling like a retread of the original series.<br />
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So how would I make the reboot interesting? Well, for starters, let's point out why Viacom is probably thinking about this in the first place. Specifically, they're hoping that a bunch of Millennial parents will tune in and get their kids hooked.<br />
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In that case, that should be the focus of the show.<br />
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A number of my friends are now married and/or have kids. I myself am getting married in like a month. The struggles of adapting to parenthood is difficult, but it's particularly strange for us Millennials, who have been admittedly slow to transition to adulthood, or at least the kind of adulthood that we grew up observing.<br />
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A lot of Boomers and Gen-Xers rushed into marriage and kids, and a LOT of the media Millennials grew up with OOZED with regret over that tendency. All the songs, movies, and TV shows told us to enjoy our youthful energy while we can, take our time settling down, and not rush into lifetime commitments before we were ready. By and large, I think we took that to heart. Millennials are generally less likely to rush into marriage, more likely to go to college, and less likely to reach financial stability as quickly as generations' past.<br />
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So we've got a bit of an "arrested development" thing going on. This is largely why Millennials are blamed for things like not buying cars or houses or cable subscriptions.<br />
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But because we diverged so much from the models left by the generations that came before us, when we do finally reach that point where we start making big life decisions, not only do we get filled with anxiety over the idea that we're finally putting down the roots that we put off for so long, we also stress over whether or not we took <i>too</i> long to do it and that we are simply too old to become "true adults".<br />
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So, to me, I imagine Clarissa the mother actually hasn't changed all that much, and that stresses her out. She probably feels like she SHOULD be behaving more like how her parents behaved, but she can't, and that probably makes her worry that she's doing it wrong.<br />
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Now, technically-speaking, Clarissa isn't a Millennial. She's a Gen-Xer. But let's be honest... Gen-Xers didn't really watch "Clarissa Explains It All". Millennials did. That's the audience that has nostalgia for the show, so that's the audience I expect the show to try and focus on (at least partially).<br />
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In other words, I see this reboot as a show that Millennial parents would watch with their kids to essentially be able to relate to the experience of transitioning into parenthood. Unlike the original show which portrayed the parents as archetypes (quirky archetypes, but archetypes nonetheless) that existed to provide obstacles and advice, the reboot would focus on Clarissa failing to fulfill those archetypes and then eventually figuring out her own way of parenting.<br />
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And if that sounds too focused on the Millennial audience, you're not entirely wrong, but I think that kids today have a different relationship to Millennial parents than us Millennials had with our parents. And I'm not trying to say "Millennial parents are cooler" or whatever, but I do think we Millennials are kind of obsessed with doing things differently than how our parents did them. Oftentimes this is hubris, but in general, the relationships that my friends have with their kids don't really remind me of the relationships I remember them having with their parents. One of those bigger differences is that I don't think Boomer parents were as inclined to watch TV with their kids. Growing up, most of the time I watched TV (even when at friends' houses) the adults would rarely join in, and if they did, they mostly commented flippantly, regularly criticizing what we were watching. Millennial parents, on the other hand (or at least the ones I know) seem to be more inclined to watch TV with their kids as a general rule.<br />
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So given that, I think it makes sense for "Clarissa" to evolve to a show that Millennials would watch with their kids so they could learn to better relate to one another.<br />
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But enough talk about the high-level concept stuff. Let's get more specific about what's changing and what's staying the same.<br />
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For starters, I don't see the reboot taking place in the suburbs of Ohio. Not just because Clarissa seemed eager to get out of Ohio and live in New York in the show, but because that's honestly what a lot of us Millennials did. We moved away. Not always that far, but with jobs becoming harder to get (and keep for that matter), and student loans ballooning out of control, we don't always get to choose where we live. A lot of us moved closer to cities and lower-income neighborhoods with real estate prices we can actually afford. I don't think I know any Millennial family that lives in a "white picket fence" suburban neighborhood like the one Clarissa grew up in. As such, I imagine Clarissa's family lives in a more modest home, probably closer to New York. She might not even own a home, she might just rent a decent-sized apartment.<br />
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Second, I think that, given her apparent state of arrested development in the novel (where she was in her late 20's) I'd find it unlikely that any of her kids would be older than 12. I'd probably aim at keeping them as young as possible. I wouldn't want the kids to be in their "rebellious" phase yet. I feel like the kids should not be old enough to see their mother as a burden (at least not constantly).<br />
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Third, unless the actor who played Sam is willing to come back as a regular and he actually can convincingly act as an adult version of the character, I think that Clarissa should be a single mom. For one thing, characters who break the fourth wall tend to be loners, and I think that it would be weird for her to have a husband that she met and fell in love with between the novel and the new series. Plus, being a single mom gives more opportunity for life drama since she'll have to juggle more. Also, divorce is a recurring presence in the series. Sam's parents were divorced, and apparently even Clarissa's parents separated.<br />
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Fourth, the show has to get the kids right. The kids can't be like the parents in the original series. They can't just exist to create conflict and occasionally show up to help Clarissa figure out the solution to her problem. Their problems have to be Clarissa's problems and vice versa. As I talked about earlier, the biggest challenge of the way I envision the reboot is making a show starring a middle-aged Millennial stereotype interesting to kids, and I think the key to that is making the kids relate to Clarissa the way they relate to their parents. It's hard for a kid to understand the perspective of their parents, but I think they try to more than we give them credit for. Also, being a kid can feel really powerless, something the the original show often touched on. Clarissa grew up frustrated with the limited control she had on her own life. Many of her conflicts arose from expectations and restrictions placed upon her by her parents. By instead making this show about the kids and the parent(s) cooperating to help solve one another's problems, kids might feel less powerless when it comes to their parents. Being able to see that their parents are just grown-up kids could be a powerful thing if done properly, and the relationship Clarissa has with her own kids will be important for establishing that.<br />
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And finally, one of Clarissa's kids should be a computer whiz who makes games every episode to help their mom deal with her problem of the day. Theoretically, Clarissa could still be the one to do this, but if the show's about her struggles as a single mom, it's probably a bit too much of a stretch to suggest that she still has the time to work out her problems by making video games. It's not a stretch at all to suggest that she still works through her problems by <i>playing</i> video games, but I think that this is a very simple way for her to be able to connect with at least one of her kids, get them involved in her problem-solving process, and reflect how video games can actually be a pretty good way to both bond with your kid and learn key problem-solving skills.<br />
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So that's how I imagine a "Clarissa" reboot. Pretty much an all-ages sitcom interpretation of Millennial parenthood where Clarissa has basically grown up to be the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5vtqDuUM1DnXllefdhq_1esG07R56dn9">Wine Mom from BuzzFeed</a>.<br />
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Honestly, I doubt the reboot will take the form I imagine. Mitchell Kriegman is a Baby Boomer, and while he was very influential to Millennials, I somehow doubt he's all that interested in continuing to explore the psyche of people my age. More likely, I imagine the show will be more like "Girl Meets World" where Clarissa isn't the main character and they instead do a retread of the original show, but with Clarissa taking the place of Janet. And if the show takes that route, I imagine it will do rather poorly.<br />
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But hey, I could be wrong. Kriegman definitely seemed inclined to take risks and maintain a specific creative vision with the original show rather than just do the easiest, most obvious thing to do, so maybe he might do the same now. Who knows? Honestly, there's a decent chance Viacom won't be interested anyway. Wouldn't be the first time a Clarissa reboot would get passed on. But if this actually happens, I think there's honestly a lot of potential here. There really weren't a lot of shows like "Clarissa Explains It All", and there really haven't been any other shows like it since then. Maybe it's time.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-64108944354398469002017-12-24T15:31:00.000-05:002017-12-24T15:31:10.060-05:00Why Some People Probably Hate "The Last Jedi" *SPOILERS*I know I still haven't reviewed "The Last Jedi". I will, but I want to see it once more before I do.<br />
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That said, if you saw my BINGO card, you'll be able to determine that I didn't get a BINGO. I wasn't SUPER far off in terms of the overall tone and themes of the film, but I was pretty far off in terms of exactly how that would be pulled off and, by and large, the film REALLY went in directions I didn't expect.<br />
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I wasn't alone in that.<br />
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However, one thing that's dominated a lot of discussions regarding "The Last Jedi" is the backlash. A LOT of people are not just lukewarm on the film, but they outright HATE it, with people spamming RottenTomatoes and Metacritic with 1-star reviews deliberately to carpet-bomb the audience rating.<br />
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Is the movie actually that bad? Of course not. But you don't give a movie a 1-star review for being a bad movie. You give it a 1-star review because it offended you and you want to hurt it back.<br />
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Now, a lot of these offended audience members are probably just usual angry "Star Wars" fanboys that hate anything that isn't the original trilogy. However, having had a lot of discussions online with people who genuinely believe the movie is bad (or at least flawed), there are two main criticisms that I see the most.<br />
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The first is in regard to the Poe/Holdo subplot that essentially created a misunderstanding that led to a different subplot regarding Finn and Rose.<br />
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I personally LIKE these subplots, and I think some reasons for disliking them are unfounded, but I get it. Conflict based on lack of communication can be frustrating and feel somewhat hackneyed, so I can totally understand that criticism. I'll probably go deeper into it during my proper review, but by-and-large, if the Canto Bight subplot completely killed the pacing of the movie for you and just dragged, I can get that killing your enthusiasm about the film. Maybe not enough to go full 1-star review on it, but I can at least get knocking off a few points for that.<br />
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There is another criticism, however, and THAT one is a lot less understandable and probably responsible for most of the loudest whining.<br />
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Basically, a whole lot of people are upset that Rey doesn't have familiar or important parents.<br />
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Now... thinking about this outside of the context of "Star Wars", this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why should something like that matter? Most movies don't have reveals like that, so why get upset that this one doesn't either?<br />
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I've been thinking about that a lot lately and I've heard a lot of theories regarding why people are reacting so badly to that, ranging from generational divides to simple sexist incapability of accepting that a woman could have power that doesn't indirectly come from a man.<br />
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However! I actually have a different idea. I'm not saying I think it's more valid, but it's an idea I at least wanted to express as a possibility.<br />
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To understand it, let's go back in time a bit. It's the 70's. "Star Wars" just came out. Everyone fell head over heels in love with it. It was basically the "Harry Potter" of the time. A boy living with godparents finds out he has a secret power and leaves home to understand it and save the universe. And for a few years, "Star Wars" (and to a much lesser extent, the holiday special) was all the "Star Wars" there was.<br />
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And in that context, the "Star Wars" people knew at the time was almost adorably simple. Luke was the young farm boy who found out he was special, was sent on a vengeance quest for his dead father, and set out to save the galaxy from the simply evil Darth Vader. You really couldn't have had a more clear-cut good-and-evil story.<br />
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And that's how people took it! Nobody really expected anything deeper beneath the surface. When people heard a sequel was coming out, they naturally expected more of the same.<br />
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What they got was something different.<br />
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Now, in hindsight, especially for people in my generation, or even some members of Generation X, it's hard to understand the mindset of people going into "Empire Strikes Back" because we all grew up in a world where everybody already knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. It was kind of the original spoiler. I myself went in knowing that just because it's a part of the cultural zeitgeist as the archetypal rug-pull.<br />
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But at the time? Nobody saw it coming. And I mean NOBODY. George Lucas only told a very small handful of people. When they filmed the scene, the person standing in for Vader's voice said, "Obi-Wan killed your father" specifically to keep the true reveal a secret. Only George, a couple producers, Mark Hamill, and James Earl Jones knew the truth leading up to the premiere.<br />
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And the movie really leans into that reveal. Yoda seeming to have been disappointed with Luke's father for some reason, Luke confronting Vader in the cave only to find that behind his mask is... himself! Luke went into his true confrontation knowing who he was, just as the audience did, and left it shaken, unsure of what the future held for him, and the audience was still right there with him.<br />
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One of the things that struck me the most in the days following the premiere of "The Last Jedi" was how often I heard people theorize that Kylo Ren was lying to Rey about her parents to manipulate her.<br />
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Those people may not be aware, but the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED after "The Empire Strikes Back". People refused to believe the truth and thought that the evil Vader was just lying to get Luke to turn. Even James Earl Jones himself thought that was the case. There was so much disagreement, in fact, that it's partially the reason Luke asks Yoda to spell it out for him in "Return of the Jedi". The audience needed it spelled out for them, too.<br />
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Now here's the thing. Human beings inherently try to predict perceived patterns. When something surprises us, we try to retroactively find signs that we missed so that we won't be surprised again. It's kind of why we have the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." In other words, there's no shame in being surprised ONCE, but there IS shame in not learning and adapting from your mistakes.<br />
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So when "The Force Awakens" came out and was being directed by the "Mystery Box" man himself, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, expected that there was some secret behind Rey's backstory, which was only shown in glimpses.<br />
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Now, if you remove the expectation of being surprised, there's actually surprisingly little reason to believe there was much mystery there. We don't see Rey's parents themselves, but we see them leaving her behind, and Maz tells her that whoever they are, they aren't coming back. Textually, the movie is pretty clear, or at least AS clear as the the original "Star Wars" (now "A New Hope" to avoid confusion) was about Luke's origins. I mean, we never SAW Anakin Skywalker, but that didn't mean we suspected there was some big hidden secret about his true identity. In a pre-"Empire" world, nobody had any reason to be suspicious.<br />
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We don't live in that world anymore.<br />
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And immediately following "The Force Awakens", basically J.J. Abrams and Daisy Ridley seemed confused about all the Rey parentage speculation to the point where their comments on the subject simply fueled more speculation. But if you read the way they talk about the character, whether or not they had clear ideas about who Rey's parents were in concrete terms, it is pretty clear they didn't approach her character as a child of an established character. They wanted her to be her own thing.<br />
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But people weren't buying it. They were CONVINCED that this was just another trick. They were foolish enough to believe Luke was just a normal farm boy with a pretty cool father and some special mojo that was rare, but not THAT unique. That's why I compared him to Harry Potter, who got a leg up from his dead parents, but more or less forged his own identity from that. That's pretty much what Luke was until that was ripped away from him by finding out his supposedly dead hero father was actually a very-much-alive villain. "Fool me once..."<br />
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So of COURSE people expected Rey to secretly be a Skywalker or a Kenobi or even a Palpatine. They expected her character trajectory to be influenced by the gravity of a different character in the universe, just like Luke was. They thought they saw all of the signs and so they thought they had the broad prediction right (that Rey was secretly related to SOMEONE) but disagreed about the details. It seemed like a foregone conclusion. Of COURSE Rey would have some kind of parent reveal. This is "Star Wars"!<br />
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But here's the thing I think those people aren't realizing.<br />
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In the "Star Wars" galaxy, the stories of the original trilogy were also just as prevalent. I mean, no, they didn't have movies, but in "The Force Awakens", it's clear that Rey heard stories about Luke, Leia, Han, and the Jedi. One of the first private moments we see of her is her looking out on the horizon, putting on an old rebel pilot's helmet. And when she found out that she had the power of the Jedi, she drew the same knee-jerk conclusions we did. Maybe what she thought she knew about her parents was wrong, just like it was with Luke and Vader (which only recently became public knowledge in the "Star Wars" galaxy). Why do you think she wanted to find Luke so badly? And there were a lot of circumstantial reasons to suspect that. Maybe she didn't just get abandoned. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe it was all for a reason, and finding out that reason would not just make all of her suffering worthwhile, it would show her what her own destiny was.<br />
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By now, you ought to be understanding the problem of revealing Rey's parents to be someone important.<br />
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It's not a surprise.<br />
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Not for me, not for you, not even for Rey.<br />
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I mean, sure, the answer could have been surprising by being something like "Your parents are Lando and Leia!" but only the details are surprising in cases like that, and they don't change the deeper meaning. The idea that she might be related to someone important is the part that matters.<br />
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Unlike Luke who thought he knew who he was, where he came from, and what he would become, Rey had none of those things. She lived her life waiting for parents who would never return, so she never became anything. She never really knew her parents, or if she did, she forgot who they were, so she effectively had no past. And without a present or a past, how can you chart a future?<br />
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So in the absence of an identity of her own, Rey did nothing BUT get pulled around by the gravity of other established characters. Roped into helping Han and Chewie on the Falcon, aiding Leia in the Resistance, and then going to Luke to get him to come back and teach her to be a Jedi like him. She already was defined by everyone else and their past adventures. That was the problem.<br />
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Rey WANTED to find out there was a reason for it all. Rey wanted an easy way to chart her own future. If her parents were good, then she would follow in their footsteps. Evil? She would go on a path of redemption like Luke did. Either way, she would finally have a direction given to her.<br />
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But to find out that they were just weak, selfish people who had no impact beyond the impact they left on her by abandoning her and stunting her emotional growth as a person? That's... well, that's not helpful. Where does a person go with that?<br />
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And that's what made it frustrating for a lot of people, I think. The worst thing that could have happened to Luke was to find out that his simple, predictable backstory was a lie that he used to justify his actions. But the worst thing that could have happened to Rey was to find out that her backstory WAS simple and predictable.<br />
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"The Empire Strikes Back" trained "Star Wars" fans (and perhaps movie audiences as a whole) to expect the unexpected.<br />
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"The Last Jedi" knew that, and decided that the only way to be truly surprising AND meaningful was to find the answer that provoked the same character reaction out of Luke in "Empire". Rey needed to feel rudderless, confused, and pulled towards the temptation of meaning defined by the one person in the galaxy that claims to truly know them. And the truth about her parents did exactly that.<br />
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The truth was, she DID actually stay on Jakku all those years for no reason. She WAS waiting for parents that were never coming back, and it wasn't because they couldn't. It's because they never planned to in the first place. She wasn't strong in the Force because she had Jedi parents (which even I thought would turn out to be the case). It was because the Force doesn't care about parents. The Force chose her for reasons unrelated to anyone but Rey herself, and Rey has to find that within herself, not in others, if she is to become who she is meant to be.<br />
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And in contrast, you have Kylo Ren, who fell partially because he found out about his connection to Darth Vader. Unlike Luke, who handled having the truth hidden from him rather well, Ben Solo didn't. He felt lied to and betrayed (or so I'm told, I haven't read "Bloodlines" myself yet). And initially, he let that history guide his future.<br />
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In "The Last Jedi", he realizes that abandoning the path of Luke, his parents, and his namesake in pursuit of the path of an even older relative was a mistake. That's why he destroys his mask and spends the movie talking about how the past should die. That's why he killed Han and why he seeks to kill Luke. Unlike Rey, who craves being pulled into the gravity of these other character, Kylo Ren feels as though it defined his entire existence as Ben Solo. He was the son of Leia and Han and the student of Luke, named after Luke's teacher. And even that name itself was fake. He was literally the product of the previous generation, even their mistakes and lies, and it was suffocating for him. He thought Snoke offered him relief, but he finally realized the opposite. Snoke was just another remnant of the past trying to manipulate him for his bloodline. The only person who treated him like his own individual was Rey.<br />
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This is one reason why I find the connection between Rey and Kylo Ren so interesting. Kylo Ren essentially had everything Rey wanted. Living parents who gave a damn, a history that explained his position and power, and a path carved out for him. He rejected all of that, and that infuriates and confuses Rey. Meanwhile, Rey has everything Kylo wants. No parents, no history, no defined future, and power that didn't come with lots of emotional Skywalker baggage. She, likewise, rejected or ignored all of that and obsessed over trying to find out how she fit into the family trees and timelines and how she could carry on the legacy that preceded her, and that infuriates and confuses Kylo. They both want the other to accept what they have and then share it with them, and are both equally frustrated when they refuse. Rey wants Kylo to return to being Ben Solo and let her be a part of that. Kylo wants Rey to give up on trying to fit in with the past and just join him in setting a torch to all of that. It pulls them together, but also forces them apart, and it's just... Wow.<br />
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The Rey parent reveal is, in my mind, thematically, narratively, and emotionally perfect in the context of "Star Wars".<br />
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But it also kind of exists to obstinately tell everyone who thought that Rey MUST be related to someone important that not only do they not understand WHY they expect that reveal, but why trying to just replicate the "Empire Strikes Back" moment would have disappointed and effectively meant nothing to Rey. If Rey turned out to be a Kenobi, then her path becomes defined as redeeming the Jedi of old, which Obi-Wan partially represented. At that point, the only way to make her path interesting would be to make her reject that path and join Kylo Ren in rejecting the past. And, you know, there's an argument for how that could be an interesting story where it's essentially Force-users against everyone else, but it just didn't seem to make sense for Rey. Why would the Rey we know, who idolized the rebels of old, be upset to find out that Obi-Wan was her father or grandfather? I mean, it wouldn't have been like anyone was knowingly hiding that from her. Why would they? So the only reaction to a reveal like that that would have made any sense would have been for her to carry on the Jedi legacy.<br />
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And... well, what do you do with that? How do you make that interesting? How is that even remotely relatable if every important hero from the "Star Wars" universe is important largely because they had important parents? In that regard, why should anyone do anything but wait for the important people to have important babies that will save everyone? Why shouldn't we all just do what Rey did for most of her life and resist the call to adventure until someone forces us off our asses?<br />
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I had a very easy time relating to Rey in "The Force Awakens" and the beginning of "The Last Jedi". What nerdy kid like me didn't dream of secretly being an alien or a mutant or a wizard or (of course) a Jedi? Who wouldn't love to find out that your mundane past is a lie and you're actually an awesome Chosen One with cool powers?<br />
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But as I grew older, what made me stop believing that stuff wasn't cynicism or some notion that I needed to "get real". What changed was that I stopped resenting the life I had and believing that I "needed" some kind of special backstory to chart my path for me or to feel empowered. The answers that I needed weren't secrets being kept from me, they were within myself all along. I just had to listen, accept what I already knew, and put in the effort to build the life I wanted for myself.<br />
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So when Rey has to go through the same thing, I thought it was perfect. I understood it completely. It felt right.<br />
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And, well, I guess I just assumed that was something a lot more people could relate to, too.<br />
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But what I'm finding more and more disturbing is that the people of the world are too aggressively looking for secrets that don't exist. The seeming omnipresence of conspiracy theories and the growing number of people who believe them seems to speak to this refusal to accept reality. The inherent mistrust of people whose jobs are to find and speak the truth, the desire to put familiar people in positions of authority, and most of all, the outright rejection of the emerging Millennial identity that is, largely, forged in direct critical examination of the problematic aspects of the generations that came before.<br />
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I mean, not to get too political, but I don't think it's a coincidence that a year after three major candidates for President all got their opportunities arguably because of their familiar last names, we have a lot of people getting upset that Rey doesn't have a familiar last name. For some reason, we expect to be led by dynasties.<br />
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And here we have "Star Wars", not just one of the most powerful forces of escapism our modern culture has produced, but in some ways, the founder of the dramatic reveal that upends and re-contextualizes everything you thought you knew, telling us that maybe our destiny may not be to the hero. There is no secret reason that explains why Rey's backstory was actually really necessary to keep her hidden or something. Her parents just sucked. Sometimes, parents just suck. And sometimes, people who have terrible parents go on to do amazing, incredible things. Alexander Hamilton, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Jobs, all accomplished great things without (or sometimes in spite of) direction afforded to them from biological parents. And really, how often do we see that kind of story depicted, especially in escapist fantasy?<br />
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People love patterns, and more than that, people love to feel that they understand patterns and can predict when they will recur. And when we're wrong about our predictions, it doesn't usually feel good.<br />
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In that context, I can understand why people are upset about the Rey reveal. It sought to recreate the FEELING of the "Empire Strikes Back" reveal, and the only way it could do that without undermining Rey as a character was to outright reject the very notion that she NEEDS a big reveal to understand herself. I didn't, most of us don't, and neither does Rey. But the FEELING of the "Empire Strikes Back" reveal was shock, disbelief, and disorientation. And "The Last Jedi" clearly did its job, perhaps too well.<br />
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People who thought they were clever for having "deduced" that there was more to Rey than we knew were now being told not only that they weren't clever, but that the movie was already a step ahead of them. Rian Johnson set a trap for them and they all fell headlong into it.<br />
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I think what I'm finding out is that most people like to be surprised when they're not expecting a surprise, but when they ARE expecting a surprise, they DON'T like being surprised, usually because that surprise essentially tells them that the pattern they thought they recognized was not only totally wrong, but based in a fundamental misunderstanding of why they thought the pattern existed in the first place. The Darth Vader reveal wasn't just about subverting expectations. It was because it took the expectations of the generation that developed the tropes that George Lucas was paying homage to in the first film, and in a single swift moment, took the once carefree and simple genre defined by "Flash Gordon" and turned it into something more akin to a Greek tragedy. And if you grew up with "Flash Gordon" like Lucas did, I imagine that was pretty hard to digest. If the reveal was just about surprise, it would have been meaningless to my generation. But it wasn't. That's because it wasn't just surprising, it was shocking, and even if you know it's coming, the shock on Luke's face never loses its potency.<br />
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Rey turning out to be a Kenobi might have been cool to some people for a while. But in 20 years, who would care? What would it matter in the grand scheme of things? How would a reveal like that define the sequel trilogy the way "Empire" defined the original trilogy? How would it carry weight after you know it? I keep hearing about how the Rey reveal is a "wasted opportunity", but to try and recreate the surface-level recipe of the Vader moment without really understanding the power behind it would have been the true wasted opportunity. But that's not really what these people are angry about. The "wasted opportunity" they're referring to isn't a narrative one, but a personal one. The "opportunity" they wanted seized was validation, vindication, and a continuation of the world as they believed it to be. As they wanted it to be. That's what I believe they're truly upset about. They wanted to turn to their friend and say, "I called it!" Instead, they had the exact same reaction as anyone else: "Wait, REALLY?" And perhaps any moment that puts a die-hard "Star Wars" fan on the same level as someone who's never seen a single "Star Wars" movie is too much of a hit to the ego for some people to accept.<br />
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And yes, ego is a part of this. I see fans saying that this reveal goes against the fundamental themes of "Star Wars". To me, that would be like people coming out of "Empire" blasting it for going against the fundamental themes of the pulp sci-fi serials that inspired it. It's not a rejection. It's a natural evolution. If it wasn't going to evolve, why make it? Why have "Star Wars" if we already had "Flash Gordon"? Because "Star Wars" had something new to say, and it resonated.<br />
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There are problems with "The Last Jedi". I'll get into them when I eventually write my full review. I do think there's a valid argument to be had regarding the execution of the Canto Bight sequence or the choices regarding Snoke. But Rey turning out to have dead, nobody parents who sold her for booze money was not a problem. I was blown away when I saw it, and I'm still blown away every time I see someone express disbelief in the same way James Earl Jones once did regarding Darth Vader. To me, that in and of itself is proof that this reveal did exactly what it was supposed to do, and I genuinely didn't think that would have been possible. I was sure that whatever the reveal was, it wouldn't hold a candle to the Vader reveal. I was completely wrong.<br />
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And if you STILL think it WAS a "wasted opportunity", I'd really like you to give me a better version. Give me a reveal that would have worked better narratively, dramatically, and thematically, and maybe I'll change my mind. I had my own theory that her parents were Jedi who trained under Luke, and even I left the movie feeling my idea would have been less interesting, if only because it would have given Rey a solid reason to reject Kylo Ren beyond just her own moral compass, and it would have given her an easy reason to continue the teachings of the Jedi.<br />
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Rey defines herself, and that's a scary thing for anyone to do. But what the old guard "Star Wars" fans are possibly missing is that Rey is not burning down what they thought they knew and loved. That's the path of Kylo Ren, the character that grew up in the shadow of that legacy. But Rey saved the ancient Jedi texts. She intends to carry on the legacy despite being told explicitly not to. Rey will pass on what she has learned. She came to the conclusion that the stories she grew up hearing about Luke, Leia, and Han may not have been exactly what she thought or what other people said, and she may not have had a connection to them as she secretly fantasized, but she decided to find inspiration in it all the same. All on her own, she decided to take up the extinguished torch and reignite it despite having no selfish reason to do so. She is still the hero championing all the ideals that "Star Wars" fans want the hero of the franchise to champion.<br />
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She's just stopped waiting for someone to give her a last name, first.<br />
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The sequel trilogy has become a clash between a person who wants to burn down the legacy that preceded him and a person seeking to preserve the lives and legacy of people she never knew and owes nothing to. If that's not "Star Wars", I don't know what is.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-85146873171454193482017-11-16T08:19:00.001-05:002018-01-04T13:35:08.778-05:00"The Last Jedi" Prediction Bingo Squares<b>UPDATE (2018):</b> I've now updated my predictions to assess whether or not I was right, so consider this post to have <b>SPOILERS</b>.<br />
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I've been wanting to write about my predictions regarding the upcoming "Star Wars" film, "The Last Jedi", but each of my attempts has fallen short, mostly because I haven't really found an entertaining way of presenting them. Then Jenny Nicholson from YouTube went ahead and figured out how to do it: A Bingo card:<br />
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So I've decided to copy her idea so that I can finally put myself on-the-record for what I expect from this next film.</div>
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And, for the record, my expectations are REALLY high. Like, I'm probably expecting WAY too much from this movie, but I honestly can't really help it. So screw it! LET'S RIDE THIS HYPE TRAIN STRAIGHT INTO A BRICK WALL! WOO!</div>
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To make this interesting, I'm going to deliberately try not to use any of Jenny's predictions, and if I have one that's similar, I'll make it more specific to keep it interesting. Like Jenny, I'm going to make a bunch of baseless predictions since it would be boring if I got most of these right. These are still actual predictions of mine, don't get me wrong, but (for the most part) I'm specifically picking ones that don't have a lot of evidence to back them up. For each square, I've included a chunk about what I mean by my predictions.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNqjasO0uOH5Ypr2I6TgeVFyD7zk-FTHCKYh0RegRWL1thtVsVwGcX6FL2Rar7TRQQCz8FeHSSO1VpSTmrFTDdyjsLdjgVIMVc_kDdSRlCUbWguFazY9_-tEJT09jQwJDRbi-C2FqsmE/s1600/TLJBingo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="455" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNqjasO0uOH5Ypr2I6TgeVFyD7zk-FTHCKYh0RegRWL1thtVsVwGcX6FL2Rar7TRQQCz8FeHSSO1VpSTmrFTDdyjsLdjgVIMVc_kDdSRlCUbWguFazY9_-tEJT09jQwJDRbi-C2FqsmE/s320/TLJBingo.png" width="303" /></a></div>
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<b>B1) Luke trained Rey's mother</b></div>
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I'm going to start off with my first prediction regarding Rey's origins, which is that her mother was, in fact, one of the new Jedi Luke was training before Kylo Ren ruined it all. This makes a lot more sense once you hear some of my other predictions, but the short reason for why I believe this one is because I sincerely doubt that Rey's parents would be someone we know, but I also sincerely doubt that the identity of her parents would be something irrelevant. I'm also guessing that he trained her mother as opposed to her father because reasons.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Nope. I was right that Rey's parents wouldn't be someone we knew, but I overestimated their significance.</div>
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<b>B2) Rey is not related by blood to the Skywalkers</b></div>
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This ties into the previous one a bit, but regardless of who Rey's parents are, I think it's very, very important to her character and to the themes of this new trilogy that she NOT be related to Anakin Skywalker by blood. I'll get deeper into why later, but it's mostly just that the character who represents the Skywalker legacy (Kylo Ren) believes that his blood entitles him to a certain destiny, and I believe one of the themes of this trilogy is that circumstance and power do not make you a hero, and making Rey special because she's related to Anakin would essentially send the message that heroes have to be chosen.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Correct!</div>
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<b>B3) Kylo Ren and Rey are the new Chosen Ones</b></div>
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In the previous film, and in the trailers for this one, we get the impression that Kylo Ren is ridiculously overpowered. He froze a blaster bolt in mid-air and held it for minutes without even thinking consciously about it. Luke and Snoke both talk about how much raw power he has. If he has even more power than Luke, it raises an interesting question. Trigger warning: I'm about to talk about the prequels and midi-chlorians. The main reason why Anakin Skywalker was so strong was because his father literally was the Force. He had a biological advantage. And while this passed on to Luke and Leia, through Luke we get the impression that, strong as he may be, Anakin was still stronger, implying that the biological advantage weakens with each generation, particularly if one of the parents wasn't Force-sensitive. By this logic, since Han Solo wasn't Force-sensitive, Ben Solo should have been less Force-sensitive than Luke or Leia, but this is not the case. This suggests to me that there's something more going on with Kylo Ren, and I suspect it's the same something that's going on with Rey. Specifically, I don't think Kylo Ren or Rey get their power through a midi-chlorian-based connection to the Force, but that they are the new "Chosen Ones" in the same way that Anakin was. I'll get more into that later.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> This one was borderline, but I'm not giving myself this one. Though there's some implication that the Force is doing something wonky with Rey and Kylo Ren, we haven't really been giving the impression that they are "Chosen Ones" in the same vein as Anakin.</div>
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<b>B4) The origins of the Jedi will be problematic</b></div>
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Based on what Han said in TFA, we can presume that Luke's hideout is the location of the first Jedi Temple, and what better reason would he have to go there but to learn the origins of the Jedi so that he can help rebuild the Order correctly this time. However, given his cynical disposition and insistence that the Jedi need to end, I presume that not only did Luke learn the origin of the Jedi Order, but he was shaken by it. I believe something regarding the Order's origins will partially convince Luke that the Jedi were meant to fail, hence why he decided to remain in exile: To allow the Jedi to fade out of existence.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> While Luke did have some issues with the Jedi, it didn't extend to their origins. Heck, it seemed like he never even bothered to read the sacred texts. I wasn't too far off, but not close enough to count it.</div>
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<b>B5) Luke left Rey on Jakku</b></div>
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She won't find out for a while, but I believe that Luke is the one who stranded Rey on Jakku. She didn't know who he was at the time and she may not even recognize him right away in present day (maybe because of the beard). But if we're presuming that her mother was a Jedi-in-training, her having a daughter might have been a deal-breaker because of the whole emotional attachment thing. But I don't just believe this because of my prediction regarding Rey's mother, I believe it because it's just too much of a coincidence that Luke's buddy Lor San Tekka (the guy who Kylo Ren killed at the beginning of TFA) just so happened to be within walking distance of Rey's home. Frankly, I think that this was the moment that the Force decided that Luke was unfit to bring balance to the Force, as he was willing to prioritize the resurrection of the Jedi over the happiness of Rey and her family, just as the old Jedi Order made a nasty habit of breaking up happy couples and taking children from their parents.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Guess Lor San Tekka really was just a coincidence. Well, it's "Star Wars", so I guess nothing is really a coincidence, but it wasn't Luke's doing, that's for sure.</div>
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<b>I1) Luke will stop training Rey</b></div>
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You know that moment in the trailer where Luke is all like, "I've seen this raw strength only once before. It didn't scare me enough then. It does now"? Well, I predict that he'll initially agree to train her, perhaps even believing that the Force means for him to train her, but once he realizes who Rey actually is and the power she holds, he will realize that he shouldn't be training her. He won't explain why beyond simply what happened with the first person he saw with that kind of power (probably Kylo Ren), but I suspect that it won't just be out of fear. Luke is a Jedi and cannot be ruled by fear. Instead, I think he'll believe that training Rey will doom her to repeat the mistakes of the Jedi and that in order for there to be balance in the Force, Rey will have to find her own path. At that point, I believe Rey will continue to train herself (she seemed to be pretty auto-didactic in TFA) and Luke will watch, but not help. Eventually, they'll leave the planet and Luke will come with, but I don't believe he will ever agree to train her again after seeing her raw strength.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> I was kind of off on many details, but I'm counting this one, mostly because Luke agreed to give Rey three lessons, but in the end, he only gave two, and part of that is because she started falling down the dark path without even resisting it.</div>
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<b>I2) Rey was not born with her Force-sensitivity</b></div>
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This is partially tying into my belief that what makes Rey special can't be interpreted as a birthright, but also kind of a necessity in terms of the whole "Luke left Rey on Jakku" theory, since if Luke is the one who took her, he would have sensed her power, and even if that's something Luke has to consciously do, if her mother was Force-sensitive, Luke probably would have thought to check Rey out. I believe that while the Force was potentially quite strong with her (the Force flows through all things), he also would have sensed that she was likely blind to it, as most people are, suggesting she had an important destiny, but not as a Jedi. Furthermore, this would resolve the biggest problem "Star Wars" fans have with the midi-chlorians, which is that it suggests that there has to be a biological component in order for the Force to work, but if Rey has incredible power despite having a low midi-chlorian count, it would suggest that her power was not innate, but given to her later in life. An "awakening", if you will. More specifically, I believe that the Force has decided that it was a bad idea for one person (Anakin) to bring balance to the Force, because one person cannot adequately embody both Sides at the same time, even someone whose father is literally the Force itself. As such, I believe the Force "awakened" both Kylo Ren and Rey to a much deeper connection to the Force so that they could sort of be joint-Chosen Ones like I talked about earlier. Essentially, Kylo Ren will be the embodiment of the Dark Side, but with a hint of the Light Side (which may be why he always feels seduced by the Light Side), and Rey will be the embodiment of the Light Side, but with a hint of the Dark Side (which we'll see more in this movie). They'll be yin and yang, representing the balance of the Force.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> While we know that Rey's power seems to grow in opposition to Kylo Ren's power, that does not suggest that she never had the power to begin with. She also said that the power had always been there, but now it had awakened. That COULD be read as her not having Force-sensitivity until recently, but I don't think it was explicit enough to count.</div>
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<b>I3) The Knights of Ren hate the Sith as much as the Jedi</b></div>
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I was very happy with TFA when it was made clear that Kylo Ren was not a Sith, nor did he specifically revere the Sith. We don't yet know much about the Knights of Ren beyond that, but I personally believe that the Knights of Ren are modeled more after the Jedi than the Sith since they don't seem to have the "Rule of Two" and the way Kylo Ren seems to think of the Dark Side feels less in line with the way the Sith saw the Dark Side and more in line with the way the Jedi saw the Light Side, like how Kylo Ren talks about the Light Side seducing him the way a Jedi might talk about the Dark Side seducing them. I think the Knights of Ren see themselves as Jedi that were freed from the dogmatic thinking that the Dark Side was evil. I even think some of the Knights of Ren were former students of Luke's that helped Kylo Ren kill Luke's loyal Jedi students.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> We actually haven't learned much at all about the Knights of Ren. They may, in fact, dislike the Sith (assuming they're still around), but it wasn't in TLJ, so it doesn't count.</div>
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<b>I4) Phasma's helmet once again stays on for the entire movie</b></div>
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I thought it was really interesting how after the photoshoot with Gwendoline Christie dressed as Phasma with her helmet off was released, it was immediately clarified by LucasFilm as not being canonical. To me, this either implies that Phasma's face doesn't JUST look like Gwendoline Christie (like she's got scars or something) or LucasFilm is making a point of never, ever, ever showing Captain Phasma's face without a helmet in canon. Given how most people think Boba Fett stopped being cool the moment we saw him without his helmet (personally I disagree... I think Boba Fett was never cool in the first place), I wouldn't be surprised if LucasFilm has decided that they won't repeat that perceived mistake.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Her helmet cracks, but stays on. Good enough for me!</div>
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<b>I5) Finn will ask Leia to let him leave the Resistance, and Leia will permit it</b></div>
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We already know from interviews that Finn will be the reluctant hero again and that he'll have a change of heart, partially thanks to a new character named Rose Tico, but to get a LITTLE more specific, I think that once Finn finishes recovering from his wounds, he will ask Leia to let him leave the Resistance in a moment that will mirror the scene from "The Empire Strikes Back" when Han asked General Rieeken on Hoth to leave so he could pay back Jabba. Similarly to that scene, I believe Finn will emphasize that, as a defector, he's got pretty much everyone in the First Order wanting to kill him specifically, so if he doesn't take off for the Outer Rim, he's a dead man. And I think Leia will respond with a familiar phrase: "A death's mark is not an easy thing to live with. You're a good fighter, Finn. I hate to lose you." This would both be a nice callback and highlight Leia's growth as a leader (and possibly her certainty that Finn won't actually go through with it, just as Han didn't).<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Finn does try to leave, but he doesn't ask permission. Bzzt.</div>
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<b>N1) Rey has psychometry</b></div>
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OK, so, "psychometry" is a rare Force ability where a person can touch an object and know about its history. While this mostly just existed in side-stories that have since been rendered non-canon after Disney took over, there is still a canonical example of a character with psychometry, and it is defined as such in the canonical novel, "Dark Disciple". Now, obviously, the movies aren't going to get that technical on us, and they probably won't use the word "psychometry" (possibly because Luke won't actually know it has a name), but I do think that Rey will once again demonstrate her ability to see into the history of an important object, just as she did with Anakin's lightsaber.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> We never see this happen in TLJ.</div>
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<b>N2) Finn will come back to save Poe (again)</b></div>
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While I'm not sure if Poe will actually get captured again like he did in TFA, I do think that part of the reason Finn will stop himself from leaving the Resistance is because Poe will get himself in trouble and Finn will decide to save him again. Though I doubt they'll call out the line explicitly, I see this as mirroring the "that's two you owe me" line from "Empire".<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Poe doesn't get captured, Finn never saves his life in TLJ.</div>
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<b>FREE) Luke and Leia will reunite</b></div>
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The free space is this prediction because, while it hasn't technically been confirmed, it's so damn likely that I would be surprised if it didn't happen.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> This one's borderline since Luke doesn't ACTUALLY show up in person, but they do interact while both are alive, they have a conversation, and it serves as a reunion in my book.</div>
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<b>N4) There will be "Stormpilot" queerbaiting</b></div>
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In case you don't know "Stormpilot" refers to the ship between Finn and Poe. If you don't know what "shipping" is... welcome to the Internet! Anyway, while it's been confirmed that there won't be a big romance subplot in this movie, we DO know that LucasFilm is fully aware of how many fans are hoping that Finn and Poe will end up being more than just friends, so I'm actually expecting that there will be a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" moment between the two that won't be explicit, but will definitely be intended to queerbait the Stormpilot shippers. I'm hoping it doesn't happen (insert argument for why queerbaiting is problematic here), but Disney is getting pretty infamous for doing half-measures on LGBT representation lately, so... yeah. I mean, I'm not really a Stormpilot shipper and even I think that if they're going to deliberately tease this, they should just commit to it. It's only weird if you make it weird.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Surprisingly, no queerbaiting. Well, Poe does happen to be the one that finds Finn "naked and leaking", but there's nothing queerbait-y about it.</div>
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<b>N5) Luke has a red lightsaber</b></div>
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This is probably a weird one. If you look at most of the new toys with Luke, you'll notice they don't include a lightsaber. We have seen Luke with a lightsaber in some promo images, but the lightsaber appears to be Anakin's lightsaber, and Luke's green lightsaber seems completely MIA. I believe he had to create a new lightsaber from scratch. However, in the new canon, it's established that a lightsaber's color isn't decided until a Jedi has bonded with it. It's also said that kyber crystals are inherently attuned to the Light Side, so in order for a Dark Side Force user to construct one, they have to dominate it through the Force, turning it red in the process. I believe that when Luke tried to construct a new lightsaber, he was surprised and disturbed to find that the Force was resisting him and that the kyber crystals were refusing to attune with him, essentially leaving him no choice but to exert his dominance over it, turning it red. I believe he is deeply ashamed by having to do this, and as such, only uses the lightsaber in dire situations. So I believe we'll see Luke use Anakin's blue lightsaber at first, but at a certain point, he'll be forced to use his new red lightsaber. HOWEVER...<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Nope.</div>
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<b>G1) Luke is and will always be a Jedi</b></div>
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As jaded and cynical as Luke has become, I believe he is still dedicated to being a Jedi. Even knowing everything he knows, and even believing that the Jedi need to end, he also knows that he still has a vital role to play as the last Jedi and has resigned himself to his fate. He will not fall to the Dark Side (at least not completely) and he will not stop being a Jedi. That part of his character is too vital. But I'm not saying that Luke won't end up being an antagonist. I think this film will emphasize that "Jedi" is not synonymous with "good guy". Rey's goals are likely the greatest good, but Luke can disagree without turning "bad". If you really look hard at the Jedi throughout "Star Wars" canon, you'll see that they are not always the good guys, and I think that Luke essentially filling a "bad guy" role while still maintaining his identity as a Jedi is the best way for the movie to drive home that the Jedi have to end. The lines are probably going to start getting blurrier.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Yep. Luke remains a Jedi until the very end.</div>
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<b>G2) Rey will call herself a Skywalker</b></div>
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This is probably my most wild theory, but I like it, so I'm including it. Essentially, I agree with all the speculation that Rey will ultimately become a Grey or Neutral Force user, but I think it will go beyond that. I think ultimately, she and Kylo Ren will create a new Order to replace both the Jedi and the Sith/Knights of Ren that is more universal. It will not emphasize the Light or the Dark Side, but rather preach a balance between the two. Now, I've already said that Rey will not be a Skywalker by blood, but in "Star Wars", names aren't just about blood, they're about identity. That's why Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and why Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. Now from a meta-narrative standpoint, it makes perfect sense for the Jedi to end and be replaced with something new and more universal so that the Skywalker Saga can be about something other than a black-and-white battle between the Light and Dark Sides, but from a franchise-building perspective, it's a terrible idea because you're expecting your audience to accept that the Jedi and Sith are gone and from now on, all Force users will be a part of this new Order. Even if you get them to accept that conceptually, "Jedi" has been in the zeitgeist for so long that whatever you'd call this new Order would generally just be called "the new Jedi Order" by lazy or casual fans. Unless, of course, you called this new Order something fans are already familiar with, something that symbolizes bringing balance to the Force, and something that has deep meaning. Additionally, I've already brought up how this new trilogy seems to be emphasizing that the fate of the galaxy can't just depend upon Anakin's family tree forever or it'll start to seem like an aristocracy. The torch will have to be carried by new, unrelated characters like Rey who are heroes for reasons other than their parentage. However, the main "Star Wars" saga is officially considered to be "The Skywalker Saga", so how can you have a "Skywalker Saga" if the main character isn't necessarily a Skywalker? Simple: "Skywalker" stops meaning a family. I think this episode will delve into what it actually means to be a Skywalker, and more specifically, what Anakin Skywalker's true purpose was. Remember, Anakin was a Chosen One that would bring balance to the Force, and the Jedi took this to mean that he would destroy the Sith, and he did, but they didn't realize that it also meant he would destroy the Jedi. The meaning, it would seem, is that Anakin was destined to destroy the failed dichotomy between Light and Dark and clear the slate for a new, more balanced generation, and I believe that they will honor him by assuming his name as a title. That's right, I believe that Force-sensitives in the "Star Wars" universe will stop calling themselves Jedi and Sith and instead start calling themselves Skywalkers, regardless of what "Side" they're on, and I believe it will begin by Rey calling herself Rey Skywalker. And if you think that's confusing because it's also a last name... well, who actually still uses it as a surname? As far as we know, Shmi Skywalker had no living relatives, and Leia never had the Skywalker surname to begin with, so neither did her son. Luke is the only Skywalker left, and he's probably not going to survive this trilogy, so the name is free for the taking. I for one would be thrilled if this is the direction they go down. The idea of an Order that actively tries to get Light and Dark Side users to complement one another rather than oppose one another is much more interesting to me than rehashing the same conflicts over and over again, and I think the idea of calling Force users Skywalkers is great, because I hate having to keep saying "Force users" when I'm not talking about characters that are explicitly Jedi or Sith or Knights of Ren or what-have-you.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> This was always something of a long-shot. It could hypothetically still happen, but I sincerely doubt it at this point.</div>
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<b>G3) Leia will ask Kylo Ren to kill her</b></div>
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During that moment we see in the trailers where Kylo Ren is about to kill Leia, you can pretty much tell that Leia knows. Of course she does. She may not have trained with Luke, but she's always been able to sense things through the Force. She even did it in TFA after Kylo Ren killed Han. And while she believed that there was still good in Kylo Ren when she sent Han off to bring their son back, his failure probably shook her. She's probably afraid that she's truly lost her son to Snoke. But in this moment, I believe she'll sense his conflict, but rather than try to talk him out of it, she'll dare him to kill her. It won't be out of resignation, but out of desperation. In her mind there are only two possibilities: Either her son is truly dead, in which case, there's nothing she can do, so she might as well end Kylo Ren's doubt, or her son is still in there, in which case, daring him to go through with it will just bring his conflict into crystal-clear focus. She won't beg for her life... it's not in her nature. But even after what he did to Han, she will tell her son it's OK and trust him to make the right call. And it'll work. More on this in a minute.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Nope.</div>
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<b>G4) Luke will cut off Kylo Ren's hand</b></div>
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While Leia may hold out hope for her son, I doubt Luke has it in him to be objective about Kylo Ren anymore. Just as Obi-Wan gave up on Darth Vader after watching him murder trainees and facing off with him directly, I believe that Luke has become convinced that Kylo Ren is now beyond saving. I believe that Luke will have another confrontation with Kylo Ren to mirror Luke's fight with Darth Vader in "The Empire Strikes Back", but in a surprise twist, Luke will be playing the role of Darth Vader this time around (hence the red lightsaber) and will lop off Kylo Ren's hand to drive that point home.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Only Snoke loses his limbs, and that's the least of his problems.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>G5) Rey will save Kylo Ren's life</b></div>
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Once Luke disarms Kylo Ren, I believe there will be a moment somewhat evocative of the moment in "Revenge of the Sith" when Mace Windu had Darth Sidious pinned. Luke will decide that he has to kill him, not necessarily because "he's too dangerous to be left alive", but because he sees no other way forward. Kylo Ren has rejected the Light Side, he betrayed Luke and his fellow students, and he killed his own father. If he lets him live, he will just continue down the Dark Side, and as a Jedi, he simply cannot allow that. He won't be driven by revenge or fear, but he will reason that he can't treat Kylo Ren as special just because of his relation to him. However, Rey will refuse to accept this. Maybe she'll have heard about Kylo Ren sparing Leia, maybe she'll just sense some kind of deeper connection, or maybe it's just because, unlike Luke, she sees a better way forward. Whatever the reason, I believe Rey will betray Luke, save Kylo Ren, and help him escape. I believe Luke will try to talk her out of it ("This is not going to go the way you think!"), but just as Luke once had to reject the insistence of Obi-Wan and Yoda that Darth Vader had to be destroyed, Rey will reject Luke's insistence that Kylo Ren has to be destroyed so that she can save him just as Luke once saved Vader. More on that in a minute.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> It didn't play out quite like I imagined, but Rey does believe Kylo Ren can be redeemed and saves his life during the Praetorian guard battle in the throne room, so I'm counting it.</div>
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<b>O1) There are no more Force ghosts</b></div>
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Similar to how I believe that Luke will have to resort to turning a kyber crystal red in order to build a new lightsaber, I think that the Force will show other signs of abandoning Luke for what he did to Rey. Specifically, I see him losing his connection with the Force ghosts of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin. I don't think they're gone completely, but I think Luke has just stopped hearing from them.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> One of the best scenes in the movie includes a Force ghost, so I was super-wrong. In fact, the Force doesn't abandon Luke, Luke cuts himself off from it.</div>
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<b>O2) Rey will convince Kylo Ren that they should train one another</b></div>
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This is what I believe the whole Rey-saving-Kylo-from-Luke thing will culminate into. Essentially, everyone seems to be predicting that either Rey will agree to be taught by Kylo Ren or Kylo Ren will start his redemption arc and start training under her. Well... why not both? If Rey decides she needs to understand the Dark Side and also realizes that, while Kylo Ren will never leave the Dark Side, she can at least help him become sane again, she may convince him that they are both better off learning from one another rather than learning from Luke or Snoke, who perhaps represent the last vestiges of the old guard that must be destroyed in order for true balance to be achieved. She will offer to teach him what she's learned about the Jedi (because, just to emphasize, Kylo Ren didn't start his training under Luke until he was 23 and probably didn't get very far before Snoke started corrupting him, which is probably one reason why his abilities are so unrefined and why his lightsaber is so junky) so that he can teach her about the Dark Side. The film may not present all of this information in an obvious fashion. In fact, the film may not help us understand Rey's reasoning at all. All we might see is her saving Kylo Ren from Luke, helping him escape, and then asking him to train her in the ways of the Dark Side, making it LOOK like Rey is going to turn, when in reality, she's simply trying to understand how to bring balance between the Light and Dark Sides and bring an end to the centuries of conflict started by the Jedi and the Sith. Rey will try to bring Ben back, not through conflict, but through connecting with him, learning with him, and understanding him. I don't think they will fall in love (though I suppose it's possible), but I do believe they will not fit a traditional student-teacher model and instead treat each other as equals, complementing one another, though ultimately, Rey will be the one to take the lead.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Nope. At least not yet.</div>
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<b>O3) Leia will die, but not because of Kylo Ren</b></div>
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Ultimately, I think Leia's bluff will work and Kylo Ren will be unable to go through with assassinating Leia, but... I still don't think Leia will survive this film. I know originally she was supposed to, but now that they've said she will not posthumously be in Episode IX, I think they're more likely to kill her off in Episode VIII than kill her off-screen before Episode IX. An off-screen death would just be so frustrating, but at the same time, I don't have a LOT of confidence in this prediction since LucasFilm might have felt it would have been disrespectful to give Leia a death scene a mere year after Carrie Fisher passed away. Then again, Carrie Fisher was a tough old lady, so she probably wouldn't have minded much. We'll see, but I'm putting my chips on her not surviving to the end of this movie.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Leia survives. I suspect she'll die between films, but she's alive at the end of TLJ, so it doesn't count.</div>
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<b>O4) The New Republic will fall into apathy and chaos</b></div>
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This isn't a very wild prediction, I know, but it's important to keep in mind that the status quo is different in this trilogy than it was during the original trilogy. Despite their name, the Resistance is more-or-less defending the status quo: the New Republic. However, during TFA, the new Galactic Senate was destroyed by Starkiller Base, and the New Republic was already having the same problems with indecisiveness that the Old Republic had. Even though Starkiller Base was destroyed, the First Order still delivered a very powerful blow, so unless the New Republic acts quickly, it's just a matter of time before the First Order gets back on its feet. And of course, without the Senate, the New Republic will be a chicken with its head cut off, and I'm willing to bet that the people with the means to help the Resistance pull the New Republic from the brink will ultimately fail them due to their own selfishness or lack of urgency, and essentially they'll allow the First Order to assume control of the galaxy, leaving the Resistance as the last hope to stop them and then maybe find a better system of government than a Republic since that doesn't seem to be working out all too well. This will likely fit into the same theme as what's going on with the Jedi, specifically that the Old Republic and the Jedi were destroyed for a reason, and just trying to rebuild carbon copies of them will just end the same way.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> The only thing I was really wrong about on this one was that I imagined it would take longer. The movie pretty much opens with the First Order in full control. Aside from that? Pretty much spot-on.</div>
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<b>O5) Rey will take back Anakin's lightsaber from Luke</b></div>
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And finally, I believe that just as Rey reclaimed Anakin's lightsaber from Kylo Ren at the end of TFA, she will also reclaim it from Luke.at the end of TLJ, probably so that she can stop him from killing Kylo Ren. Just as her claiming the lightsaber from Kylo Ren was a way of saying that he was unworthy of it because of his obsession with the Dark Side and his insistence that it was his by birthright, Luke will also be unworthy of the mantle of Anakin Skywalker for being unable to let go of the Jedi, even as he realizes they are destined to become extinct.<br />
<b>VERDICT:</b> Luke never really accepts the lightsaber in the first place, but Rey does resume ownership of it and I believe that at least one of its broken crystals will be used for her new lightsaber, so I'm giving myself this one. Mostly out of pity.<br />
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So that's my Bingo card of predictions for "The Last Jedi"! Maybe I'll even be right about some of them!<br />
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<b>UPDATE (2018): </b>And here's the final card! Not even close!<br />
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Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-82016500071310457832017-01-04T10:57:00.000-05:002017-01-04T10:57:23.257-05:00Rogue One: The Star Wars Movie Where Everyone is Boba FettI liked "Rogue One". I have a hard time articulating WHY I like it, but I can't pretend I don't like it.<br />
<br />
And I'm not really here to argue why I shouldn't like the movie, or why the movie is really objectively bad. I'm not even all that convinced that it is bad. If it were bad, I imagine a lot more people would have disliked it. This is kind of an argument I've seen literary nerds paint themselves into with "Harry Potter". They'll spend a lot of time arguing why "Harry Potter" isn't good, but then they realize that the problems with "Harry Potter" don't stop anyone from enjoying it for reasons they can't necessarily figure out. And if virtually everybody likes something, how can you argue that it's "bad"? What does "bad" even mean in that context?<br />
<br />
So, no, "Rogue One" is probably good, otherwise I doubt so many people would like it. But I feel like it's worth pointing out something about its characters.<br />
<br />
They're all Boba Fett.<br />
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If you're less well-versed in "Star Wars", allow me to explain.<br />
<br />
In "The Empire Strikes Back" (retroactively known as "Star Wars: Episode V"), Darth Vader hires a bunch of bounty hunters to find the Millennium Falcon after his own troops perpetually fail to do so. Among these bounty hunters is a guy named Boba Fett. He is not explicitly named at any point in "Empire", but we know his name for other reasons I'll get into in a moment. In any case, he's the only bounty hunter to successfully track down the Millennium Falcon for Vader, and he leads the Empire to Bespin before the good guys get there, mostly because he wants to collect the pre-established bounty on Han Solo. We see him do one clever thing (anticipate Han Solo's clever trick of hiding in space garbage), he says a few lines ("As you wish", "He's no good to me dead", and "Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold"), it's implied that he has a thing for disintegrating his targets, and he has a really cool outfit.<br />
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So if you don't know much about Boba Fett, it probably seems like he's a fairly uninteresting character. And you'd be right, but you'd also be wrong, because Boba Fett is one of the most popular characters in the entire franchise, particularly among old-school "Star Wars" fans.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of speculated reasons as to why, but the real reason is pretty simple: Marketing.<br />
<br />
The original "Star Wars" was insanely popular. Like, "Avengers" popular. It was a phenomenon, and so the studio was all over marketing the upcoming sequel, and once Lucasfilm had developed the character of Boba Fett based on older designs and concepts for Darth Vader (the character everybody loved), the marketing team decided to lean heavily into the character. They made toys, he made mall appearances, he was on posters, and he was in an animated short that was included in the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special". Boba Fett was sold as a new villain who would basically be Darth Vader's right hand in the sequel, and fans ate him up. In the time leading up to the new movie, fans speculated wildly about this character, his background, his skills, etc. Then the movie came out and it was AMAZING. Like, seriously, "Empire Strikes Back" is, to this day, regarded as the best "Star Wars" film, and it probably deserves it.<br />
<br />
But the thing about Boba Fett is that his role was severely diminished over the course of rewrites and edits for the final film. He doesn't really do all that much and he has no close relationship with anyone, even Vader. He's no one's right hand. He's just kind of there, wearing a helmet. Is he happy? Sad? Mischievous? Bored? Smarmy? The answer to all is yes and no because he's always silent and wearing a helmet. He's Schrodinger's Bounty Hunter.<br />
<br />
This turned out to be kind of perfect for Boba Fett. Because of how he was marketed and received by all the fans, his appearance in the film kind of confirmed everybody's speculation about him. If you were a kid and you bought a Boba Fett toy and you imagined a crazy backstory about him, his actions in "Empire" probably fit within the framework that you imagined for the character. It probably didn't directly confirm anything either, but you were able to fill in the blanks.<br />
<br />
You know how some movies can sometimes "feel" more violent than they actually are because they leave certain things to the imagination? Like the ear-cutting-off scene in "Reservoir Dogs" for example? Well, Boba Fett is a character that gets more interesting because everything about him is left to the imagination, and everyone in the film acts like he's a more interesting character for unspoken, nonspecific reasons. And so, if you went into the film expecting him to be a cool character, you left the film feeling like he was, indeed, a cool character.<br />
<br />
"The Force Awakens" deliberately replayed this tactic with the character Captain Phasma, and it worked gangbusters. Hell, I went into the movie KNOWING that Phasma was basically just an attempt to capture Fett Lightning in a bottle again, and it worked. I went into that movie expecting Phasma to be awesome, and I left that movie hoping that Phasma somehow survived Starkiller Base, despite Phasma never actually doing anything all that important or cool. It just kind of works.<br />
<br />
But the joke about Boba Fett is that as they continue to include him in canonical materials, he continues to fail to live up to his own hype. In "Return of the Jedi", he stands around and gets killed in the most embarrassing way possible. In "Attack of the Clones", he's a kid who watches his father get his head cut off. In the "Clone Wars" cartoons, he gets to show off some impressive skills, but he ultimately gets used by a bunch of bounty hunters and fails to kill the Jedi who killed his father.<br />
<br />
Boba Fett's subtextual reputation is that he's a cool, badass, world-class bounty hunter, but in actual text, he's a marginally-competent screw-up who almost always works for somebody else and almost always fails.<br />
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Boba Fett succeeds as a character because of the magic of "projection". We as an audience go in with the pre-conceived notion that he's a badass, so everything he does or says is taken within that presumed context, reaffirming that previously-held belief, even if there's an equally-valid context that would do the exact opposite.<br />
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That brings us to "Rogue One", where, as the title of this post suggests, every character is Boba Fett.<br />
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Every character was well-established in marketing and other canonical media produced by Disney so that when we went into the movie, we got the gist of the characters and wanted to like them. Then, when we saw the movie, they behaved in ways that allowed us to project those preconceived character traits onto them, and so our expectations of how we would feel about those characters came through and allowed us to build them up as complex, interesting characters. It also helped that pretty much all of the actors were great in bringing a lot of weight to these characters.<br />
<br />
If you watch "Rogue One", it feels like every character has a really cool and interesting personality or backstory. You aren't really sure WHY it feels that way, but it just sort of does.<br />
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It's the Wile E. Coyote running over a cliff logic. It's only a problem if you look down. Otherwise, you can just keep running on air.<br />
<br />
But if we're being honest, very few characters in the film actually earn the reputations that we project onto them. The film doesn't give any of the characters a real arc, we don't really see them do much to build up the character traits we assume they have, and they act like they know and care about each other even though they don't really have any reason to.<br />
<br />
It's a magic trick, is what I'm saying.<br />
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Now, like a magic trick, it probably doesn't matter if I tell you it's a magic trick, or even how the magic trick is done. You'll still be entertained, and that's perfectly fine. See, it doesn't really matter WHY you think a character is well-defined or interesting, just THAT you think a character is well-defined and interesting. Most good movies do this by showing us scenes of them developing or establishing themselves in interesting ways, but sometimes movies can get away with doing this in unconventional ways.<br />
<br />
"Avengers" did this by making a bunch of other movies that established these characters ahead of time so the movie could focus on action. "Rogue One" did this by applying the Boba Fett formula to virtually all of the characters.<br />
<br />
Is that cheap? Maybe, but if your brain is interested in these characters, why should you care whether or not those ideas came from the movie itself or if the movie just tricked your imagination into doing its work for it? Isn't it equally impressive that a movie can do that?<br />
<br />
Well... yeah! Kind of! I think "Rogue One" and its cast, crew, and marketing team deserve props for making me care about characters that (let's be honest here) don't really do all that much. Magic tricks aren't easy to pull off, and given the positive reception of the film, I don't think anyone can argue that they didn't successfully pull it off.<br />
<br />
Sure, tricking people into believing that you made the Statue of Liberty disappear isn't as impressive as actually making the Statue of Liberty disappear, but it's still impressive, isn't it? I mean, I certainly can't do that. Can you?<br />
<br />
The only problem with this method of character establishment is that it doesn't work very well in the long-term. Part of the reason "Attack of the Clones" is considered the worst "Star Wars" movie of all time is because it's the first movie that Boba Fett is in where his presence actively contradicts people's imagined, projected character traits and backstories for him. We see what he's like as a child. We find out where he comes from. We see him without his helmet on. We learn where he got his ship. There's nothing to project onto. I personally don't think he has a BAD backstory (in fact, I actually think it's pretty interesting, particularly in "Clone Wars"), but I didn't go into that movie with decades of baseless, imagined adventures of Boba Fett, bounty hunter extraordinaire. If you did, your reception of the character's portrayal in "Attack of the Clones" probably sounded something like this:<br />
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So this is the danger of the Boba Fett Method: It's a really shoddy foundation for a long-term character that you want to build upon. Boba Fett was cool until they started treating him like an actual character.</div>
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Luckily, "Rogue One" avoids this by not being a foundational film. If any of these characters will ever be seen again, it will be as side characters. If their backstories are ever told, it will be in books or video games that most people never see. This is a one-shot side-story. So the fact that none of these characters have substantial depth to them isn't really a problem, so long as you believe they do for the duration of the one film that they're all in.</div>
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This, in general, is the power of "Star Wars", and a large part of why I love it so much. It's such a massive, broadly-defined universe that it's just a playground for the imagination. "Rogue One" is the first movie in the franchise to make that playground the main attraction, and I think it worked.</div>
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Take my personal favorite character of the film, Chirrut Imwe. He's blind and believes in the Force. It's implied that he's at least Force-sensitive because he's able to "see" things, like Jyn's Kyber crystal, and because he defends a Jedi temple. However, it's also implied that he's not a Jedi because he doesn't manipulate the Force or use a lightsaber. He just sort of trusts in the Force and lets it guide him. He's more passive. He also has a dependent relationship on the more cynical and brute-force character, Baze Malbus.</div>
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Based on those simple things (as well as Donnie Yen's performance), I was able to imagine an entire character from whole cloth. It's not that I HAD to, I WANTED to. I ENJOYED doing the movie's work for it. The movie never once defines his abilities in any concrete terms, but I did within moments of being introduced to him, so it knew it didn't have to.</div>
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That's how basically the entire movie works. It eschews exposition and character development because they know that if they make the characters just intriguing enough, the audience will do that for them and they can just skip to the action sequences.</div>
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One could make a compelling argument that that's lazy, and maybe it is, but one man's "lazy" is another man's "efficient". The writers didn't have to expend energy rigidly defining any of these characters, and that allowed them to focus their energy elsewhere. One could argue that they didn't do any of those other things significantly better as a result, but that doesn't really matter since they still did them pretty well.</div>
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So, yeah. "Rogue One" tricked most of us into liking a bunch of characters that we really had no specific reasons to like.</div>
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I still like them anyway, and you probably do too.</div>
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That said, if somebody DOESN'T like the movie, it's probably because they weren't willing to do the movie's homework for it. They EXPECTED more concrete character development and exposition, and when they didn't get it, they rightly didn't enjoy the rest of the movie.</div>
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You can't fault the viewer for that anymore than you can fault someone who isn't fooled by a magic trick. The whole point of a magic trick is to fool you, so if it doesn't work, that's the magician's fault.</div>
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I've seen a lot of people get up in arms over people who bring up a lot of valid criticism for the film and explain why they didn't like it. When someone says that they thought the characters were poorly-defined and didn't really do anything all that interesting, I see a lot of fans get really offended by this. And it makes sense. In their minds, these characters WERE well-defined and interesting, so hearing somebody suggest otherwise sounds absurd. But these people are always hard-pressed to actually refute those claims, and ultimately they decide to just sneer and dismiss the negative criticism or attack the person making it.</div>
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Look, guys, I know we all like to think we're not unintelligent, gullible film-goers, and that we only like movies that are well-crafted and deep, but I've got news for you.</div>
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ALL fiction is about tricking you into believing things that aren't real.</div>
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Some fiction tries harder at forging a believable illusion than others, but in the end, it's still all just pretend.</div>
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It's entirely possible, and in fact, very, very likely that you enjoy at least one movie that is objectively terrible. That doesn't make you a bad person.</div>
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This is actually a problem I see with "Star Wars" fans in general, and I think it first bubbled to the the surface during the prequels. "Star Wars" fans don't want to admit that they like the movies for sometimes rather silly reasons. They want to feel mature in their admiration of the franchise, and so they try to build up this mythology around the quality of the original films.</div>
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But let's get real here. "Star Wars" was a good movie that used very stock characters and tropes in a very visually-stunning and imaginative way. "The Empire Strikes Back" was an objectively good film that built upon that foundation and made it go deeper and took it in directions nobody expected. "Return of the Jedi" was wall-to-wall fanservice that was inoffensive enough that most people didn't really realize that it wasn't all that good. The prequels are OK movies that didn't live up to decades of hype and nostalgia that over-sold the original films. "The Force Awakens" was a competently made retread of the original "Star Wars" with some really interesting new characters.</div>
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"Rogue One" is a magic trick that is very competently-made, but entirely hinges on whether or not you are willing to care about characters for pretty shallow reasons.</div>
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This is a franchise about space wizards and laser swords. Can we as a fandom finally learn to be OK with that?</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-59834842759282286222016-06-03T18:00:00.000-04:002016-06-03T18:00:18.812-04:00Basic Income (Or "Why Don't We Just Give Everyone Money?")This Sunday, Switzerland will be voting on a concept called "basic income".<br />
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If passed, this new law would guarantee that all citizens of Switzerland would receive about 2500 Swiss francs every month, no questions asked. <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-swiss-are-about-to-vote-no-on-basic-income/">FiveThirtyEight estimates this</a> as being about the equivalent of $2000 in the US if adjusted for cost of living, and while Nikki Sixx apparently disagrees with this assessment (check the comments of the article), $2000 a month seems like a workable income in the U.S., so I'm rolling with it. Anyway, this payout would be given regardless of income, regardless of employment, regardless of family status, regardless of anything except age and citizenship. Every adult citizen gets enough money to live a reasonably comfortable life.<br />
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Now before you go all, "Switzerland must be CRAZY!" you should know that this measure won't pass. When it goes up to vote this Sunday, polls are showing that about 70% of voters will say "no", and the reasons are fairly obvious. Higher taxes, less incentive to work, it's a largely untested idea in the first place... Yeah, the world probably isn't ready for this idea.<br />
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But ready or not, is basic income an inherently bad idea, or could it work?<br />
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For starters, this idea probably sounds a lot like communism, but that's not quite the case. This would only be communism if this was the only income anyone would ever receive or if it could only be spent on government-approved necessities or something. But all the government would do here is collect taxes and write checks. A person holding a job would still take home their paycheck (minus whatever new taxes were put in place), but then they'd receive another $2000 on top of that each month. So capitalism would still be the name of the game. People who put in the extra work would still be better off than those who don't and the government isn't controlling who gets what income and what they can spend it on. It's just money being funneled through the federal government and going to every citizen (and only citizens, not immigrants who have yet to earn full citizenship).<br />
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But communism aside, there are the more obvious problems that we touched on. Higher taxes is the first issue, but let's really figure out what that would mean. I'm not even going to attempt to understand the Switzerland tax system, so I'll apply this based on U.S. tax and revenue. In the U.S., we would need about $7 trillion more each year in tax revenue to pay each adult American citizen $2000 every month. So in other words, it would literally double our current annual federal budget. How much would we need to tax to make that happen? I'm not a tax expert, but just for the sake of argument, let's see what would probably have to happen. Well, let's start by saying that this new system would replace most other need-based social welfare programs like food stamps or what have you, but not programs like Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. We could roll health care into one single payer system (maybe that's pie-in-the-sky, but we're already talking about basic income, so I doubt single payer would be a stretch) and that would eliminate the burden on employers and individuals to pay health care premiums. The main reason I'm keeping Social Security is because people paid into it and they should probably get what they paid in. We could probably phase it out, but it would take a generation, so I won't account for it to help pay for basic income. Anyway, eliminating the other welfare programs would save us about $400 billion annually, which still leaves us with $6.6 trillion that we need to raise. Let's also say that we revert tax breaks for investment income to bring that down to a rounder $6 trillion. Then let's say we find ways to close loopholes and such to make sure corporations and the wealthiest Americans are actually paying the taxes they should be paying (easier said than done, I know, but this is just a thought experiment, so let's go with it). It's hard to know how much that would actually save us, but let's say we get the one-percenters and their corporations to cough up another $2 trillion tax revenue annually, bringing us down to $4 trillion.<br />
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To make this slightly less awful for corporations, we could also probably lower or abolish the federal minimum wage. After all, we wouldn't really need it anymore. That combined with no longer having to provide health care to employees would make it a lot cheaper to hire people for smaller, part-time positions.<br />
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Anyway, the remaining $4 trillion would be roughly half of our current taxable income each year. Yikes. Well, let's just say that income tax brackets across the board increase by 50% for everyone. Not a flat tax of 50%, but increase all the tax bracket rates by 50%. For example, income taxed in the 35% bracket would instead have 85% deducted. It's extreme, but $4 trillion is a lot of money and this is pretty much the only way we could realistically generate enough revenue to pay for it.<br />
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So what would this increase in taxes mean for most working Americans? Speaking for myself, I'd be paying about something like another $30,000 each year in federal income tax.<br />
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That sounds terrible, but considering that I'd be making $24,000 a year from basic income, that means I'd be losing about $500 a month. That would suck, but I could manage it. I was able to manage having that level of income a few years ago, so I could probably do it again. I'd just have to buy fewer video games and less snack food, mostly. That said, I do have a bonus, which is that I have a girlfriend. She's unemployed, so she would pay no additional taxes, but she'd get the $2000/month basic income as well, so we'd actually be way better off in this system.<br />
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You could say that this unfairly targets the wealthy, but everyone gets the basic income and everyone's tax rates would be increased equally across the board. I'd say that's the very definition of fairness.<br />
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It would also mean that lower income individuals would make even less from their jobs than they do now, particularly if we got rid of the minimum wage, but the basic income would more than make up for it. If you make $14,000 a year as a barista, you'd suddenly be making closer to $30,000 a year without needing to negotiate a pay raise or go full time.<br />
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And that brings us to the next big obvious problem with basic income, and that's whether or not this would disincentivize work. And yeah, it probably would. I mean, if you can live off $24000 a year and you don't feel like you need more than that, you probably won't want to work.<br />
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Well, what's wrong with that? I'm serious. Other than some arbitrary measure of "fairness", I can't really think of a good reason why everyone in this nation should have to do paid work to earn a living, especially when millions of Americans are trying to find jobs and can't.<br />
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Hear me out.<br />
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We have way more people than jobs, and as we improve technology and operating efficiency year after year, we'll probably continue to have fewer jobs and more and more people as our population keeps increasing.<br />
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A common attitude (particularly in America) is that a person shouldn't get something for nothing. They should have to work in order to receive an income. Otherwise they're a burden on society.<br />
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Maybe I'm crazy for asking this question, but... why? Why should a person have to work to have a basic existence? I mean, it's not like it's fun to live on a $24,000 salary, but at least it's possible. It allows a person enough security that they can pursue specialized training or an education. More people could start businesses. More people could move to a part of the country that they like, even if it doesn't have a terrific job market. Why should a person have to work at a job they hate to survive and have a chance to pursue their real dreams?<br />
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This idea of "everyone should work for a living" made sense when we had more jobs than people, but we've gotten to a point where most Americans don't need to work in order for our economy to stay strong. Heck, having all of these Americans without jobs and without a livable income makes them more a burden on society because they can't buy anything. The problem is that we don't have enough jobs for people to earn enough money to afford that living, even if they want to. The solution seems to be to try and create incentives to create more jobs, but if our economy doesn't need more jobs in order to function optimally, maybe more jobs isn't the best solution. We'd just be having corporations hire extra people that they don't need so that they can work jobs they probably don't want so they can earn a currency that is inherently worth only what we collectively agree it should be worth.<br />
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Fiat currency was created to be representative of some kind of arbitrary value for goods and services. It's kind of an abstraction of a trading system. It essentially exists so that a person doesn't take more goods and services from the economy than they contribute. If the work you do produces enough value into the economy to offset what you take, then you provide a net benefit to the economy. The problem is that the amount we're paid often has no direct relation to the value of our work, and this has only become more pronounced as our economy has become more based in services than in goods. People who play professional sports get paid millions of dollars for providing entertainment. How much is that entertainment worth? It's worth whatever people are willing to pay. Meanwhile, a person making minimum wage at a coffee shop is probably generating way more wealth than they're taking home because that person is easily replaceable and has to take whatever pay they can get.<br />
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This notion of a worker getting paid less than they are worth is the source of most income inequality and it's what has inspired a lot of communist revolutions in the world over the past century or so, but they often attack the problem in the wrong way. The state would often just control too much of the economy to stifle greedy capitalism. Eventually the workers started to get tired of the government having too much control and not being able to take advantage of their new wealth. To quote from "A Complete History of the Soviet Union As Told By A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris":<br />
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The winter is cold, I’ve got plenty of gold</blockquote>
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And I’m standing in line for a loaf of bread</blockquote>
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So while communism fails because it lacks capitalism's ability to grant successful and hard-working people a better standard of living and puts too much power in the hands of the government, this was also happening in an era where powerful nations still needed a lot of low-skilled workers. These days, low-skilled American workers are becoming an endangered species, partially because of foreign labor, and partially because of inevitable obsolescence. We just don't need as many as we used to, and the ones we need are often being filled by foreign workers.<br />
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We could try and bring back jobs for these workers, but if those jobs were really needed, they would still exist. Without the minimum wage, perhaps a number of outsourced and downsized jobs would return to America, but probably not enough to single-handedly fix poverty. We just have way too many people.<br />
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Having jobs that we don't need--like Wal-Mart greeters for example--would make us feel like these people are earning their keep, but why can't we just be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that a Wal-Mart greeter doesn't contribute any real value to the economy? We're just wasting their time. Why not just give that person $2000 a month and let them spend their time however they want?<br />
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And more than that, having millions of Americans suddenly all have a lot more money and time would be great for our economy.<br />
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Part of the problem with hoarding wealth is that there are some things that a person usually only buys once or twice. Houses, cars, phones, insurance, movie tickets, you get the idea. Even billionaires generally only buy a handful of these things if they want to collect. But if millions of Americans suddenly got a massive boost to their income, imagine the possibilities. For example, imagine a whole bunch of people moving to Detroit or Cleveland to take advantage of the dirt cheap housing markets. It wouldn't matter that there are no jobs in Detroit or Cleveland. They could just move there and live off of basic income. With more people living there (and with most of them having a lot of free time on their hands), more companies would have incentives to create more businesses in that region, which would improve the economy further.<br />
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People without jobs surviving on basic income would probably contribute to society in other ways. Perhaps through art and literature, perhaps through dedicated study of esoteric academic subjects, or perhaps through innovation. Time is a precious resource, and we'd essentially be giving millions of Americans tons of it to do with as they see fit.<br />
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There's this cynical notion that if we give a whole bunch of people a ton of free money with no strings attached, they'll just sit around and watch TV all day everyday. And yeah, a fair amount of people probably would. But look at retirement age people. A lot of them try to stay active for the sake of staying active. A lot of them want to maintain a standard of living that costs more than their fixed income can provide on its own. And these are people that have largely earned their rest and could get away with sitting at home and watching TV all day without anyone calling them lazy. If those people are still willing to stay active in our society and economy despite having enough money to survive and no social pressure to contribute, why should we expect younger people to behave any differently?<br />
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And really, if a person's instinct is to spend their whole day sitting around and watching TV... why would we want that person to work? If they did, they would probably be lazy workers. Why not just let them stay home if we as a society can afford it? Wouldn't it be nice to go to McDonald's and only interact with employees that actually want to be working there? And besides, those lazy people would probably pump all of their basic income back into the economy since lazy people aren't usually very good at saving money. If that's the case, they wouldn't be much of a burden on society. The people who wouldn't be using the basic income would be the people more likely to lose more money in taxes than they'd make from the basic income, so that would actually hypothetically improve the economy.<br />
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We have about 150 million jobs in America and about 300 million adults. If about half of Americans just didn't work, we'd still have enough people to fill all of those jobs. More importantly, a lot of the open job positions in the U.S. simply don't have enough qualified people to fill them, and there aren't a lot of paths that allow lower income people to pursue the necessary training to qualify for those kinds of jobs. Perhaps basic income would give them enough financial freedom to change that.<br />
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So laziness probably wouldn't be much of a factor.<br />
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The only way this basic income structure wouldn't work (at least as far as I can tell) would be if we as a nation simply didn't generate enough GDP to give everyone a basic income without negatively impacting business. Since my rough calculations required taking about $3 trillion from the wealthy, that means we'd be risking dropping our GDP down to where it was during the Great Recession. The hope, however, is that since that money would be put back into the economy through a sudden dramatic increase in disposable income for about half of Americans, we wouldn't actually see our GDP dip down. The businesses that suffer from higher corporate and investment taxes would likely benefit from being able to get rid of the minimum wage. If we also implemented single payer health care, that would also make it easier for businesses to hire cheap labor since they wouldn't have to worry about expensive benefits. They might have a harder time filling those positions, but that would just create an incentive to either innovate ways to eliminate those positions, or just treat their employees better. Beyond that, business would probably be booming thanks to all of this money being pushed back into the economy. The only difference would just be that people making money in the highest tax brackets would have a lot less of it than they used to, and that would mean less investment and philanthropy. However, regular people could still invest and create new businesses through crowd-sourcing (see Kickstarter) and philanthropy would be less essential in the U.S. as we essentially eliminate poverty.<br />
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Obviously, I'm not an economist, so I'm probably not accounting for certain factors. In addition, a lot of this was conditional on the assumption that we'd actually be able to get the wealthy to pay their fair share and that they wouldn't "go Galt" or find other loopholes to exploit. I essentially paid for this by removing most existing welfare programs and then taking $2.6 trillion from corporate income (mostly targeting corporations that make over $1 billion a year in profit), and $4 trillion from the individual income of all Americans. The goal would be to make it so that corporations still had enough money to maintain profitability, and to make it so that people making less than $75,000 a year would see little to no impact on their overall income once you account for the basic income in addition to their increased tax burden. It is said that people making $50,000 a year reach peak happiness. Making more than that doesn't apparently improve happiness by very much. A person making $50,000 a year is about as happy as someone making $1 million a year. As someone who makes more than $50,000 a year, I'd agree that I could probably be perfectly happy with this level of income and making more probably wouldn't make a significant difference in that regard. I mean, I'd be able to travel more and go out to eat more, but right now I have a job I like, a decent place to live, a good car, more than enough food, a cat, good health care, high-speed internet, a great computer, a 50" HDTV, a bunch of video game consoles, and a manageable amount of debt. I'm living the dream and I don't think my lifestyle would change all that dramatically if I made more. I mean, I'm still going to try and make more money because I'd like to pay down debt faster and budgeting is hard, but if I was making $100,000 a year and new tax laws made it so I was instead making $80,000 a year in order to end poverty in the U.S. practically overnight, I think I could learn to adjust. So, in my opinion, so long as someone making more than $50,000 a year doesn't suddenly start making less than $50,000 a year, I don't think we'd severely impact anyone's individual happiness in any significant way.<br />
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On of the few complications I can think of is how the economy might respond to the higher demand, particularly as corporations are losing money in tax revenue. They could respond by jacking up prices, but not to the extent that would prevent people from being able to buy things, otherwise they'd be passing up on an opportunity to break sales records. We typically think inflation only happens when the treasury creates more money, but since a lot of this money is kind of already out of the economy, reintroducing it like that might have the same general effect. That's what it's important that a good portion of the money comes from income tax and not just from corporations and investments.<br />
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In addition, we'd probably need to produce a lot more goods to satisfy the increased demand. We'd easily have enough labor, particularly if we got rid of the minimum wage, but resources are already a problem and this would likely just make it worse. Still, I think that's the sort of problem Americans are pretty good at solving, and the alternative is basically just throwing up our hands and saying, "I guess America can only support a certain number of people and everyone else has to leave or slowly die."<br />
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There's probably a lot that would need to happen to make a system like this viable, but think of all of the problems it would solve if we could make it work:<br />
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People over 18 wouldn't have to live with their parents as much.<br />
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College would be more affordable.<br />
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A person could take their time to find a good job without worrying about whether or not they can pay rent.<br />
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Landlords wouldn't have to worry about their tenant's ability to pay rent.<br />
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No more food stamps.<br />
<br />Fewer people would have to declare bankruptcy.<br />
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Way less crime (at least crimes generally committed out of desperate poverty).<br />
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People looking for work will have an easier time finding it.<br />
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Employees will work harder because they will be more likely to have a job they actually want.<br />
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People will choose professions based on their desires and skills more than what professions are more financially stable.<br />
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More people would be able to risk quitting their job to start a different career path or start a new business.<br />
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Fewer people would need to work multiple jobs.<br />
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More parents would be able to stay at home and raise their children.<br />
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Employees would have more leverage in negotiating with their employers without having to unionize.<br />
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Populations would be less likely to concentrate in big cities.<br />
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Businesses would suddenly have way more customers than before, which could in turn mean needing to hire more employees.<br />
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Retail would be more profitable on weekdays as people surviving on basic income wouldn't be busy at work.<br />
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We wouldn't have to burden employers with mandated benefits or the minimum wage.<br />
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Will the idea as presented in Switzerland work? Probably not. But the general idea itself seems plausible. It seems like it could be the optimal hybrid of both socialism and capitalism where both sides feed one another and keep them balanced. Socialism keeps capitalism from hoarding wealth and capitalism keeps socialism from stagnating the quality of living and crippling small business.<br />
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Proponents of basic income say that it will drastically reduce the administrative overhead we have with current welfare programs, that it takes government decision-making out of the equation when it comes to socialism (so government incompetence wouldn't be a potential factor), and that it applies to everyone equally so it seems generally pretty fair.<br />
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The biggest obstacle is just figuring out how to make the necessary tax revenue to afford it and to make sure that revenue largely comes from places where the money is just sort of sitting around and not doing anything. Once that wealth goes back into the economy, the system will largely sustain itself through increased consumerism and less administrative burden on the private sector.<br />
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I think the main reason I'm currently liking the idea of basic income is because it's more forward-thinking. Our current system isn't sustainable. A distressingly large number of Americans simply have no way to escape poverty, and as our population increases and our work force becomes more and more automated and dependent on foreign workers, this problem will only keep getting larger. It's probably too difficult to try and get corporations to behave in a way that would actually benefit Americans, so why not just let them do what they do and just take half of their money and give it to everyone equally?<br />
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Basic income eliminates this inevitable problem and creates a system that is less vulnerable to the ups and downs of capitalism. Yes, it means higher taxes, but it also means smaller government, and unlike taxes that go towards programs that only some citizens benefit from, everyone will receive basic income. Granted, it would only benefit about half of Americans, but the other half would still be doing fine. The wealthy would still be wealthy, just less so, and the poor would have about twice as much money as they currently get from welfare without having to go through the bureaucracy. More importantly, they wouldn't have to deliberately avoid work or luxury in order to continue to qualify, which is one of the current problems with welfare as it can sometimes incentivize a person to not try and improve their standard of living.<br />
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In a more practical sense, the biggest obstacle this idea has is just people. Even if a lot of people all agree that it's a good idea, the people who have the strongest influence in our government are the people who would probably be inconvenienced the most by basic income. They like having their exorbitant wealth. But that's one reason why I think it's important to tie this in with eliminating welfare programs and the minimum wage. These are things that the wealthy have been trying to eliminate for years, and the biggest obstacle they have is that eliminating those things would destroy millions of American lives. But this is a system that could work for everyone.<br />
<br />
I don't know if I'm 100% sold on the idea. There are probably downsides I'm not considering or anticipating. It needs a lot more debate. And I suppose that's why I'm writing this.<br />
<br />
This is an idea that needs to be debated more. Economists should crunch the numbers and see if we could make it work. A smaller nation like Switzerland has to try it out and see if it can work. It's crazy, but not crazy enough to be completely dismissed outright.<br />
<br />
Is this is the economy of the future? Let me know what you think.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-37689979040613715582016-03-10T12:00:00.000-05:002016-03-10T12:00:25.972-05:00Overdue Thoughts on "Deadpool" (the Movie)I finally saw "Deadpool" last week, and as someone who once wrote a very long (and surprisingly popular) blog post about <a href="http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com/2012/08/dear-liefeld-stop-taking-credit-for.html">why Rob Liefeld should stop taking credit for Deadpool</a>, as well as a post about <a href="http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com/2015/07/deadpool-trailer-thoughts.html">my thoughts on the leaked trailer for the movie</a>, I guess I should probably post a review.<br />
<br />
It's fantastic.<br />
<br />
Most of my impressions from when I saw the leaked trailer last year were fairly accurate. This is very much the screenplay that got leaked several years ago, but kicked up a notch. I was worried they would water down the script, but they actually did the opposite. Rather than take out fan-service-y stuff and the salty language, they added more in. They even included Bob of <strike>HYDRA</strike> some random group of henchmen completely unaffiliated with intellectual property owned by Marvel Studios, which I totally didn't expect (I even said as much in my earlier post). They gave Vanessa (who may one day become the character Copycat) a lot more agency than she had in the screenplay, which I was happy to see. Weasel got a lot more to do, Blind Al was included for no good reason (but I'm still glad they did it), and the inclusion of Negasonic Teenage Warhead was great. I don't even mind that her power set is completely different from her comic book counterpart because honestly, the movie's power set for her is way cooler.<br />
<br />
The movie has its share of problems. I do think the original screenplay was tighter. The new stuff with Blind Al did kill the pacing a little bit. It's hard to get away with introducing a brand new character towards the end of the second act. They also then spend a few minutes collecting a bunch of weapons only to accidentally leave them in the taxi before the third act, rendering it entirely pointless. Also, I thought many of the action sequences lacked a certain flair. Perhaps I've been spoiled by movies like "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", but I rarely felt like the action kept me invested. Even so, they weren't BADLY shot or choreographed, I just wish they tried to push the envelope a bit more. Deadpool allows for some really creative stuff and his most interesting action sequence was at the very beginning of the film. I'd say this is probably just because of the director's relative inexperience. I don't want to rag on him too much, though. He did just fine.<br />
<br />
But let's step away from the technical and get a little more nerdy.<br />
<br />
I am glad they were pretty faithful to the character's origins, particularly after the travesty that was "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". It was a very pleasant surprise that they stuck so close to at least the main story beats of the character and that they didn't change too much for the sake of making the character more "palatable".<br />
<br />
But...<br />
<br />
I still prefer his comic book version, and the reason is probably the closest thing I have to a philosophical problem with the film's interpretation of the character.<br />
<br />
I like my Deadpool to be miserable.<br />
<br />
I won't spoil too much of the movie (not that there's a lot to spoil), but suffice it to say that this is not a sad movie.<br />
<br />
You might be scratching your head at that. "Of course it's not a sad movie! Deadpool is a funny character!" you might say. And you're right, but as Carol Burnett said, "Comedy is tragedy plus time." In addition, I also find that (at least in Deadpool's case) tragedy is often comedy plus time.<br />
<br />
I've written extensively about this already, but Deadpool's character struggle is never really about the struggle between good and evil, but more a struggle between apathy and sympathy. He often knows what the right thing to do is, he just struggles with whether or not he should even bother doing it. His evil isn't a desire to cause harm to innocents, but the kind of evil caused when good people choose to do nothing.<br />
<br />
In the comics, his origin pushes him to a point where he little choice but to disconnect himself from reality in order to function. In the Workshop, he's brought to the brink of death so many times that he actually starts to see Death herself. At a certain point, Death becomes one of the few things that brings him comfort. They literally fall in love, and towards the end, he decides to pull a stunt that will both stick it to the people who tortured him while also going out with a bang. He makes a conscious decision to end his own life, but at the last minute, his compassion gets the better of him, activates his healing factor for the first time, and permanently robs him of his ability to die just as he was about to welcome Death with open arms. In the end, he can't even die when he wants to.<br />
<br />
His life is such a cruel joke that the only way he can cope is to act like his hallucinations of speech bubbles and comic frames and such are real. He has to believe that there's someone with a typewriter putting him through all of this for someone's sick idea of entertainment, because otherwise, reality is just too much for him to bear. Humor for him (and for most of us) is a defense mechanism.<br />
<br />
And since he's so disconnected from his world (out of necessity) it makes it difficult for him to care. He's tried to be a hero on several occasions, but the problem is always that he just doesn't care enough to hold himself to the same code of ethics as the other heroes. He doesn't see the problem with killing a bunch of henchmen because if this is a comic book world, they probably don't have names or faces anyway. And it's hard for him to put in the effort to make a difference when he knows that something will probably come along and ruin it a while later. Even when he gets small victories, in the end, he's never allowed to win and be happy. Comedy plus time equals tragedy.<br />
<br />
But the thing that keeps Deadpool (in the comics) tethered is that he can't completely convince himself that he's really just in a comic book. Sure, he SEES all of the comic book trappings and observes how contrived everything always seems to be, but he also knows he's crazy and hallucinates quite a bit, so a part of him isn't entirely sure. There's a part of him that still stays invested, still believes that there's a point to all this, and in the end, that's always what keeps him from going completely dark side. It's the same reason we keep watching "Game of Thrones". We have to hold onto the hope that eventually the bad guys will get what's coming to them and the good guys will be vindicated for doing the right thing. But at the same time, we know that there's a good chance the writer will just slap us in the face and make us sad again.<br />
<br />
Alright, so now that I've gone into what I find deep and interesting about Deadpool in the comics, let's talk about his character in the movie.<br />
<br />
Everything I've just described has basically nothing to do with the Deadpool in the movie.<br />
<br />
While Deadpool in the movie does go to the Workshop and does have to deal with a lot of crap, his torture isn't quite as bad as in the comics. In the movie, they're torturing him to try and activate his latent mutant powers. In the comics, they tried to give him powers, but they assumed they failed, so they just started using him as a live specimen and trying to keep him alive as long as possible so they can perform as many experiments on him as possible. His scars weren't caused by just one incident like in the movie, they were the product of months (possibly years) of experiments, all undergone while cancer ravaged his body and riddled him with tumors. He is a character defined by being perpetually on the brink. He sits on the wall between life and death, he sits on the wall between good and evil, he sits on the wall between comedy and tragedy, and similarly, he sits on the fourth wall between reality and fiction.<br />
<br />
In the movie, Deadpool's fourth-wall breaking has no clear reason for existing other than "he's Deadpool". Sure, he feels disconnected in the same way as his comic book counterpart, but we never really see what brings him there. We never see him reach the point where he gives up, and to me, that's an important part of Deadpool's character. Almost every other comic book superhero reaches a point where they either choose to give up or stand up and fight, and Deadpool in the comics uniquely tried and failed to do both. He couldn't save his friend and he couldn't get the release of death that he craved. He didn't want to exist, but he was left with no other option. When you have to live a life you don't want, and you have incredible (almost unimaginable) power, what do you do with it? To me, that's the central question of Deadpool as a character.<br />
<br />
In the movie, Deadpool does have the moment where he tries to be a hero and fails, which I'm glad they included, but he never gives up. Vanessa always drives him through the plot. She's his tether.<br />
<br />
In the comics, Deadpool and Vanessa did have a similar relationship, and it is important. I also vastly prefer Vanessa in the movie, for the record. However, once Deadpool in the comics leaves Vanessa to go to the Workshop, he has no intention of returning to her. He wants her to move on without him. She stops being his motivation at that point in the comics, though that's probably out of necessity since Vanessa has her own thing going on in the comics and if she continued to pine for him, it would be weird that she never mentioned him before they retroactively decided that they were a thing.<br />
<br />
My point is that Deadpool in the movie is perhaps too conventional. I never felt like there was something deeper going on behind his hijinks. At his best, Deadpool can be like the Shakespearean "fool" character, who serves both as comic relief, but also as scathing satire of the world he inhabits. He never really reaches that level in the movie, and I think that's my biggest problem with it.<br />
<br />
All that said...<br />
<br />
I think that this Deadpool still works on his own merits. Yes, he's substantially different in many subtle ways from the comic book version, but I recognize that I'm probably in the minority when it comes to wanting to see a more depressed and scarred Deadpool. I'm a privileged middle-class white American, so I can identify with someone struggling with existential nihilism and having a hard time giving a shit. The movie Deadpool appeals more to people who recognize that we're all in a shitty place, but that doesn't mean we have to let it get us down. Perhaps we need more comic book movies about that and fewer movies in general about depressed white guys who are sad about having incredible power and not knowing what to do with it.<br />
<br />
This is a more optimistic Deadpool, and while it's not the Deadpool I fell in love with, I still think it works and he's probably a better fit for a movie than my Deadpool would be.<br />
<br />
Still, the fact that I have to cut this deep in order to find a serious criticism is something I never thought I'd ever get to do. I was afraid the movie would turn out like the terrible video game that came out a few years ago. I was afraid it would completely misunderstand the character and be oppressively unfunny for the entire duration.<br />
<br />
After "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", I never thought we'd get a Deadpool movie good enough to warrant deep criticism. I'm a big fan of Deadpool, and even I thought that an R-rated faithful adaptation of Deadpool would tank at the box office. I never thought Fox would let it happen, and if they did, I assumed it would then serve as a financial justification for why they would never let something like it happen again.<br />
<br />
I'm so happy I was wrong.<br />
<br />
Not only did they actually make almost exactly the sort of Deadpool movie I hoped they would make, it kicked ass in the box office, proving once again that conventional wisdom is changing.<br />
<br />
Oh, and my last big concern going into the movie was that it wouldn't be very funny. While the trailer made me laugh a few times, the "red shirt, brown pants" gag fell really flat.<br />
<br />
Much to my delight, this movie is hilarious.<br />
<br />
Honestly, the "red shirt, brown pants" gag was the only joke that made me cringe in the entire movie. Just about everything else lands perfectly. Even seeing it with a small audience didn't diminish the laughs I had all the way through.<br />
<br />
Part of what makes the comedy work is the chemistry between the actors. The cast here is phenomenal, and even the weakest performance (Ajax) wasn't really all that bad.<br />
<br />
The decision to make Colossus purely CG was weird, but I understand why they did it (they don't want to worry about having to recast him in a future X-Men movie).<br />
<br />
While the movie's pacing is a bit clunky, I don't really care that it is. The stuff with Blind Al is fantastic and really brought me back to the Joe Kelly comics that I loved.<br />
<br />
I'm so glad this movie actually happened and I can't wait for the sequel. I hope we get more stuff with Blind Al and Weasel, I hope Bob makes a return appearance, I hope they give Vanessa her mutant powers, and I really can't wait to see how they deal with Cable.<br />
<br />
Maximum effort!Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-6664153550157486432016-01-30T14:22:00.002-05:002016-01-30T14:22:41.319-05:00The Guilt Trip: Why I Hate the Genocide Path of "Undertale"A little over a week ago, I was shocked to discover that my brother had not heard of "Undertale". I could understand that he hadn't played it yet; I had only just finally gotten around to playing it myself. But given how universally praised the game has been, particularly with all the "Game of the Year" accolades it has been receiving by the fistful, it was surprising that I got to be the first person to tell him about it.<br />
<br />
It's a somewhat difficult game to sell, which is probably why so many critics have put it on their "Best of 2015" lists as a short way of saying, "This game is really good," and getting people to play it without having to spoil any of it.<br />
<br />
And... well, yeah. This game is really good. Particularly the first time you play it.<br />
<br />
This post isn't a review (at least not per se), but if that's what you're looking for, suffice it to say that I highly recommend playing it.<br />
<br />
A friend of mine has been obsessed with this game for months. She hasn't been playing it that entire time, mind you. She hasn't played it since she reached the ending a second time and she swears she never intends to play it ever again. But she can't stop thinking about it, talking about it, writing about it, watching Let's Plays of it...<br />
<br />
And it's not that she has seen all there is to see and done all there is to do. In fact, there's a LOT of game content she hasn't experienced for herself. My brother (who picked it up after I made him aware of it) also intends to leave the game (for lack of a better term) "unfinished".<br />
<br />
If you know nothing about "Undertale" (as I did before a week or so ago), this might seem confusing. Why leave a game unfinished? And while fans of the series like to be coy about it because "you have to experience it for yourself", I personally disagree. The reason is not that shocking and doesn't really give away anything about the story. It perhaps gives away what kind of story "Undertale" is, but I don't necessarily think that ignorance of that aspect makes the experience any better. It's not like there's a big twist or anything that hinges on this. That said, SOME "Undertale" fans would likely tell you to go in and play it knowing absolutely nothing. I personally find that irresponsible, but I'm probably in the minority on this, so if you'd rather trust the majority over me, you should probably stop reading this post and go play it a couple times. Or rather, play it once, reload your save, do some extra stuff, and then beat it again to get the "True" Ending (assuming you qualify).<br />
<br />
Alright, time to dig in.<br />
<br />
So if you took the advice of the multitudes and played this game knowing absolutely nothing about it, you probably experienced one of two possible situations:<br />
1) You accidentally killed a couple monsters early on in the game, got one of the "Neutral" Endings, and then had to play it again because how were you supposed to know that you couldn't kill ANYTHING!<br />
2) You played with a walkthrough because as soon as you heard there was a "True Ending", you wanted to make sure you did everything you needed to do to unlock it.<br />
<br />
However, if you ignored the advice of the majority of fans and are reading this before having played "Undertale", allow me to pull back the curtain slightly: There are TECHNICALLY several different "Endings" to the game, but none of these are actually endings because at the end, the antagonist of the game shows up and asks you to do it again without killing anything. Even if you did go through without killing anything on your first try, you'll still have to go back and complete a few more errands before you get the "True Ending". And if you go through the game killing everything... well, we'll get to that more later, but suffice it to say that you won't have a good time.<br />
<br />
See, "Undertale" has a minor narrative conceit (one of many) where your character's ability to use save points is actually canonical in the game. Your character is literally time traveling every time they return to their SAVE (as the game calls it). And when you "finish" the game and choose to start over from the beginning, your character is technically time traveling back to the beginning of the game. This means that if you play another game, the ending you just experienced wasn't actually an ending because your character's story is continuing in a fifth-dimensional sense.<br />
<br />
As interesting as that is, it's my first gripe with "Undertale". I don't like the "True Ending" or as it's more commonly known, the "True Pacifist Ending". Not just because you pretty much can't achieve it without a walkthrough, but because if you follow a particular path, you'll never be able to see it at all without cheating.<br />
<br />
I don't know why they feel the need to include the "Pacifist" qualifier, because honestly, not only is this the "True" ending, it is pretty much the ONLY ending. The other endings don't have satisfying conclusions. Unlike a game like "Mass Effect 2" where the "less than perfect" endings are all still legitimate endings for the game, if you don't play "Undertale" in exactly the way Toby Fox (the creator) intends, he doesn't want you to enjoy the conclusion.<br />
<br />
That might seem harsh, but while I do love "Undertale" and still recommend it, I was pretty annoyed by the "True Ending" and how it is presented in contrast with the other "endings".<br />
<br />
I went in knowing that you weren't supposed to kill anything. This game was originally pitched as "a traditional role-playing game where no one has to get hurt." This was a big selling point for me because I've always wanted more games that treated this option with seriousness. Some games LET you play a game without killing anyone, but few games actually acknowledge it, let alone reward it. Sure, you can play through "Fallout 3" without killing (almost) anything, but the game doesn't care if you do. No one is impressed by your moral fiber. No achievement is unlocked.<br />
<br />
The "Metal Gear" games have always encouraged pacifism without necessarily requiring it, which is one thing I've always loved about those games. So knowing that "Undertale" carried on that tradition was exciting to me.<br />
<br />
However, in "Undertale", doing a pacifist run isn't just an option, it's the only valid option.<br />
<br />
Like I said earlier, if you do any ending other than the "True Pacifist Ending", the game asks you to try again until you do. If you do get the "True Pacifist Ending", the game literally asks you to put the game down and never ever play it again because everyone has a happy ending. Why would you want to spoil that by sending your character back in time?<br />
<br />
For starters, the thing that makes games like "Metal Gear" and "Mass Effect 2" great is that the different paths you can take are all equally valid. When you finish, it doesn't tell you that you played the game wrong and tell you to do it over again. And when you play the "ideal" way, the game doesn't end by asking you to never play it again.<br />
<br />
And you know what? I VASTLY prefer the so-called "Neutral" endings of "Undertale" over the "True Ending". In the "Neutral" endings, the third act confrontation is far more interesting, the boss battles are more exciting and harrowing, and it changes based on whatever choices you made along the game. The "True Ending" on the other hand skips over my favorite boss fight of the game, changes the varied and interesting final boss with a far less interesting boss, and gives you an ending that is 100% exactly like everyone else's. And then it tells you that you chose correctly and guilts you into never playing it again.<br />
<br />
Now here's the kicker. As I mentioned, there's another path you can take where you decide to kill everything instead. The problem is that if you complete it, the game will remember it forever and you'll never EVER be able to get the "True Ending' again (unless you monkey around with the game data in your computer). The game will never forgive you for it.<br />
<br />
This is why my friend will never play along the third route. Because she likes her happy ending and knows that if she goes down that dark path, she'll never be able to get that happy ending back without cheating.<br />
<br />
So when I got the "True Ending", I did a reset. Like I said, I didn't even really care much for the "True Ending", so I didn't really care about losing it. I wanted to experience the entire game. So I started again, this time killing everything.<br />
<br />
Hoo boy.<br />
<br />
So this run is known by the fans as the "Genocide Run". Toby Fox apparently prefers to call it the "No Mercy Run", but I have my own name for it...<br />
<br />
"The Guilt Trip"<br />
<br />
Now I'm going to avoid explicit spoilers for the actual content of the game, but seeing as most people probably aren't going to experience "The Guilt Trip' for themselves, I feel justified in talking about what it's all about in the vaguest of terms. Nothing I say will spoil the "Neutral" or "True" runs of the game, and I won't even spoil the specifics of anything in "The Guilt Trip", just the broad strokes. Now, without further ado, let's talk about "The Guilt Trip".<br />
<br />
I hate it.<br />
<br />
I genuinely think that the way it exists and the way it is presented not only hurts the game as a whole, it's also incredibly judgmental, sadistic, and infuriatingly smug.<br />
<br />
It's entirely not worth it, and before fans jump down my throat... I KNOW, OK? I get that it's SUPPOSED to not be worth it. That you're SUPPOSED to regret doing it and that you SHOULD feel bad for pursuing it.<br />
<br />
And you know what? The game explores that stuff really well. There was a lot of really interesting potential in this ending. But certain choices Toby Fox made for "The Guilt Trip", particularly the very end, make it go from a fascinating exploration of the gamer psyche to what is essentially a never-ending punishment. Toby Fox isn't Hideo Kojima. He's Ramsay Snow. Oh, and if you decide not to play it and just watch someone else play it, he's punishing you too. He actually apparently hates you even more because you don't even have the guts to do it yourself.<br />
<br />
So if no one was supposed to play it or even watch it, what the fuck were we SUPPOSED to do? It's not like it's completely optional, either. There's important story information that you ONLY get if you play through "The Guilt Trip". Without it, the fandom's understanding of the game series would be incomplete.<br />
<br />
And yet Toby Fox punishes us for trying to experience it.<br />
<br />
It's one thing to punish somebody with the intent that they learn and grow from it as a result. But that's not what Toby Fox wants. Remember, if you complete "The Guilt Trip", you will NEVER get to have the "True Ending" unless you cheat, meaning that no matter what, you'll always be guilty.<br />
<br />
Toby Fox doesn't want people who complete "The Guilt Trip" to learn and grow. He wants to hurt them.<br />
<br />
And I'm not just talking about people who do "The Guilt Trip" because they're actually sadists and want to watch everyone die. No, trust me, "The Guilt Trip" is directed SQUARELY at people who do it entirely because they're reluctantly curious. Even if you feel bad every step of the way, in Toby Fox's mind, that makes you even worse.<br />
<br />
That's what Toby Fox is punishing. Not malice, not sadism. Heck, I think a sadist would enjoy this path a lot more than I did. No, Toby Fox is punishing curiosity.<br />
<br />
Fuck.<br />
<br />
That.<br />
<br />
Shit.<br />
<br />
This path is Toby Fox saying, "What, you thought my 'True Ending' wasn't good enough? Well screw you! Here's an even WORSE ending! And you are going to have to fight REALLY hard to get it. And I won't even let you play the game again afterwards until you sit in front of a blank screen for 10 minutes. Go fuck yourself."<br />
<br />
Now, I understand what he's going for. He's saying that the greatest evil in the world is perpetrated by people who commit evil without actually admitting that they're evil. They do it out of curiosity or ignorance or a sense of the greater good. That part I'm totally OK with and I actually think it's really interesting and well-executed. And if he stopped there, I probably would be applauding it right now.<br />
<br />
But that wasn't good enough for Toby Fox. He needed to be a sanctimonious prick about it. He had to punish the player as if they were ACTUALLY a sociopath. He had to impose ACTUAL consequences. And then he presents an ending that's abrupt, unsatisfying, and lazy. Rather than accept that the motivations for why a player goes through "The Guilt Trip" are complex and treat the player with respect (especially after everything they've been through), "The Guilt Trip" is the forbidden fruit, and Toby Fox cackles with self-satisfaction while playing both God and serpent.<br />
<br />
What this SHOULD have been was a recommended starting point. Your character starts out behaving like a character in a typical RPG where you're expected to fight and kill everything. Then the game makes you feel bad about it. Then you go back and do it again with mercy. Your character learns that not everything is as it seems and to give peace a chance. Then you complete the game with the "True Ending" and can put it down with satisfaction because you've seen everything there is to see and you've grown as a person.<br />
<br />
Nope. Can't do it that way. And if you could, I would vastly prefer that overall path. Too bad. Like I said, if you complete "The Guilt Trip", you can't get the 'True Ending", so the game is essentially forcing you to get the "True Ending" first.<br />
<br />
This is not an oversight. This is 100% intentional. Toby Fox WANTS you to never see that part of the game. Well, that's not exactly true. He does want you to see that part of the game, but only so he can make you feel bad for wanting to see it. That's why he set it up this way. Rather than accept that people are capable of learning and growing, he prefers to make it so there's no way you can ever feel 100% OK with ever doing "The Guilt Trip".<br />
<br />
I would be OK with "The Guilt Trip" if there was a way to get a slightly different version of it that doesn't permanently fuck up your game so long as you don't do it after you get the "True Ending". I think that if somebody chooses to do "The Guilt Trip" after experiencing the "True Ending" when there is an alternative, then the way it's presented makes sense. Then there's evidence that the player truly doesn't care about the characters and is just doing all of the endings for the sake of completion.<br />
<br />
But no. Toby Fox wanted to make a point, and that point required restricting the player so that the only way they could experience the whole game was if they did the "True Ending" before "The Guilt Trip".<br />
<br />
And just to reiterate, the point that he wanted to make that was SO DAMN IMPORTANT was... that you are a terrible person for wanting to see the whole game he created.<br />
<br />
It has no justification other than sadism, smugness, or perhaps both.<br />
<br />
And the biggest problem with this is that it flies in the face of what this game demonstrates through one of its characters.<br />
<br />
So now I'm finally going to get into SPOILERS in order to explain what I mean in greater detail.<br />
<br />
The character of Asriel is essentially the main antagonist of the game, and like the player's character (Frisk), he can use SAVE points. And something you find out during "The Guilt Trip" is that Asriel did the same thing as you. First he went through and made everyone happy, but that wasn't good enough, so he went through and killed everyone just to see what would happen.<br />
<br />
And yet, in order to achieve the "True Ending", you have to forgive him. He is the one that pleads with you to never play the game again because he's finally found happiness.<br />
<br />
Asriel gets to have the arc that the player SHOULD have, but cannot have.<br />
<br />
When you complete "The Guilt Trip", you destroy the world. Then, if you start up the game again, after waiting 10 minutes at a blank screen, you are given the opportunity to recreate the world by giving up your SOUL. This returns the game to more or less what it was like before, but now, if you try to get the "True Ending", it will be implied that your character will turn evil and murder everyone again. Your character is now soulless and beyond redemption.<br />
<br />
So Asriel is forgivable, but Frisk isn't? Why?<br />
<br />
And inconsistency aside, when you play through "The Guilt Trip", the game is so passive-aggressive in so many ways that it feels like it tries to make itself less enjoyable just to hammer the point home even harder..<br />
<br />
Puzzles? Meh, we solved most of them for you. That's not what you REALLY came for anyway, is it?<br />
<br />
Fun characters and antics? Nope. Too happy or interesting. You just want everything dead, right?<br />
<br />
Final boss fight? HAH! The real final boss is also done for you and the last boss you DO fight... Well...<br />
<br />
OK, I have to talk about this before I keep going.<br />
<br />
The battle with Sans is INFURIATING.<br />
<br />
He's the last boss that you actually fight, and he is INSANELY difficult. But not for any fair reason. No, Sans cheats.<br />
<br />
He invents new mechanics that are not used at any other point in the game (poison and dodging), he hits hard with moves that require dozens of attempts to figure out, he starts attacking you IN THE MENU, and you have to attack him two dozen times before he actually fucking dies (and he dies off-screen to deny you the satisfaction). Oh, but before you get the last hit off, he tries to cheat AGAIN by refusing to end his turn. You have to beat him by sitting still and waiting for him to fall asleep, and then you have to budge your SOUL icon over to move the rectangle to the FIGHT button in order to win.<br />
<br />
I spent something like 6 hours fighting Sans.<br />
<br />
With every other boss fight, even the ones that were actually difficult, I always felt bad about winning. I love most of these characters and it hurt to kill them.<br />
<br />
But Sans? I wanted him dead. And I'm glad I killed him. I never really thought he was that interesting in the first place.<br />
<br />
And how does the game reward you for suffering through this?<br />
<br />
You walk into a room, lose all control or ability to change the events, and watch as characters say a few creepy lines and then kill the game. No end credits, no request to try again without as much murder. Just done. And then you're either irredeemably evil or a cheater.<br />
<br />
It's a huge slap in the face.<br />
<br />
"The Guilt Trip" isn't fun. It's grueling and punishing in every sense of the word.<br />
<br />
And the most frustrating part is that it COULD have been great. The stuff that Asriel/Flowey says towards the end about how he went around killing all of his friends just out of curiosity because his ability to SAVE meant that he wouldn't have to suffer consequences is GREAT metanarrative stuff. It's deep, it really hits you in the gut, and it makes you think about just how sociopathic it is to go through every possible path in a game just to see what it's like.<br />
<br />
But by forcing the player to suffer unavoidable consequences as a result of doing it means that unlike Asriel, Toby Fox doesn't think we deserve redemption.<br />
<br />
Why not? Why go through all of that stuff and make the player suffer if not to help them learn and play games more thoughtfully?<br />
<br />
Well, it's because he's not trying to teach the player anything. He's not trying to give them the arc he gave Asriel. He's making a point about what he dislikes about games and gamers. He's soapboxing.<br />
<br />
In other words, "The Guilt Trip" is not a real ending.<br />
<br />
It's a trap.<br />
<br />
Not unlike the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit, there's no right answer. If you obey God's command, you'll forever remain ignorant of the nature of good and evil and everything the world has to offer. If you deny it, you'll gain new knowledge, but you'll forever be exiled from the Garden of Eden.<br />
<br />
So fuck you, Toby Fox. I don't want your "True Ending" again anyway. It's preachy hippy dippy garbage where everyone's problems can be solved with the power of friendship.<br />
<br />
The battle with Asgore in the "Neutral" path is AMAZING. It's one of my favorite things about the game. Having it replaced with a corny scene where the entire cast shows up to tell Asgore to stop being a meany is eye-rolling and lacks the depth that it has otherwise. The Asriel fight is OK, but it's too similar to every other fight in the game. The Photoshop Flowey fight is WAY more visually interesting and memorable.<br />
<br />
So no, I'm not going to change my game data to undo my "Guilt Trip". I will wear it like a badge of honor. Toby Fox can make me feel like a bad person, but I'm fine being exiled from the Garden of Eden if he's the God who rules it.<br />
<br />
I just finished playing through another "Neutral" run, which thankfully isn't changed by my "Guilt Trip". In the end, Flowey asked me to play again without killing anyone (I killed one or two minor monsters at the beginning of this run).<br />
<br />
Sorry, asshole, but if I'm not going to be forgiven, neither are you.<br />
<br />
"Undertale" is a great game and even after all this, I still recommend it, but because of Toby Fox's preachy self-indulgence, it falls short of being one of my personal favorite games. My favorite games are games that I can pick up and play again and again to relive the experience. Toby Fox went out of his way to make sure I wouldn't want to do that.<br />
<br />
Fine, Toby.<br />
<br />
You win.<br />
<br />
I hope your "victory" is as hollow as you decided to make mine.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-10666428779353580702015-12-19T20:06:00.001-05:002015-12-19T20:06:45.760-05:00Unanswered Questions - A Review of "The Force Awakens"J.J. Abrams has finally figured out the solution to his Mystery Box problem.<br />
<br />
If you're unaware, J.J. Abrams is somewhat infamous for a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box?language=en">TED talk he gave a long time ago</a> where he explains his philosophy when it comes to creating an air of mystery around his work.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Anyway, so one of the things that I bought at the magic store was this: Tannen's Mystery Magic Box. The premise behind the mystery magic box was the following: 15 dollars buys you 50 dollars worth of magic. Which is a savings. Now, I bought this decades ago and I'm not kidding. If you look at this, you'll see it's never been opened. But I've had this forever. Now, I was looking at this, it was in my office, as it always is, on the shelf, and I was thinking, why have I not opened this? ... But the thing is, that it represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. And what I love about this box, and what I realize I sort of do in whatever it is that I do, is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility, that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination.</blockquote>
<br />
The Mystery Box has been present in everything J.J. has created. It's why his trailers tell you next to nothing about the movie, why so many questions are always tantalizingly left unanswered, and why "LOST" was so popular.<br />
<br />
However, the Mystery Box has always had a major flaw that J.J. Abrams never found a way out of. While he could set up questions and mysteries better than many, unlike in real life, he could never quite leave the box unopened. Infinite possibility space is exciting, but it's exciting because eventually the box is going to be opened and since it's a big secret, we imagine that it will be something incredible.<br />
<br />
J.J. Abrams has never ever paid off a mystery in a way that was worthy of the setup, and that's largely because he doesn't have a very good imagination. This was the biggest reason I was worried about him taking on "Star Wars". While I knew he was a fan, I could see that he was setting up a number of mysteries that he was ill-equipped to pay off.<br />
<br />
But, thankfully, he finally cracked the formula. He figured out how to pull off his Mystery Box, and the solution is actually fairly simple.<br />
<br />
He just decided not to answer the questions he raised.<br />
<br />
This obviously wouldn't have worked in many other contexts. A self-contained movie can't set up things and then refuse to pay them off. But this is "Star Wars".<br />
<br />
J.J. Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan set up great questions and mysteries and then decided to pass them off to the next team that's handling Episode VIII.<br />
<br />
"The Force Awakens" is the beginning of a relay race. Like "The Empire Strikes Back", it's an exciting and wonderful entry in the series, but it only succeeds because it doesn't have to carry the burden of story alone.<br />
<br />
It reminds me a lot of J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek", which similarly was a good setup for a new franchise, but this time around, Abrams won't have to follow it up. This will be left to a filmmaker with a greater wealth of imagination and narrative talent.<br />
<br />
And that is what makes "The Force Awakens" work as well as it does. J.J. Abrams gave us his gift of setting things up while sparing us his inability to do anything interesting with it.<br />
<br />
I know I sound backhanded in my praise, but let me make it clear: I love "The Force Awakens". As of this writing, I have seen the movie twice, so it passes my "Attack of the Clones" test (the first time I saw "Attack of the Clones", I had such a good time that I was convinced that the movie was amazing, upon a second viewing I realized how much a midnight showing can influence your feelings of a "Star Wars" movie). It easily has the best acting and dialogue of any "Star Wars" movie, the new characters are, with rare exception, incredible and fascinating.<br />
<br />
But for all this movie does well, its successes are afforded entirely by deciding to leave Chekhov's Guns laying about all over the place. Who is that? How did they get that? Why did that happen? Even the titular "awakening" is left completely unexplained or even remarked upon beyond that one line that you probably already heard in the trailer.<br />
<br />
It's all done so that the movie's pace sprints along for the entire duration. There's no time to explain! Just take this! Go here! Do the thing! FIGHT! FIGHT SOME MORE! RUN!!!<br />
<br />
Let me make something perfectly clear... this should not have worked. The plot of "The Force Awakens" is basically just "A New Hope" with names changed around, which was one of the things I was dreading. And the movie moves along so quickly that most casual audiences won't notices or care. But I did. And in spite of myself, I loved it anyway because these characters are just that good.<br />
<br />
I love them all and I want to know more about them.<br />
<br />
I wish this movie gave me more than it did, but I'm also glad it didn't, because Abrams and Kasdan were probably unqualified to do more than they did.<br />
<br />
So what we end up with is a movie that leaves me wanting more, and since I know that we'll be getting more, that can really only be a good thing, so long as the movie itself isn't skippable.<br />
<br />
I think "The Force Awakens" could have done a number of things better, that they could have put more effort into thinking things through as far as the world-building was concerned, but I love it for what it does right and what it wisely chose NOT to do.<br />
<br />
That's about all I want to say without going into specific details. I loved it. It's not perfect, or even close, but it does enough to justify its existence and it serves as a spectacular new foundation for the Disney era of "Star Wars". Go see it if you haven't yet, because everything else from hereon out is <b>SPOILER</b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>territory.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Now that we're all in the know here, let me get the big obvious stuff out of the way first.<br />
<br />
Yes, I'm a little disappointed that Finn isn't a clone, but it's just as well because he's not Force-sensitive either. And Finn is still a spectacular character. After having so many great trooper characters in the "Clone Wars" cartoons, it's great to finally have a prominent central character that embodies that kind of role, right down to the "nickname". Also, having an ex-trooper around creates a great way to bring up things about the troopers that we never knew before. We learn all kinds of things about troopers that we never had a chance to learn before because there was no way to organically bring it up in the story. Finn does that job, and on top of that, manages to be a wonderful character in his own right. He's clearly in over his head, but when he's in the thick of it and things go his way, his excitement is downright infectious.<br />
<br />
I'm glad that Rey isn't just another Skywalker, but this is one of those mysteries that will probably never have a satisfying conclusion, which is why I hope Rian Johnson doesn't lean too heavily on this. Still, Rey is easily the most intriguing mystery the movie leaves for us. She's clearly very gifted with the Force. And not just because she's able to resist Kylo Ren's mind-probing or because she masters the art of Force Persuasion without even understanding how she did it. When she touches Luke's lightsaber, she demonstrates a very rare ability in the universe known as psychometry, a gift that canonically has only been demonstrated by the character Quinlan Vos. It is what (probably) allowed her to see glimpses of the lightsaber's history. As I've only seen the movie twice, I haven't been able to recognize everything, but we definitely saw a hallway in Bespin where Luke Skywalker fought Darth Vader and we definitely heard the line, "You've taken your first step..." which is probably from Obi-Wan telling Luke that he'd taken his first step into a larger world on the Millennium Falcon (where the lightsaber had also been present).<br />
<br />
Put simply, Rey is a prodigy, perhaps eclipsing even Anakin Skywalker's gift, and he was the bloody Chosen One.<br />
<br />
But Rey has no prophecy. No known family name to live up to. No training or understanding of what she's capable of. She is likely tied to the "awakening" Snoke referred to, but we don't really know what that means. All we know is that she's absurdly powerful and a very <i>very </i>fast learner.<br />
<br />
Rey is the infinite possibility space that J.J. Abrams always aspired to create, and she is his greatest triumph. She's without question my favorite character in the movie and the one I want to know the most about.<br />
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Poe Dameron is a great character, but he doesn't get a ton to do. For some reason, Abrams decided that the movie would be more interesting if we thought that Poe was dead for about half of it, and I don't really know why. I mean, yeah, it gives us a great scene where BB-8 is sad and it pays off when BB-8 finds out he's alive again, but there was no reason we couldn't have had a side-plot showing Poe waking up and getting back to the Resistance, giving him a chance to have more screen time and to show a little bit more of the New Republic.<br />
<br />
And that's one of my biggest beefs with this movie. We don't even get to see the New Republic in any meaningful way before the First Order destroys it with Starkiller Base.<br />
<br />
Now, I know they basically did the same thing in "A New Hope" where the senate was dissolved only a short while after we found out it existed, but the destruction of the Old Republic took three whole movies to accomplish, and the Empire that took its place also took three movies to destroy. I know the New Republic isn't exactly completely destroyed, but without the senate or their fleet, they might as well be.<br />
<br />
I can't help but wonder how the First Order was able to build a planet-sized super-weapon that literally eats stars without the New Republic or the Resistance knowing. The far less powerful Rebellion was able to find out all about the Death Star, which was much smaller and stealthier. And we know that the Resistance didn't know about Starkiller Base, because otherwise, they probably wouldn't have been wasting their time trying to find Luke.<br />
<br />
I did like the symbolism of the destruction of Starkiller Base. Rather than just exploding and leaving a blast of particles, it crumbles away and gives birth to a new star. It's not just destruction, it's creation. It's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
Sorry, got sidetracked. Poe is a great character and I hope we get more time with him in the next movie.<br />
<br />
Kylo Ren is a captivating villain, but he's really hard to pin down. Sometimes he's flippant, other times he's disarmingly straightforward. He's unpredictable, but I think it's largely because of how inconsistent he is. One thing that really confuses me is when the unfortunate officer tells him about "a girl" and he completely loses his shit, Force-grabbing him instantly. It suggested that he knew something about this girl, but it turns out he knew absolutely nothing about her. I thought maybe he knew that she had something to do with the "awakening" that he and Snoke felt, but he seemed shocked when he discovered she was Force-sensitive, so that couldn't be it. The only conclusion I can draw, therefore, is that he just irrationally overreacted to finding out that there was a girl involved in the droid's escape.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong, I love Kylo Ren. I agree with a lot of people who say that he's kind of what George Lucas was trying to accomplish with Anakin, but well-acted and compelling. I think he benefits from the fact that he's not a Sith. There aren't a lot of good reasons for someone conflicted with the light side to be loyal to the Sith without being put under severe mind control, but Kylo Ren seems to be trying to blaze his own path in the dark side. Obviously, he's being manipulated to some extent by Snoke, but Snoke also gave him a certain degree of trust. There's still a lot more we have to learn about him and what drives him, but his relationship with Snoke feels less like Anakin's relationship with Sidious, and more like Luke's relationship with Yoda. Snoke reluctantly sent him off to confront his father, and now that he has proven himself, he must return to him and complete his training.<br />
<br />
Actually, I've noticed that the biggest difference this movie has with the Original Trilogy is that the bad guys are sort of the rebellion this time around. Starkiller Base wiping out the New Republic's military and senate was akin to the Rebel's destruction of the Death Star in "A New Hope", and the destruction of Starkiller Base is kind of like the destruction of the Rebel base on Hoth in "Empire" (it's even on an ice planet). The First Order is back on the ropes, and while they'll likely have time to lick their wounds and rebuild their strength while the New Republic fills the power vacuum and starts building a new fleet, they didn't quite overthrow the government in control of the galaxy, just like how the Rebellion didn't quite finish off the Empire just by destroying the first Death Star.<br />
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I like this not just because it forces the good guys into a slightly different position, but because it means that the nest movie can't just be another "Empire Strikes Back". If anything, it'll be more like "The Republic Strikes Back".<br />
<br />
What I find most interesting is that while General Hux is fixated on destroying the New Republic, Snoke and Kylo Ren seem vastly more interested in finishing off the Jedi. They prepare to attack the Resistance not because they want to finish it off, but because they want to do it now before they have a chance to find Luke. The rest is just politics.<br />
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Speaking of Luke... While I'm glad they explained that Luke tried to recreate the Jedi Order but Kylo Ren killed them all, they didn't really explain why Luke reacted by going into hiding. The best guess I can come up with is that Luke went to the first Jedi temple in order to try and rethink his approach to rebuilding the Order, so that his next attempt wouldn't result in failure, but it seems kind of weird to decide to do that before dealing with Kylo Ren and Snoke. That seems like it should be Priority One. Then again, Luke has always been pretty bad at prioritizing.<br />
<br />
Maz is a really interesting character, and what I find even more interesting is that she's the only character we've met who was alive when Yoda was born (I suspect this is intentional). Not unlike Yoda, she acts as a very wise character, but I like that she's not a hermit. In fact, she's the exact opposite, running a cantina. While the cantina scene is probably the most shameless homage in the film, it serves as a great way to introduce Maz and to give Finn and Rey their "refusal of the call to action" they're supposed to have in order to satisfy the Campbell formula that was a great inspiration for the original film.<br />
<br />
Still, there are a lot of weird choices where the movie is blatantly repeating stuff from the old movies, but decides to arbitrarily change the names and practically nothing else. Jakku is a desert planet that looks almost exactly like Tatooine, but with only one sun. Aside from that difference, it's practically identical, from the architecture design to the moisture condensers. Yes, I know that a desert planet would always need moisture condensers, but do they have to be the same ones? This is a completely new planet and since they made the conscious decision to make it not be Tatooine, they should have gone the extra mile and made it different in ways that weren't so pointlessly superficial. If they wanted it to be Tatooine, it should have just been Tatooine.<br />
<br />
I think that's probably part of why I have a hard time saying that I like this movie better than the prequels. Yes, the dialogue and acting is far superior, and the mixture of practical and CG effects is blended in a way that is far more believable, but the prequels were inventive and bursting with actual creativity, not just the infinite possibility space given to us by Abrams, which is basically just a creativity IOU. Naboo, Coruscant, Kamino, Mustafar... these locations were memorable, iconic, and felt far bigger than what we got in "The Force Awakens". The closest we get is Maz's planet, Takodana, which I couldn't even remember the name of without looking it up, and even that basically just looked like Yavin IV with a cool cantina in it.<br />
<br />
I really wish that George Lucas had acted as a Producer for this film, because his obsession with world-building was sorely needed for this film. Without the characters, the worlds Abrams presented to us would have felt far more lifeless than anything in the prequels. Thankfully, the characters make the world feel genuine, making up for this rather significant shortcoming.<br />
<br />
If I was being honest, I'd say that I like this movie about as much as "Phantom Menace". I like it way more than "Attack of the Clones" and a bit more than "Return of the Jedi", but I think I like "Revenge of the Sith" just a little bit more.<br />
<br />
Maybe that sounds crazy, but having seen "The Force Awakens" twice, I don't really feel like there's a lot of meat on the bones here. "The Force Awakens" is perhaps a less frustrating film than any of the prequels, but it's also significantly less ambitious. I'd probably be less reluctant to show this film to a random person, but I'd be less likely to watch it on my own. It feels like exactly the sort of movie George Lucas was deliberately trying <i>not</i> to make when he made the prequels. He clearly didn't want to just retread his earlier work.<br />
<br />
I feel like the perfect "Star Wars" movie is something in between "The Force Awakens" and "The Phantom Menace". Relying heavily on great characters and great acting, but taking place in a world that is fully fleshed out and visually breathtaking and trying to do new things. Perhaps that is why "A New Hope" is so remarkable, even when compared to the other entries in the series.<br />
<br />
I'm hoping that Rian Johnson will restore balance to the franchise. I think that Abrams has given him an incredible new place to work from, and I'm excited to see just where this whole thing is going, but I have a feeling that in a few years, "The Force Awakens" will be seen as the weakest movie of the sequel trilogy.<br />
<br />
I've pretty much said everything I wanted to say, but I'm going to finish with a few stray thoughts and observations:<br />
<br />
- So is Finn going to have a cyborg spine now? That could be pretty awesome.<br />
- Is Chewbacca just going to chill out and wait for Rey to train with Luke? We didn't see him leave with the Falcon after dropping Rey off.<br />
- I think that when Kylo Ren is saying that he'll finish what Vader started, he's not talking about ruling the galaxy or whatever, but bringing balance to the Force. I think that Kylo Ren believe that in order for the Force to be truly balanced, the Jedi must also be destroyed, just like the Sith. Hence why he created his own schism with the whole Knights of Ren thing, obsessed with Darth Vader, who betrayed both the Jedi and the Sith, ultimately serving neither. Perhaps his devotion to the dark side is out of necessity in order to destroy the Jedi.<br />
- Is the New Republic going to rebuild the senate? Who's in charge now while they go about rebuilding everything? Leia?<br />
- Did Leia ever train with Luke? Why didn't she become a Jedi? Was she afraid that she'd turn to the dark side? She does internalize a lot of tragedy, what with her home planet getting blown up in front of her and all.<br />
- Seems like Chewbacca's family is officially non-canon now. The way Maz referred to him as her boyfriend (even if it was just a joke) suggests that he's single. Plus it looked like he was flirting with that doctor. Lumpy will not be missed.<br />
- The fact that Kylo Ren recognized Anakin's lightsaber suggests that he's seen it before.<br />
- I wonder if Kylo Ren was actually named Ben or if he was named Obi-Wan and Ben was just his nickname, much like how it was for the original Obi-Wan. Either way, when Han cried out, "Ben!" that was probably the closest I came to tearing up.<br />
- Kylo Ren holding that blaster shot in mid-air was probably the single coolest thing in the entire movie.<br />
- The music was lovely, but John Williams didn't really seem to stretch himself creatively this time around.<br />
- The instant bread thing was pretty damn cool.<br />
- The wreckage from the Battle of Jakku was probably the only thing about Jakku that was unique and interesting, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Jakku's culture or history. Still, the wreckage was very visually interesting.<br />
- I think C-3PO's red arm is cool. I hope he keeps it.<br />
- BB-8 is a marvel of practical effects. I love him.<br />
- I like that when Finn reveals that he lied about being with the Resistance, Rey didn't really get upset with him. I hate that whole "liar revealed" trope and it was nice to see them side-step the whole thing.<br />
- Maz is lovely and i hope she shows up in the eventual Yoda anthology film.<br />
- General Hux is interesting, but he's no Tarkin.<br />
- Did Kylo Ren lose his helmet? He left it on the catwalk, so I doubt he had time to get it before the planet became a sun.<br />
- If Starkiller Base absorbed its sun, where did the light come from in the later scenes? I think it was a possible missed opportunity for some cool light design during the final battle.<br />
- Why were there only X-Wings during the Battle of Starkiller Base? Where were the Y-Wings or B-Wings? I mean, especially considering how the main objective was to blow up a very specific part of the base, you'd think Y-Wings would be ideal, what with their bombing capabilities. Heck, why didn't the Resistance attempt to fight a land battle on the base? The First Order didn't seem to have AT-AT walkers and the like. This wasn't like the Death Star where landing on the surface wasn't possible because it didn't have an atmosphere. Starkiller Base was a planet. It was weird that they didn't fight on it like a planet.<br />
- I really liked the riot trooper with the stun baton, but why was he there? It didn't look like they had qualms about killing innocent civilians or whatever. Why bring the nonlethal guy? And more than that, why didn't he try shooting at Finn? He recognized that he was a trooper, apparently, so he probably could have assumed that Finn wouldn't have been able to reliably deflect blaster shots like a Jedi would. Maybe he wanted to take Finn alive so he could be court-marshaled or something?<br />
- I realized the second time around that the trooper that died in Finn's arms at the beginning was shot by Poe. I wonder if Finn was aware of this. Did he know the guy?<br />
- I always find it funny when spies and scoundrels just randomly talk into their comms saying things like "Tell the First Order something something." Shouldn't they start by saying something like, "This is such-and-such. Do you copy?" Otherwise, their important message might be missed while the other guy is on the crapper.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-91370157299969732342015-12-08T18:00:00.000-05:002015-12-09T16:39:00.859-05:00"Star Wars" and CynicismI've been trying to write a post about "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" for a few months now, but I've never really been able to write something that I was OK with posting, and ultimately, I think it's because I always end up sounding cynical.<br />
<br />
I truthfully have mixed feelings about the new movie. On the one hand, I can't wait to see it. I haven't been this hyped up for "Star Wars" since "Revenge of the Sith". On the other hand, I have a lot of reservations about J.J. Abrams' capabilities as a writer and director, and it's not hard to cut together a good "Star Wars" trailer, so I tend to take them with a grain of salt. However, as soon as I start going down the path of talking about all of the things that bug me about what I've seen so far, I start to hate the way it all sounds.<br />
<br />
It isn't fair for me to be cynical about this next movie, because honestly, the cynical part of me <i>wants</i> it to be terrible. J.J. Abrams is exactly the sort of "Star Wars" fan that has done nothing but whine about the franchise since "Return of the Jedi". Since I was a kid, all I ever heard from those fans was how much everything sucked. Ewoks sucked, the Special Editions sucked, Jar Jar sucked, the new puppets sucked, the lack of puppets sucked, Anakin sucked, etc. and <i>why oh why can't they just make a movie like they used to!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
And now Disney is doing exactly that. Old cast, old methods, a plot that seems to be a carbon copy of "A New Hope" but with different names and places, and disregarding almost anything that has transpired since J.J. Abrams was a kid (unless it happened to make millions of dollars).<br />
<br />
A lot of people see this as a love-letter, but at my worst, I see it as the product of a jaded "Star Wars" fan. The sometimes-implied notion that "back to basics" is what "Star Wars" needed all along completely misses the point of "Star Wars" for me.<br />
<br />
This movie being terrible would be very vindicating. A testament to how the cranky old fans were always wrong and that their desire to "save 'Star Wars'" was always just about them not wanting to admit that maybe "Star Wars" never needed saving in the first place. That they were just mad that it wasn't pandering to them anymore.<br />
<br />
And even if the new movie <i>is</i> bad, it won't really hurt the "Star Wars" canon for me. The next director, Rian Johnson, inspires a great deal more faith in me than Abrams does. He's an old fan, but he's <i>brimming</i> with imagination. "Looper" impressed me by being a time travel movie that had a pretty simple plot, but managed to feel incredibly unique. Who randomly puts telekinetic powers into a movie about time travelling hitmen? Rian Johnson, that's who. And it doesn't stop there. Every movie he has made is unlike anything I've ever seen, and all without straying outside of convention. "Brick" was a film noir set in a high school. "Brothers Bloom" was a quirky caper comedy with a genuine heart and a gut-punch of an ending that still finds a way to be enigmatically optimistic so that it doesn't sour the overall tone of the film. It's the same kind of magic that made "Star Wars" work from the beginning. It's that kind of "chocolate and peanut butter" logic that makes perfect sense when you see it, but it takes a genius to come up with it in the first place. And hearing him talk about the job, it just sounds like he's exactly the sort of person I want handling "Star Wars". If J.J. Abrams botched this, it wouldn't really hurt "Star Wars", it would just hurt Abrams and all of the fans who thought that this was what "Star Wars" needed.<br />
<br />
I can't really lose. Even if this movie sucks, I'll still get to be smug about it from now until the next movie comes out and saves the day.<br />
<br />
And yet... I don't want to hate this movie. I want to love it. I want all of the things I'm hoping to see to be brought to life. And despite my issues with Abrams, he's consistently very good at directing actors in a way that George Lucas never was. He's not so good at writing and his movies almost always have incredibly disappointing third acts, but maybe collaborating with Kasdan will make the difference.<br />
<br />
I have dozens of reasons why I might hate this movie. I'm worried that the third act will just be blowing up yet another spherical super weapon. I'm worried that the movie will tie itself into a convoluted knot to explain why the good guys are still underdogs even though they won in the last movie. I'm worried that too much of the movie will be about making winking references to the original movies, or worse, thinly-veiled put-downs directed towards the newer canon. I'm worried that Abrams is hiding the fact that certain characters might have the last name Skywalker or Solo just so he can give us a convoluted "surprise" reveal like he did with Khan in "Star Trek Into Darkness" that isn't actually surprising and often requires a lot of pointless plot gymnastics to justify. I'm worried that the incredible and imaginative production design I'm used to will be reduced to just replicating things that were in previous movies, are remarkably similar to things that were in previous movies, or are just realizations of old, unused concept art. If there's more stuff like BB-8, I'll be fine.<br />
<br />
But there are some things that would make me giddy as a schoolgirl. Finn turning out to be a clone would be an amazing revelation, especially if he's actually Force-sensitive (the implications!). Luke's "exile" turning out to be less about doing the hermit thing like Obi-Wan and Yoda and more about training the new generation of Jedi in secret would be nice. I'm hoping Captain Phasma turns out to be a sort of Stormtrooper Javert; Lawful Neutral to a fault. The Knights of Rey turning out to not be inherently evil, but a group misled by Supreme Leader Snoke (the new Emperor, basically) would be an interesting angle. The possibility that Finn isn't Force-sensitive, but Rey is would be cool because then you'd have a Force-sensitive character who doesn't use a lightsaber and a non-Force-sensitive character who <i>does</i> use a lightsaber.<br />
<br />
In general, I'm just hoping that there's more to this movie than it seems. That there are real surprises hidden inside Abrams' "mystery box" this time around.<br />
<br />
However, one thing I've decided is that even if the movie is terrible, even if all the "surprises" fall flat and it's just a cookie-cutter rehash, I don't intend to be cynical about it. I'll probably rant about it for a blog post or two, certainly, but I don't intend to fall to the dark side like many of the fans before me. I won't spend the next decade complaining about everything it did wrong. Hell, I'll probably still watch it whenever I decide to marathon the series, because even bad "Star Wars" movies tend to have something worth watching. And I won't have to put together a "fan-edit" to make it "the way it should have been". I won't act like the series has been ruined. I won't look forward to "Episode VIII" any less. And I won't be a jerk to the people who inevitably decide that this is their favorite movie in the series.<br />
<br />
In a little over a week, I'll be going into a little theater near my hometown with my girlfriend, my brother, and some friends to see it on opening night. We will have a great time no matter how bad it might be because it's "Star Wars". And I'll probably go see it again the next day, even if I hated it, because it's "Star Wars".<br />
<br />
Young children (but not <i>super</i> young children... the movie is rated PG-13, parents) will be seeing "Star Wars" for the first time next week. Good or bad, they'll hopefully walk out of that theater wanting to swing lightsabers, fly the Falcon, and feel the Force. They'll go home and dive into all the old movies and cartoons and they'll become a part of a fandom that, in spite of its darker side, still loves this franchise because of the way it connects all of us through our collectively captivated imagination.<br />
<br />
How could I possibly be cynical about that?<br />
<br />
May the Force be with you.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-43470317649946935182015-11-09T17:30:00.000-05:002017-11-16T13:26:46.594-05:00How to Get 100% Completion on "Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain"<b>UPDATE 11/2017:</b> <i>Since I see that this post still gets traffic, I thought it would be good to add a disclaimer that I wrote this up in 2015 and so I'm not certain if everything here is still valid as of 2017. I doubt it's all that different, but they may have adjusted some of the mechanics in patches or changed the way it calculates the completion percentage, so if you follow this guide and end up with less than 100%, feel free to comment and let me know what's changed.</i><br />
<br />
Since it's been a while since I've posted anything, I thought something simple would be a good idea.<br />
<br />
I just (finally) got through playing "Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain", by which I mean I got 100% completion.<br />
<br />
Getting 100% completion on this game is hard, but I would say it's not quite as hard as it was in "Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots". And frankly, there are a few things I found out along the way that, if I had known from the beginning, would have made it significantly easier.<br />
<br />
First of all, what do you need to do to get 100% completion?<br />
<br />
1) Complete every Side Ops Mission.<br />
2) Complete all 50 Main Missions with an S-Rank<br />
3) Complete every objective of every Main Mission.<br />
4) Complete every "important" Dispatch Mission (the ones marked with yellow dots)<br />
4) Get every Key Item<br />
5) Get every Memento Photo<br />
6) Capture every animal (it's not enough to just identify them for your encyclopedia)<br />
<br />
With that said, there are a few things you DON'T need to do in order to get 100% completion. You DON'T need to develop every single item, you DON'T need to find all the cassette tapes, and you DON'T need to unlock every emblem.<br />
<br />
Let's start with the big tips:<br />
<br />
<h3>
Get the Following Items</h3>
<div>
Here are some items you ought to develop, not necessarily because you NEED to, but because they REALLY help:</div>
<div>
<b>Stealth Camo</b></div>
<div>
- This item restricts Main Missions to A-rank only, but it still has TONS of uses. More on this later.</div>
<div>
<b>Wormhole Fulton</b></div>
<div>
- The final upgrade to the Fulton recovery system allows you to Fulton almost anyone from anywhere.</div>
<div>
<b>D-Dog's Fulton Outfit</b></div>
<div>
- Sometimes you just don't have time to extract someone, and with D-Dog's Fulton outfit, he can do it for you. It's a little temperamental, but so long as the prisoner or unconscious soldier is nearby and not in a locked room, D-Dog will be able to run over to them and extract them, usually without anybody even noticing.</div>
<div>
<b>Stun Arm</b></div>
<div>
- The Stun Arm might SEEM useless, but it's quite possibly the single most useful weapon in the game. If you have it equipped, press and hold R2 to start charging it. Keep charging it until the little bar above the weapon icon charges all the way. You'll hear a little beep when it finishes. Then and only then do you release R2. This hidden move releases a massive area attack that hits EVERYONE in a 40-meter radius from you, no matter where they are or what they're wearing, and they stay knocked out for around 6 minutes, giving you more than enough time to do what you need to do.</div>
<div>
<b>Parasite Armor + Mist/Armor Parasites</b></div>
<div>
- I know what you're thinking, but the game is lying to you. Using the Parasite Armor does NOT restrict you to an A-rank like it says it does. Only when you use the Camo Parasites are you restricted to an A-rank. The Mist and Armor Parasites can be used as much as you like and you'll still be able to get an S-rank.</div>
<div>
<b>EMN Mines</b></div>
<div>
- You'll need these for a few missions that involve taking down vehicles (specifically "Backup, Back Down"). Max out the development on these so that you can carry as many as possible without needing to redeploy, since that's one of the objectives of the aforementioned mission.</div>
<div>
<b>Sleep Grenades</b></div>
<div>
- Max these babies out because they are REALLY useful for taking out the Skulls in a couple missions.</div>
<div>
<b>Sleep Grenade Launcher</b></div>
<div>
- This was really only useful in "Pitch Dark" and "Cloaked in Silence", but it was still useful.</div>
<div>
<b>Cluster Guided Missiles</b></div>
<div>
- The best launcher in the game. It does a ton of damage and it locks on to targets within about 200 meters, so it's perfect for taking down helicopters and Sahelanthropus.</div>
<div>
<b>D-Walker's Fulton Ballista</b></div>
<b>- </b>Not essential, particularly since it locks you to an A-rank, but there are a few Side Ops where you have to Fulton enemies with TONS of armor. Being able to just shoot them with a gun that automatically Fultons them makes those missions way easier.<br />
<b>Infinity Bandanna</b><br />
- Unlimited ammo AND suppressors. Restricts you to A-rank, but again, it has its uses.<br />
<br />
Some of these things require certain specialists or high-ranked Mother Base platforms, but every single one of them is worth it, trust me.<br />
<h3>
Side Ops Have No Ranking System, So Use Stealth Camo</h3>
<div>
Unlike the main missions (and unlike the Side Ops in "Peace Walker") the Side Ops don't judge you on your performance. They only care about results.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So break out that Stealth Camo, Infinity Bandanna, and Fulton Ballista and get cracking. Also, once you complete a Side Op, you can just return to the ACC through the Start Menu. Don't worry, the game remembers that you completed it. It just saves you from having to call Pequod and waste money on the extraction.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are a few different types of Side Ops, but once you get a rhythm for it, they're pretty easy (just time-consuming).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Prisoner Extractions</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
These missions are the easiest. Bring along D-Dog with his Fulton outfit, sneak into the area with your Stealth Camo, when you see the prisoner, tell D-Dog to go Fulton him. If he fails, find the locked door and unlock it and do it yourself. Boom, you're done.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Secure the Blueprint</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
Either look up online where the Blueprint is or interrogate soldiers until they tell you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Extract the Highly Skilled Soldier</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
These are harder than Prisoner Extractions because the target is unwilling. You'll need to find them and knock them out. Not too hard with D-Dog, Stealth Camo, and your INT-Scope. Don't bother capturing every soldier in the area or you'll be there all day. Just find the one you need, sneak in, take them out, and return to ACC.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Capture the Animal</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
There are a small number of missions that involve capturing animals. The hard part is usually just finding the animal. Once you do, just camo up and shoot it with your tranq gun until it drops.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Extract the Wandering Mother Base Solider</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
This is necessary for unlocking all of the Memento Photos. This is a little trickier than the other Extraction missions since they often resist you, but with a decent long-range tranq gun, you can land a head-shot, and that's all you need.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Eliminate the Heavy Infantry/Armored Vehicle Unit/Tank Unit</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
D-Walker's Fulton Ballista is very handy for these missions, but if you're not interested in keeping anyone alive, Air Support Bombardments can work fine too (though they're far less elegant).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Mine Clearing</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
Air Support Bombardments are big time savers for these missions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Eliminate the Wandering Puppets</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
These missions are fairly easy at first, but they get tricky once the Puppets start wearing head armor. For this, I recommend packing a lethal weapon to shoot them in the head until the helmet falls off, then either tranq them with a head-shot or just finish the job if you don't plan to extract them. Just remember that you NEED a head-shot on these guys.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Target Practice</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
Most of these missions are easy, but one or two are practically timed easter egg hunts. Use a video walkthrough if you don't want to snap your controller out of frustration.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And that's pretty much it for Side Ops. Like I said, they're easy enough, just time-consuming.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
You Don't Need to Get S-Rank and All Tasks at the Same Time</h3>
<div>
This is a very important thing to keep in mind. While you need an S-rank on every Main Mission and you need to complete every task for every Main Mission, you don't need to do both at the same time. In fact, you don't even need to get all the tasks in one go. Some missions are way easier if you just focus on completing a few tasks per run.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That's not to say that doing perfect runs can't sometimes be expedient, but there are some missions that are so hard that trying to get an S-rank while completing all of the objectives is just more trouble than it's worth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Particularly because some tasks are far easier to complete with Stealth Camo and the Infinity Bandanna.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A simple way to go about completing all the Main Missions would be to start by doing the mission with your Stealth Camo and Infinity Bandanna, just to easily complete all of the tasks. Then do the mission again without the items that lock you to an A-rank and focus on getting an S-rank.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But how do you get an S-rank? Follow these basic strategies:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Use Mist Parasites</b></div>
<div>
- It's not quite as good as the Stealth Camo, but it reduces visibility so much that you basically have to be within spitting distance of an enemy for them to notice you, and at that point, you can just run up and knock them out. But honestly, with Mist Parasites, you barely even need to do anything else. Just crouch-walk to wherever you need to go, ignore the soldiers, keep your distance, and do what you need to do. You can complete entire missions without knocking out a single soldier if you've got the Mist Parasites. Mist Parasites are OP. Use them liberally, and if you run out, go get some more from the Skulls in Kaz's mission. You can probably take them out quickly with either a decent sniper rifle or Sleep Grenades.</div>
<div>
<b>Use the Stun Arm for densely guarded areas</b></div>
<div>
- If a building or area is crawling with soldiers, the Stun Arm can be really useful. Just make sure everyone is within 40 meters (D-Dog is very helpful for figuring that out) before you do the blast. You need a full charge and that takes a few minutes to build back up, so use carefully.</div>
<div>
<b>Turn off Reflex Mode</b></div>
<div>
- I know it's helpful, but it's a crutch, and a costly one. If you have it on and it triggers, even if you take down the guy that spots you and avoid an alarm, you STILL won't get the bonus for Perfect Stealth, and that's in addition to losing the bonus for avoiding Reflex Mode. Just turn it off and if someone spots you, try to take them down without it. If you set off an alarm, just reload from the last checkpoint. The points you lose for reloading are significantly less than what you lose for using Reflex Mode and not getting Perfect Stealth.</div>
<div>
<b>Don't go out of your way to accomplish other objectives</b></div>
<div>
- Yes, you sometimes get bonus points for them, but you also get bonus points for completing the mission quickly. The trade-off isn't usually worth it. Just focus on the main objectives and doing them as quickly as possible.</div>
<div>
<b>99% of the time, don't kill anyone</b></div>
<div>
- This is a "Metal Gear" game. If you're killing someone, you're doing it wrong. There are a couple missions where the fastest way to complete them is to kill the target, so sometimes that's OK, but the rest of the time, do it non-lethally. You get a point bonus, you get new soldiers, and you get more Hero Points.</div>
<div>
<b>Use material containers for quick extraction</b></div>
<div>
- Calling down a helicopter takes time and money. But if you climb on top of a material container, use the Fulton extraction, and then press and hold the action button immediately afterward, you can ride the material container out of the mission area. This is particularly useful for missions like "Pitch Dark".</div>
<div>
<b>Use Armor Parasites for combat missions</b></div>
<div>
- A few missions are less about sneaking and more about fighting things. "Metallic Archaea", "A Quiet Exit", and "Sahelanthropus" involve Snake getting shot at no matter what you do. This is when you use the Armor Parasites. Seriously, with these babies, you'll be damn near invincible, giving you plenty of time to do whatever you need to do without needing to run to cover constantly.</div>
<div>
<b>If a soldier is too armored for a tranq gun, shoot them in the arms or legs</b></div>
<div>
- The soldiers in the game gradually evolve to adapt to your dominant strategies. Eventually, certain soldiers start wearing armor to avoid getting knocked out by your tranq guns. If you aim for a head-shot but you hear a CLUNK instead of the satisfying PEW, then aim for their arms and legs instead. If you hear a RIP instead of a CLICK, then their arms and legs are armored as well. At this point, your tranq gun is useless, so don't waste your ammo. You can either try to knock these guys out with CQC or you can just use your Stun Arm. Or you could just avoid them, if possible.</div>
<div>
<b>Look up walkthroughs for "Subsistence" missions</b></div>
<div>
- Subsistence missions are the worst. You have to complete the mission (and all the objectives) without any equipment, weapons, or buddies. You don't even get to pick the time of day. There are only a few of them, but they're still infuriating. Just look up walkthroughs on YouTube. Otherwise, you'll be there all day trying to figure it out.</div>
<div>
<b>Plant Capture Cages at the start of every mission</b></div>
<div>
- They get extracted automatically and it will save you time during your eventual animal hunt.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So to sum up, each mission should play out something like this:</div>
<div>
- Make sure Reflex Mode is turned off in the Game Options.</div>
<div>
- Land.</div>
<div>
- Plant Capture Cages.</div>
<div>
- Run to your objective.</div>
<div>
- If you see soldiers, activate your Mist Parasites. Turn on your NVG so you can still see. If you hear the iDroid voice tell you that "weather will clear shortly", it means your Mist Parasites are about to wear off, so redeploy them if you're still near enemies.</div>
<div>
- If a soldier spots you, try to take them out quickly, even without Reflex Mode (usually running and using CQC is pretty reliable, but if you already have them in your sights, go ahead and try and knock them out with a silenced tranq).</div>
<div>
- If you trigger an alarm, reload from the last checkpoint.</div>
<div>
- Don't kill anyone. If you do, reload from the last checkpoint.</div>
<div>
- If there's a bunch of people all in the same 40-meter area, charge up your Stun Arm and let 'em have it.</div>
<div>
- Complete the main objectives (and any side objectives if you don't have to go out of your way).</div>
<div>
- If there's a materials container, ride it out of the hot zone. Otherwise, call a chopper and get out, or just run out of the hot zone if that's easier.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As for completing the other tasks, I can't really give too much detail or else we'll be here all day. But for me, this was the most fun part of the game, so I would recommend you try to do this without a walkthrough as often as possible. Since you don't have to worry about getting an S-rank at the same time, you can just accomplish the tasks using whatever weapons and items you want, like the aforementioned Stealth Camo and Infinity Bandanna. You can also have fun with the Air Support strikes and special character outfits like the Cyborg (run faster, jump higher!). This is the part of the game where you get to cut loose, and at the end of the day, this IS a video game, so why play if you can't have a little fun?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The only part of this that is no fun at all is when you have mission objectives that require you to listen to every conversation. Those objectives are obnoxious and there's really no way to make that fun. Sorry. The best tip I have for this is to just have a run where you focus on listening to conversations and then do the other objectives in a different run. That way if something goes wrong, you don't have to listen to the same conversations over and over and over.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you REALLY want to try and get S-rank and all the objectives at the same time, it is possible (for the most part) if you can avoid detection and having to restart. But I'd probably suggest bringing along the Stealth Camo just in case you get spotted. You only get locked out of the S-rank if you use it, so just having it can't hurt, and it'll be nice if something goes wrong after you've completed most of the objectives. At that point, you might as well just focus on accomplishing the tasks and try to get the S-rank afterwards, so go ahead and use your emergency Stealth Camo.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But again, you <b>REALLY DON'T NEED TO GET ALL THE OBJECTIVES AT THE SAME TIME YOU GET AN S-RANK</b>. There's no big reward for doing both at the same time. The game doesn't care.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That said, if you STILL want to try, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuQoXxpfYaSmVX_z_8pbF0__8A4SUhsba">these video walkthroughs</a> are the best I could find by far. This person completes almost every Main Mission with every objective, perfect stealth, no kills, and S-rank, and he does most of them VERY quickly. If you're a perfectionist, look no further.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Dispatch Missions</h3>
<div>
Honestly, there's nothing all that special about completing the required Dispatch Missions. Just have a bunch of high-ranking Combat Unit soldiers and keep trying the important missions until you complete them all. Odds are you'll fail some of these a lot, even with all S-ranked soldiers, but just keep trying. Soldiers are easy to replace and eventually you'll get it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Get all the Key Items</h3>
<div>
You'll get most of the Key Items just from completing and S-ranking all of the Main Missions and finishing the Side Ops. Beyond that, there are two Key Items that you only get if you collect all of the Delivery Invoices. If you don't know what these are, you'll find them on those weird orange metal things in certain areas. Those are delivery locations. If you have the appropriate invoices, you can hide in a box at those locations and fast-travel to anywhere else that you have an invoice. They don't have many practical uses, but they do come in handy for a few missions, so they're worth getting early on. Plus, you need them for two Key Items, and you need THOSE for 100% completion, so... yeah. Go get 'em.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The only other Key Item you might not have is the one you get for Marking 500 soldiers, and if you don't have that one by now, you probably should use the INT-Scope more. Just run around areas and look at people with the INT-Scope until you get that Key Item.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Memento Photos</h3>
<div>
You get these from the Wandering Soldiers Side Ops and talking to a certain character that's on your Medical Platform. I can't say too much more without spoilers, but basically, after you finish the first Wandering Soldier Side Op, explore the Medical Platform until you find an area that triggers a cutscene. After that, just head back to that location every time you finish a Wandering Soldier Side Op. When you finish, the last Memento Photo is hidden in that area.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Capture All the Animals</h3>
<div>
This is another thing that requires a walkthrough, to be honest. If you've been planting Capture Cages at the start of every mission, you'll probably have already found most of them, but there are a few that are damn near impossible to find.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, I mentioned this earlier, but it's not enough to just see the animals. You have to capture them. Sometimes an animal will appear in your Encyclopedia even if you haven't captured it yet. To know which ones you captured, look at your Animals Emblems in your Emblem Customization page. You unlock an emblem for that animal when you capture it, so if you don't have the Emblem, you still need to capture it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=516561727">This guide</a> is pretty good for finding most of them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And... that's it! Once you've done all these things, you should have 100% completion. If you don't, then there's probably something that counts towards completion that I'm not aware of. In that case, I'd say just focus on completing all of the Achievements/Trophies for the game. You'll probably already have most of them by now, so it probably won't take long.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Oh, and what did I think of the game?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Well, I spent countless hours getting 100% completion and unlocking all the trophies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Clearly, I hated it.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-41607475440129102012015-07-12T11:11:00.000-04:002015-07-12T11:11:04.726-04:00Deadpool Trailer ThoughtsSince I've established on this blog that I'm a big fan of "Deadpool" (though I've fallen way behind on his comics, something I eventually intend to remedy) I thought I'd throw out my thoughts on the new leaked trailer for "Deadpool" from SDCC.<br />
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First off, I won't link to the trailer because Fox is taking it down every few hours and they haven't put it up officially yet, probably because if they did, it would have to be a red band trailer (too much cursing). Shouldn't be too hard to find. Your Google Fu is strong.<br />
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The first big takeaway I get from this is that it's very heavily influenced by the Joe Kelly run of "Deadpool", which is my personal favorite take on the character. The inclusion of Blind Al (who I don't THINK was in the original leaked screenplay from a few years back, but it's hard for me to remember) makes me giddy. Blind Al is one of my favorite Deadpool supporting characters. But I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />
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As I mention above, a rough screenplay for this movie leaked about 5 or 6 years ago. I found a copy and read it (I've tried to find it again since, but to my surprise, it appears to have been effectively expunged from the Internet, a very rare feat indeed) and I loved it. It was written by the "Zombieland" guys and it wasn't perfect, but it had the potential to be a way better Deadpool movie than I thought Fox was capable of producing. And so I was pretty convinced that it was never going to happen. I knew it would have to be R-rated, which is the kiss of death for a lot of comic book movies, and while I thought that Deadpool would be appealing enough to pull it off, I knew it would be next to impossible to convince Fox executives of that. I knew that a movie with this screenplay was too good to be true.<br />
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And yet, here we are. An actual trailer, and judging from it, it bears a very striking resemblance to what I remember from the screenplay I read. Specifically that Colossus is in it as a supporting character and a few jokes and action scenes I remember were shown in this trailer. I mean, I knew when they announced it that the "Zombieland" guys were still the ones credited for the screenplay, but so much time had passed that I was worried they were forced to rewrite it into submission. Luckily that doesn't seem to be the case. And we got a joke teaser a few months back stating emphatically that this movie was going to be R-rated.<br />
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This is really happening guys.<br />
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Ryan Reynolds is (as everyone suspected all along) a great fit for the role. At least judging from this alone. After over a decade of hoping and praying that he'd get to do this role (the right way), he finally got his wish. Whether or not this movie turns out to be good, you can't deny that this is exactly the Deadpool Reynolds has always wanted to play.<br />
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OK, so Negasonic Teenage Warhead. She was not in the screenplay I read (I don't think) and her presence here is... odd. Is she there as an X-Man backing up Colossus? If so... I don't know, I feel like this was a missed opportunity to bring in Siryn, especially since they already established her dad existing in "X-Men: First Class" (though I guess he was apparently killed according to "X-Men: Days of Future Past", so I suppose that puts a damper on things). Ah well, if they're going from the screenplay I read, they would probably focus on Copycat being the sole love interest for Deadpool, which is fine. I hope they change the ending I read, though. Copycat doesn't have nearly enough agency in that draft. I guess we'll see.<br />
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Also, Morena Baccarin as Copycat is totally OK in my book. We barely see her in the trailer, but I'm always happy to see her get work.<br />
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Oh, and Weasel is fantastic. The "topographical map of Utah" joke was one of the funniest things I've heard in a while.<br />
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Alright, now for the stuff that I don't like so much.<br />
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The "red shirt/brown pants" joke is old as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Even the people of Westeros have heard that joke a million times and they haven't invented indoor plumbing yet.<br />
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It's hard to tell from the bootleg, but I don't think Wade's face is ugly enough. Like I said, this a tough call from the view we get, but I don't think they went far enough.<br />
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I'm sad that this is made by Fox because that means we'll never get Bob of HYDRA in a hypothetical sequel (unless they come up with a HYDRA knockoff).<br />
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I don't know how I feel about the music used. I feel like a soundtrack more similar in tone to "Guardians of the Galaxy" would suit it better, but this is a nit-pick at best.<br />
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Aside from that... I really can't wait to see this. I never thought this would actually happen, but here we are.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-61906229324505043002015-06-14T11:31:00.001-04:002015-06-14T17:16:25.618-04:00Bad Arguments Against "Jurassic World"A lot of people enjoyed "Jurassic World" and I'm one of them. "Jurassic Park" was one of the first PG-13 movies I was allowed to watch as a kid and I still remember sitting with my family in the car watching the movie at a drive-in theater. I owned a bunch of the toys (the ones with the weird detachable chunks of flesh that they called "battle damage"), I read the original novel (though I was waaaay too young for it, so most of it went over my head), and I think it sparked some of my early interest in science. It's an important movie for me.<br />
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"Jurassic World" felt like it was made by and for people like me. It was more or less the kind of movie I would have made if someone asked me to make a sequel. I left the movie feeling completely satisfied and I'd say it's the first film of the Summer to exceed my expectations ("Age of Ultron" fell somewhat short of my high expectations, and "Mad Max" met my high expectations, but did not exceed them).<br />
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I can see what some people don't like the movie. The pacing is pretty break-neck, most of the story beats are cliche and predictable, the characters are stock and simple to understand so we don't have to spend too much time on them, and the bad guys are straight out of cheesy 80's action films.<br />
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Still, as I've been reading and watching mixed or negative reviews of the movie, I keep hearing arguments that I just... don't think people are thinking through? It feels like they're just pulling arguments that SOUND like they make sense, but don't hold up to any actual scrutiny. So rather than write a loooong review like I usually do, I'd rather just rant about bad arguments people have been making against this movie. Let's do this!<br />
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The CGI is Terrible!</h4>
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This is one of the weirdest arguments I've heard, mostly because I keep hearing some people talk about how "fake" everything looks, while other people (even people who feel generally negative about the movie) say the CGI looks amazing.</div>
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I actually wonder if this is because of the format that people choose to watch the movie. I personally saw it in 2D and the CGI never bothered me. I don't know if I'd say it was "amazing", but it never stuck out to me. My guess is that maybe the CGI holds up to less scrutiny in 3D and/or IMAX.</div>
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Even so, one argument I've heard a few times to explain WHY the CGI is terrible is because "If you notice it's CGI, it's bad CGI" and that practical effects should have been used more.</div>
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I'm going to say, if that's the benchmark for a good special effect, the only time I personally remembered that the dinosaurs weren't real was when they used a practical effect. There was a scene with an apatosaurus and I thought "Wow! That's a really impressive animatronic muppet dinosaur!" and it was, but I still NOTICED that it was a practical effect, and it was the only time I did. So if the benchmark of a good effect is invisibility, I'd say the CGI worked better for me in that regard than the practical effects.</div>
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The Romance Subplot Is Pointless</h4>
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The most common complaint I've heard is that the romance between the characters Owen and Claire is forced and pointless and there because romances are expected in Summer blockbusters.</div>
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Well, yeah. Sure. But practically EVERYTHING in these movies are forced. That doesn't make them BAD. It's all about whether or not you can enjoy the movie because of or in spite of those elements.</div>
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As for the romance... well, my stance on forced romantic subplots is that I'm OK with it if it follows these criteria:</div>
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1) The relationship doesn't define a character. So often romantic subplots are used as the only character trait for a supporting female character in the film. Her only motivation or growth is defined within the constraints of that relationship.</div>
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2) The characters in the relationship have good chemistry. If I enjoy watching the actors flirt with one another, then I'll probably enjoy the romantic scenes they share. Bad chemistry is the death-knell for a romantic subplot in a movie like this.</div>
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3) The plot isn't slowed down by the romance. If the characters are getting shit done while they flirt and the plot doesn't grind to a halt because they want to talk about their feelings, then the romance doesn't really hurt anyone.</div>
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First off, ALL of these rules are broken by the forced romance in the original "Jurassic Park" between Alan and Ellie (which wasn't in the books). Ellie Sattler is unfortunately given very little to do or be as a character in that movie and pretty much the only thing people wondered about her was whether or not she and Alan were an item since the movie left it somewhat ambiguous. Which brings me to my second point. Alan and Ellie had such little chemistry that people couldn't even tell that they were SUPPOSED to be romantically involved. Last, the few scenes that were devoted to Ellie's relationship with Alan could have been cut entirely and it would have sacrificed nothing. This is a case of a romantic subplot existing to the detriment of the movie.</div>
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"Jurassic World", on the other hand, does not suffer this problem. Owen and Claire are both interesting and distinct characters. They both develop (well, Claire does at least) and have traits outside of their relationship. The flirty scenes they share usually involve also moving the plot forward, either to reveal more about the characters or to get them to involve each other in different aspects of the plot (when the kids meet Owen for the first time, they see him kissing Claire, so rather than having to explain to the kids who Owen is and that he's trustworthy, the movie just tells them "He's your aunt Claire's boyfriend" and they move right along). And most importantly, I think Owen and Claire have enjoyable chemistry. On a scale of Neo/Trinity to Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, the chemistry between them lands somewhere in the above-average section with Indiana Jones/Marion Ravenwood. I enjoyed watching them flirt.</div>
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The romantic subplot doesn't NEED to be there, fine, but it doesn't hurt anything. At least not as far as I'm concerned.</div>
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Oh, and there's a great scene where another romantic subplot is teased but then rug-pulled away at the last minute.</div>
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The Divorce Subplot Is Pointless</h4>
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The other thing people complain about in terms of pointless character subplots is regarding the fact that the two brothers in the film are there specifically because their parents are trying to get them away so they can sort out some divorce proceedings stuff without their kids finding out. The mother's sister (Claire) works there and Zach (the younger sibling) loves dinosaurs (of course he does) so a weekend at Jurassic World makes perfect sense.</div>
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The divorce subplot doesn't really go anywhere explicit. There's a scene where their mother cries on the phone when talking to Claire, upset that the kids aren't spending time with her, and there's a scene where Zach cries because he knows why they're really there.</div>
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A lot of people think this subplot serves no purpose and just gets in the way.</div>
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First of all, again, this subplot was already used in "Jurassic Park" with the Murphy siblings, and that subplot was also forced and pointless. It existed for pretty much no reason other than to give Alan a reason to bond with them.</div>
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In fact, Zach is pretty much a carbon copy of Tim in pretty much every way (though I found Tim to be much more annoying).</div>
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However, in "Jurassic World", the divorce subplot does have ONE purpose. Why ELSE would two parents send their kids ALONE to an amusement park?</div>
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OK, so then why not bring the parents along?</div>
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BECAUSE WHAT KID DOESN'T WANT TO GO TO AN AMUSEMENT PARK WITHOUT PARENTAL SUPERVISION!?!?</div>
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This is basic wish-fulfillment fantasy 101 for kids! You get to go to Sea World but with DINOSAURS and NO PARENTS! WHEE!!!</div>
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The divorce subplot exists solely to facilitate that. And to the movie's credit, it spends VERY little time dealing with it, and the only time they address it, it's done to give Zach's brother a reason to bond a little with him. It's not like they force in a moment at the very end where the parents decide to stick together or whatever, as if trauma inspires that kind of thing. It's just a shitty thing that's happening to these kids and the plot device to get them there without their parents.</div>
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Now, here's the thing. A lot of people who argue against this subplot (and the romance subplot) seem to be coming from a place that suggests that these subplots could have been scrubbed entirely and the movie would have been better for it.</div>
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I don't agree.</div>
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Without the romance subplot, the kids have no reason to trust Owen in a scene where they need to trust him very quickly in order to not slow down the third act, which then means that the characters would need to meet Owen in the first act, which would have meant contriving a reason for them to go see the top-secret velociraptor training facility, which would have required MORE pointless scenes than the romance subplot required.</div>
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Without the divorce subplot, we have no reason for the parents to not be there, so they seem grossly negligent, making it hard to sympathize with the mother when she gives Claire shit for abandoning them. It also means having to contrive a reason for the brothers to relate to each other out of nowhere. The divorce allows these things to happen expediently.</div>
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You need to be able to care about these characters or the action scenes involving them carry no weight.</div>
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OK, so then maybe we should just get rid of the brothers completely! Oops, then you don't have a POV character for the younger audience or a reason to be introduced to the park from the perspective of an outsider.</div>
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These subplots are not original, I get that. But they take up very little time, they allow the plot to chug along through the first act without wasting too much time on humans, and if you ignore the fact that they're unoriginal, they work. The actors sell them believably, and they're written passably well.</div>
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I think that these are load-bearing subplots. They may not look nice, but they're essential. I'd like to see how the critics would suggest removing them without damaging the parts of the film that work exceptionally well.</div>
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Why Would They Rebuild the Park!?</h4>
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People seem to think that it's ridiculous that anyone would try to re-create this park after what happened the first time. That the premise for this movie is, on its face, ludicrous.</div>
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If you're saying this, I highly recommend you watch the movie "Blackfish". I have a lot of problems with the overall conclusions of that movie, but it does a great job at showing you just how BAD we were at building amusement parks around aquariums. It was inhumane. People died. Animals died. But we just kept doing it.</div>
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Was "Jurassic Park" THAT big a catastrophe? How many people ACTUALLY die in that movie? Maybe a dozen? Probably about the same number of people have died from captive whale attacks. Has that stopped Sea World? Has that stopped people from GOING to Sea World? And that's just ONE kind of park designed around wild animals. Even parks with NO animals have human casualties.</div>
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Or hey, did the Titanic stop people from going on cruise ships? Did Apollo I stop Apollo XI?</div>
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The fact is, "Jurassic Park" didn't fail because dinosaurs were beyond the human ability to control them. It failed because the original creators underestimated them. They tried to turn them into an attraction before they even fully understood them (not unlike the original Sea World-type attractions). It bit them in the ass.</div>
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The thing is, the genie was out of the bottle. The dinosaurs were set loose and they started breeding. Can't turn back now.</div>
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So OF COURSE someone decided to go back and get them under control. They probably studied them, carefully planned ways to corral them and restrain them, and took every necessary precaution.</div>
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And it worked! The park we see in this movie is fully-functional and has been for years. It's clearly safe.</div>
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I will say that they probably could have done MORE. Since Joe Badguy implies at one point that these animals have no environmental protection because they're technically classified as extinct, they don't have to be humane with these animals. Any they're already giving them tracking implants. Why not also implant tiny detonation devices that would destroy their brains at the push of a button?</div>
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Obviously something would have to go haywire with that for the movie to work, but it would have been nice to see that kind of forethought. I wanted to believe that this crew was competent.</div>
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And they were! Not only is the park being handled well by intelligent people, they've even got a guy who's learned how to train the raptors (sort of). The movie reminds us that dinosaurs aren't mystical beings beyond our understanding. They're animals. We've been training animals and putting them in attractions for years. Even predators. It's not that crazy.</div>
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The problems don't start until they idiotically create a new dinosaur that's bigger and badder and OF COURSE they aren't told everything they need to know about her by the people who created her before they decide to turn her into a star attraction. And of course it's what screws everything up.</div>
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The park itself wasn't a bad idea. They clearly made it work. The bad idea was deciding that that wasn't good enough.</div>
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Why Are People Bored With Dinosaurs? That's Preposterous!</h4>
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The main reason they create the new super-dinosaur is because the tourists have gotten bored with dinosaurs and they think they can reinvigorate their audience by manufacturing a bad-ass new dinosaur that will wet pants and loosen bowels aplenty.</div>
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A lot of people seem to find that premise ridiculous. Why would people find DINOSAURS to be BORING!?</div>
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These people seem to completely miss the fact that this is a freaking meta-narrative.</div>
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The audience in the movie is getting bored with dinosaurs because THE AUDIENCE WATCHING THE MOVIE IS BORED WITH DINOSAURS!</div>
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If the movie didn't have this new dinosaur teased in the trailer, audiences would have said "Whatever, been there, done that, who needs to see the same old dinosaurs again?" So of course the studio executives told them to put in a new dinosaur to get butts in seats.</div>
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The genius was that it was written into the script to have the same reason for being created WITHIN the universe. It's believable that they would create a big scary new dinosaur because THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE.</div>
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I know not EVERYONE is bored with dinosaurs, so if you're a dino-lover, that plot-point must seem ridiculous, but I guarantee you, if that new dinosaur wasn't in the trailer, the box office numbers probably would have been WAY lower because mass audiences are stupid.</div>
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I actually loved the speech from the scientist who created the new dinosaur as he is clearly frustrated with the CEO's flippant attitude towards the fact that they created a killing machine. OF COURSE she's a killing machine! He asked for something big and scary! He treated cloning like a toy factory!</div>
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I also love that speech for throwing in a line to explain why the dinosaurs don't have feathers, particularly since it was ALREADY explained in the first movie when they said they filled in gaps of the DNA with reptile DNA. And I love that the REASON why they STILL look like that is implied to be because it sells better. WHICH IS THE SAME REASON WHY THEY LOOK THAT WAY IN A META-NARRATIVE SENSE.</div>
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It's all a meditation on the commercialization of living creatures. That's what sets this movie apart from "Jurassic Park". JP1 was about the ethical dilemma of bringing back an extinct species without fully understanding the potential consequences. Typical "<a href="http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/">ME GO TOO FAR</a>" storyline.</div>
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This movie was less about that and more about the ethical dilemma of commodifying a species. Even when they try to pull that "YOU GO TOO FAR" crap on the scientist, he turns it back around and says that HE wasn't the one responsible, it was the people who treated the dinosaurs like a product that they could rebrand.</div>
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JP1 was about the dangers of science without ethics. JW is about the dangers of capitalism without ethics.</div>
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The character who develops the most (Claire) has an arc where she goes from treating the dinosaurs like things to understanding that they are living creatures. The aforementioned scene with her and the apatosaurus is great.</div>
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And I think this all makes sense. If someone did successfully create a theme park with dinosaurs, after a few years, people WOULD start to get bored. Just like how you can't recreate the awe of the first "Jurassic Park" movie, once a person has seen a real-life dinosaur for the first time, they'll probably just get bored with it, just like they would with ANY cool animal. And obviously corporate interests would use whatever mechanisms they have at their disposal to reinvigorate their audiences.</div>
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This Movie Is Basically Just a Rehash of the First Movie</h4>
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The last argument I want to refute is that "Jurassic World" is just reusing the same story elements from "Jurassic Park", but with different set-pieces.</div>
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I won't deny that there are a lot of throw-backs to the original movie here. The music, the stock character archetypes, some of the props and sets... there's obviously a lot of reverence for the first film here.</div>
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And some characters are very familiar. As mentioned, Zack and Gray are basically just the Murphy siblings again. Simon Masrani is a lot like John Hammond, at least in spirit and motivation. Owen shares Alan Grant's love of the dinosaurs while also exhibiting Ian Malcolm's smart-ass nature and constant disapproval of man's disrespect for nature. Like Alan, Claire has a subplot where she has to bond with children. </div>
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But the characters also have a lot of differences. Claire as a character is very different from any other character in "Jurassic Park" because she pretty much starts out as the kind of character that would have been a bad guy in the first film. Owen, despite his misgivings, doesn't constantly spout out moralistic stump speeches or collapse in awe of dinosaurs. He has a different kind of understanding of dinosaurs that is less scientific or deifying and much closer to the way that actual zoologists interact with animals. He respects them and has a relationship with them. He understands them in a much deeper way than other characters have. He understands them in a way that is only possible in a world where dinosaurs have been around for a while. He's had the time that they lacked in the first movie.</div>
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And sure, Zack and Gray are shameless rehashes, but I'd also say they're subtle improvements on the Murphy siblings. The Murphy kids were supposed to be my POV characters when I saw JP1 as a kid, but I really couldn't have cared less about them. They were annoying, clingy, over-emotional, and I definitely wouldn't have wanted to hang out with them. Gray is still annoying, but he's the older brother, so of course he's insufferable (hi Tom!). Zack, on the other hand, is basically Tim Murphy, but he doesn't spend the entire movie sucking up to one of the adult main characters, He's there to see the dinosaurs, not someone who studies them. He acts the way I would have acted if I could have gone to that park. Hell, he acts the way I probably DID act when I went to Disney World for the first time. He's a much better POV character and I think kids will probably have an easier time relating to him than I did with Tim Murphy.</div>
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As for the story beats, while they're certainly predictable, I don't think they're just carbon copies of JP1. JP1 had a much longer first act, and when things went bad, they went bad ALL AT ONCE. ALL of the dinosaurs broke out simultaneously and everything went crazy from there. "Jurassic World" makes it more of a situation that starts out with just ONE thing going wrong pretty early on, and over time, it causes more and more things to go wrong. Godzilla breaks out, kills their first-responding dino-hunting team, the park security has its hands full corralling the park attendants, and so the CEO has to fly a helicopter, bad things happen, he dies, and accidentally lets out a bunch of pteranodons in the process, which then attack the park attendants, making things worse. From there, more dinosaurs are only released in order to try and take down Godzilla. It's a chain-reaction.</div>
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The reason I'm making this distinction is because it reflects what's different about this movie. Everything bad that happens, happens because of human decisions. Humans decided to create Godzilla. A human decided to fly a helicopter and it freed pteranodons. Humans decided to release the velociraptors.</div>
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In JP1, the disaster happens because of forces beyond human control, and that was the point. The point of that movie was about meddling in forces beyond our control.</div>
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"Jurassic World" isn't about that because we HAVE control. This was about assuming that control means understanding. That because we've figured out how to make this work, OBVIOUSLY we know what we're doing. Everything could have been avoided if humans just accepted that they no longer had control and stopped trying to regain control. If they evacuated the island from the beginning, it would have been a PR nightmare, but they probably wouldn't have lost their CEO or needed to release any other dinosaurs. But because they thought they could contain the situation without anyone finding out (which, sadly, actually happens during disasters at amusement parks), they just kept making things worse.</div>
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This story shares a lot of elements from the first movie, don't get me wrong, but it's not just the same movie over again. It has different characters with different problems and motivations. It has different themes and messages. It stands on its own.</div>
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<h4>
The Decent Arguments Against This Movie</h4>
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I did want to spend a little time acknowledging some acceptable criticisms. First of all, as much fun as Vincent D'Onofrio's character is, he's the most trope-ridden bad guy I've seen in years. And even that would be acceptable (he IS fun to watch) if his character had any reason to exist. He doesn't. The movie didn't need him. The well-intentioned idiots running the park were doing fine mucking everything up without him. All he does is let the raptors loose, and honestly, that's a decision Owen could have made. It would have meant shifting his character slightly, but it also would have given Owen a flaw, which the movie kind of forgot to do. If he maybe had a little more pride in his raptor crew and maybe even a tiny bit of arrogance, it might have made him a little more believable as a character and it would have made the bad guy completely unnecessary.</div>
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And the whole "dinosaurs as weapons" subplot is dumb. They spend a LOT of time trying to make it seem plausible, but honestly, I don't buy it. The fact is, InGen is clearly already flush with cash. They don't need government military funding for Jurassic World. The idea that they would want to try and court the Department of Defense with barely-trained velociraptors and freakin' GODZILLA is so stupid that I actually wish they got someone from the DoD to show up just so he could tell Vincent D'Onofrio how crazy he was. "Drones are hackable? Yeah, well dinosaurs are breedable and I don't want terrorists sending their own mini-Godzillas after our troops." If you want to talk about something to cut from the film, THIS is what should have been chopped out.</div>
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Next, as I said, this movie is generally very predictable. You can imagine pretty much every single story beat from the end of the first act. That said, the movie does throw a few satisfying curve-balls, but one of them depends on something that's really hard to excuse.</div>
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The scientists keep Godzilla's genetic parts a mystery for most of the movie. This is pointless and stupid, especially when not having that information leads to the dinosaur's escape AND it causes one of their plans to fail completely and utterly in a way that I won't spoil.</div>
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I get that corporations like to keep secrets when it comes to their intellectual property, and that's fine, but when you aren't telling the people who are supposed to be designing mechanisms to keep them secure, or when you aren't giving full-disclosure TO THE CEO AFTER THE DINOSAUR IS ALREADY RUNNING AMOK? You are officially a moron. It's a cheap and contrived plot device to increase tension and make the dinosaur less predictable. It works in that regard, but it's a lazy way to make it work, and it FEELS lazy. Surprises should never feel cheap.</div>
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That said, there is ONE surprise that is set up and earned and ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL, so this isn't a problem that the movie suffers chronically, but that one aspect really bothered me.</div>
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Lastly, this movie feels like sequel-baiting. The scientist gets away with a bunch of eggs and DNA samples and stuff and we don't hear from him again, so he probably got away just to set things up for a sequel. I don't think that's a good idea. I really don't think you could do much more after this, unless they plan to go all-out with the dinosaurs-as-weapons idea, unless they plan to turn it into basically live-action Dino-Riders. Anything short of that will probably be a waste of time.</div>
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Conclusion</h4>
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Overall, while I understand that not everyone will like this movie, I would appreciate it if the people who didn't put a little more thought into articulating why they didn't like it. Otherwise, it just feels like they went into the movie EXPECTING to dislike it.</div>
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I would say that if you thought the trailer looked cool, you'll probably like the movie. If you thought the trailer looked stupid, you MIGHT still like the movie, but this really is the sort of movie you have to open yourself up to in order to fully enjoy. Some movies are good at getting you to open up even if you aren't initially interested. This movie isn't one of them. It moves forward assuming the audience is already interested. If you aren't it will just leave you behind.</div>
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So if you're not all that interested, maybe just skip it. But I don't think this movie will DISAPPOINT anyone. It's very fun and very satisfying and I was very glad they finally gave "Jurassic Park" a worthy sequel.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-594065316733233932014-08-18T12:30:00.000-04:002014-08-18T15:11:37.341-04:00"Silent Hills" and the Psychological Power of Video GamesIf you haven't heard, Konami announced that Hideo Kojima (mostly known for the creator of the "Metal Gear" franchise) would be teaming up with filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro (of late known for "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Pacific Rim") and actor Norman Reedus (known for his acting work in "The Walking Dead" as Daryl) to make the next game in the "Silent Hill" franchise, dubbed "Silent Hills".<br />
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I had heard this news last week and it sounded great to me, but I was rather busy last week, so I missed the other more interesting part of the story.<br />
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As it turns out, this announcement was not made at a press conference or an exclusive report or anything like that.<br />
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It was made through an enigmatic playable demo called "P.T.", or "Playable Teaser". While the teaser itself was announced at Gamescom last week and then subsequently released for free on PS4, its connection to "Silent Hill", Kojima, Del Toro, or Reedus was held back until players reached the end of the demo, at which point the initial teaser trailer was revealed.<br />
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This is a rather ingenious bit of marketing on its own, but what made it better was that the very last puzzle of the game demo was so difficult (you had to find a bunch of impossibly-hidden pieces of a picture, have a headset plugged into your controller, wait for two audio cues, stop moving completely for a few seconds, and then a phone rang) that it pretty much FORCED people to communicate about it online, making its buzz strong in certain circles of the internet long before its connections were even made known.<br />
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But I don't really want to talk too much about the game's marketing, because when I finally got to sit down and play "P.T." for myself... well, let's say I was a bit surprised. I was expecting something very short, something very straightforward, something that felt more like marketing rather than an actual demo.<br />
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What I got was probably the scariest game I've played since "Amnesia: Dark Descent", and I'd actually say that this game was scarier.<br />
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And it's not even a full game. It's not even really a demo because the content in the game won't even be in "Silent Hills". This is Kojima and Del Toro basically saying, "This is what we did <i>for fun</i>."<br />
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The mind reels at what the final product will be like.<br />
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Here's the thing. I'm not really big on horror games usually. I'm not really big on the horror genre in general. It's not so much that I don't like being scared, I just don't find being scared to be <i>fun</i>. Some people like getting frightened, and I understand and respect that, even if I don't count myself among them.<br />
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The problem with the majority of games and films in the horror genre is that they operate on the assumption that their audience just wants to be scared and that as long as they accomplish that, they're good to go. It's the same kind of lazy thinking that leads to action films where the filmmakers are only interested in making stuff blow up, or films for children that only seek to stimulate rather than engage young viewers. In order for me to be interested in watching a horror film, it has to be a <i>good movie</i>. It has to use fear for something other than a cheap thrill. And similarly, a video game in the horror genre has to be a <i>good game</i> for me to even consider playing it.<br />
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"Silent Hill" has been one of the few horror franchises I've dipped my toe into because when it's done well, it understands that horror is about more than just sudden loud noises and things jumping out at you from around the corner. It's about getting inside the player's head. Making them feel something other than just a pounding heartbeat.<br />
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However, since "Silent Hill" has left Japan to be produced by Americans and Europeans in recent years, it has generally lacked the same subtlety and balance the original four games tried to have. I admit I haven't played a number of these games, but it's fairly clear that none of these games have quite hit the mark. The game I thought came closest was "Shattered Memories", but while it managed to have improved gameplay and actually tried to focus on psychological scares rather than random jump scares, it... well, it wasn't very scary. The monsters weren't very interesting and didn't really reflect any deep psychological issues being dealt with in the story, the transition to the Otherworld segments was too telegraphed to provide any significant stress during the rest of the game (if the walls aren't made of ice, you can relax), and while the story was interesting, it didn't really deal with anything particularly difficult. It was just about daddy issues, and while it was interesting, it didn't have the same emotional punch some of the more successful "Silent Hill" games have had.<br />
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So when I played through "P.T." and got a glimpse of what Kojima and Del Toro had in store for us... I definitely think they get it.<br />
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When it comes to horror in video games, I believe it holds a power greater than horror in film. In a film, you can turn away, close your eyes, curl up, and wait for it to be over. You can't play a video game with your eyes closed (well, not typically anyway). In film, you holler at the protagonist to not open that door or to turn around and go home. In a video game, YOU are the one choosing to open the door and walk forward. Video games have all the visual and audible power of a film when it comes to horror, but they have the added benefit of making the player choose to keep going.<br />
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"P.T." does this beautifully.<br />
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First of all, the space in this game is incredibly small. You start in a room with a door. You walk through the door into a hallway. The hallway has a little nook with a clock and a plant. At the end of the hallway is a corner turning right. In that corner is a small counter with some pictures and food wrappers and other assorted junk strewn about. Then you turn to corner to another hallway. In this hallway, there's a door to your right leading to a bathroom. Further down the hallways is the foyer with another counter with more pictures and a radio and a door leading outside (that is, of course, locked) and another door further along the hallway. This door leads down a staircase to another door. Through that door... is the first hallway again with the clock and the plant.<br />
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This is the entire game space. A looping hallway. The hallway changes each time you go through it, of course. Sometimes you can't move on until you solve a puzzle, but in the end, you always just walk down the stairs and walk back out into the hallway for more.<br />
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The idea to use such limited space really evokes the original genius of the original "Silent Hill" games which utilized their limited budget and graphics capabilities by surrounding the entire town in fog. It's obvious that Kojima and company couldn't waste too much time and energy on a demo that wouldn't even be used for the final game. So they designed a simplistic scenario and turned it into an advantage.<br />
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The endlessly repeating hallway is incredibly unnerving because this game never gives you a moment to relax. You spend the entire game wanting to get out and to avoid the horrors you experience, but you just... can't. Even in some cases where you seemingly die and start over... it's just a continuation. Even death isn't an escape. It's torture, plain and simple. Your only option is to either stop playing (and forever wonder what awaited you) or simply force yourself to keep going, descending further and further down into bottomless repetition.<br />
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And that's kind of the point.<br />
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I don't want to spoil too much of the story in this game, but at the very beginning, you hear on the radio about a man who went crazy and slaughtered his family. While I don't think it's ever explicitly stated in the game, I think it's pretty damn clear that the character you play in "P.T." is the man himself. And this never-ending hallway and every single horror you face is his punishment for what he did.<br />
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But it's not enough that he be forced into a never-ending loop that he cannot escape. No, throughout the game, you can often only progress by directly confronting and acknowledging the horrible things he did, sometimes actively reenacting (at least symbolically) some of those acts. This is interesting because oftentimes, your instinct in a game like this is to avoid the scary stuff. Games like "Slender" are successful because they put the player at a conflict between wanting to find the pieces of the puzzle and wanting to avoid the horrible scary thing that they know is after them.<br />
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Part of what makes games like these work is the fact that the player goes in expecting to be scared. The choice to give this game a first-person perspective means that every corner is a potential scare. Every time you turn around, you don't know what could be lurking behind you. And even though you can get through this entire game and only experience one or two legitimate jump scares (although when I played it, I experienced five), you spend the entire time expecting them.<br />
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For example, through most of the beginning of the game, the bathroom door I mentioned is locked. After a few loops, you see it open a crack, but you can't go into it. However, the door to the stairwell is locked, so you have no choice but to explore, and that crack is all there is to explore. You can just barely make out the interior of the room. You can make out a sink... a toilet... maybe a mirror... but it's too dark. Then, without warning, a terrifying figure shows her face in the crack of the door and slams it shut. Then the door to the stairwell opens. When you loop around again, the bathroom door is still closed, but as you approach the stairwell (locked again, of course), you hear the bathroom door open behind you.<br />
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The terror this is meant to induce is transparently obvious. You know you saw SOMETHING in that bathroom. You know it was terrifying. You know you DON'T want to see it again. And yet... the stairwell is locked. You can't proceed. Sure, you could turn off the game, and I'm sure some people do, but... I couldn't. I had to know. And I knew that the only way to know would be to make the moronic decision to investigate the bathroom.<br />
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I move into the bathroom and can't really make anything out. I can tell that the woman isn't in there with me. I also see a flickering light on the floor. It's a flashlight. I don't want to pick it up. I don't want to see what's inside this bathroom. I don't want to limit my field of view to the floor, allowing something to jump up on me as I try to pick up the flashlight. So I leave the bathroom, just to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the stairwell is still locked and that picking up the flashlight is unavoidable. Of course it is, so I go back, clench my teeth, and pick up the flashlight.<br />
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The bathroom door shuts behind me. It's locked. At this point it becomes apparent... there's something in the bathroom sink. And the only way... the ONLY way I would be let out of the bathroom to continue descending deeper into the character's personal Hell is if I make him look directly at it with the flashlight. Bring it into focus so that it can't be avoided. Only once you face it will the door (slowly) open and let you proceed.<br />
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I won't tell you what it is. If you're curious, go ahead and watch a playthrough, or if you have a PS4, give the game a download.<br />
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The main reason I don't want to talk about it isn't necessarily because I want to keep it a surprise, but because some of the content of this game is PROFOUNDLY upsetting and the game has no qualms with rubbing your face in it.<br />
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The game surrounds you with upsetting and terrifying imagery and sounds and tells you that you have to solve puzzles to see more. WHO CAN SOLVE PUZZLES LIKE THIS!?!?<br />
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When you're frightened, the last thing you want to do is think logically. In this type of exploration-based puzzle game, the typical strategy is to just look around until you find the thing that's out of place, but this is exactly the kind of environment where you DON'T want to look around and explore. You just want to get to the end.<br />
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And that's the worst part. You have no idea how close you are to the end. How can you know when there's nothing to clue you in? I assumed it would be a short demo. Something minimalistic and simple that I could breeze through in about 15 minutes. It took me over an hour. Maybe two hours, I'm not sure. Each time it got worse, I thought, "It has to be over soon. How could it possibly get worse than this?" Then it kept going. It kept getting worse.<br />
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Once I got stuck in the red hallways (if you've played, you probably know what I'm talking about), I finally decided to find a walkthrough to figure out how to get through it, CONVINCED that I was in the last section of the game. NOPE. I still had about three more puzzles to solve first. At that point, I was just about ready to quit the game. "FUCK IT!" I thought. "I'm not putting myself through more of this. I'm done." But I couldn't let it go. I had to know. I knew that if I gave up, it would haunt me. That my imagination would probably be worse than the actual ending. So I forced myself to the end. And honestly, I'm glad I did, because the very last part is actually not that scary so long as you have a walkthrough handy (seriously, don't feel ashamed, you'll never figure out some of this stuff without help). Or at least, it's not as scary as what I would have imagined in my sleep that night. Once you get through it, the whole story comes together and you feel a certain sense of closure. Or at least <i>I</i> did.<br />
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I walked away from this game feeling like this man was paying for his crimes. The fact that I shared in his hellish torture for a few hours was certainly not an uplifting experience, but it's an experience I don't regret having. And while I certainly BELIEVE that the character I played as was the man who killed his own family getting what he deserved... since the game chooses to make this somewhat ambiguous and never truly confirms it means that I have to CHOOSE to believe that this Hell was meant for him. I don't want to believe that he merely escaped facing the horrors of his actions and left them for me to experience in his stead. And the idea that this is simply a belief tells me that how I choose to process the horrors of the world, both real and imagined, is in fact nothing more or less than a choice. And while our choices and beliefs affect the way we perceive reality, they do not, in fact, change it.<br />
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This game frightens me, but right now, what frightens me more is the realization that at some point, there will be an ENTIRE GAME made by the same people who created this little stroll through a certain pocket of Hell. I nearly lost myself trying to play through THIS. My girlfriend and I went to bed with the doors locked and knots in our stomachs. I don't know if I could handle a full-length game with this kind of intensity.<br />
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But I know that I want to. I want to see what this team is capable of when they aren't forced to constrain themselves to just one hallway.<br />
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I feel like they understand the potential of horror in games. They understand the power they can wield with it. And that is simultaneously exciting and mortifying.<br />
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"Silent Hills" could very well be the most frightening video game ever created.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-49326277150761449252014-06-09T12:45:00.000-04:002014-06-09T12:48:33.793-04:00Why Bill Watterson Will Probably Stay Retired<div>
Imagine you flipped a coin, and by some miracle, that coin landed on its side. You don't know how you did it and you don't know exactly how long it will last before it finally falls over, but after waiting and waiting, you see that it will only fall over if you choose to touch it again. What would you rather do? Pick it up, knowing that you probably won't ever be able to do it again, or let it sit and keep it that way, allowing it to remain in that miraculous position for as long as you can protect it?</div>
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Many people in my age group grew up with the comic strip "Calvin & Hobbes". When I was very young, my older brother and I were very fond of syndicated comic strips like "Garfield", "Dilbert", and of course, "Calvin & Hobbes". It was this fondness that eventually led us both into the world of webcomics, which has become something completely different, but more on that later. Regardless, some of those old comics perhaps didn't age quite so well. "Garfield" stopped being funny (unless you <a href="http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/">remove Garfield from it</a>), Scott Adams, the author of "Dilbert" turned out to be a <a href="http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/">huge asshole</a>, and eventually, almost everyone comes to the realization that the "funny pages" are really not all that funny.<br />
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And yet somehow, "Calvin & Hobbes" has remained beloved nearly twenty years after it ended syndication.</div>
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There are a number of reasons for this. The biggest (and most obvious) reason is that the comics themselves are great. They're rare in that they often speak to a child-like mentality and understanding of the world, but not in a way that talks <i>down</i> to a child. Calvin often resorts to existential observations of adult reality, not to sound smart or smug, but to attempt to justify why he shouldn't do as the adults in his life instruct him to do. This allowed the author, Bill Watterson, to use Calvin as a sort of mouthpiece for criticism on the adult world while still somehow retaining Calvin's childishness. Even when Calvin is discussing things most children wouldn't revisit until high school or college, he still comes off as a kid, and that is a really hard thing to pull off.</div>
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But another important reason "Calvin & Hobbes" has remained so beloved over the years is because Bill Watterson ended it, and he ended it well. The final comic strip for "Calvin & Hobbes" could probably be considered one of the greatest endings to a serialized narrative in any media format ever. Just look at "The Sopranos" or "Breaking Bad". No matter how good you are, endings are really hard to pull off and generally leave a lot of fans underwhelmed. But "Calvin & Hobbes" had an ending that was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It provided closure while still leaving us wanting more. It was beautiful and to this day I can't think of anyone who has said that they thought it was an unsatisfying conclusion to the strip.</div>
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A lot of people have wanted more "Calvin & Hobbes", or perhaps a "Calvin & Hobbes" film adaptation or something along those lines, but honestly, I don't think any true fans want more "Calvin & Hobbes". The collected works could stop a truck. I don't think we need <i>more</i>, particularly when it ended so well.</div>
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But what <i>has</i> left fans puzzled over these two decades is Bill Watterson's reclusivity. Given Watterson's bad history with the syndicates, it wasn't very surprising that he would not want to work on another comic strip, but I don't think a lot of people expected him to just drop off the map entirely. He finished "Calvin & Hobbes" in his 30's, so I think everyone expected him to produce <i>some</i> kind of creative work. And yet, he seemed to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger#Writing_in_the_1950s_and_move_to_Cornish">pull a Salinger</a>. He would rarely, if ever, give an interview, he would almost never sign books, and his creative writing work was pretty much limited to writing forewords for a number of books about comics and cartoonists.</div>
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However, in the past year, he seemed to come out into the daylight a little bit. Last October, he did a <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclusive-our-interview-bill-watterson">rare interview</a> with "Mental Floss", in February of this year, he did the poster for the documentary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_(film)">"Stripped"</a>, and just recently, it was revealed that <a href="http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-that-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-bill-watterson-would-return-to-the-comics-page-well-he-just-did/">he had been collaborating with Stephan Pastis</a>, author of the current syndicated comic strip, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearls_Before_Swine_(comics)">"Pearls Before Swine"</a>.</div>
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The strips themselves are clever and amusing, though hardly anything all that remarkable, excepting of course that it marks the (brief) return of Watterson to the world of syndicated cartooning after nearly two decades.</div>
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Seeing all of this Watterson activity over the past year has led to a great deal of speculation. Some people wonder if Watterson is thinking about making a comeback. Perhaps he's considering something special for the 20th anniversary of "Calvin & Hobbes"? Is this a sign that his early retirement is almost at an end?</div>
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However, after seeing the interview and some of his other public comments regarding these recent events, I've actually gotten the exact opposite impression. I think I finally understand why Bill Watterson will probably never truly return to any major commercial creative endeavor ever again.</div>
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And it's not just the reasons you might assume. Sure, he had major problems with the merchandising and struggled with maintaining creative integrity and all that, but his work has become so sought after that pretty much anybody with half a brain would give the man whatever he wanted. Just look at what Pastis said in his blog post talking about the recent collaboration:</div>
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…He had a comic strip idea he wanted to run by me.</blockquote>
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Now if you had asked me the odds of Bill Watterson ever saying that line to me, I’d say it had about the same likelihood as Jimi Hendrix telling me he had a new guitar riff. And yes, I’m aware Hendrix is dead.</blockquote>
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So I wrote back to Bill.</blockquote>
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“Dear Bill,</blockquote>
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I will do whatever you want, including setting my hair on fire.”</blockquote>
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Now, aside from just being hilarious, this does a nice job of explaining just how respected Watterson has become in the intervening years. And Pastis isn't exactly a nobody in the world of syndicated cartooning. "Pearls Before Swine" has been around and successful for almost as long as "Calvin & Hobbes" has been missing. And while I personally don't find his work particularly engaging, I can't deny that he is at this point a veteran of the industry and is not one to cast aside his pride so easily. And yet, here he is, completely willing to roll out the red carpet for Watterson and likening himself to a street urchin before Watterson's Michelangelo.<br />
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This is the impression Watterson left upon the world. This is the respect that people have for him. If he decided to come back, people would support him no matter what he wanted to do. If he wanted to compose a rap/polka fusion album, record labels would compete in the Hunger Games to decide who gets to sign him. They would let him do whatever the hell he wanted and they would let him sign any contract he wanted, just so that they could be allowed to sell something new with his name on it.<br />
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So no, I don't think artistic integrity has anything to do with his reluctance to create any new work, at least not at this stage.<br />
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Another reason people imagine he has remained a hermit is that he just enjoys his privacy. I think that this is probably true to an extent. Someone with Watterson's general exposure and introverted nature (and if you doubt that Watterson is an introvert, remind yourself that he spent ten years writing a comic about an outspoken and underestimated boy with an imaginary friend) probably doesn't like the fact that everything he does gets pounced on by the media and his fans like a pack of starved hyenas. Not just because he doesn't enjoy that kind of exposure, but also because he doesn't want to feel like he's exploiting his fanbase. He's been doing some painting in the intervening years, but he has never once considered putting them up for auction largely because he seems to know that if they sold well, it would be because of his name, not because of the work itself. It would seem like he's cashing in and it would devalue the work he creates in any case. Besides which, it seems his painting is more self-indulgent and less something he would even want to share in the first place (though I imagine when he passes away, his paintings will be highly sought after and showcased in a museum or something, regardless of his intent).<br />
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I do think that these two aspects contribute to his Salinger-ness, but I think that they are merely facets to a much bigger, but also simpler reason for his extended absence: After all these years, he's still on top.<br />
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I imagine that when he first went on hiatus after "Calvin & Hobbes" he probably did think he'd make some kind of comeback eventually. Maybe not to syndicated comics, but I imagine he thought he'd produce <i>something</i> new at some point. But I do imagine he felt the need to recharge and distance himself from the corporate nightmare he finally managed to escape from. Then, I imagine he became somewhat reclusive simply because that's just the way he is. As I said, he's an introvert.<br />
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I think he probably thought he'd fade into obscurity and be able to create something new and rebuild his notoriety from scratch when he eventually returned, allowed to create what he wanted without having to create it within the shadow of his previous work. However, that's not what happened. "Calvin & Hobbes" only became more beloved over time and his decision to step away from the spotlight only made his rare appearances that much more visible. For a while, he snuck to a local bookstore to secretly sign a few books, but when he found out they were being auctioned for ridiculous prices, he stopped. This sounds like the kind of person that wants to engage on some small level with his fans, but not get caught up in the whirlwind of celebrity.<br />
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Even so, I think rather than sour his outlook on life, he eventually came to the realization that maybe he <i>shouldn't</i> create anything new. I mean, why should he? A work that he was proud of and that he was able to finish the way he wanted to became regarded as a masterpiece and a sort of pinnacle for the medium. The medium itself has been slowly vanishing into a pixelated world, a world that Watterson himself does not find particularly interesting (and Pastis seems to confirm that Watterson is not particularly big on technology).<br />
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When he ended "Calvin & Hobbes", Watterson likened it to leaving the party early. Coming out of retirement at this point would be the equivalent of coming back while the party is cleaning up and people are drawing crude markings in Sharpie on the faces of people who passed out on the couch. Even if he did have anything substantial to add, what would it accomplish? He produced "Calvin & Hobbes" at the height of the syndicated comic strip and revolutionized it in his own small way. At this point, it's a service indebted to those who still buy newspapers, not really a challenging creative medium. Watterson's talent would largely be wasted on it.<br />
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And Watterson himself has no interest in moving on to the next stage in comic evolution. We will never see a Watterson webcomic. Watterson will never own a Cintiq, he'll never set up a booth at a con, and he'll never set up a Patreon (though if he did, I'm sure he'd probably break the service). Here's a bit from that Metal Floss interview where he talks about the future of comics:<br />
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Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I’m old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they’ll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won’t be the same as what I grew up with. </blockquote>
So let's look at the big picture here. He's been out of the game for almost 20 years. The game itself has changed a lot in those years. The work he last produced has gone from celebrated to beloved to deified. When he does come out of his cave, even for a moment, everyone pays attention to everything he says and does. When he does feel like putting new work out into the public, he can auction it off and raise thousands of dollars for charity, largely because of the fact that his work is so rare. He maintains his hard-won privacy after all these years despite the continued popularity of his work, and he's in his mid-50's.<br />
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I imagine from his point of view, he'd have very little to gain from any further significant artistic output (and what would he want <i>more</i> public adoration for at this point anyway?), but he'd have everything to lose if it didn't live up to people's expectations. If he produced something mediocre, it would cost him his notoriety, it would devalue his existing work, and he would continue to get badgered by people asking him to do more work to make up for it (or to stop "ruining" his previously created works, a la George Lucas).<br />
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So really, put yourself in Watterson's shoes. What would you do?<br />
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In my mind, I imagine I'd do exactly what he's been doing. Keep to myself, enjoy the comfortable life I'd earned, keep busy with personal projects out of the public eye, and every once in a while make a small contribution to the public creative world, but on my own terms and in a way that didn't have high enough stakes to potentially jeopardize my life or creative legacy. I mean, just look at these "Pearls Before Swine" strips. Imagine if they had been hyped up beforehand. "Watterson Makes a Return This Week!" Everyone would have been going nuts, only to see the three pretty amusing strips that we got. "That was it?" Even worse, imagine if this was a "Calvin & Hobbes" comic. There would have been riots in the streets over something as average as this. But because it was announced retroactively and it was a part of something most Watterson fans generally don't have any strong opinions about one way or the other, it was just seen as a gift. A gift that we can all appreciate, not necessarily for its quality or for what it "means", but just as a nice gesture that Watterson chose to leave us.<br />
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His guest art feels like a big deal, but it works because it is small.<br />
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The only thing that I think could possibly bring Watterson out of retirement would be if he had an idea that he simply couldn't <i>not</i> create. Something worthy of returning to the public eye and gambling the legacy that had been built up. He is, after all, a creative person, and sometimes a creative person gets an idea in their brain that they need to express to the world or they risk losing their mind over it.<br />
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Perhaps Watterson has found that itch. Perhaps this work and his work on "Stripped" is a sign that he's been brushing up on his skills with the intent to go once more into the breach...<br />
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But I find that unlikely. I think that Watterson will still poke his head out every once in a while for the rest of his life. And maybe he will in fact do a little something for "Calvin & Hobbes" to mark the 20th anniversary. Probably something small and cute and nostalgic. Maybe an adult Calvin passing Hobbes on to a child or something. However, I sincerely doubt Watterson has any intention to create anything of particular substance.<br />
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I don't think he's crazy or resentful or selfish. I think he's a rare individual who knows to quit while he's still ahead. I know I've been beating on this one a lot, but really think about it. It's been <i>20 years</i> and people are <i>still</i> going crazy over "Calvin & Hobbes".<br />
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Remember what I said in the beginning about the coin flip landing on its side? I figure that's how Watterson feels. At first, I figure he was probably humbled by the popularity of "Calvin & Hobbes". "Wow, isn't that cool!" But it just <i>kept going</i>, and now... now I imagine he sees "Calvin & Hobbes" as something else entirely.<br />
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For me, the moment when this all clicked into place was when I read that Mental Floss interview and saw this bit at the end:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?</b></blockquote>
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I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.</blockquote>
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I know this bit is meant as a joke, but let's not forget, this is <i>Bill Watterson</i>. This man has held a very firm stance against the licensed and unlicensed commercialization of his work. And here he is, joking that those decals that represent that very thing he fought so hard to prevent were his "ticket to immortality".<br />
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I'm not entirely sure he was completely joking.<br />
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Crude and crass as they are, those decals have become a part of the popular culture zeitgeist as an extension of the overwhelming influence "Calvin & Hobbes" has had. I think the reason Bill Watterson can now have a sense of humor about these decals is because a part of him feels like he no longer truly owns "Calvin & Hobbes". Just as with the miraculous coin flip, I believe Watterson has chosen to protect this little miracle rather than to try and "own" it. And I don't expect anything will convince him otherwise.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-76099219996565143092014-04-04T12:14:00.000-04:002014-04-21T11:56:23.312-04:00"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Review - When Captain America Throws His Mighty S.H.I.E.L.D.As far as the standalone Marvel Cinematic Universe movies go, my favorite has always been "Captain America: The First Avenger". I wouldn't necessarily say it was the "best" of the standalone films, that's a judgement that's far more difficult to pass and also a far less interesting discussion (at least for me). But it was always my favorite. It felt like one part "Raiders of the Lost Arc", one part "The Dirty Dozen", and it never once tried to approach its material with irony or self-awareness. On top of that, the cast was great and diverse, the story blended seamlessly into the ever-expanding MCU with references to "Thor" and "Iron Man 2" all over the place, and it was just plain <i>fun</i>. It was unique, it was interesting, it was entertaining, it was bold. I loved it.<br />
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Still, I always had to give it the qualifier that it was my favorite <i>standalone</i> MCU movie. Obviously, "Avengers" was always my favorite in the MCU canon. How could it not be? It was smart, it was impressive, and it was indulgent in all the best ways.<br />
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So when I say that "Captain America: The Winter Solider" is my favorite MCU movie as well as the <i>best</i> MCU movie to date, I want it acknowledged that I say this without qualifiers. Not only do I enjoy it more than any other MCU movie to date (including "Avengers"), I would argue that it is objectively <i>better</i> than any other MCU movie to date (including "Avengers").<br />
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If you care at all about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you <i>need</i> to see this movie. That is without question. You <i>need</i> to. Plain and simple. Heck, even if you don't care about the MCU, you should probably still see this movie.<br />
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That said, I don't think this movie is for <i>everyone</i>. For example, this movie probably wouldn't pass the Pat's Mother Test, that is to say, if my mother would fall asleep while watching it, it fails the test. A good chunk of this movie is action and intrigue and that sort of thing just bores certain people. I don't personally understand why, but some people also dislike chocolate and pizza and some people love <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie">Moxie</a>.<br />
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If I were to try and describe this movie, I'd probably say it's like a Bourne movie if Jason Bourne fought like Tony Jaa on PCP, carried a shield, was a really good guy, and was friends with superheroes.<br />
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The fight scenes are <u>incredible</u> (note: I underlined that shit), the car chase scenes are some of the best I've seen since "Blues Brothers" (coincidentally, one also happens to feature a whole mess of police cars chasing the good guy), the plot is well-crafted and makes internal sense, the dialogue is never pointless and always interesting (and often funny without breaking the tone), and the movie understands the MCU continuity better than any other standalone movie since... well, since "Captain America: The First Avenger".<br />
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That's all I'm really willing to say before going into spoiler territory. If the above doesn't interest you, you might not like the movie. If you're looking for a big romance subplot or a straightforward good vs. evil story or a story where problems are solved neatly and without a lot of violence... This isn't your movie. Sorry! That said, if you tend to enjoy action films or spy films or superhero films, you <i>need</i> to see this movie. So go do that and join me for some <b>SPOILERS...</b><br />
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OK, so this isn't <i>just</i> a movie about Captain America adjusting to our crazy modern world. That is definitely a big part of it, but I'd say most of it gets rounded out in the first act of the film. It's good, but it's not the central point of the film. Nor is the titular Winter Soldier, who anyone who's picked up a Cap comic in the past decade would know is actually a brainwashed and weaponized Bucky Barnes.<br />
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No, probably the biggest plot point of this film (and probably one of its biggest spoilers) is that it's pretty much about the total destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the hands of Captain America and his pals. Why? Because S.H.I.E.L.D. had become covertly taken over by HYDRA, the rogue Nazi group Cap fought in the first movie.<br />
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This is a pretty big deal, especially since this is the last Earth-based Marvel movie we're getting before "Avengers: Age of Ultron". S.H.I.E.L.D. has been omnipresent since "Iron Man", though they were less present in "Iron Man 3" and "Thor: The Dark World". They were the glue that held the MCU together, and now they've been dissolved. The Avengers will go into their next movie without having any kind of authority to back them up or guide them along. Nick Fury won't be around to settle their disputes with some bloody trading cards this time. And God only knows how this will affect the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." show. Will Coulson and his team operate independently? Will they try to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D.? It's anybody's guess and it's not really the point of this review.<br />
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My point is, this is the first time Marvel has been willing to shake up the foundation of its universe this completely. They've put so much work into building this connected universe that being willing to rip out the spine of the universe in order to see if it can still stand is a pretty impressive move.<br />
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Although now that S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone, it seems less like a spine and more like an umbilical cord. It was instrumental during the development process, but now that the Avengers have left the womb, all it could really do is possibly trip up or strangle someone. So away it goes. At least for now.<br />
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This movie has a lot of twists and turns, but for me, the biggest shocker was the reveal that Agent Jasper Sitwell, one of the few characters who shares a name with a <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Jasper_Sitwell_%28Earth-616%29">S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the comics</a> and who was present in the Marvel One-Shots "The Consultant" and "Item 47" as well as "Thor" and a number of episodes of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." was working for HYDRA all along. And then he also dies somewhat hilariously.<br />
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Maybe this is just me, but I always liked Sitwell. He was cool in the same way Coulson was cool. He appeared to be a dull bureaucrat on the surface, but beneath that surface dwelled a ruthless and experienced killing machine. Plus I thought he was funny. I, for one, will miss him.<br />
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The movie also handles the "surprise" of Bucky being the Winter Soldier very well. They knew that half the audience would know going in and the other half would probably figure it out pretty quickly, so they opted to reveal it towards the middle of the movie, where everything is going to hell all at once.<br />
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And that brings me to this movie's greatest strength.<br />
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It's very easy for a movie like this to try and do too many things or to bank everything on one major secret or reveal. With a spy thriller, the secrets can become nebulous and the surprises can start to feel inane and convoluted. However, if you go in the opposite direction and have all of the weird things all tie into just one or two major plot points, there's a good chance your audience will figure things out before the characters and start getting bored.<br />
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What "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" does incredibly well is that it introduces a lot of individual threads of plot and character, but it keeps them all simple enough that they manage to create complexity through its simplicity.<br />
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Let me try and explain.<br />
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There's a <i>lot</i> going on in this movie. You have Cap, you have Winter Soldier, you have Black Widow, you have Falcon, you have Peggy Carter, you have Nick Fury, you have Maria Hill, you have Agent 13, you have Alexander Pierce, you have Brock Rumlow, you have Agent Sitwell, you have (gasp!) Arnim Zola, you have the World Security Council, you have that one senator guy from "Iron Man 2"... And then for plots, you have Cap adjusting to modern times, S.H.I.E.L.D. developing a program to counter global threats preemptively, S.H.I.E.L.D. being corrupted from within, Alexander Pierce trying to complete HYDRA's plan without tipping off the good guys or the World Security Council, the identity of the Winter Soldier and how he's still alive and why he's a bad guy now...<br />
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That's a lot of plates to spin, but the great thing about it all is that most of those pieces are, on their own, very simple, but there are so many moving parts that a lot of the films biggest surprises are hiding in plain sight.<br />
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Let me give one of my favorite examples of this.<br />
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Black Widow is a very prominent presence in this movie. She's around most of the time. She has about as much screen time as Cap. Yet when we jump into the third act action set-piece, she's nowhere to be found. And because there's just <i>so much</i> going on in this movie, I didn't even realize she was missing until it was revealed that she was disguised as one of the members of the World Security Council so that she could take down Alexander Pierce. So the movie managed to surprise me with a fairly simple ruse, not through a convoluted plot or a fakeout, but through very simple misdirection. And it's this kind of surprise-building that really separates this movie from the other MCU movies. I loved "Avengers", but I hoped that there would be more twists and turns than we got. It was surprisingly straight-forward and difficult to spoil. Most of the surprises came from gags or little character moments, not from plot. This was the first MCU movie that kept me guessing all the way through, and that's what really sets it apart for me.<br />
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And also, because each of these pieces are simple on their own, the movie never really feels overstuffed. Nothing feels undercooked or included for the sake of including something. Everything has a reason for being there and everything is given enough time to add to the overall momentum of the film.<br />
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I think that's a good word to describe this movie: Momentous. Not just that it carries through the momentum from the movies that came before it, hitting the ground running from the very beginning (no, seriously, the movie begins with Cap running), but it continues to build on that with each subsequent scene. This isn't a movie that's content with staying in one place.<br />
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While I knew that Markus and McFeely would be good writers for this, I wasn't sure how the Russo Brothers would turn out as directors. They did good work on "Community", and while "A Fistful of Paintballs" proved that Joe Russo had some chops when it came to directing action, I never really expected them to direct a political superhero spy thriller. But bringing them on to direct this was a very good call. Also the Danny Pudi cameo was very much welcome (I actually would love it if they referenced this cameo in "Community" much in the same way they acknowledged Danny Pudi's cameo in "Cougartown").<br />
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All in all, there's really no dead weight here. No bad actors, no useless characters, no stupid plot contrivances, no cop-outs, no cheap effects. And for a movie of its length and scope, that's quite an achievement.<br />
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It also manages to get "dark" without getting "gritty", and that's mostly thanks to the presence of Cap. Cap is the idealist and he really balances out all of the paranoia, fear, and back-stabbing going on throughout the movie. This is also easily one of the most brutally violent film in the MCU. I'm actually surprised they got away with a PG-13 on this in some places. People get shot, stabbed, crushed, burned, combusted, chopped up by turbines, electrocuted, and punched. I mean, we don't really see any gore or anything, but the camera rarely shies away from the action, and the result is probably the most violent PG-13 movie I've seen in a long time. Not that I'm complaining, I just don't think parents who have a problem with that sort of thing should take that rating lightly.<br />
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I also like that there's no contrived romance going on. There's a little bit of flirting and some foreshadowing regarding Agent 13 (who the movies have yet to openly acknowledge is Sharon Carter, but she <i>probably is</i>) and we get to find out what happened to Peggy in a very sad and touching scene, but the women aren't here to revolve around the male characters. While the movie probably fails the Bechdel Test, it definitely passes the Mako Mori Test with flying colors.<br />
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Oh, and I only touched on this briefly but HOLY FUCK ARNIM ZOLA SHIT SHIT SHIT. I definitely did not expect him to show up this quickly, nor did I expect him to be the mastermind behind the whole HYDRA resurgence. I nearly flew out of my chair in excitement and surprise.<br />
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And I think that's what really separates this movie from the other MCU movies for me. I was completely absorbed the whole way through and it kept on surprising me. And each surprise felt natural and reasonable. It made sense that S.H.I.E.L.D. would recruit Zola. After all, his intelligence is what allowed them to take down HYDRA, and it's a known historical fact that the U.S. recruited a lot of Nazi scientists for various projects for the military and NASA. And it makes sense that Zola, who always seemed uneasy regarding Red Skull's zeal and lack of subtlety, would be inclined to rebuild HYDRA slowly, carefully, and secretly. And it makes sense that S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization that (as we've seen in "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.") is very big on compartmentalizing and keeping secrets between different levels of agents, would have something like Zola's HYDRA festering inside it without anyone knowing.<br />
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This also brings one of the most interesting things about the movie to the forefront. Zola's plan is basically to use all of the massive amounts of information gathered about everyone in the world (by S.H.I.E.L.D.) to kill all the undesirables with incredible precision. A Death Star with the accuracy of a laser pointer. So the bad guy's plan is to abuse an overabundance of intelligence and information in the modern world. But the reason he can get away with it is because S.H.I.E.L.D. is way too wrapped up in keeping secrets and stopping leaks. The message seems contradictory, but it's not. To me, the message is that an organization without any accountability or transparency (even from within itself) probably shouldn't be in charge of all of the world's secrets. This has obvious parallels to the NSA, but it seems to say less that "what the NSA did was bad" and more that "what the NSA did is super-dangerous if they have no oversight, transparency, or accountability".<br />
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This movie is <i>excellent</i>. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you excited, it makes you think, and it has superheroes in it. What more could you want out of a Cap movie?Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-66651325824301362992014-02-13T12:30:00.000-05:002014-02-13T12:30:38.167-05:00Pokémon X and Y: Two Steps Forward...I know this review is long overdue, but I just didn't feel comfortable giving the game my full assessment until the Pokémon Bank was officially released in North America, and that sadly didn't happen until very recently. I know it's technically an add-on and somewhat separate from the game, but since the release of the Bank has greatly impacted the Pokémon community since there were over 100 Pokémon previously unavailable, not to mention a large number of moves and abilities locked away as well, it seemed unwise to give my full assessment of the game until now.<br />
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First, a little backstory. I'll try to keep this brief. I've been playing Pokémon since Gen I. I haven't maintained the same level of interest my whole life, but I was there at the beginning and I'm here now. The Pokémon anime was what originally got me hooked on anime, I was crowned a Champion at the PAX Pokémon League at PAX East 2013, I have a living Pokédex entirely composed of legit Pokémon, and I own at least one game from every generation. What I say, I say from the perspective of someone who has witnessed this franchise wax and wane over the years and who still actively loves it, warts and all.<br />
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Story</h3>
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Let me be frank. The story for Pokémon has never been particularly engaging. That's not to say the stories haven't been well-written. I actually think the story for "X/Y" had a pretty interesting narrative with surprisingly complex characters, given the sorts of characters we've seen in the past.</div>
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But even with the story elements improving as they have, the story itself is still not even close to being <i>engaging</i>. This was more readily apparent in "Black/White" where the story involved what seemed to be dozens of characters, all of whom were doing far more interesting things than your character was doing, but it's still rather apparent here. The problem with the story in most Pokémon games is that the story that want to tell is not the story you're experiencing. The story you experience in "X/Y", and indeed, the story you experience in <i>every</i> core Pokémon game, is the story of an adolescent who gets a Pokémon, defeats a series of gym leaders, and then defeats the local Elite Four to challenge and claim the title from the Champion. There are sometimes other plots that happen in the background, such as the shenanigans of Team Rocket or what have you, but unless those plots intersect with the protagonist's journey in some meaningful way, it's just frustratingly tangential.</div>
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The problem I had with "Black/White" and to a lesser extent, "X/Y", is how whenever the background tangential narrative shows up, it grinds <i>my</i> narrative to a screeching halt. One or more of my stupid "friends" shows up to chat me up about how some character I don't care about is doing something off-screen that only affects characters that are also off-screen. Even if someone ends up battling me along the way, I don't <i>care</i> because the outcome of that battle, win or lose, doesn't impact my character's journey. If I lose to my rival, that impacts the journey because in my narrative, that character is my direct competition, the ruler by which I measure my progress. When I'm tasked with postponing my badge-hunt to fight off some bad guys in a nearby system of caves, I really couldn't give less of a crap, particularly when doing so involves multiple cutscenes where my character stands around silently while other characters talk about stuff that doesn't really concern me. "Black/White" was <i>really</i> bad about this in particular, where every side-quest seemed to involve every single gym leader who had to show up constantly and monologue about the same boring pointless stuff over and over again. All of this stuff was happening <i>at</i> me, not <i>with</i> me.</div>
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That's why I think my favorite game plot in the series is "Diamond/Pearl". It's roughly the same story as "Red/Blue", but with interesting twists. Your rival is your friend rather than some punk kid, and in an odd twist, he ends up failing to defeat the Champion. I actually felt a little bad for Barry when I finally surpassed him just before facing the Elite Four. Team Galactic's main focus was to summon the legendary Pokémon that you want to capture and their actions also spawn the wandering Pokémon as a result, so their actions directly impact your journey as a player. Yeah, I know that the other Teams often try to involve the legendary Pokémon <i>du jour</i> into their schemes, but Team Galactic's <i>entire plan</i> centered around those Pokémon, whereas Team Flare just used the legendary Pokémon as a power source or something.</div>
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As I said, "X/Y" isn't <i>quite</i> as bad as in "Black/White". At least "X/Y" doesn't contrive the story so that you save the world <i>by</i> defeating the Elite Four (I mean, <i>seriously</i>?). However, it still doesn't manage to connect the narrative in a way that doesn't feel tacked-on or frustrating for the pacing of the game.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I know some people enjoy the story, and I understand why. To those people, the point of Pokémon <i>is</i> the journey. When they defeat the Champion, the game is over for them. For me, the point where I defeat the Champion is where the game effectively <i>starts</i>. Defeating the Champion is my way of proving myself within that game, showing that I'm ready to take on whatever challenges are left in this game's world. Once I have usurped the Champion's throne, I am ready to catch 'em all, breed better Pokémon, train my A-team, and pit them against even greater foes. As such, when the story feels like it's slowing down the hero's journey rather than supplementing it, it feels like a pointless distraction to me. And sometimes the fact that these stories are completely at odds with one another is just aggravating.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For example, at a certain point in the game, you are challenged by a certified Gym Leader outside of a Gym. At first I thought this was incredible. A Gym Battle without the chance to prepare ahead of time. The pressure was on. Still, I managed to squeeze out a victory in spite of my lack of preparation and I was eager to receive my badge. Except once I win, she just walks away and tells you to challenge her again when you travel into the next town.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
OK, seriously, <i>what</i>!? I defeated you! Yeah, you were using a Pokémon that you only just barely obtained, but that's not <i>my</i> fault. I'm not the Gym Leader who decides to make random challenges for kicks. If you're a Gym Leader and you challenge a Pokémon trainer to a match and you then <i>lose</i>, you should be expected to give them your badge. That's just how this sort of thing is supposed to work. I proved I was better than her, so she should be expected to give me proof of that. But no, that battle was just to tie into the side-plot involving the Mega Stones.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You see what I mean? That part of the game could have easily intersected with the primary motivation of the protagonist, but they deliberately decided not to because they arbitrarily decided that badges can only be earned if you beat the Leader <i>inside</i> the Gym. Which makes that entire battle nothing but a stupid delay to getting that Leader's badge.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm not saying they need to scale back the story to match the limited scope of a game like "Diamond/Pearl", I'm saying that if they want the story to be bigger, they have to jettison the traditional badge-collecting story arc. I know it sounds like blasphemy, but the story doesn't <i>have</i> to be about a newbie trainer climbing up the ranks to take on the Elite Four. We don't <i>have</i> to make badge-collection the sole driving force for the game's momentum. There are plenty of trainers in the game world who don't go around collecting badges and they seem to be the people having the fun, interesting adventures since they seem compelled to interrupt me with them every time I walk into their stupid town. Maybe make the story about a gym leader whose gym loses its certification and she has to relegitimize her status as a gym leader through a journey of self-discovery. It could be a fun way to learn how gyms come to exist and what a leader has to do to qualify.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Presentation</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't need to spend too much time on this because this has already been gushed over for months now. "X/Y" is gorgeous, at least comparatively. No more immobile sprites, no more limited 4-directional movement, no more boring one-size-fits-all character design for the protagonist.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's worth noting that we should have <i>expected</i> this kind of presentation for "Black/White", but whatever, better late than never. I'm a little disappointed that the visualized Pokémon battles are still more or less between two stationary Pokémon shooting art at one another as in the age-old "Pokémon Stadium", but it's undeniably great to see these Pokémon visualized in full CG.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I find it weird that they decided to give Pikachu the ability to say its name in-combat while still retaining everyone else's original digital cries, but here's hoping they expand this to the rest of the roster in the future.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Core Mechanics</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
OK, this is the part where <i>I</i> gush.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"X/Y" does so much with this series' mechanics, some of which I have been <i>dying</i> to get for years.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can finally breed legit Pokémon with perfect IVs without manipulating the random number generator thanks to new mechanics introduced for the Destiny Knot.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Male Pokémon can pass down Hidden Abilities while breeding with Ditto.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can battle online without having to go to a Pokémon Center.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can save more than one battle video online and you can set up mock battles based on the Pokémon you played against (this is particularly great if you want to test out possible counters).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Berry Fields are back and streamlined to make the Berry mechanics actually kind of fun (in a "Harvest Moon" kind of way).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The new and improved Exp. Share and O-Powers have made breeding and leveling-up Pokémon so much easier. I can activate the Breeding Power and use a Magcargo to hatch four new Pokémon about every 5 minutes and the Experience Power plus the Lucky Egg plus Affection bonuses to get a Pokémon to level 50 or above through one round of the Elite Four. It's glorious.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Pokémon-Amie and the Affection mechanic, while effectively pointless outside of the main game except for a couple evolutions, is surprisingly engaging and makes me feel a bit more bonded with the Pokémon on my team. Very adorable.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Super Training has made EV training a central mechanic rather than a thing only weird people (like me) obsessed over. Also, it's made resetting EVs quite a bit easier too. Don't get why EV-training items don't work with it though. That's kind of a weird oversight.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can search for Pokémon on the GTS even if you haven't seen them in-game yet by typing in their name. Very helpful, especially during the month or so where Japan had tons of Pokémon no one else had.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Wonder Trade is a great way to dump Pokémon you don't want and a great way to stumble upon the occasional rare find.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Fairy typing adds some much needed balance to Dragon Pokémon which have reigned supreme for far too long.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And of course, the Pokémon Bank, while inexcusably delayed to a ridiculous degree, is an <i>excellent</i> idea and a very welcome mechanic for solving the "Generation Gap" problem they'd been facing for years.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I know some people have their complaints about the Pokémon Bank. I mean, I can't deny that the Bank and Transporter are REALLY badly designed. You can only transfer Box 1 from Black/White, so every time you use Transporter, you have to open up Black/White and drag and drop every Pokémon you want to transfer into Box 1, one at a time. When you use the Transporter, it loads all of the new Pokémon into a temporary storage box and you can't transfer any more until you've emptied it completely. Oh, and once again, you have to drag and drop every single individual Pokémon from the temporary box into either your Bank or your X/Y game. And you need to have the X/Y cartridge available to use Bank. So for me, in order to transfer my living Pokédex in "Pokémon Black" to my copy of "Pokémon Y", here's what I had to go through:<br />
Step 1) Insert "Pokémon Black"<br />
Step 2) Open "Pokémon Transporter"<br />
Step 3) Transfer Box 1 from "Pokémon Black" into the Bank's temporary storage<br />
Step 4) Swap "Pokémon Black" for "Pokémon Y"<br />
Step 5) Open "Pokémon Bank"<br />
Step 6) Drag and drop all 30 Pokémon from temporary storage into my copy of "Pokémon Y" and save<br />
Step 7) Swap "Pokémon Y" for "Pokémon Black"<br />
Step 8) Go into "Pokémon Black" and drag and drop all my Pokémon from the next available PC Box into Box 1 and save<br />
Step 9) Repeat Steps 2-8 <b><i>22 TIMES</i></b><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
I can't deny that all of that is really annoying and it definitely took me WAY too long to transfer over my Pokémon. And yeah, waiting close to three months for a product that should have been available from the beginning, only to have it delayed again for another month and some change, and then being expected to pay $5 for it is a bit ridiculous. I'll grant all that.<br />
<br />
But seriously. You want annoying? Try transferring Pokémon from Gen III to Gen IV. That's right, the Pal Park. Where you can only send six Pokémon at a time and you have to wander around a closed area for half an hour just to find them all and capture them without even really battling them. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you can only use it once every 24 hours. And nope, screwing with the clock doesn't help. If you change the time, it will reset the clock and make you wait <i>another</i> 24 hours. Why does it have this limitation? I have no idea, but brother, if you think the new Pokémon Bank is frustrating, you don't know how good you have it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That said, I probably would have appreciated it immensely if they released the Pokémon Transporter tool separately. There's really no reason why you shouldn't be able to transfer Pokémon from Gen V to Gen VI without needing the Internet to get involved. It's pretty obvious they only want to do it to try and curb hacking (though apparently they haven't done a very good job there either) and to get people to actually <i>want</i> to use the Pokémon Bank storage service. In any case, now that it's here, the Bank is a more than welcome addition and should make carrying over to future generations much easier. Now that I'm done transferring my Pokémon from "Pokémon Black", Bank's design isn't <i>so</i> terrible and it gives me a little more peace of mind in the (albeit unlikely) event of me losing my save data or cartridge. I'd say that's worth the $5/year.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As for mechanics I'm not so crazy about... Well, I guess I'm going to join the choir of people who were disappointed with the small number of new Pokémon this time around. I guess I'm not <i>that</i> disappointed since we got to see all of the other Pokémon in full CG and there are a bunch of new Mega Evolutions on top of that (more on that later), but it did make the main story that much more of a trudge to get through. Without even trying, I managed to stumble across almost every single new Pokémon in the Kalos Pokédex before even getting the National Pokédex. Kind of underwhelming.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I also really, really miss the Pokétch from "Diamond/Pearl". That thing was so damn useful! It had a step counter, a daycare monitor, a happiness meter, a calculator... I seriously wish they would bring that thing back.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I pretty much despise the layout of Lumiose City. Granted, you can pretty much just use a cab to get where you need to go and not have to deal with it, but it drives me up the wall. I can never tell where I am because the only major landmark the city has is in the center of it and when the city is shaped like a circle, knowing where the center is is completely useless.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Horde Battles seemed really cool for about five seconds until I realized that you can't throw a Pokéball until there's only one Pokémon left. Talk about tedious.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why the <i>heck</i> do you have to find a roaming Pokémon 12 times before being able to battle/capture them? All it does is drive the player completely batty.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lastly, the GTS, while slightly improved, is still incredibly underdeveloped. When you are browsing for a Pokémon you want, you can only search by their species name, their gender, and their level range. And that wouldn't be <i>so</i> bad if you could still <i>see</i> the rest of the info about each Pokémon, but nope. Before you agree to a trade, you have absolutely no idea what that Pokémon's Nature is, what its present stats are, or what moves it has. But that's OK, because they now give you a little blurb to describe the Pokémon to prospective traders. Because surely no one would <i>ever </i>lie about the Pokémon they're trading, right?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/XtKSCXX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/XtKSCXX.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Oh, but that's OK, because at least you can see what <i>item it's carrying</i>. Because that's <i>clearly</i> such <i>vital</i> information. Oh, and it has the weird little blue icon! At least now I know <i>it's legit</i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yeah, I know that most players are just looking to fill out their Pokédexes and don't care about IVs, Natures, or Egg Moves, but the vast majority of the people who will use the GTS in the long-term will be using it to build up better teams and it's really hard to do so when you have no idea whether or not the Pokémon you're about to receive is what you need.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Metagame and Online Battle Mechanics </h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You'll notice I didn't really mention Mega Evolution in the previous section. Well, that's because as a game mechanic on its own, it's not really that big of a deal. It's pretty cool and breathes some new life into some older, forgotten Pokémon, but I doubt I used it very much during the main story.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When it comes to Online Battling and the Pokémon competitive metagame, however, Mega Evolution is a pretty big deal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a way I was a bit surprised at how much Mega Evolution mattered in the new metagame. After all, Mega Evolution requires you to sacrifice a held item slot, something most competitive players wouldn't do lightly, and for the most part, Mega Evolution doesn't generally do much aside from boost a Pokémon's base stats a bit. However, as we rapidly found out, Mega Evolution sometimes did way more than that.</div>
<div>
<br />
Enter Mega-Kangaskhan, one of the first banned Pokémon of the new metagame.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yes, you heard right. Kangaskhan.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why is that? Well, it's true, Kangaskhan's Mega Evolved form has some boosted stats as we pretty much expected, but what it <i>also</i> gets is a new ability called Parental Bond. What does that mean? It means that every single attack gets two hits, with the second hit at half normal strength. So what does <i>that</i> mean? It means that typical counters for physical sweepers like Kangaskhan such as Focus Sash or a Substitute which typically ensures a Pokémon's survival for at least one turn are rendered completely useless. If a Mega-Kangaskhan manages to successfully use Power-Up Punch, which deals damage AND buffs up her attack two full stages, she's effectively unstoppable.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now let me make one thing clear. I hate going up against a Mega-Kangaskhan in online battles. It's infuriating. But at the same time, I <i>love</i> this. While she will probably never come into play in the metagame played through Pokémon Showdown online, she will continue to dominate in Random Matchups and so the pressure is still on for traditional Wi-Fi players to find an effective counter. I personally like to use Chesnaught which can use Spiky Shield and Rocky Helmet to at least try to work Mega-Kangaskhan down to about half health in a worst-case scenario, but people are still experimenting and finding ways to deal with her as well as a few other big threats like Mega-Gengar and Speed Boost Blaziken.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In addition, prior to the release of the Pokémon Bank, the fact that there was no way to hack the game meant that the online battles were fair and the Pokémon you traded were always legit. No facing off against a team of shiny legendaries with unobtainable abilities. Of course, that all changed when Pokémon Bank was finally released and apparently did a very bad job at filtering hacked Pokémon. Seriously, this is something that services like pokecheck.org have been doing <i>for free</i> for years and GameFreak, the people who <i>designed the game,</i> can't program a service (a <i>paid</i> service, mind you) to prevent people from polluting the ecosystem with blatantly hacked Pokémon? It's pretty inexcusable.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While I'm ranting, I want to take a moment to express how utterly pissed I am that you <i>still</i> can't do a ranked 6v6 single battle online and how you can't turn off Team Preview before a match. I understand why they have it like that. A 6v6 battle can take a long time and Team Preview adds a certain element of strategy. But this is the way battles are fought in the game. This is the way the game teaches you as a player to battle with Pokémon. If they want single battles to be fought 3v3 with Team Preview, why isn't it set up that way in the game itself? It just goes back to what I was talking about where the antiquated badge-gathering "classic journey" from the first game is shoehorned in regardless of whether or not it's consistent with what they're trying to do differently in this installment. I mean, I'm more or less <i>fine</i> with 3v3 random battles. It limits my strategies a bit, but it does make battles quick and simple and difficult to dominate with a singular strategy. And I'll admit, the only reason I wish you could turn off Team Preview is because I like playing mind-games with Zoroark. But I guess I'll just have to let that go for now and Team Preview functions as a pretty decent deterrent to things like Mega-Kangaskhan. I tend to keep a couple of Pokémon in my Battle Box that I rarely use but are known Mega-Mom counters just so people think twice about bringing it in after Team Preview.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The last thing I want to complain about is how WiFi interaction is handled. You can't add someone as a friend unless you already have their friend code (and they have yours) or unless you battle/trade with them twice. This seems pointless and arbitrary. I can understand why they don't want you to be able to harass random passersby with friend requests, but surely I can harass people I've traded/battled already, right? Or at least I should be able to harass people in my immediate vicinity. Also, why is it that I have to manually turn on WiFi when I start up the game? "Black/White" asked if you wanted C-Gear on when you started the game. My 3DS has the WiFi on already. It's using it. The lights on the side are blinking. Turning it off in-game doesn't save the 3DS any power. Why do I have to consciously go online? Also, why is it that when the PSS is connected via WiFi it can no longer detect people in my immediate vicinity unless they're also on WiFi? I'm pretty sure the 3DS doesn't have to choose between using WiFi and using the SpotPass stuff, so why can't you guys juggle both? Sounds like laziness to me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Beyond that, I'm actually really happy with how "X/Y" has changed the online community. Battling online has never been more fun, rewarding, or simple to do. The Mega Evolutions and the inclusion of the Fairy typing have changed things in a really cool way. And in spite of the fact that most people are aware of how broken some of the Pokémon are, they don't seem to be ubiquitous in online battles.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Conclusions</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So here's the thing. I'm generally pretty happy with "X/Y". I've been playing it a lot and I expect to continue to play it for quite awhile longer. But it still feels like Nintendo and GameFreak aren't giving us their A-Game.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's no good reason why a service like Pokémon Bank caused them this much trouble. The amount of data needed to represent a Pokémon is incredibly small. The amount of bandwidth and storage needed to support that amount of data should not need to cost any amount of additional money from customers, but since it does, I assumed that they were pulling out all the stops to make a really solid service that would be bulletproof. Instead, it proved to simply be because of their general incompetence and inexperience with online gaming support.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's no good reason why they shouldn't be able to support a 6v6 random match online. There are games that need to render complex polygonal models moving in three-dimensional space in real-time with as little latency as possible. Pokémon just needs to render stationary models and turn-based combat. This shouldn't be this hard.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's no good reason why they can't do a better job filtering out blatantly hacked Pokémon in their online services. The fan community has known plenty of ways to judge a Pokémon's validity for years and while it's not infallible, it at least verifies that a Pokémon is at least plausibly legit. And while I don't expect the powers that be to be hard-asses and scrutinize everything, it's kind of hard to take them seriously when you see a Pokémon like this one:</div>
<div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cakeisnotalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ku-medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cakeisnotalie.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ku-medium.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yeah, that's a <i>Level 1 Gengar</i>. You want to know how easy that is to detect? All you need is an If/Then statement in the code to check to see if a Gengar being traded is at least Level 25.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That's literally all they had to do. They had three months. I know there are a lot of rules to program in, but like I said, fans were able to do this <i>for fun</i>. These developers are ostensibly being <i>paid</i> to write these kinds of exceptions into the code. We are <i>paying them</i>. And they apparently can't be bothered to spend a few hours writing some If/Then statements. Well done.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's no good reason why we had to go through three full generations on the DS platform to get fully-rendered CG Pokémon. The DS has been able to do this for years. I know 512 MB wasn't a lot of space to work with, but considering "Pokémon X/Y" is only about 1.7 GB, I'm reasonably confident they could have found a way to make CG Pokémon work as early as "Diamond/Pearl" if they tried.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Pokémon franchise seems to suffer from what I like to call "iPhone Syndrome". See, the iPhone, in its earliest incarnation, was innovative, but also rather incomplete. It was limited to AT&T, it didn't have GPS, you couldn't use 3G, it only had one camera in the back, it didn't even have the App Store. But with each new release, they would add on one or two of the features the previous generation lacked. Meanwhile, the competition has heated up, but because they're Apple, people didn't care that they were often a few steps behind in terms of features. People will still flock to buy each new version because it is just one degree less restrictive than the previous version.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That's the problem Pokémon has.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's perfectly possible, and entirely reasonable, to create what is essentially an "ultimate" Pokémon game. But that's not what Nintendo want to do. It's not even doing something as shameless as what Madden does where it just releases the same game over and over. No, it makes changes with every generation, but the changes are so frustratingly incremental that it's hard to imagine that they aren't doing this on purpose. Like, during the development of "Black/White", I have to think that someone asked, "Hey, should we make the Pokémon CG instead of pixelated this time?" to which a higher-up probably responded, "Nah, let's save that for the next generation."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is the attitude they carry into every generation and it drives me nuts. They just <i>assume</i> they're going to make another Pokémon game, and so they don't bother to make each generation the best it can possibly be. If something is too hard, they just don't bother and save it so they can make it a big feature in the next installment.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I know that that's kind of the trouble with handheld gaming consoles. If they want people to buy the new Nintendo handheld, they have to be able to play with their Pokeymans. So they know that they will inevitably have to make a new Pokémon game for the new console. And if they know that no Pokémon game is going to be the last one, why should they bother to put all of their creative energy into it?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So while I do definitely greatly enjoy "X/Y", I can't help but feel like the other life-long fans and I have a lot more passion for this franchise than the people who actually created it.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-28478219281960449222013-12-28T09:35:00.001-05:002014-01-06T22:01:14.582-05:00Are MOBAs Sports?It's possible you've seen this little clip from HBO's "Real Sports" thing briefly talking about the "League of Legends" championship, followed by a minute or so of old people popping their monocles.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Box01YzekaQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
Now, I'm not here to talk about why these old people don't matter. Whether or not they think LoL or DOTA2 or any other MOBA counts as a sport matters about as much as it did when Roger Ebert said that games can't be art. Yes, it might be maddening and inspire us to rant and rave about this or that, but it won't really change anything. MOBA championships will still continue to be increasingly popular and other video game championships will likely join the ranks and no one will care whether or not old sports journalists consider it to be a legitimate sport.<br />
<br />
But it does make me wonder... are MOBAs sports? I mean, it probably doesn't really matter, but I like to ponder these things anyway because the MOBA genre is interesting to me and I haven't really talked much about them before.<br />
<br />
<h3>
What's a MOBA?</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
MOBA stands for "multiplayer online battle arena". Not very helpful, I know, but it's a relatively new-ish video game genre that started out as an off-shoot of real-time strategy games like "Starcraft" or "Warcraft". The primary difference being that instead of setting up buildings and micromanaging soldiers, you primarily only concerned yourself with one character and all of the buildings and soldiers were mostly out of your control. All you had to do was defend your own team's buildings while destroying your opponents. You mostly did this by leveling up over the course of the game, gaining power, and buying new items.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Matches are played in real-time between 5 players on a symmetrical map. The first team to destroy their opponent's primary structure at the opposite end of the map, wins. That's pretty much the main focus of the game, but if you want to know more, just Google it or play "League of Legends" or "DOTA 2". You can play both games for free.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While there are sometimes modified ways of playing (one-on-one, different rulesets, etc.) the primary game is played 5-versus-5 in the way I just described, and almost everyone plays in this way.</div>
<br />
<h3>
"It's Not a Sport, It's a Game"</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Probably the second-most nerd-rage-inducing comment from the video above (the first would be the "Star Trek" comment) would be the quote, "It's not a sport, it's a game."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This distinction is left undefined, but it's one that modern humanity has debated for quite a while.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For example, in order to be a part of the Olympics, technically all an activity needs to qualify is to be sanctioned by an international sport federation. Chess is such an activity, yet it is unlikely to ever be included in the Olympics, nor is it probably ever going to be considered a sport.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is one obvious answer: The difference between a game and a sport is that a sport requires strenuous physical activity.</div>
<div>
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<div>
This seems fair, but it's not always applicable. Archery, for example, does not require a great deal of physical strength, relying far more on precision and coordination. Equestrian sports depend little on the physical acumen of the rider, depending far more on the horse. </div>
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Well then one might say that those sports still require physical precision and practice. That muscle memory and physical training are still a required component. You certainly can't say the same about chess.<br />
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And that seems fair, but if we are merely talking about some kind of physical demand, MOBAs certainly fit that bill.<br />
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Almost all high-level players utilize lightning-quick reflexes, precise timing, and complicated maneuvers that require a great deal of practice and training. While not necessarily physically demanding, muscle memory and coordination are as key to professional MOBA playing as they are to archery or golf.<br />
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The problem then is that you could then potentially call "Guitar Hero" a sport. It does, after all, require a lot of physical coordination and muscle memory, perhaps more so than MOBAs. And in that regard, why aren't real musicians considered athletes? Drumming is far more physically exhausting than golf.<br />
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Well, for starters, you can't objectively measure standard music playing. Music is an art and its quality is nearly impossible to quantify in an unbiased way. While ice dancing can be argued similarly, judges often rate performances based on very specific criteria.<br />
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OK, that explains why real musicians aren't in the Olympics, but what about "Guitar Hero" or "Rock Band" or "Dance Dance Revolution"? Those games are scored.<br />
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Well, to get into why MOBAs could be considered a sport in a way that "Guitar Hero" cannot, we'll have to talk more about MOBAs in general.<br />
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<h3>
The Court</h3>
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Even though it's scored, there's a reason why competitive rhythm game competitions never really caught on. The result of a competitive match often depends on what song you pick.</div>
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I played in a few small competitions for rhythm games when I was a bit younger and the competition format was always very haphazard. There was really no fair way to do it. No one was equally good at every song. There were some matches when I defeated someone far better than me because we were playing on a song that I knew really well. I think I technically missed more notes, but because I knew when to use Star Power most effectively, I still won. That wasn't because I was a better player, it was because I just happened to know that song really well. I could just as easily been given a different song and lost.</div>
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This applies to games like "Halo" as well. The format varies from tournament to tournament. Maybe they choose a different map or a different set of rules. There's too much potential variety.</div>
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Whereas if you play a game of basketball, it doesn't necessarily matter where you play. Yes, different courts might have different subtleties about them and different referees might be stricter about certain things, but the structure is the same. The rules are the same. The court is essentially the same.</div>
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Most video games don't really have just one "court". "Call of Duty" wouldn't be half as popular if it only had one map. And the map of one online shooter is going to be vastly different from another online shooter.</div>
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But when it comes to MOBAs, there's really only one format. One primary way to play.</div>
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And the interesting thing is, this isn't just individual to each game. The overall goals and mechanics of DOTA2 are more-or-less identical to LoL. Just about every MOBA game has the same "court":</div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Map_of_MOBA.svg/300px-Map_of_MOBA.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Map_of_MOBA.svg/300px-Map_of_MOBA.svg.png" /></a></div>
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You have 2 bases, 3 lanes, 22 towers, 6 inhibitors/barracks. The intricacies may change between games, but the overall mechanics of a MOBA are basically the same no matter which one you play.</div>
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The big difference between MOBAs are the characters. Most popular MOBAs have very large rosters of characters, each with their own unique power sets. There are very few characters that can be identified as particularly "strong" or "weak" because it's all relative to what characters are popular at the time. If one character is popular because of a certain ability, other characters that are good at countering those abilities tend to become more popular while those more susceptible to those abilities become less popular. Then if another type of character becomes popular or if new characters are added or existing character mechanics are modified, things start shifting.</div>
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This isn't all that different from how actual sports work.</div>
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Let's look at basketball again. In the decades we've been playing it, the way its played has changed a lot, but not because the rules have changed, but because the people playing it have changed the "metagame".</div>
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There's another reason why MOBAs work more as a sport than most other video games, and it actually is tied in with the court aspect.</div>
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Spectators</h3>
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Part of what makes a sport a sport is less the game itself and more the community around it. Plenty of sports have been invented, but if you can't get a crowd to show up and watch them, no one will ever care.</div>
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"Call of Duty" multiplayer requires a lot of skill, strategy, and physical precision, at least as much as any MOBA does, but as a spectator sport, it's far inferior, and that's because the spectator is rarely given an omnipresent view of the situation, and if they are given one, it is separate from the view given to the players.</div>
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Imagine watching a game of football entirely through the perspectives of the players. You'd never really understand what was going on. The player, on the other hand, has the ability to understand pretty much the whole big picture because of the way the field is laid out. They can pretty much see any part of the field at any time they want, though they of course have to pay attention to what's right in front of them as well.</div>
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In a shooter, even if you did watch the game from a top-down perspective, it's an experience entirely divorced from what the player is experiencing.</div>
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But the way a MOBA is structured makes it function in a way not dissimilar to other spectator sports. The spectator gets the same top-down view that the players have. The players can't necessarily see EVERYTHING due to fog of war, but they can get an idea of the big picture. However, like a football player, it behooves them to get an impression of the big picture as often as possible while still focusing on what's in front of them. Also, one thing that I find fun about watching MOBAs is that some of them allow the spectator to focus on whatever they like. They can see it from the perspective of a player or just look at a general area. The viewer gets to absorb the game as a whole rather than focus solely on one part of it that they can't control.<br />
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The one big problem with MOBAs as a spectator sport is fairly obvious to anyone who tries to watch a MOBA game without having played one. It can be confusing.<br />
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There are so many characters and abilities and items and strategies that the amount of lingo in a MOBA can be staggering. While this is true about a lot of sports, most sports have a baseline of understanding that can give a new spectator a tenuous grasp on how the game is going. Specifically, a score. When I didn't really understand the rules of football, I could at least understand that bringing the ball to the end of the field was a good thing and that the team with the most points won. I could tell who was winning and I could tell when something good happened for one team when their score went up. If something they did caused the score to go up more, I got the impression that it was a good thing to do.<br />
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MOBAs often lack that baseline appeal. Part of what makes a MOBA exciting is that the tide can be turned at almost any point in the game. While most matches are decided very early in the game during the laning phase, a really good jungler or a well-organized team can still pull out a victory if they play their cards right. But it means that it's hard to really grasp something as simple as "who's winning?"<br />
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You could get a vague idea of who's winning based on which team has destroyed more towers or which team has farmed more experience and gold or which team has died fewer times, but while those aspects of the game influence the outcome, they don't decide it. Until a base is destroyed, anyone could win.<br />
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Chess has a similar problem. While there is a point system to chess that could be used to suggest someone is winning, that's not what decides the game. Until someone has delivered a checkmate, it could be anyone's game. Still, people who walk by while you're playing may still simply ask "who's winning" because unless you play a lot of chess, it's hard to really know who has who on the ropes.<br />
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That's kind of the biggest problem with MOBAs as a spectator sport. However, as the video at the beginning of this post points out, MOBAs certainly aren't lacking for spectators.<br />
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So why is that? Why do so many people come out for MOBA tournaments than pretty much any other kind? Well, I think there are three main reasons.<br />
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First, MOBAs are really popular right now. Thanks to the free-to-play model and the dedicated fanbase for real-time strategy games that built the MOBA genre, MOBAs are played by a lot of people. So naturally, there are a lot of people who understand the games enough to enjoy spectating.<br />
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Second, as I already mentioned, MOBAs have the "court" structure which makes them easier to watch than most other competitive games. Fighting games come close, but the problem with fighting games is that the characters aren't different enough to really make a compelling and perpetually evolving metagame. It's why they have to keep making new versions of fighting games every few years. If you just add new characters to an existing fighting game, it throws the whole roster out of balance because while each character has their own special strength and abilities, the basic mechanics of each character are easily compared. At the end of the day, every character kicks, punches, and has some kind of mega-move. But MOBAs tend to deal more with what Extra Credits calls "incomparables" (more on that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw">here</a> if you're interested) where the abilities of one character can be wildly different when compared to another character, particularly when you also have to take into account how they interact with the other members of their team. Even fighting games that allow you to tag out multiple characters and have dozens of characters to choose from like "Marvel Vs. Capcom" tend to gravitate towards a handful of characters that fit particular play-style niches that have developed in the fighting game community over the years. Meanwhile, MOBAs are free to fundamentally alter their entire metagame simply by introducing an innovative new character into the system.<br />
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Lastly, even if you don't really understand what exactly is happening, a MOBA is visually interesting. Complex without being too crowded and alienating. When something cool happens in a game, even if a spectator has no clear idea of what exactly is happening and why it matters, they can still tell that it's cool. For example:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/tDaJes0T1Ig?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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You might have no idea what the announcer is talking about. You might have no idea what exactly just happened. You might have no idea why it matters. But in a way, you don't really need to. What did you see? You saw a bunch of those guys with red bars team up and ambush the team with green bars, sucking them into a black hole, but then the green guys dispelled it, sucked <i>them</i> into a black hole, and killed all of them. You don't have to know much to know that "killing all of your opponents at once while being ambushed" is pretty damn cool.<br />
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Because all MOBAs have the same basic setup and maps and the only variety is in the characters and the players, you have a game that can be played in virtually infinitely-many ways while still maintaining the basic setup and structure as a point of reference. Everything is built-upon rather than discarded and rebuilt from scratch.<br />
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Are MOBAs Sports, Or What?</h3>
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Up until now, I've kind of been dancing around whether or not I think MOBAs count as sports. Instead, I've mostly been effectively talking about why MOBAs seem the most sport-like out of any other game. Why they draw the biggest crowds. Why the champions seem far more impressive. Why they are the most fun to watch. Why people argue for them being sports more than just about any other games out there.</div>
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But really, what does it boil down to? What feels so sport-like about MOBAs?</div>
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I could cheat and say "the only thing that makes a sport a sport is whether or not a majority of people consider it a sport", but I don't think that's true. I think there's something more fundamentally intrinsic to sports that make them stand out. And I think it's the idea of a game <i>around</i> a game.</div>
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I'm not talking about the metagame, although that's certainly part of it. I'm talking about the narrative of a sport.</div>
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I was never really into sports growing up and I still pretty much don't care all that much, but I was often confused as to why some people got into it as much as they did. Why they cared so much about teams that didn't even represent their own hometown or state, why they wore the jerseys of players, why they constructed and competed with fantasy teams. Eventually, I realized that the answer to my question was basically the question itself. People care because people care.</div>
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A simple game of American football is exactly that. A game. But there's more going on than just that game. There's a metagame being played by the managers and coaches where they decide what new players to add to the team and which old players to trade or retire. Every new season, fans watch closely to decide whether the changes have made their favorite team better or worse. It makes them grow attached to individual players, particularly if they have interesting life stories.</div>
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Just look at fantasy football. It's a game built around the idea of <i>managing</i> a game, not playing it. And it's insanely popular. It's because that's really the part that people love about American football. American football as a game is actually pretty boring. It's slow-paced, scored in a bizarre manner, and has a lot of weird rules that are hard to explain. But as a <i>sport</i>, it's deep, engaging, and ever-changing. I don't really care for it, but I understand why people get so wrapped up in it.</div>
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In order for a game to be elevated to a sport, a single game has to mean more than "just a game". The outcome of every individual game has to build to a greater whole. Each victory and loss has to matter. Each player (and in the context of MOBAs, character) has to be evaluated and have their own story.</div>
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And while it's still rather underground and mostly niche, MOBAs are starting to develop that. The ever-evolving rosters of the games change strategies every year in the same way new draft picks can change an entire season of American football. Teams are starting to forge identities of their own with star players with ambitions, dreams, rivalries, signature styles and strategies. In a way, playing a MOBA while tangentially aware of the high-level strategies being employed by the pros influences the play-styles and character choices of the more casual players.</div>
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Also, there really isn't a sport quite like a MOBA that currently exists, and for that matter, there really can't be. A fighting game or a shooter can be just as easily represented in real life, albeit with some limitations, but the core gameplay would be there. Why watch a video game of two fighters when you could watch a boxing match? Why watch a CoD game when you could watch or play a game of paintball or laser tag? But a MOBA can't really be represented in real life. You can't represent the complex power sets or the respawn times or the farming or the murdering. It can really only be represented digitally. Even just the basic goal of "destroy a base" can't be represented accurately in real life.</div>
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So I think out of all video games, MOBAs are kind of poised the most to actually thrive in the competitive community at this point. So long as the core gameplay remains the same and the crowds keep getting larger and the coverage gets better and the characters keep shuffling, I think it can stand the test of time. Maybe not the games themselves, but unlike fighting games, the individuals MOBAs don't matter as much as the universality of the game mechanics. So long as the court never fundamentally changes, the crowds will just keep growing.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-84474140835171910512013-12-05T12:56:00.000-05:002013-12-05T13:00:27.959-05:00Burning Under the Spotlight - A "Catching Fire" ReviewI liked the first "Hunger Games" film quite a bit. I hadn't read the book (and I still haven't... <a href="http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com/2012/06/book-was-better.html">I'm bad at reading</a>) so I went into the movie knowing very little and I left more-or-less satisfied. Like many people, I had a number of qualms with it. Most people cited the shaky-cam or lack of originality as the bigger complaints, but I honestly found those to be minor problems. The shaky-cam was necessary to obscure the violence enough to score a PG-13 rating, crucial for a film like this. And yeah, we'd seen movies like it before, but "Hunger Games" did enough differently to stand apart and justify it's existence.<br />
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My biggest problem with "Hunger Games", as I've said before, was that Katniss was never put in a situation where her survival meant doing something morally compromising. Every time the movie almost gave her an impossible situation, they found a way to rob her of it. When (<b>SPOILER ALERT</b>) Rue died, I was upset, but not largely because I particularly cared about Rue as a character, but because her sudden death robbed the film of an interesting question. Suppose everything went Katniss' way. Suppose she and Peeta and Rue all survived until the end of the Hunger Games as the last three standing. Then what? Would she have tried her berry-eating routine with Rue, too? Would that have worked? Would she have sacrificed herself to save Rue knowing that she wouldn't have been able to return to the sister that Rue so reminds her of? Would Rue have been able to live knowing that Katniss and Peeta gave their lives for her? Rue's death at the hands of some random shmoe meant Katniss would never have to make a hard decision for her survival. And that's kind of how that entire film works. Most of Katniss' enemies either die off screen or she only kills them after they do something horrible. I left the theater liking Katniss but not exactly knowing much about who she really was.<br />
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Luckily for me, "Catching Fire" tackles this particular angle head-on, almost from the very beginning, and we end up with a film that's more engaging, more complex, and far more enjoyable than the previous.<br />
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No Spoilers</h3>
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A running theme in "Catching Fire" is really about what I discussed above. Katniss in the first film had two major motivations: to survive and to be a decent human being. At no point in the first film did she have to choose one over the other. This leads the insane President Snow to believe that Katniss, whose efforts to be a decent human being have inspired a fledgling uprising, is not the revolutionary many seem to believe her to be and that when push comes to shove, she'll save her own neck before laying herself on the line for others.</div>
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This actually serves as a major point of conflict for her character. See, for Katniss, survival isn't really a selfish desire. She wants to survive for the sake of her sister and her mother and her friends. Yet her survival almost entirely depends on her willingness to cooperate with President Snow. She knows that any act of defiance will put her loved ones at considerable risk. But as events continue to escalate, she comes closer and closer to the inevitable decision between doing the right thing and putting herself and her loved ones in harm's way. And how she handles that decision, in the end, is a truly defining moment for her as a character and really drives this movie in a way the first film didn't.</div>
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The direction here is great, and not just because Francis Lawrence knows how to use a tripod. Say what you will about Lawrence's other works, the guy knows how to frame a shot. But more than that, I've always felt like he was very good at evoking a character's personality through simple visuals rather than through dialogue. While "Constantine" is a mess in terms of plot, dialogue, and pacing, I love watching it if only for the larger-than-life feel of most of the characters. Like the first "Hunger Games", most of this film sticks to the book's limited point-of-view around Katniss. The viewer rarely knows more than Katniss does. In fact, unlike the book, we are often left knowing <i>less</i> than Katniss does. Still, through very excellent and subtle acting and cinematography, we always know exactly what Katniss is thinking or feeling without her having to say a word. That takes skill and restraint.</div>
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Some may say that this film's weakness is that it doesn't stand on it's own, and I've said before that that doesn't really bother me. Sure a film that can stand on its own and function as a good sequel is ideal, but for me, it's extra credit. So long as the film that came before it is worth watching, I don't mind doing a little extra homework.</div>
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The few weaknesses the film does actually have are actually fairly difficult to articulate, but I'll do the best I can. While I can understand perfectly well why we are limited to Katniss' perspective through the majority of the film, I do think they could have eased back a little bit on it. Film is a visual medium and being told about a thing that's happening is almost always less interesting than actually seeing it. That said, some of the things we <i>do</i> see are at times not very interesting. If you can't create a convincing CGI baboon-thing, you probably shouldn't center an entire action sequence around them. Just saying.</div>
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All-in-all, though, I was extremely satisfied with this film and would recommend checking it out.<br />
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Spoilers</h3>
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OK, fun time.</div>
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This film starts out great. I think my favorite scene in the film is actually towards the beginning where Katniss and Peeta are greeting the viewers at home from their isolated little village in District 12. While we hear cheering fans over the broadcast, we simultaneously hear a hollow emptiness surrounding Katniss and Peeta as they pretend to be overjoyed with their predicament. It creates this powerful sense of uneasiness and phoniness that suits the scene incredibly well. It's really incredible to me.</div>
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Then they start out their tour in probably the worst possible starting location, District 11, home of Rue. I swear, this film does not fuck around.</div>
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I heard a lot of stuff about the love-triangle thing in this part of the series, but honestly I wasn't bothered by it specifically because of three reasons:</div>
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1) Katniss' struggle choosing between Peeta and Gale reflects her difficulty choosing between survival (through living a comfortable sham with Peeta) and doing the right thing (being true to herself and refusing to play ball with the twisted President Snow). It's not just about choosing either the hunky guy or the sweet sensitive guy or something shallow like that.</div>
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2) Peeta, who embodies the "nice guy" trope thankfully subverts that trope quite a bit. He gives Katniss a fricking locket with a picture of Gale in it. Despite his obvious feelings for her, he never feels entitled to her affection, even if he is clearly frustrated over not getting it.</div>
3) Katniss makes it clear that her struggle is less about "twoo wub" and more about getting to a place where they're allowed to even <i>have</i> love to fight over in the first place. I like that.<br />
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OK, enough dallying about. Let's get to the meat-and-potatoes. In an effort to kill off Katniss while also tarnishing her imagine, Snow arranges for a special Champion Edition of the Hunger Games, bringing back former victors to fight again, including Katniss and Peeta. While this seems like a cheap ploy to just retread the first plot, the story smartly recognizes that this decision is a double-edged sword. All of these former victors are crowd-pleasing favorites and no one wants to see them go, particularly not the victors themselves. This move is implied to be extremely unpopular, even among the callous citizens of the Capitol.<br />
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In addition, since the new participants are largely adults, the movie can get away with killing them left and right without needing shaky-cam. That said, a great deal of them die off-screen, and that's pretty lame, but whatever.<br />
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The big thing here, however, is that Katniss has to forge more alliances this time around. And not all of them are clearly good people. And as things get closer and closer to the conclusion, we actually start to get closer to the point where Katniss will have to make the decision between doing the right thing and surviving.<br />
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It all culminates in one big moment where Katniss and her allies are purportedly planning to electrocute the remaining competitors before ending their alliance at midnight. However, this plan goes awry and Katniss finds herself on her own, wounded, and left with a golden opportunity. She can either kill her ally, Finnick, who undoubtedly poses the largest threat to her, or she can take a shot in the dark, try a crazy spur-of-the-moment plan, and attempt to fry the force field on the arena. While this seems like an easy choice, it really isn't. While frying the arena would mean allowing her and her allies to live, she knows that doing this is nothing short of an act of open rebellion and war. She knows this could get everyone she cares about killed, as well as the lives she would be saving in the process. She also has no reason to believe that this crazy plan would even work. She just knows it's the right thing to do.<br />
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And what makes this even better is that we find out that this was pretty much the plan the whole time. While Katniss being left in the dark does come off as burying the lead for a big twist ending, it actually serves a much deeper narrative significance by giving her choice meaning. If she <i>knew</i> Finnick was on her side and that her attempt to fry the arena was pretty much orchestrated to work, her choice wouldn't have mattered nearly as much.<br />
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And best of all, her decision <i>does</i> have consequences, and they were consequences she knew she would be provoking. District 12 was fire-bombed (again, something that would have been cool to see, but whatever) and while her mother, sister, and Gale are OK, the rest of the District is fucked up. For the first time, she made a truly hard decision and lost something for it, informing what truly matters to the character and allowing her to evolve as a product of her own agency. The movie finally gave me the moment I wanted so badly from the first film and it was exactly as great as I hoped it would be. In fact, I think it actually makes the first movie better by making the unanswered questions about Katniss' motivations a central plot element to this film. It takes a really special movie to make other movies better by proxy.<br />
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The rest of the movie has its ups and downs.<br />
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The aforementioned baboons are silly. I think everyone can agree on that.<br />
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My roommate who was familiar with the books told me a few things that were lost in translation that I would have liked. For example, apparently the whole "THE CENTER OF THE ARENA IS WATER" thing was a bigger deal in the book because most of the Districts are land-locked and thus a decent number of contestants simply couldn't swim. I get that something like this is hard to establish, but they could have simply had a moment during the countdown to the beginning of the Hunger Games where the camera cuts over to one or two of the tributes losing their shit over the water and shouting that they can't swim before getting blown up for not leaving their platform. Simple, quick, effective. But because the movie is typically very dedicated to sticking with Katniss' perspective, especially once the Hunger Games start, we don't really get that kind of insight into what the other tributes are going through. It's a minor nitpick, but it did bug me.<br />
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I really liked that during the reaping, they still used the same giant fish bowls even though there were only three names for District 12.<br />
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This is more a criticism of the books than the movie, but in the history of Panem, District 13 was the one that led the rebellion and they got wiped off the map (except apparently not really) and now District 12 got the same treatment. Assuming Suzanne Collins knew this was going to be a thing, I think it would have been cooler if the nuked Districts weren't conveniently at the end of the number list. Like if District 13 were instead District 7 or something and so when they go through the list of Districts and skip over 7, you get a sense of its absence that reflects the silent pain that lingers on in Panem and the unforgiving power of the Capitol. When the missing Districts are at the end of the list, it's easier to forget about them or ignore them, and I would think the Capitol wouldn't want that to happen. It's not really that big a deal, but if I were Suzanne Collins' editor, I probably would have suggested something like that.<br />
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Pretty much all of the new characters are amazing. I particularly liked Johanna, though it took me a while to realize she was that girl from "Stepmom" and "Saved!".<br />
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All in all, though, these bits and pieces are trivial. What matters most is that the core of this movie, the driving narrative, is strong and resonant and makes this a truly great film that elevates the franchise for me.<br />
<br />
My only major concern at this point is with the last two films. I really feel like there's not a lot of ground left to cover, and yet they are apparently taking the "Harry Potter"/"Twilight" route of splitting the last book up into two films. I've heard a lot of people say that "Mockingjay" is their favorite book, so I'll give these movies the benefit of the doubt, but as far as I'm concerned, they have a pretty high bar to overcome.<br />
<br />Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-54150927995764093182013-12-04T12:12:00.000-05:002013-12-04T12:12:00.032-05:00How To Get Into Bitcoin (via Litecoin)Most of you have probably heard about the whole Bitcoin thing by now. I'm not here to explain it to you -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin">plenty</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Um63OQz3bjo">of</a> <a href="http://bitcoin.org/en/faq">other</a> <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5803124/what-is-bitcoin">people</a> have already got that covered -- but a lot of people might be wondering whether or not they can get into it, and if so, how.<br />
<br />
I myself have been dabbling in the cryptocurrency scene lately and have gotten to a place where I've managed to make a modest profit despite spending no money in terms of investment. So I thought I'd share it since I probably would have appreciated it if someone else had explained it in equally-simple terms a few months ago.<br />
<br />
I had known about Bitcoin (abbreviated BTC) for a while, but it wasn't until last Summer that I actually had any real interest in it. However, I'm not a gambling man by nature, so I wasn't about to throw actual money into the ring. Truth be told, I wish I <i>had</i> because back then, Bitcoin was $100 per Bitcoin and now it's currently around $1000, so I could have made 10x what I could have put into it, but hindsight is 20/20.<br />
<br />
Still, you don't need to buy Bitcoin in order to get Bitcoin. There are methods where you can mine Bitcoin using your computer. There's just one major problem. Bitcoin is <i>really</i> hard to mine. And I don't just mean the fact that you probably need a fairly decent working knowledge of computers to get it working, no, I mean that for a machine, mining Bitcoin is a lengthy and work-intensive task for all but the most over-powered computers. It didn't used to be that way, but in the past year, devices specifically designed to mine Bitcoin (known as ASIC miners) started to become popular and this increased the difficulty of mining Bitcoin considerably. I was not about to throw money away on an ASIC miner (and they're hard to find even if I wanted one), but I was mining Bitcoin too slowly to really expect to see any kind of return on my investment of time either.<br />
<br />
That's when I discovered Litecoin (abbreviated LTC). Litecoin is an alternative cryptocurrency which is similar to Bitcoin in a number of ways, but it's biggest difference is that it uses a different algorithm for mining. This algorithm makes it pretty much impossible to make a dedicated device to mine Litecoin. The best way to mine Litecoin is to use a really good graphics card and/or CPU. Using the same personal computer at home, I can mine 1 LTC in about half the amount of time it would have taken me to mine 0.01 BTC. And while Litecoin is significantly less profitable than Bitcoin, it currently trades at about 0.035 BTC per LTC.<br />
<br />
A decent number of people believe that Litecoin will one day stand alongside Bitcoin as an equal, but I don't find that terribly likely. Still, I do think that Litecoin has a future as a complement to Bitcoin since it costs less and allows for trading smaller amounts of USD than BTC currently allows in most exchanges. More importantly, it also functions as a decent entry level for people who are just looking to dabble rather than try and make a living on speculating cryptocurrency.<br />
<br />
In general, people who are looking to get in on Bitcoin either try to just buy some or figure out how to mine it. My advice is to do neither. My advice is to mine Litecoin, which is much easier to mine for people who don't have the kind of money to spend on additional hardware, and then trade it for Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
Here's my current process:<br />
<br />
<h4>
Step 1: Mine Litecoin</h4>
<div>
Using <a href="http://coinotron.com/">Coinotron.com</a> as a mining pool, <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167229.0">cudaminer</a> to mine from my NVIDIA graphics card (you can use <a href="http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/">cgminer</a> for AMD graphics cards, which tend to work better) and <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpuminer/">cpuminer</a> for my CPU, I can mine about 0.05 Litecoins per day. The whole process of setting up a computer to mine cryptocurrency can be daunting, but if you run into problems, odds are good that <a href="http://reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/">someone on Reddit</a> can help you out. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The problem with mining pools is that you can only actually <i>get</i> your coins once you've reached a certain threshold. Under current Coinotron rules, I can payout Litecoin at the 0.3 threshold at the cost of 0.03 LTC, so we'll say that in 6 days, I get 0.27 LTC that I can actually use. For the sake of sanity, let's go with a full week before payout and get 0.32 LTC per week. Obviously, depending on whatever system you're using, you'll make more or less Litecoins per week, but if you've got a decent gaming PC, you can probably do about the same, possibly better if you've got a good AMD card. If you want an idea of what kind of results you'll get, check these charts: <a href="https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison">AMD charts</a>, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjMqJzI7_dCvdG9fZFN1Vjd0WkFOZmtlejltd0JXbmc#gid=0">NVIDIA charts (more comprehensive than the other link)</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Step 2: Transfer Litecoin to BTC-E</h4>
<div>
Rather than transfer the LTC to a wallet, I just transfer it directly to <a href="http://btc-e.com/">BTC-E</a> to save on time and fees (and hard drive space since wallets take up a lot). BTC-E is an exchange service for various cryptocurrencies. There are a number of exchange services, and most of them are probably fine, but BTC-E has one of the highest LTC/BTC trading volumes. If you have a lot of faith in Litecoin, you could theoretically just ignore this step and all other steps and just get a Litecoin wallet and keep Litecoin indefinitely or until the prices get even higher (which they might), but odds are you're looking to turn this into money sooner rather than later, or at least turn this into BTC, so let's keep going.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Step 3: Convert Litecoin to Bitcoin</h4>
<div>
Once you've got some LTC in your BTC-E account, just sell it for BTC. As of writing this, the current LTC/BTC rate is about 0.035, so our 0.32 LTC is worth about 0.01 BTC.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Step 4: Move Bitcoin to Coinbase</h4>
<div>
Theoretically, if you just want to get some BTC and then sit on them, you're more than welcome to do so, but odds are, you're looking to turn Bitcoin into US dollars, and BTC-E is actually pretty lousy at withdrawing USD, which is why we converted to BTC instead of USD in the previous step. But now that we've got 0.01 BTC, that's the bare minimum amount needed to withdraw BTC from BTC-E, so go ahead and do that. Create an account on <a href="http://coinbase.com/">Coinbase.com</a>, add and verify a checking account, and then transfer over your BTC from BTC-E. Now you have about 0.01 BTC on Coinbase. You can either let it sit there or if you want, go ahead and sell it. At current prices, it'll be worth about $10. I personally intend to let my BTC accumulate in Coinbase until either prices get truly ridiculous or I find myself in need of quick cash.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So yeah, $10 a week probably seems like peanuts, and it truly is, but considering I didn't spend any money on getting this whole thing setup, I'd say $10 a week is pretty cool.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And of course, this all assumes that BTC and LTC will still be worth a damn in the future. And that's fair. For all I know, Bitcoin's current price of $1000 is the highest it will ever go and all these digital coins will be about as worthless as Monopoly money in a few months. Well, if that's the case, all I've lost is idle computer time. That's why I haven't invested any actual money into this. Plus, a computer mining cryptocurrency can be a cheap substitute for a space heater during these colder months.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And hey, imagine how crazy it'll be if BTC rises even higher. If in a year it ends up being worth $10,000, by then I might have about 0.5 BTC, which will be worth $5000. That's certainly worth the effort, I think. It won't be enough to make me rich or anything, but money is money. And yeah, that's probably a really optimistic guess, but so far, those who've underestimated Bitcoin have done so at their own peril.<br />
<br />
Now you might have some questions, and I'll do my best to answer them pre-emptively:<br />
<br />
<h4>
Why convert to Bitcoin? Isn't Litecoin also enjoying record-breaking price increases?</h4>
<div>
It's true that, like Bitcoin, Litecoin prices (both LTC/BTC and LTC/USD) have never been better. A lot of Litecoin fans will say things like "This is just like what happened with Bitcoin!" and "Soon Litecoin will become just as profitable." And maybe they're right, but as of this moment, I see no evidence to suggest that Litecoin is being bought for anything other than a means to make BTC and USD. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is being used for a number of high-profile online services. Bitcoin is an actual currency, albeit a rarely-used one. Yes, Litecoin's prices have been on the rise, but almost exclusively in direct proportion to the rise of popularity of Bitcoin. Until Litecoin becomes independent of Bitcoin, I see little reason to favor LTC over BTC. And frankly, I think it's a lot to assume that the mainstream economy is ready to accept one cryptocurrency, let alone two.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
What about energy costs? Is it worth the money to mine when you factor in the amount of power used by your computer?</h4>
<div>
One common concern among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is whether or not they can mine efficiently. Whether the amount of money they make from mining justifies the increased power draw from their PC. CPU mining is specifically less efficient than GPU mining, and both are far less efficient than ASIC mining. And if you're looking as short-term gains, yeah, I'd say this is a reasonable concern. I personally haven't seen much of an increase in my energy bill and I certainly haven't crunched the numbers to see if it's worth it in the short-term. But honestly, I'm thinking more in the long term. Maybe I'm increasing my electricity bill by $12 a week to make $10 a week. I don't know. But I do know that over time, mining Litecoin will only get more difficult. Perhaps not as quickly as Bitcoin, but it's just the way cryptocurrency is designed. And if prices do continue to increase, I'll certainly be glad I maybe took a small hit regarding my energy costs.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Will it harm my computer to leave it running all the time?</h4>
<div>
Probably, yeah. At least to an extent. If you try to squeeze every drop of processing power out of a machine (particularly if it's a laptop) and leave it running all day every day, you're bound to wear out that computer faster than you probably would have normally. That's just common sense. But you don't have to run your computer into the ground. Most mining software lets you tweak how much you want to push your hardware so it isn't running at full power the entire time. Of course, if this is just a spare computer or something, you might care less. Or if it's a desktop PC, it can probably handle the workload better and replacing parts would probably be easier. Also, obviously, if you're using your CPU or GPU for mining, you'll probably notice a considerable performance hit if you try to play video games or something. So just turn off the miners if you plan to do something like that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
All this mining stuff is complicated. Can't I just buy Bitcoin and make a profit by trading?</h4>
<div>
Mining certainly isn't for everyone. Most decent mining software requires a certain amount of technical ability. Most require some working knowledge of how to use the command-line. Most require some troubleshooting or trial and error. If it's just too much trouble for you, then yeah, you're more than welcome to just buy some Bitcoin through Coinbase or whatever and then buy and sell as prices fluctuate in an effort to make a profit. That seems to be what most people are doing, otherwise the prices probably wouldn't be so high. But doing this is somewhat risky. It's hard to say if what we're seeing right now is the beginning of something or the end of something. If you buy into Bitcoin now, you could stand to lose quite a bit if it crashes. Just keep that in mind before you start throwing down hundreds or thousands of dollars.</div>
<br />
And... well, that's really all I've got to say. I'm not going to waste my breath speculating on whether or not Bitcoin or Litecoin or whatever will continue to be worth something, whether or not they will become widely-used currencies, or whether or not different cryptocurrencies will enter the scene. I'm just sharing my method in case some of you are interested in getting into Bitcoin but aren't really sure how.<br />
<br />
Best of luck.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-68884635701187806052013-11-22T12:30:00.000-05:002013-11-22T17:03:50.409-05:00Additional Thoughts Re: "Contrast"In my initial thoughts on the PS4 from earlier in the week, I mentioned that I rather liked "Contrast". I also mentioned that I hadn't actually finished it yet.<br />
<br />
As of yesterday, I finally got around to finishing it.<br />
<br />
And... well, my opinion has shifted somewhat.<br />
<br />
See, when I discussed it before, I talked about how the game felt unfinished, but the story and unique mechanics elevated it enough to feel worthwhile to me.<br />
<br />
However, having now completed the game, I think I can safely say that the whole thing basically falls apart in Act III.<br />
<br />
Act III feels more than rushed. It feels like the original creators of the game all died and then the janitor swooped in and tried to finish it.<br />
<br />
The first two Acts of the game, while somewhat unpolished, served as a solid foundation for the story and the game mechanics, but the final Act decides to rob the story of any dramatic weight and scrape together poorly-designed gameplay to bring about the finale, which has an ending tonally incongruous to the rest of the game.<br />
<br />
To be more specific, I need to go in <b>SPOILER</b> territory, so forgive me.<br />
<br />
Alright, so the first two Acts establish an interesting -- if a bit cliche -- setting in a noir style about a young girl, Didi, and her imaginary friend, Dawn (the playable character). Didi's mother, Kat, works as a cabaret singer and is struggling to make ends meet due to her deadbeat husband, Johnny, getting the family in trouble and then skipping town. Then, of course, Johnny shows up wanting his family back. He has another ridiculous plan to start a circus funded by mobsters, with the highlight act being a man named Vincenzo, a sort of hybrid between Houdini and Tesla. His plan seems to be coming together, but Kat still doesn't want him getting the family involved. She pulls a gun on him and reveals that Johnny isn't even Didi's real father, and that, in fact, Vincenzo is. Didi stops the fight, leaving Kat little choice but to give Johnny one more shot.<br />
<br />
The next act is about trying to get the circus up and running. Johnny, being a natural-born screwup, needs Didi and Dawn's help to fix basically everything in order to keep Vincenzo from leaving. You succeed and the circus seems ready to go. Didi also wishes to talk to Vincenzo to learn more about him, but he seems hard to get ahold of.<br />
<br />
To me, this was a pretty good setup. Johnny was depending on the guy his wife cheated on him with in order to try and win his family back. Dramatically, that's pretty dynamite. Simultaneously, you have Didi who at once wants to give her father another chance and have him around again, but also wants to learn more about Vincenzo. And last, you have Dawn, whose origin and identity is very much a complete mystery, particularly in regard to her powers. Is she a ghost? An actual imaginary friend? Didi from the future? A manifestation of Didi's latent psychic powers? It seems like a great setup for a killer Act III.<br />
<br />
So Act III begins with Didi wanting to go find Vincenzo to talk to him. We find out that he's hidden in his lab. Now this was the first big failing for me. The lab of someone like Vincenzo should have been a much more interesting place than it was. Sure, there were tons of gadgets and gizmos all over the place, but almost none of them actually come into play. On top of that, the level design is just ridiculous and needlessly complex. There's no clear sense of space or logic to the layouts.<br />
<br />
Anyway, you get through this and Didi finally confronts Vincenzo. And Vincenzo basically reacts about how you would expect... he never wanted her, he's too busy, she's better off with Kat, etc. Still, this scene felt weird to me. The context of the scene is that Didi seems to want to run away with Vincenzo, but the game never really gives us a clear indication of <i>why</i>. Up until this point, Didi has been very dedicated to wanting to bring her family back together, and now she suddenly wants to leave? I mean, granted, if I were a kid, I totally would have wanted to go on an adventure with Houdini-Tesla, but her sudden desire to ditch her family seemed to come out of <i>nowhere</i>.<br />
<br />
Still, the scene could have had dramatic weight. After all, her father also left their family to pursue his own ambition, and so her desire to leave could have been used to mirror her father's mistakes. That could have made for some interesting drama, but it never materializes.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the big climax in Vincenzo's big performance, which of course has technical difficulties. Didi is suddenly very upset with the fact that she has to fix Johnny's screwups -- something she never seemed upset about before -- and she goes to the nearby lighthouse to save the day.<br />
<br />
Now here's the first problem. Didi has shown that she doesn't want to live with her family. She's shown that she doesn't like Vincenzo for abandoning her. She's just now explained that she's tired of fixing Johnny's screwups. So why then is she bothering to go to the lighthouse? Why does she care about the self-centered, witless, frustrating adults enough to go through the trouble of fixing everything?<br />
<br />
More importantly, Didi hasn't really done much of anything. Dawn does pretty much all of the heavy-lifting. Particularly in Act III where Didi is nowhere to be seen for the majority of it.<br />
<br />
So you climb the lighthouse, a task which is really not that difficult and only introduces one new mechanic that you use twice. Along the way you discover Dawn's identity: she was Vincenzo's assistant that he somehow got trapped in a parallel dimension. Then you get the lighthouse pointing at the stage, Vincenzo does his performance, and then we get our big finale.<br />
<br />
Johnny tries to get Vincenzo to take his daughter with him because he's a screwup. They praise Didi for being incredibly thrifty and for saving the day (even though it was Dawn that did it), and Johnny says that Didi should travel with Vincenzo rather than stick around and cover for Johnny's mistakes. But then Kat, Vincenzo and Didi all tell him that it's OK and that everything is better now and their family can be happy again now that his insane mob-run circus somehow turned a profit. Then we get a brief scene where Vincenzo thanks Dawn for looking after Didi, revealing that he was aware of her presence and also possessed her abilities of hopping into shadows. End credits.<br />
<br />
OK, what the fuck?<br />
<br />
First of all, if Vincenzo knew about Dawn, why did he praise Didi? He knows she didn't do jack shit. Second, <i>why are we OK with the fact that Vincenzo is a terrible person</i>? He got his assistant trapped in an alternate dimension, he slept with a married woman and then abandoned the resulting child for purely selfish reasons, he decided to help out the cuckolded father, but only for money and unreasonable demands (and was a major dick about it the whole time), and in the end, we're supposed to be... OK with this? We're supposed to care that he thinks that Johnny is a suitable father? What gives him the right to have an opinion? He's clearly an asshole!<br />
<br />
Next... what kind of ending is <i>that</i>? Everything works out? Kat, Johnny, and Didi live happily ever after? What about the mob? Are they going to still be extorting Johnny? What about the circus? Is it going to have to keep running indefinitely? Will it remain successful without Vincenzo? If the circus was just a one-time thing to settle some debts, what is Johnny going to do now? Is Kat still going to try to become famous? Why does Didi suddenly love her family again after all that huffing and puffing and wanting to run off with Vincenzo? Why does the world seem to be falling apart from Dawn's perspective? What did we learn? What was accomplished?<br />
<br />
It's incredibly aggravating. The game has a very intriguing setup and then attempts a resolution that is unearned, tonally dissonant, and lacking any real dramatic weight or climax. Everything just works out and everyone is happy. No one learns anything, no one loses anything, and what the characters gain seems undeserved and possibly doomed.<br />
<br />
It's beyond clear at this point. This game needed at least another year in development. Not just to correct the numerous bugs, glitches, and half-finished levels, but also to find a fitting conclusion to the story. The shadow mechanic is fun, but unlike a game like "Portal", the player is never really challenged to master those mechanics or use them in creative ways.<br />
<br />
I wouldn't say I <i>hated</i> "Contrast", because it certainly kept me engaged the whole way through, and while the ending was massively disappointing, I was more or less satisfied with the experience. Though it probably helped that the game was essentially free thanks to PlayStation Plus. But $15 is <i>way</i> too much for a game this unfinished.Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-26877859829833649592013-11-19T12:27:00.001-05:002013-11-19T12:27:22.114-05:00Initial Thoughts on the PS4I've talked a number of times about my history with Sony in regards to video games. I had never owned a PlayStation until college and the PS3 was the very last console from the previous generation that I purchased, and I mostly only did it because a friend of mine got me hooked on the "Metal Gear" games. And after using it for a while and warming up to it, I ultimately decided that I should have purchased the PS3 in the first place.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The PS3 was the best system of the previous generation, at least for me. I'm not big on online multiplayer, which I think the Xbox 360 clearly did better, but pretty much everything else the PS3 did much better. I've gone over this before. Better media sharing, better hardware stability, better exclusive games, better indie support, better controller (I'm sorry, I'm not a huge fan of the 360 controller), better digital game support, easier to upgrade the HDD, better paid subscription service, better interface... Honestly, the only reason I still have my 360 is because that's where all of my "Rock Band" DLC lives and it has a Blip and HBOGo app. That's basically it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So my decision to get a PS4 wasn't born entirely out of the fact that Microsoft completely screwed the pooch on their initial console announcement. And while we're on the subject, yes, I know they've recanted most of the things that made people edgy, but based a <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2013/11/08/penello-people-just-werent-ready-for-all-digital-xbox-one/">recent statement</a> from Albert Penello, it's pretty clear that Microsoft is probably hoping to go back to their original plans later on:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We just think that's the way the future's gonna go... We may have been right. What we were wrong about was that it's just too soon. People just weren't ready to make that leap right away."</blockquote>
<br />
But no, I didn't <i>just</i> get a PS4 because it cost less, lacked an online requirement, and had a lot of support from indie devs. No, I also got it because in spite of my own admitted biases, Sony won me over last generation and I felt like I kind of owed them the benefit of the doubt. I regretted not buying a PS3 sooner last generation, so I felt it made sense to get a PS4 right out of the gate this time around.<br />
<br />
So on Friday, my PS4 arrived, I got it set up, and I gave it a whirl. I didn't play with it excessively over the weekend, but I do think I've had enough time to give my initial impressions.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Setup</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Unboxing it was fairly painless. It comes with an HDMI cable, which, yeah, I think this is the first system to do that. Hope Best Buy doesn't mind. The first problem I ran into was... well, finding the power button.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Seriously, because of the way this thing is designed it took me about 5 minutes before I could find the "On" switch. I had to point my lit-up phone at it to see the tiny power and disc ejection buttons sitting wedged in the middle of the front face. Say what you will about the PS3's weird-looking design, at least you could tell how to turn it on and eject a disc.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once I got it to turn on and connected it to my WiFi, it started downloading the initial Day One update almost immediately. I was actually pleasantly surprised by that. I had heard that the network was really congested, so I actually came prepared to load the initial update manually. Turns out I didn't need to. The update downloaded and installed pretty quickly. I think the whole process took about 5 minutes. Perfectly painless.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then I tried to log into my PSN account. That... was less smooth. I had to go at it for roughly an hour, sometimes getting errors, sometimes just seeing it spin its wheels for about 10 minutes before backing out and trying again. Eventually, though, it let me through. I still got warnings periodically about PSN Maintenance the whole time, but my connection seemed more or less stable for the rest of the night.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I thought it was a bit strange that the initial update was fine, but logging into my PSN account was a nightmare.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In any case, I <i>needed</i> to connect to my PSN account before I could play any games.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
The Games</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was initially going to purchase "Knack", since I kinda liked the colorful design and unique mechanics, but pretty much all of the reviews I've read have panned it, so I decided to cancel that order.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But that wasn't too much of a problem, thankfully. Since I have a PlayStation Plus account (which has more than paid for itself several times over in free games and discounts), I decided to go all-digital this launch. It was a bit of a problem due to the whole PSN Maintenance debacle, but once I got through, it was less of an issue.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On day one, I was able to get "RESOGUN", "Contrast", "Warframe", and "Blacklight Retribution" all for free.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
RESOGUN</h4>
<div>
"RESOGUN" is a fun little game. It kind of feels like a hybrid of "Gradius" and "Missile Command". It's a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up, but you are confined to a single circular area and you have to defend and save 10 humans in the map while simultaneously avoiding getting killed yourself.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's a really well-designed game and I enjoyed playing it, but I think my only problem with it is that it's not terribly addicting, which is kind of a death-knell for a shmup. I played the first couple levels, had a pretty good time, failed on the third one and then just kind of moved on to other games.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I think part of the problem is that each level feels sort of self-contained. In "Galaga" or something like that, even if I die right out of the gate, I still might feel the urge to keep trying in spite of myself. In "RESOGUN", however, if I lose a life early on or a human dies early on, I feel less inclined to keep going since surviving ten waves of Keepers, which are green, glowing smaller fleets of ships that have to be destroyed to free one of the humans. If they are not destroyed quickly enough, the human just dies. If you destroy them, the human is freed from its cage and you have to fly over to it, pick it up, and bring it to an evacuation point.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let me just say that this very critical aspect of the game took me <i>way too long</i> to figure out. I knew I had to "save the last humans" as the game tells you at the beginning of every level, but I had no idea <i>how</i> to. I couldn't figure out who the Keepers are, what I was supposed to do to them, and how their deaths affected the humans.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All that was probably my own fault for not paying as much attention as I should have, but I'm just saying the game isn't necessarily terribly intuitive. Also, I still don't quite get <i>why</i> letting the Keepers live causes the humans to die. I would think it would make more sense if the humans got captured or directly attacked, but it seems like the humans just die as a result of the Keepers existing. And when the Keepers are destroyed, the human it frees could be anywhere on the map, often causing a rather intense mad dash to the other side of the map to find them before they get killed, and rushing in this game can be tricky since, like any decent shmup, touching another ship will kill you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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All in all, though, I liked "RESOGUN", I just don't think I'm crazy about it. It certainly is the prettiest game of the bunch.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h4>
Contrast</h4>
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"Contrast" is probably my favorite game of the bunch. I haven't beaten it yet, but I really enjoy playing it.</div>
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I'm not 100% sure what exactly is going on (again, haven't finished it yet), but it seems that you play as Dawn, an imaginary friend to a girl named Didi, who lives in a noir-style world. Didi is the only character you can actually see. Everyone else in the game is shown only in shadow. Similarly, it seems no one else other than Didi can see you, though it seems they can see your shadow (though they most seem not to notice you at all). Also, the rest of the world seems very... unfinished. It's unclear whether or not this is just the way the world appears to Dawn, if her ability to interact with the world is limited through Didi, or if the world truly is this collection of concrete islands trapped floating on a void of nothingness.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In any case, the core gameplay of the game is platforming with a slight twist. Dawn has the ability to slip in and out of shadow form, resulting in some very clever level design and puzzles. The puzzles thus far haven't been terribly difficult, but they are still engaging. The platforming itself is a bit flighty and glitchy. Reminds me a lot of "Psychonauts". Clever ideas, but lacking the polish of a platforming game like "Banjo-Kazooie" or a Mario game.</div>
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<div>
The real highlights of the game, however, are the story and the atmosphere. Didi's story of a girl caught between two parents teetering on the brink of annihilation is a bit cliche, but still engaging. Didi understands more than her parents think, but she also is more concerned with the simpler side of the situation. She understands that her father is in trouble with the wrong sort and she knows that his plans tend to not work out so great, but she just wants her family to stay together and for everyone to stay happy. Her motivations as a character are clear and sympathetic and inform the gameplay by providing simple goals.</div>
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The gameplay might be a bit buggy at times, the assets might have needed a bit more polish, and the level design could be tighter and a bit more complex, but the game manages to engage me far more than "RESOGUN". I'd say they are almost complete opposites in that way. While "RESOGUN" has a great deal of polish and balance, it lacks any kind of hook to draw the player in. Meanwhile, "Contrast" probably needed more time for polish and balance, but manages to hook the player in through its unique ideas and compelling story.</div>
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<h4>
Warframe</h4>
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"Warfram" is free-to-play game for everyone, not just PlayStation Plus subscribers, but I think you might need PS+ in order to play it online. I could be wrong, I don't know.</div>
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In any case, this isn't a new game as it's been out on the PC for close to a year now, but this is the first console port.</div>
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It's a cooperative third-person shooter where you play as a sort of cyborg going through and fighting aliens. Part of the gimmick is that it allows for a handful of different play-styles. Some levels can be played with stealth rather than constant running and gunning, though if you're playing in a team, good luck using stealth.</div>
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Your characters get a number of abilities and the use of a melee weapon (a sword), which is pretty cool, but the gameplay isn't terribly unique.</div>
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For what it is, though, I certainly don't regret playing it and I might go back to it. I'm always a fan of compelling cooperative play and as a free-to-play game, it handles microtransactions responsibly. If you have patience, you <i>can</i> unlock everything in the game without paying a cent, but since a lot of gear is obtained randomly by purchasing blueprints and fusing upgrades, spending real-world money to get a particular piece of gear you want would probably save you time. I personally think that's the best way to handle free-to-play in the current marketplace. Meanwhile, games like the upcoming "Killer Instinct" claim to be free-to-play, but there's no way to get all of the content without paying. Sure, you <i>can</i> play for free if you only want to play as one character, but no one in their right mind would do that.</div>
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But I had my problems with it. The art design is way too dark, making it really difficult to spot a lot of enemies. I'm also not crazy about the melee attacks. When you use your sword, you lunge forward, so if you space it improperly or your opponent strafes, you may have to spin around wildly to get your bearings straight again.</div>
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Still, I'd say it's worth a go. It <i>is</i> free, after all.</div>
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<h4>
Blacklight Retribution</h4>
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When I tried to play, there was apparently some server trouble, so I wasn't able to play it. The game is still in Beta anyway, so it probably wouldn't be fair to give it a whole review at this stage.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h3>
Back to Games In General</h3>
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So in spite of the fact that I didn't buy any games at launch, I had a pretty good time with what I was able to get for free. Game installations took a lot less time than they did on the PS3, multiple games could download simultaneously, and once I got PSN to connect properly, the downloads went along pretty quickly. My guess is that they were throttling the number of PSN logins so that the download speeds would remain optimal for update and game downloads. Kind of an irritating trade-off, but I guess it makes sense.</div>
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I really do wish that they made an effort to have more PSN games from the previous generation to have some compatibility on the PS4. I've downloaded a lot of PSN titles and it would have been nice to see some of those purchases carry over. Also, yeah, the whole backwards compatibility thing is a bit of a drag, but I understand why it's a problem and I hope that the Gaikai streaming service will prove stable. In the meantime, I still have a perfectly functional PS3.</div>
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I will say that I can understand the hesitance regarding the 500 GB HDD. On the PS3, 500 GB was plenty. Even for someone like me who has been binge-downloading games from PSN could fit dozens of games without any problem on a HDD that size. However, I did tend to buy my AAA titles via physical copies just because those sorts of games can take up a lot more space. The PS4, however, will need to install all of your games, in full, no matter what. Again, I understand why. I mean, our PCs already do this. But our PCs aren't limited to one 500 GB HDD. We can have external drives and multiple drives and larger drives. The PS4, however, can only have one 2.5" HDD for game installs, and that's pretty much the largest HDD you'll find that will fit within that form factor.</div>
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Honestly, though, it shouldn't be as huge of an issue this generation. The ability to play certain games from only a partial download/install will make it less of a hassle to delete games that you aren't playing anymore. Plus, even though 500 GB is by no means "more than you'll ever need" (which is always a doomed statement to make at any given time period anyway), it should be plenty for about a dozen AAA games, which is certainly more than I can typically juggle at any given time, so I don't really have a problem with this. At least not yet. We'll see how I feel in the future.</div>
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In general, though, I feel like the games I got were enough to quench my thirst for at least a weekend, and the fact that I didn't have to pay for any of them makes that even nicer. I would have liked to be able to play "Watch Dogs", but I'm willing to let Ubisoft take their time to get that one polished. It looks great.</div>
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<h3>
The Features</h3>
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The PS4 is more than just games, though, and people expect more from their video game systems as well. So what else do we got?</div>
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Well, the controller is very nice. I haven't had a lot of games that used the touchpad much, but it's easy to reach when I have needed to use it, so I think I'm OK with it so far. The rest of the controller is very ergonomic and comfortable and it has an audio jack port this time, which is probably the only feature from the Xbox 360 controller that I would have liked the DualShock 3 to have. Bluetooth was always a nightmare for chat audio. Also, the controller uses micro USB, so you can charge it with most mobile device charge cables if you don't want to plug your controller into the PS4 itself. Overall, the controller is great. No complaints.</div>
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One feature that I had a fair amount of fun with was the built-in Twitch.tv streaming. Without needing to buy anything extra, you can set up any game to stream directly to Twitch.tv for the world to see. It was easy enough to set up and you can share announcements for your streams on Facebook to let people know when you're online by spamming their Facebook timeline (sorry about that). I liked the feature, but I have some minor issues with it. The Twitch.tv overlay takes up about 1/4 of your TV real estate to show you that you're on the air, whether or not your mic is active, how many people are watching, and what people are saying. That's all well and good and I like being able to read the chat as I play, but I really think popup notifications could have been plenty for me. The ability to turn off the overlay would have been nice. Also, while it tells you how many people are connected, I wouldn't mind knowing <i>who</i> is watching, even if it's -- again -- just as a popup notification. It's pretty cool and I think I'll keep using it, but it could be better.</div>
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The new interface is fine, though there's really not much to say about it than that.</div>
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Not all of the apps that were available in the PS3 are available in the PS4 yet. Most notably the YouTube app, which I thought was a strange omission. Still, I imagine it will be carried over soon. And yeah, I really would like it if they could get apps for Blip and HBOGo so I could stop using my Xbox 360.</div>
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Probably my biggest complaint is that there doesn't seem to be any media server support. Look, Sony, I get it, most people watch movies and TV through Netflix and Hulu and stuff these days rather than downloading and streaming locally. But seriously. How hard would it have been to support media streaming? The PS3 has been able to do this since launch. There are $50 devices made by startups probably working out of a garage that can do media server streaming. It's just frustrating, that's all. Thankfully, this can probably be added fairly easily in a software update.</div>
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I didn't get the PlayStation Camera, mostly because it's voice control features are severely limited and there aren't really any games that really use it yet. Unless I want to start including my face in my Twitch.tv streams, I don't think I'll be rushing out to get one yet. Maybe if they release a better version in a few years or if more games start supporting it or if Harmonix ports "Dance Central" to the PS4. I could get down with that.</div>
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<h3>
The Takeaway</h3>
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Here's probably my biggest takeaway from this experience so far:</div>
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I still use my PS3.</div>
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If I want to watch YouTube? I switch to my PS3. If I want to stream a video from my laptop? I switch to my PS3. If I want to play "XCOM: Enemy Within"? I switch to my PS3.</div>
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This is a problem, and it's a problem both new systems share. I understand that the PS3's current incarnation lacks backwards compatibility, but it didn't at launch, and that's probably when you need it the most. Games are still coming out for the PS3 and not all of them will have PS4 versions right away, if ever. Gaikai is still months away at the earliest, and even that is probably optimistic.</div>
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The PS4 doesn't feel like a replacement to the PS3 or even a successor and I worry that it might take a very long time before it does.</div>
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On the one hand, I guess I'm kind of OK with that since I love my PS3 and I would feel weird disconnecting it and putting it in storage, but my PS3 is also really getting old. I finally got the Yellow Light of Death a number of months ago and had to send it back to Texas (read "Mexico") twice to get it repaired. It's working fine now, but I doubt it will have the same kind of longevity that my N64 has. It won't last forever and I have a terrible sinking feeling that when it dies, I will have to either repair it myself at considerable cost (probably from a third-party) or buy a replacement (which would lack PS1/2 backwards compatibility) in order to be able to play most of the games for it. Maybe I'm underestimating Gaikai or perhaps the PS4 can one day natively support some PS3 games through emulation, but this transition feels rocky at best.</div>
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I plan to keep using my PS4, but I feel like I'll still be using my PS3 far more often. I'm hoping that will change in the next year, but I think that's the other problem.</div>
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While I don't necessarily regret buying the PS4, I feel like I probably could have waited a year and it wouldn't have bothered me much. In a year, I'll probably be done with most of the PS3 games I'm still playing, most if not all of the new games will be available on the PS4, Gaikai might be working, YouTube might be supported, and maybe media streaming too. But I feel like until that day comes, my interaction with the PS4 will be sporadic at best. I still stand by my initial feelings from long ago that Sony and Microsoft would have been smart to hold off for another year and really come out swinging rather than do the usual "rush it out and fill in the blanks over the next year" that most consoles have done in the past.</div>
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Still, it feels like a worthy investment. I think I <i>will</i> get good use out of it, just not right out of the gate. I'm hoping that the somewhat sparse launch line-up leaves some room for indie devs to crash on the scene and build names for themselves. I'm hoping that the new hardware gives devs more freedom to push the boundaries of both visuals and game mechanics, especially when it comes to AI. I'm hoping that the PS4 will eventually be my new media hub that I turn on first thing when I get home from work every day.</div>
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So... I'd say my feelings are mixed. If you're reading this hoping to get a fix on whether or not you want one... well, I guess my feelings are that if you already have a PlayStation Plus account and you know you'll probably buy one within the next year or two, you might as well go for it now. It probably won't get any cheaper for another few years and if you've already got a PlayStation Plus subscription, you can take advantage of the free games that will come out in the meantime. Build up your library. If you're debating between getting this and an XBOne, I'd say that if you like to play smaller, indie games and you don't want to always have your system connected to the Internet, you should probably go with the PS4. But honestly? I don't really know if the PS4 is a clear winner yet. I've heard the stories about how devs are saying off the record that the PS4 has more hardware power, which is great, and yeah, while Microsoft has said that they're taking steps to be more indie-friendly and they've taken away their online requirements, I find it difficult to trust them. The reaching out to indie devs feels like little more than a token gesture at this point. They say that indies will get equal treatment, that they'll set their own terms, that the XBOne will work as a complete SDK eventually, and that publishers will no longer be needed, but for now those are only words. I'm hoping they prove me wrong, but they rarely do. As for the recanting of the online requirements, as I said near the beginning of this post, Microsoft rarely truly gives up on anything. If something they create doesn't go over well, they take it away, change it up a bit, rebrand it, and try again (see also Vista, Zune, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, etc.). I'm willing to bet that in about a year, they'll try again with the online requirements. Maybe offer a new feature that you can only use if you opt into the always-online feature. Then eventually, if the feature is adopted by a large enough percentage of users, they'll make it a requirement. If they get blasted in PR, they'll probably just cite some metrics saying that the majority of their users are always connected anyway or something like that. The only reason they're recanting now is because they still need people to buy the damn things, but that's a problem that will go away after launch.</div>
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But that said, if those things don't really matter to you... If you really only play AAA titles, you always have a stable Internet connection, and you think Kinect is worth $100, then... well, yeah, the XBOne is a pretty comparable choice at this stage. It will probably support most of the same 3rd party games and the graphics probably won't be very different. They've started doing the free games thing that Sony started with PS+, though the selections have been pretty underwhelming so far. The Kinect is undoubtedly better than the PlayStation Camera and the system in general has a lot more app support, even if most of those apps are stuck behind a paywall.</div>
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But if you like indie games, you're worried about Microsoft changing their minds again, and/or you really don't care whether or not the Kinect is better than the PlayStation Camera... yeah, the PS4 is probably your best option.</div>
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Of course, people like Yahtzee will always say that you don't <i>have</i> to choose between the two and that you can just as easily get a PC. And yeah, that's true, but honestly, while Steam has improved the PC ecosystem dramatically in a short amount of time, I just prefer console gaming. With PC gaming, everything feels a bit like a roll of the dice. Usually everything works the way it should, but every once in a while, something just doesn't and sometimes it can be a nightmare to fix it. Consoles offer consistency. A promise that I will be able to use this hardware to play most of the games that will come out in the next decade or so with no serious game-breaking problems. For example, I just got "XCOM: Enemy Within" on my PS3. My PS3 is over 5 years old. So here's a challenge: find me a 5-year-old PC that can play "XCOM: Enemy Within" as well as my PS3 can. Then tell me how much that PC cost 5 years ago. I'm willing to bet any PC you bought 5 years ago with a graphics card capable of playing the PC version without overheating or significantly reducing the settings probably cost somewhere around two or three times what I paid for my PS3 five years ago.</div>
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I like PC gaming, I think it can be a great option for certain types of games and Steam often has great deals. But I don't think I could ever make it my "primary" method of gaming. And the Steam Machine coming out next year isn't really a solution either as far as I'm concerned, but that's a whole other ball of wax.</div>
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I feel like the PS4 was a good choice. I might not get a lot out of it for a while, but I stand by it nevertheless. At least for now. Hopefully I'll still feel that way in a year.</div>
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</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939001316717781842.post-5603572585159414012013-11-13T12:15:00.000-05:002013-11-13T12:15:00.044-05:00"Thor: The Dark World" ReviewI'm going to break this review up into two parts. Non-spoiler and then spoiler. The non-spoiler part should be more or less complete, the spoiler part will just be where I get into the nitty-gritty geeky specifics that I love to go nuts over.<br />
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<h3>
Non-Spoiler</h3>
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<div>
The first "Thor" movie, despite being pretty good, had a number of problems. Asgard looked too pristine and unused for a multi-millennia-old kingdom, the side characters were often under-defined, and the whole plot felt overly rushed and compressed into a short period of time when it didn't have to be.</div>
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"Thor: The Dark World" manages to at least fix those first two problems. While Asgard still looks gorgeous and impressive, it feels like people actually live there. Less Naboo Starfighter, more Millennium Falcon. Additionally, while the side characters probably have about as much to do as before, what they do actually has more relevance to the plot than it did before. Also, the background characters aren't just completely ignored either. When soldiers die, the movie finds subtle ways to make you care. The bodies (when bodies still remain) are left strewn across the once-spotless halls of the All-Father. They are mourned.</div>
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It is fairly easy to say that "Thor: The Dark World" is a notable improvement over its predecessor for the reasons above as well as a few others that I'll get into later. However, one thing that remains unchanged from the original film is that this sequel feels even more rushed and compressed.</div>
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Very little time is devoted to giving characters room to breathe. It can often be a bit exhausting. While the first "Thor" movie suffered partially because it was hard to believe that Thor could change so much and fall in love within the span of a day or two. Thankfully, there's not a lot of enormous character whiplash this time around, but instead we simply end up with a movie that kind of feels incomplete.</div>
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Characters are introduced and then ignored. New conflicts emerge and then are left to be dealt with in a sequel. A lot of people say that a good movie should be able to stand on its own, and I don't entirely agree with that, but if a movie CAN stand on its own, that's usually a point in its favor. The fact that "Thor: The Dark World" is in no way a self-contained movie doesn't make it a less enjoyable movie for me, but it does mean that I'm far less likely to watch it on its own rather than as a part of a Marvel movie marathon or something.</div>
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Still, while what we got was a bit rushed and perhaps slightly incomplete, it was still incredibly entertaining.</div>
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Probably the one thing about "Thor: The Dark World" that I didn't expect was how incredibly funny it was. The "Iron Man" movies were funny, but "Thor: The Dark World" is hysterical. I was laughing almost the entire way through. The movie realized that one of the best things about Thor is how much he stands out. The best parts of the first movie were the parts where he clashed with modern-day Earth. It was funny, not just because he didn't understand the nuances of Earth culture, but because he genuinely didn't care. He treated the whole thing as just another adventure where he would mix and mingle with the local populace and then move on. Eventually it meant more than that, but at first, it was just very funny to see Thor throw a coffee mug on the ground or ask for a dog large enough to mount and ride like a horse.</div>
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While Thor doesn't spend much time on Earth in this one, that element of Thor and his kin having a very larger-than-life persona is never forgotten. Some of the best comedy is built on confusion or contradiction, and Thor is very much an inherently funny concept. That an advanced alien race would behave like characters written by Shakespeare is comedic gold when played right, and this movie manages to do that without straight-up making fun of the source material. It never apologizes for it's apparent silliness, but it does acknowledge how peculiar it is.</div>
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Most importantly, the movie always remembers to have <i>fun</i>. Too many action movies lose that element of fun and it can often make the set-pieces feel dull and detaching. This movie doesn't have that problem.</div>
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The only other criticism I can give is that Thor doesn't really have a lot to do in his own movie. Oh, he's in most of it and he does things and feels things, but almost every critical detail of the plot is acted upon by someone in his supporting cast. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Thor is often the one arranging all of the moving pieces and making sure they're in the right place and ready to do what they need to do when he needs them to do it, but when all is said and done, Thor's role in pretty much every plan he directs is to show up and the right moment and hit things. And perhaps Mjolnir deserves more credit for that than he does.</div>
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Still, despite Thor's lack of <i>doing stuff</i>, he remains an interesting and entertaining character to follow through the story and his supporting cast is really given time to shine and develop.</div>
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Overall, I'd say the movie is thoroughly enjoyable, I just think it's a bit... peculiar. Not necessarily bad, just... particular. Slightly off-putting.</div>
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<h3>
Spoilers</h3>
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<br /></div>
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OK, time to get detailed and nit-picky. This part is going to be more stream-of-consciousness than anything else.</div>
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First and foremost, I'm still disappointed that they killed Frigga. They really didn't need to. I'm glad she at least got to die a hero and all that and it's good that the movie doesn't lack for proactive female characters, but a fridge is a fridge. The movie wanted a reason for Loki to cooperate, and so they decided that Frigga was expendable to achieve that end. I find that upsetting and while it didn't ruin the movie for me, it certainly didn't help.</div>
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Next, the reveal at the end, while pretty cool, is incredibly maddening. Too many questions are left unresolved. Where is Odin? Is he alive? Will Loki continue to pretend to be Odin? Will this mask his presence from Thanos, who I imagine is still pissed at him for failing to get the Tesseract? It feels like a huge cliffhanger with serious potential consequences and it's pretty irresponsible to just leave this hanging.</div>
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Speaking of the Tesseract, I was a bit surprised that they decided to make the Tesseract one of the Infinity Gems. Er, Infinity <b style="font-style: italic;">Stones</b>. Presumably the Mind Stone, since the Mind Gem was also blue and Loki's staff, which was somehow connected to the Tesseract, had the ability to possess people's minds. Similarly, I'm assuming the red aether is the Power Stone as it seemed to give its users the ability to perform impossible feats of strength and power. Also, yeah, because it's red. It's interesting because this basically means that any artifact, regardless of shape or form, can be an Infinity Stone. Makes you wonder if they've hidden any other Infinity Stones in plain sight.</div>
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On that same note, HOLY CRAP BENICIO DEL TORO IS PERFECT AS THE COLLECTOR. "Guardians of the Galaxy" can't come out soon enough.</div>
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I really liked how Sif and Jane didn't do the whole love triangle bullshit outside of Odin being an ass and implying how much he ships Thor and Sif because Sif won't die on him.</div>
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Loki tends to get over-praised, but he really deserves it here. They kept me guessing from beginning to end and Tom Hiddleston just had so much fun with it. Loki did a lot of frowning and brooding in his previous two outings, but in this movie, he's the grinning mischief-making chessmaster full-tilt. And it's incredible.</div>
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I was worried that Jane would be possessed through the majority of the movie a la Hawkeye in "Avengers". Thankfully, she was never robbed of her character or agency and actually probably did more to move and resolve the plot than Thor did.</div>
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Odin was way more of an asshole in this film than he was in the first film, which was a bit aggravating, but it <i>is</i> how he usually behaves in the comics, so... yeah, I'll take it.</div>
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The Captain America "cameo" is utterly hilarious. Absolutely brilliant. Vaguely surprised that Chris Evans can do such a convincing Loki, but not that surprised.</div>
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Darcy is also absolutely great. I love how she cares so much even though by all accounts, she probably shouldn't. Wasn't she interning for the credit? Why is she still there two years later? Did she change her major?</div>
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I find it curious that S.H.I.E.L.D. ignored what was going on, possibly because Darcy was the one who reached out to them. I am surprised they didn't do anything about Selvig's naked craziness at Stonehenge. I do hope they devote an episode of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." to dealing with that random monster from Jotunheim that's bombing around London, but it's probably outside of their budget.</div>
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It feels like S.H.I.E.L.D. in general has been pretty hands-off lately. Maybe it's because they wanted to decrease the saturation or maybe it's because something is corrupting S.H.I.E.L.D. from within. Perhaps we'll find out.</div>
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Malekith, much like Laufey in the previous movie, felt very underdeveloped. Why did he want to destroy the universe exactly? What did he stand to gain or lose? Can he not survive in a world with light? Does he just prefer the darkness? Did he used to rule the universe when it was enveloped in darkness but lost control after light showed up? If so, why does he want to rule the universe? What agenda is he pushing?</div>
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Kurse was pretty awesome though. At least I got that he was completely loyal to Malekith in a Waylon Smithers-esque fashion.</div>
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I thought it was pretty much bullshit that Hogun got dumped off on Vanaheim to be with his people. Apparently Hogun isn't an Asgardian in this universe. Whatever. I get that he didn't provide as much comic relief as Fandral and Volstagg, but did we really have to ditch the only Asian dude in the movie? It would be interesting if in MCU continuity Vanaheim is to Ancient Asian mythology as Asgard is to Ancient Norse mythology. I think I could maybe get behind that, though calling it "Vanaheim" seems kinda dumb if that's the case. Maybe this is the realm where K'un L'un is located. Maybe Hogun will show up in the "Iron Fist" miniseries. Maybe this whole convergence thing is how he discovers K'un L'un. I dunno. I guess we'll see.</div>
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I touched on this before, but I really liked Loki's master plan. He starts out the movie with a number of problems. His family hates him, he's in prison, and Thanos is presumably after him as well for not holding up his end of the bargain. So what does he manage to do? Get out of prison, regain his honor, avenge his step-mom, fake his death, AND stick it to his father and reclaim the throne of Asgard. Gotta say, he played his shitty hand really well. He's my favorite kind of villain. He doesn't let his petty bullshit get in the way of his true goals. He may not be fond of Thor, but he knew that he would be better off playing nice with him than trying to off him. And he may be an ego-maniac, but he's fine with pretending to be dead and posing as Odin simply because he knows that's the only way he can get what he wants for now. He's smart and selfish, not single-minded and pointlessly evil like, say, Malekith.</div>
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I thought it was a nice touch to illustrate how Loki learned his magic stuff from Frigga. It made his devotion to her a lot more believable.</div>
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I also like that Loki is perfectly amicable towards Jane. He really has no reason to hate her and so he doesn't. In fact, I think he saved her life at one point, though that was probably just to help convince Thor that he was OK again.</div>
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What the hell was with Jane's new boyfriend, Richard? He seemed nice and all, but he seemed to serve absolutely no purpose that couldn't have been fulfilled by something else that already existed in the movie. Maybe he'll be important later? I dunno. He kind of reminded me of Doc Samson in "The Incredible Hulk". He was just sort of... there. Maybe he originally had more to do but they cut it out.</div>
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Darcy's intern, Ian, was pretty OK though. I mean, he was about as pointless as Richard, but at least he was funny and had good chemistry with Darcy. He reminded me of Rory from "Doctor Who". </div>
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I loved <i>loved </i><b style="font-style: italic;">loved</b> the spaceship battles. I dunno, I just have a thing for that sort of action sequence. Maybe that's once reason I love "Star Wars" as much as I do. Man, I am going to have a cow over "Guardians of the Galaxy".</div>
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Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16139932488765341880noreply@blogger.com0