What isn’t awesome about this artwork? NOTHING THAT’S WHAT.
I, like Yahtzee, love Tim Schafer. We’ve takenturns talking about how great he is. I grew up on games like Day of the Tentacle and I adored Full Throttle. Psychonauts quickly grew on me (after my fingers healed up) and when Tim finally returned with Brütal Legend, I was very excited. Having played the game, I still think he’s a genius. The game, on the other hand, I’m a bit less passionate about, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have fun playing it.
Eddie Riggs is a roadie. He’s not a front man or a guitarist or anything of the sort. I mean, sure, the man can wail on an ax with the best of them and knows good music when he hears it – and cringes when he hears bad music – but he’s a roadie. He stays in the wings and helps a band look good. He can fix, build and do just about anything, but he never wanted to be in the spotlight. Until a spotlight fell on him, that is. Several spotlights, in fact, and a whole lot of set design. His near-death experience took him to another world instead of a hospital, a world of pure heavy metal imperiled the forces of darkness and the onslaught of screechy hair metal. It’s Eddie’s job to take command of the resistance and lead them to victory. The final goal of that victory, to liberate the world or blow it to smithereens, is kinda murky. Prophecies are like that.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“C’mon. Just three little words. Say it. ‘Nickelback sucks.'”
Unlabeled maps make the baby Jesus fume with rage. I’m not asking you to tell me exactly where everything is if exploration is one of your selling points, and I do love to explore. No – just tell me where things are after I find them. When I pass something, unlock a new area or catch sight of a landmark, jot that down on the map. It shouldn’t be that hard. Why am I only seeing Metal Forges and sidequests on the map when I bring it up? How does that help me?
Likewise the in-game tutorials aren’t terribly informative. I had no idea how to unlock the various draconic gargoyle statue things littered around the landscape until I looked it up on a fan site. Nobody in the game told me what they were for or how to free them, just that I had to. And I still don’t know how to switch around the faces on Mount Rockmore.
A lot has been said about the game’s RTS gameplay. As someone who’s played a variety of RTS games, from the original Command & Conquer to StarCraft, I had a few quibbles about it myself. The inability to see the battleground from above felt like a major hindrance, selecting individual units took longer than I felt comfortable with since most of the enemy was running up to pound my face into the nearest hard surface, and blending the third-person adventure controls with RTS controls felt hasty in its construction and shifting gears from beating ass to issuing commands broke the flow of combat somewhat. I don’t object to the existence of RTS in this game – just its execution.
Stuff I Liked
“Dig the wheels, baby? I got ’em from this crazy mumbling dude in a dress.”
That said, I love the idea of being with my troops during the battle. When I first heard General Lionwhyte wailing away as he floated there on his hair-wings, my first thought was to run over to him and shut his pasty whiny ass up. And that’s exactly what I did! No need to sortie other troops, I just zipped over and started unloading on him.
The art direction of the world is pretty cool. It feels like the studio over at Double Fine is wallpapered with old Queensryche and Megadeth albums and that’s what the artists used to make this world feel awesome.
The riffs you learn to summon your car, raise forges and do other things is reminiscent of color-matching in Rock Band and are satisfying to pull off, especially in the middle of a stage battle.
I like Jack Black and I don’t care who knows it.
Switching between the melee and ‘magic’ attacks you have is very smooth, and it makes combat more interesting.
I like the characters. They’re not overly deep and complicated, but they’re cool and the voice acting is nicely done, which leads me to…
Stuff I Loved
“It’s a fucking robe, you fucking prat!!”
Ozzy, Lemmy, Lita and Rob Halford. ‘Nuff said.
Oh, you want more? The soundtrack will kick your ass. It is awesome. I loved zipping around the landscape in the Druid Plow rocking out to metal. Dropping the Plow into the middle of a fight and kicking on a different tune to pump you up more helps get through some of the tedious bits of the RTS engine. It did for me, at least.
The bit at the beginning where you can choose the amount of swearing & gore makes me laugh every time. It would only be better if the censoring was in the style of Metalocalypse, laying guitar stings over the curses.
Bottom Line: Brütal Legend is one for metal fans and fans of Tim Schafer. Hardcore RTS fans, people expecting a sandbox game mixed with God of War or folks who can’t stand Jack Black aren’t going to enjoy this. I did, though. Rent it if you like badass music and a unique gameplay & story experience, buy it if you like the game after playing it.
And for the record, I was digging on the character of Lita more than Ophelia.
I’m not entirely sure why. Just something about her.
Whoo, boy. Trying to sort out exactly where I am at the moment and what’s coming next is proving to be difficult. The dayjob is ramping up along with everything else so time during the day to get a plan of action together is difficult to come by, since I have settled on a long-term writing project that should be occupying most of my free writing time. I do have a couple other incidental side projects, and I don’t want all of it to get derailed by my interest in Star Trek Online.
Now, the game has been previewed inseveralplaces, and the open beta critiqued in a coupleothers, but I have yet to pass my final judgement upon it. I actually want to put together more than just some text and pics about it, however, which leads me to the big obstacle that I’ve run into today.
You see, YouTube and Google like each other a lot. They encourage you to link your YouTube account to your Google account, which I did. However, I picked up the YouTube account ‘jeloomis’ before I really got into the whole Blue Ink Alchemy branding thing. In addition to having a video supplement to my beta impressions, which will be more like a narrated slideshow than an actual video because of my desire to preserve processor power and a complete lack of knowledge in FRAPS use, I was thinking of reworking the ‘Powerless’ idea to something less artsy and more casual. In order to make sure people associate these things with this space and my other work, I wanted to change my YouTube account name. You can’t do that without deleting the old account, which I did, but in the course of doing so I neglected to unassociate that account with Google. So, when I went to create the YouTube account with my shiny username, guess what happened?
“That account is associate with jeloomis.”
So… it’s associated with an account that no longer exists. And there’s no way to unassociate it outside of that account.
I contacted YouTube to reactive the old ‘jeloomis’ account so I can yank it away from Google and get this thing set up properly. We’ll see how timely their customer service department is. EDIT: Apparently very, but that doesn’t mean they’re helpful in getting the association severed. My vexation is COLOSSAL.
Meantime, here’s a to-do list for that project I’ve chosen thanks to the Magical Talking Beardman.
Get plot points vetted.
Generate dramatis personae document.
Work out rules of languages & magic.
Write the damn thing (target word count:125k)
Find an agent.
The first hurdle is, to me, a crucial one. I’ve laid out the plot of the novel in a document and shown it to a couple minds I really respect. My wife has given me some good feedback on it and I’ve tweaked the document accordingly. I’m waiting for a few more opinions before I proceed with the next step. Having a plan like this should keep me from procrastinating too much. I hope.
No word back yet from Polymancer, although there is another assignment I’ve been contacted about. More on that after I fit it into my schedule somewhere. And what’s this? A new Escapist editorial schedule calender? Hot diggity dog, it’s time to flood Jordan’s inbox with more pitches.
I really have no excuse for sitting around bored any time soon. Unless I’m in STO going from one system to the next and waiting for an instance to load. But more on that later.
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a current movie. I blame my job schedule and related finances. Anyway, when I got a couple of movie passes for Christmas, my wife and I debated what we’d go see. We settled on Daybreakers and, well, anything I say here is going to sound a lot like MovieBob’sreview. But you know something? It’s so good it’s worth giving the “Go See This” treatment at least twice. The movie stars Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman, Isabel Lucas and Sam Neill.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“Hmm, apparently if we extract sparkles and Dawson’s Creek romantic crap from the movie, it’ll be completely awesome!”
To be honest, Ethan Hawke’s character reminded me of Brad Pitt’s from Interview with a Vampire. Now, I know vampires are nothing new, and a reluctant vampire can easily shuffle the character into the ‘protagonist’ category, but I think he protested a bit too much. It didn’t really get to the point of annoyance, but it came close. Not necessarily a bad thing, per se, this is just my personal opinion.
I’m not sure why vampires explode when staked. My wife gives me crap for getting hung up on the fine details on vampirism when I should be more concerned about how blood-sucking fiends from beyond the grave even exist in the first place. I guess this is another personal fault, since I’ve worked with vampires quite a bit in a writing and gaming sense for many years. I mean when I’ve participated in vampire LARPs, nobody explodes when staked so I guess I’m sort of used to that. (Yes, I’ve LARPed in the past, shut up.)
Stuff I Liked
“Awesome, you say. Will it still appeal to the powerful and lucrative tween demographic? No? Then keep the sparkles in. This I command.”
There are so many little touches that remind you that these vampires are from the old school. They don’t cast reflections, they don’t have pulses and they have to inhale right before speaking since they don’t have to breathe. Their fangs are always out and their eyes are disconcerting unnatural colors. It’s a refreshing change from what we’ve had to deal with recently.
The metaphors on fuel shortage and the examples of corporate greed overwhelming the long-term benefits to humanity don’t overshadow the characterization or storytelling. They exist, they state their points and move on. Sort of like the Ethan Hawke/Brad Pitt parallel brushing the annoyance factor (again, in my opinion), the metaphors nudge but never quite mount the soapbox. They are good lessons that are well-presented, and like District 9, it’s nice to see an action genre flick that has something to say other than “HERE ARE SOME EFFECTS.”
I liked the degeneration of vampires into chiropteran monsters, and the varying reactions of the ‘refined’ vampires to the animalistic cannibals that were once friends or even family. As much as the vampires are themselves fiends, the different ways in which they deal with these unfortunates actually gives them a layer of humanity.
Stuff I Loved
“Look, friend, you better keep the sparkles outta my vampire flick, or so help me I will go completely Green Goblin on your ass.”
Sam Neill. I love the way he projects cold, objective creepiness in all of his scenes. He’s very much an old-school vampire, Dracula in a suit, uncompromising in the realization of his desires and ruthless in the execution of his will. He’s manipulative, he’s diabolic, and I adored every scene he was in.
Willem Dafoe. I don’t know if I need to say much more about the man, as he’s one of the most versatile and memorable character actors I’ve ever seen, and this performance is no exception. It’s almost like he and Sam are vying for the position of ‘most awesome character’ in this movie, and I think it’s just about a tie. I love his cars, too – I think my father owned a Firebird Trans Am at one point.
In spite of his reluctant vampire role in the first act, Ethan Hawke does a great job of giving us a main character with an arc we can follow and growth we can support. Again, my initial near-annoyance with his constant protestation wore off very quickly, and he’s one of the characters that show real humanity and depth. I have to admit I’m not terribly familiar with a lot of his work, and after seeing Daybreakers, I know I need to change that.
The pace of this film, and the tightness of its storytelling, are just about perfect. It doesn’t throw too many things at us at once so we lose track of what’s going on or what’s at stake, it takes the time to develop its characters just enough for us to care about them, it doesn’t skimp on the action or the gore, and it does all of this with the sparing use of special effects and a brevity that’s refreshing and compelling.
The scene in the shade of the tree where Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe meet for the first time was done so well I about giggled with glee. From the car’s automated warning about the UV level to Hawke all but dancing from one pool of shadow to the next, the scene was downright exceptional. I got the feeling he was in real danger, putting himself at extreme risk for the sake of something he believed in. This scene caused most of my initial annoyance at his character to evaporate, and from then on I was definitely rooting for him.
Bottom Line: I’m going to reiterate MovieBob’s sentiment: You should go see this. I know some people out there aren’t big fans of gore, which means they’re missing out on a great example of screenwriting, acting and direction. It’s paced perfectly, the story is packed expertly, every character has nuances and depth and the action ramps up towards the end to just the right pitch. If you can handle a good amount of on-screen blood, especially in the film’s third act, Daybreakers is a satisfying and rousing revival of the old-school vampire movie. It does everything right, doesn’t sell you short and will leave you wanting more. Go sink your metaphorical fangs into it. This is a badass movie, and it is definitely, definitely worth your time.
The USS Farraday, en route to Earth for refit or decommission, investigated odd message fragments and micro-singularities in the Mutara nebula. The phenomena, apparently created by protomatter, nearly destroyed the ship, but quick thinking by the crew prevented a total disaster. However, subspace distortions have carried the Farraday to an unknown corner of space, and among the casualties of the incident was the Farraday‘s captain, Emmanuel Parkhurst.
Now that the latest film is available on Netflix, as well as the television series, I’d like to discuss the rise and fall of the Terminator franchise. Examining what worked in the various stories of this mythos and where things went a bit wrong, or a lot wrong, should only take a few minutes. It’s interesting, at least to me, that such examinations don’t happen more often when these stories are getting put together. Then again, calling what happens in “Salvation” an actual story is giving it a great deal of credit. Come along, you’ll see what I mean.
The Terminator
I’ve known grown men haunted by this.
Men in action films were being called ‘killing machines’ before this one came along. Charles Bronson springs to mind. However, James Cameron gave us a literal killing machine. The titular character is a cybernetic assassin sent back in time to murder someone. This target isn’t a genius, or a great warrior or even all that significant. Sarah Connor is a waitress in her late teens who is unaware that she’s in any sort of danger until everybody who has her name starts dropping dead in very violent ways. The only man who can save her, who is even aware of what this killing machine really is, comes from the future and explains why she’s wanted dead: she will give birth to mankind’s best hope for survival in a future where machines are systematically exterminating our race. To prevent John Connor from taking charge of the resistance, the artificial intelligence called SkyNet sent the Terminator to kill his mother before he was even born.
Beyond the action sequences and some high octane nightmare fuel in the form of the skinless Terminator rising from the flames of a wrecked fuel truck, the storytelling’s very tight and the conceptualized time travel is realized rather well. The human characters show depth and real emotion, and Arnold’s star-making role relies on him simply being large and stoic, seemingly unstoppable in his cold rampage. I think a lot of this is actually due to the constraints of the technology of the day. Without CGI or today’s massive effects budget, James Cameron had to use the genius of Stan Winston sparingly. The scene where the Terminator repairs himself is a great example of this. Without a single word and minimal music, Arnold’s actions and the use of a very complex artificial stand-in creates a scene that is both awesome in its execution and squick-worthy in its content. Not only did this film really launch Arnold’s career, it cemented Cameron’s place as the arguable master of the genre.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Look up ‘badass’ in the dictionary. You’ll find this.
Sequels can be dubious creatures. It’s rare for a sequel to not only harken back to feelings created by the original, but also build upon the characters, themes and stories established previously. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Dark Knight are often mentioned in the same breath as this film, in that they do exactly what a sequel should: taking favorite characters and interesting stories and improving on the overall formula. In this, John Connor’s grown into a somewhat precocious and arrogant pre-teen while his mom has been locked up for trying to tell people about killing machines coming back in time to kill her. A new Terminator, the T-1000, is sent back in time to murder John as a child, while John’s future self captures and reprograms an older model and sends it back as a protector.
Everything that made the first film work is here. However, a lot of concepts are taken in new directions or even turned on their heads. Sarah Connor, learning the identity of the man responsible for creating SkyNet, takes it upon herself to go assassinate him, in effect becoming no better than the machines sent to kill her and her son. The T-800, Arnold’s model, begins to explore the nature of humanity as he spends time with the Connors, and John, who begins the movie zipping around on a dirt bike as he hacks ATMs for cash, turns out to be one of the most virtuous and downright heroic characters in the story. And as for nightmare fuel, the vision Sarah has of the nuclear holocaust that is Judgement Day is as realistic as it is chilling. The action is balanced with humor, the horror with good writing & acting, all coming together in a package that actually outstrips the original. Finally there’s the awesome factor of Arnold hefting a minigun with a little smile on his face, tiny little Robert Patrick tossing Arnold around like a rag doll and Linda Hamilton going completely Amazonian and nearly taking down the T-1000 single-handedly while only having the use of one arm. It gave a fantastic movie-going experience and hope that this trend would continue.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Yeah, she’s kinda hot, but not quite right for a Terminatrix.
It’s unfortunately at this point that the Terminator films began to follow the ways of other sequels: rehashing old ideas while not presenting anything terribly new. John Connor, now a young adult and getting by off the grid after the death of his mother, is once again targeted for termination, this time by a female Terminator with highly advanced weaponry and programming under the liquid-metal skin that made the T-1000 so dangerous. Another older model is sent back to protect him. This time, however, Judgement Day’s coming is inevitable, and John ends up in a bunker with his future wife and becomes the voice of the resistance even as SkyNet brings humanity to its knees.
Instead of doing anything new with the storylines or characters, Terminator 3 suffers from being, in essence, a carbon copy of Terminator 2. The Arnie model is already programmed with psychology so there’s nothing for it to learn, the T-X is somehow less menacing since it has an endoskeleton that can be destroyed as an excuse to have energy weapons in the past, there’s no Sarah Connor against which to contrast John and some of the very rules of time travel are ignored for the sake of plot convenience. Still, it’s difficult for me to confidently say that T3 is a horrible movie since some of it does work, if only because it was looking over the shoulder of T2 and jotting down notes. It’s just shallower than the first two films, and while it does offer the eye candy of Kristanna Loken and some amusing moments like the contents of Sarah Connor’s coffin, it can safely be ignored.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
That’s more like it.
That’s exactly what television producers did when they began the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Taking place after T2, Sarah and John stay on the run until a Terminatrix named Cameron appears from the future to help prevent Judgement Day. As the series goes on, the protagonists move into roles of anti-heroes and even terrorists, breaking the law on a regular basis and pushing the envelope in terms of acts committed for the sake of a greater good. The show grew a very dark and edgy beard, and in my opinion, was too good a show for FOX execs to allow to live.
Aside from casting the always delightful and poignant Summer Glau as Cameron, what this show does right among other things is the dynamic of Sarah and John. In T2 we observe that Sarah loves her son enough to go to murderous lengths to protect him, while John loves his mother too much to see her become a complete monster in the name of his safety. The TV series builds on this, showing Sarah struggling to maintain her humanity in the face of everything she has to do while John slowly has to let go of his young idealism and taking on the mantle of leadership. It is, like the first two movies, smartly written and well acted. And then there’s the fan service – dear God, the fan service.
Terminator: Salvation
An action shot from Modern Warfare 2 Terminator:Salvation
Reversing the way the TV series handwaved T3, the fourth film follows T3’s take on the story and brings us to 2018 where John Connor is not the leader of the resistance, but rather a subordinate officer whom some people (especially those in charge) deem unpredictable or even unstable due to his claims of his own importance. His cell is infiltrated by an advanced prototype Terminator calling itself Marcus Wright, who believes he’s still human, while trying to save a young warrior named Kyle Reese from termination – and thus becoming the cause for his own conception.
I’ve reviewed this film already so let me just briefly cover the bullet points. The writers and director water down the concepts even further from T3 until it feels more like a generic CG-driven action flick than an heir to the Terminator legacy. While Anton Yelchin does very well as Kyle Reese, and Sam Worthington brings a lot of humanity to his character in the face of a lot of alpha-male swaggering, the whole thing overall just feels more empty and lifeless than the machines themselves. Again, there’s some parts of the film that work while others fall flat, so I can’t really call it a horrible movie but it’s really not something I’m interested in watching again, either. But there’s not a great deal of story here, and the emphasis seems more on the action scenes and big robots with lasers.
That, I think, is the failing of the second pair of films. The humanity of the characters is somewhat dialed down so the cool factor of the robots, gunplay and visuals can be turned up. But what worked in the first two films weren’t just the special effects or the action or the bloodshed. It was the characters, very human and well-realized characters, that drove both the plots and the success of those films. Even the television series, blasted by some as being too cerebral or too dark or too God-awful, managed to get that right, focusing on Sarah and John more than it did on killer robots, laser beams and things that belong more in a Michael Bay flick than it does in something that’s actually got a brain in its head.
So, in conclusion, I recommend you watch the first two Terminator films, and if you find yourself hungry for more, check out The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You can watch the other two films if you want, but I feel they’re pretty weak by comparison. Feel free to disagree, though. It’s not like I’ll be able to send a killer cyborg back in time to kill your parents or anythig. Well, not until I figure out what exactly they’re using to power Dick Cheney.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
