the case for automata
06.16.09 • comment (2)
Watch out! The boys over at Penny-Arcade are engaging in democracy. In need of a long-form story for the month of July, Jerry and Mike have previewed three possible story ideas over the last few days. Now, as Ryan Seacrest likes to say, America decides. America’s options are Lookouts, Automata, and Jim Darkmagic. The online poll is still running, but it contains only the question at hand, leaving no space for comments. I found this vaguely upsetting, and then remembered that I have a website.
So here’s why you should vote for Automata. First and foremost, it’s currently winning, and everyone loves a winner (unless you live in Iran). If populism isn’t your bag, I can do better. Let us examine the candidates.
Lookouts is a fun concept; imagine a Boy Scout troupe in Fangorn Forest. Mike Krahulik’s art here is wonderful, and while I’m sure that Tolkein’s ghost whispered seventeen paragraphs of text into his ear, Holkins produced compact, evocative prose. It’s clear that both their talents have grown well beyond what a three-panel comic can contain, which perhaps explains the need for a larger project. Lookouts clearly resonated with Penny-Arcade’s audience, and I like it, particularly after listening to the illuminating podcast. However, I think Middle Earth and its thinly disguised kindred realms have been done to death since, say, 2001 (or maybe 2002, or 2003), and I’d much rather see Penny-Arcade explore territory that hasn’t been so thoroughly trampled.
Then there’s Jim Darkmagic, which I didn’t enjoy. Jerry and Mike have been producing three comics per week for ten years. They’re funny more often than not, but today they badly misfired, and it’s a shame that it happened to Jim. Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) is, of course, Krahulik’s character from the Wizards of the Coast D&D podcasts. The naming of Jim is one of the laugh-out-loud moments of the first podcast, and he’s been a hit with fans ever since. The problem with Monday’s comic is that Jim is portrayed as a boob. In the podcasts, he’s as competent a wizard as any in D&D, but has a truly massive, shamelessly self-promoting ego. Allow me to paraphrase Krahulik’s comment in that first podcast: “Remember, when I say ‘Jim does this,’ or ‘Jim does that,’ I’m not referring to Jim. He’s referring to himself, in the third person.” To put it another way, in the podcast he’s Steve Carell’s Maxwell Smart. In the comic, he’s Don Adams’s Maxwell Smart, and the character is less interesting for it. That, and I just don’t think the writing is all that funny on this one.
Which brings us to Automata. Of all three “treatments,” Automata’s reveals the least about itself. You have to go to Holkins’s own description to get a little more background, and it sounds like a very cool premise for a story. Androids in the 1920s are almost interesting enough by themselves, but androids as an oppressed, semi-legitimate minority in the 1920s is even better. Let’s be honest. X-Men is at its best when it treats the mutant population as a metaphor for real-world minorities. The best parts of Star Trek: The Next Generation almost always deal with the intersection of Data and the rest of humanity. This is rich territory, rarely explored. The guys at Penny-Arcade approach their work in subversive, intelligent ways, and I’d love to see them apply the pen and the paintbrush to a world like this. The art is great, and the premise intriguing. Vote for Automata.
star trek, up, and terminator: salvation
06.05.09 • comment (1)
Rather than bless you with three tedious movie reviews, I’ve decided to take a different tack and instead discuss how the actual films stack up against the trailers that advertised them. Spoilers ahead across the board.
Star Trek
The trailers would have you believe that this movie is a “Not Your Father’s Star Fleet” kind of affair. Here’s a re-imagined Kirk actually seen shacking up with a hot green coed, here’s Spock losing his cool and hitting people, and just in case these explosions and shots of bridge angst don’t look 100% Epic to you, let’s throw in a choir of gently rising voices to make sure even your ears get the point.
What the trailer doesn’t tell you is that J. J. Abrams—who we should all greet with a raised eyebrow of intense skepticism after the first season of Fringe—delivers gold during every second of this movie. Abrams gives us much more than Star Fleet with a veneer of sex, dirt, and explosions. He digs through the Star Trek mythos and serves up the very heart of its characters and themes, while respecting all of its beloved, hokey tropes. Spock grappling with the human emotions he never wanted, Kirk reconciling duty with impulsivity, and naturally, the fate of the universe hanging in the balance. Amidst all this, Chekov still has a ridiculous accent, Scotty yells at everyone about engine power, and McCoy tells us that he’s a doctor, damnit, not a physicist. As long as we’re talking about Bones, let’s give Karl Urban some bonus points for making a truly great entrance.
The last good Star Trek movie before this one was 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact. That’s a long drought. Abrams discards just enough of Trek’s conventions (set your phasers to pun!) to pull off his daring refresh of the material, while staying true to Star Trek’s heart. While watching McCoy inject Kirk with a number of intergalactic diseases and antidotes to fake a medical emergency, I was reminded, quite vividly, of this scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.1 Ladies and gentlemen, this is what Bones does, and I applaud Abrams for getting it. I’m almost willing to forgive him for the plodding, mediocre crapfest that was Fringe. Almost.
Up
Up’s trailer paints itself as a buddy comedy about a grumpy old man and his peppy side kick, who stumble through a cavalcade of madcap adventure set in exotic locations. The Pixar aficionado should know better, since Pixar already made that movie. It was called Finding Nemo, perhaps you’ve heard of it?
What the trailers hide from us is a much deeper story, one motivated not by a child-like desire for adventure in old age, but by a need to mourn for the lost love of your life and make up for past mistakes. If you harbor suspicions that a friend of yours might be a robot, take him or her to see Up. If he’s not sobbing uncontrollably after the first ten minutes, you can safely shoot him in the head. Only a damned machine could remain tear-free during this movie. 3D glasses are awkward enough without me having to wipe my tears off them, thank you.
So yes, the trailer is hiding a lot from us. In fact, the image of a nimbus of balloons tethered to a brightly painted house is just one small part (albeit an inspired one) of an increasingly surreal, wonderful film. What do you want me to say? Pixar can do no wrong. They release one film a year, and it’s always perfect. God but I hate them.
Terminator: Salvation
This is the perfect example of a trailer ruining a movie. Let’s be clear. Terminator: Salvation is, at best, pretty good. The trailer has lots of footage of Terminators blowing up, and the film is at its best when it delivers on the spectacle and pyrotechnics. The trailer also makes the plot of the movie very clear: there’s a weird new Terminator model that thinks it’s human. Except, this isn’t the real plot. The real plot concerns John Connor’s attempt to save the life of a teen-aged Kyle Reese, the man who is sent back in time in the original Terminator and ends up fathering John Connor.
The movie doesn’t do a very good job reminding the audience about the Reese/Connor time travel relationship, so unless you’ve recently watched Terminator or the inexplicably canceled Sarah Connor Chronicles (Why, FOX, why??), you may find yourself slightly confused. Regardless, the trailer mentions nothing of Kyle Reese, instead focusing on this psuedo-human Terminator named Marcus Wright. The climax comes when Wright stumbles back to Skynet’s headquarters and the malevolent computer, speaking with the face of Helena Bonham Carter, reveals that though he was based on a human volunteer from 2003 (which we see in the film’s opening scene), he was also programmed to find Connor, gather intel about the human resistance, and then return to Skynet, a program he has now unwittingly executed to perfection. Anyone who didn’t see this coming from a mile away is an idiot (especially since the whole concept cribs so heavily from Battlestar Galactica). It would have been fairly easy to keep Wright’s true nature a secret, but the movie and its trailer go out of their ways to ruin the surprise for no good reason.
It’s worth mentioning that Sam Worthington, who plays Wright and who I’ve absolutely never heard of before, does a great job with the material. He’s a lot more compelling than Christan Bale’s relentlessly stoic Connor. Salvation reaches for the kind of emotional redemption we got in Terminator 2 and ends making a wild grab that culminates in a nonsensical and unnecessary heart transplant. At least the action bits are good. That and a totally awe-inspiring digital cameo from Arnold, who has been restored to his youth circa 1982. Where were these effects wizards on Wolverine?
- And hey, as long as we’re taking a trip to the 80s: “A keyboard. How quaint.” ∧
mega man 9
05.21.09 • Comments Off
I have beaten Mega Man 9. Now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?
Saying that Mega Man 9 is difficult is like saying that the surface of the sun is hot, or that a fat man in a Speedo is scary. The game is intentionally retro, boiling Mega Man back down to its most basic components. In fact, Mega Man can only do three things in the game. They are:
- Jump
- Shoot
- Die
The game is as simple as it is merciless, and the combination instantly fascinated me. I came late to the Mega Man 9 party. In truth, what really sparked my interest was this excellent essay by Bruce Morrison, in which he explains why a game so unbelievably difficult is ultimately a joy to play, if you have the right mindset. He also touches on the idea of game-based versus internal rewards. In short, players have come to expect that games will reward them for playing well, and game studios are only too happy to oblige. The Achievements systems on the XBox and Playstation make the notion explicit, and to a certain extent, ridiculous. Players are rewarded and patted on the back for making even the most rudimentary progress. Picked up the wrench in Bioshock? Have a badge. Successfully navigate the perils of the tutorial level? Here, you’ve achieved something.
Mega Man 9 does not partake of this orgy of auto-congratulation. Mega Man’s only reward—the only permanent reminder that you’ve made real progress—comes when you successfully complete an entire level and obtain a Robot Master’s power. Yes, Mega Man 9 does have Achievements, but they clearly take the term very seriously. Defeat each Robot Master in thirty seconds. Now do it in ten. Beat the entire game in under two hours. Never miss a shot. Never get hit. Would you like me to part the Red Sea while I’m at it?
Mega Man 9 feels exactly like a Buddhist enlightenment (bear with me). All is suffering. You die over, and over, and over. Amidst all the pain, you begin to accrue a deep, almost imperceptible inner knowledge. Gradually the illusions of the world around you fall away. That which once seemed impossible becomes nothing to you. You transcend. Plug Man’s infamous vanishing platforms become less an obstacle than an opportunity to demonstrate Jedi-like powers of precognition (fast-forward to about 1:00).
Enough about personal challenge, inner reward, and Buddhism. Mega Man 9 is a great game. The game’s decidedly lo-fi approach masks a surprisingly rich experience. Your options may be limited to jump, shoot, and die, but there’s a great deal of variety embedded in how you do those things. Consider the play style of one Ms. PinkKittyRose, which is very different from my own. Look at her on Wily Fortress Part 1. Unlike me, she barely touches her Robot Master powers. She’s far better than me with the default Mega Buster, and the way she plays is very different because of it. When she used Rush Coil to bypass the magma blasters (around 3:20), my jaw hit the floor. I must have died thirty times getting the jumps exactly right. Like a true Buddhist, she saw that the answer to this problem was no problem.
If you want to see true transcendence, you need look no further than the “speed runners,” brave souls whose sole purpose in life is to complete the game in the shortest possible amount of time. In their quest to beat the clock, these people (and I use the term loosely) have explored the game at the furthest boundaries of creativity and discovered subversive, unexpected treasures. To watch one of these people play the game is to witness, in one particularly specific form, the very length and breadth of human thought. For your information, Mega Man 9 can be played from start to finish in about twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds. Got some free time? Here’s how you do it. Mesmerizing.
One particular reveiw of the game, written by Sumantra Lahiri, struck me as odd. He writes:
While Mega Man 9 has all of the elements to make a classic 8-Bit game, it some how just misses that 8-Bit perfection of Mega Man 2. For whatever reason, that intrinsic quality of a classic 8-Bit game seems to constantly elude it. In many ways, Mega Man 9 is definitely one of the better Mega Man games in its long storied run, but the truth is this; Mega Man 9 is good, not great. Though to say that Mega Man 9 did not attempt to capture that feeling of 8-Bit perfection would be false.
What does that mean? I think Lahiri’s problem is that he’s been confounded by what I call the Twelve Year Old Effect. The most awesome year of your life is the one in which you, personally, were twelve. The television shows will never be funnier, the ice cream will never be sweeter, and the video games will never be more “8-bit perfect” than they were then. It doesn’t strike me as particularly fair to dock Mega Man 9 points simply because it isn’t Mega Man 2.
Mega Man 9, like all great games, builds a complex experience out of a simple premise. Jump, shoot, die. Repeat until enlightenment is achieved.
x-men origins: wolverine
05.14.09 • Comments Off
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is what happens when complete ineptitude is allowed to run rampant over a good idea. Spoilers ahead, not that it matters.
This movie represents every problem I have ever had with Wolverine writ large. He talks mean but never backs it up. He doesn’t just heal, he’s nigh invincible. He doesn’t just have heightened senses, he’s able to hear a comment muttered from across a room through a pane of reinforced glass and a tank of water. He does this having recently come back from the dead. He is the most interesting thing on screen at all times not because he is actually interesting, but because the writers, producers, effects artists, and director decided to neglect absolutely everything and everyone else.
This movie is like a Monet in reverse. It gets uglier the farther away I get from it.
The rushed and confusing opening scene takes us to 1845, when a young Logan’s powers first manifest in a moment of great emotional distress. His claws pop out and he accidentally kills his father. Or maybe the guy wasn’t his father. I’m baffled as to what happened in these weirdly mishandled four minutes, but Logan and his brother, Victor Creed (who, although the name is never used, is supposed to be a re-imagined Sabretooth, never mind that he can’t possibly be the same Sabretooth from the original X-Men, ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?) decide that they must run away from home and become mercenaries. Logan and Victor proceed to montage their way through every major American (of course?) conflict from the the Battle of Bunker Hill to the Tet Offensive.
One hundred and fifty years of warfare could make for some great story, but we’re finished with it by the time the opening credits stop rolling. Aside from one of the movie’s few clever lines of dialogue, these fifteen decades of mass murder go without comment. The critical problem with Wolverine is that it skips everything interesting in the man’s life. Rather than build an interesting back story or an engaging character arc, the movie, like all the worst comics, proceeds on the assumption that the mere presence of Wolverine is enough to keep the audience interested. Likewise, we get what feels like five dozen cameos from characters who are only interesting if you already know who they are supposed to be. The film presents them to you without any effort at interpretation, embellishment, or depth. Look! Here’s Gambit! He can do card tricks, and has a stick, so you know he’s Gambit. Kind of. And now! A fight! Cheri! And Gambit, away! Whoosh.
Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber (Sabretooth) should be given serious credit for doing a good job with execrable material. Danny Huston, bless his tightly cropped hair, should not. His William Stryker is wooden and crass, possessing none of Brian Cox’s deliciously smooth malevolence. Brian Cox’s Stryker was like a fine aged whiskey. Painful and damaging, yes, but full of subtle notes that always made you want more. Danny Huston is PBR. A cheap pantomime of the real thing that can’t even do its job right.
Wolverine is equal parts boring and inconsistent. Hugh Jackman moves from fight to fight with no sense of rising action and a truly poor resolution to this non-climax. The ultimate villain is a faceless, voiceless, characterless Frankenstein wielding an amalgam of stolen powers. This cheap device is the refuge of lazy video game designers and twelve year-old fantasy writers. And how do the writers of Wolverine explain his memory loss at the start of X-Men? Adamantium bullets. Because although Wolverine’s brain can heal from an adamantium slug, his memories don’t grow back. What? Are you telling me that in 150 years of war, Wolverine never once sustained a head injury? This kind of laziness is just insulting.
Speaking of insulting, did you catch that cameo from Professor Xavier? The one where he walks out of a helicopter? You heard me. I said walks.
Okay, folks. It’s time for you and I to do a little call and response. I say “Xavier,” you say “Chair.”
Xavier.
Xavier!
Xavier!
Whatever the hell walked off that helicopter to rescue young Cyclops and the other assorted mutant extras was not Professor Charles Xavier. Charles Xavier does not exist without a wheelchair. It is what makes his character iconic, what allows him to transcend the pages of the comic and reach the reader as the absolute archetype of mind over matter, of brain over body. In a universe of spandex and exaggerated musculature, Xavier manages to be a mutant powerhouse from the understated calm of a three piece suit and a wheelchair.
All of this collapses the instant that Xavier stands up. Now he has no physical deficit to counterbalance his overwhelming intellectual might. This is the incomplete Xavier, who might have heard that the world is an unfair place, but doesn’t understand what that truly means. He hasn’t experienced it firsthand yet. His legs are the price he has paid for unparalleled mental powers, a permanent reminder that nothing in this world comes free. His injury taught him what it was to be visibly different and vulnerable, as so many mutants are. This grants him empathy, and it is one thing (perhaps the the only thing) that separates him from his great adversary. It also forced humility on him, and taught him how to live with weakness until it was no weakness at all. On a good pair of legs, he’s just a cunning manipulator with suspicious amounts of money and a charming accent, utterly untouched by hardship. He’s a pretentious, dangerously overconfident chrome dome with a PhD who for some reason refuses to be called “Doctor.”
The wheelchair is integral to the character. Pulling him out of it simply to signify that we are “in the past” is an unforgivable mistake. It also didn’t help that the unnecessary CGI youth formula made Patrick Stewart look like he was made of pancake batter. I mean, why bother? The bulk of the story takes place perhaps ten years prior to X-Men, and Patrick Stewart looks basically the same. Just let the man be.
Xavier’s cameo tells you everything you need to know about the ineptitude of this movie. The cursory and grotesquely inappropriate treatment of Xavier bespeaks much more than lazy writing. It demonstrates a staggering disregard for the substance of X-Men and a profound misunderstanding of why people have remained dedicated to these comics for the better party of fifty years.
It would not have been hard for Wolverine to be a good movie. The Dark Knight proved that summer blockbusters can be propelled not just by big explosions, but big ideas. Iron Man (which, similar to Wolverine, was last summer’s innaugural flick) showed that a middling story can be surprisingly entertaining if you give a talented actor something to do besides grimace and lunge. But fine, thanks. Please, continue to ruin a franchise that looked unstoppable in 2003.
preceded by a brief, high pitched shriek
04.28.09 • comment (1)
ARMAND: What are you giving him drugs for? What the hell are Pirin tablets?
AGADOR: It’s aspirin with the “A” and the “S” scraped off.
ARMAND: My God, what a brilliant idea!
AGADOR: I know.
Sometimes, you just need something to take the edge off a bad day, know what I’m saying? Someone please remind me to buy The Birdcage the next time I’m within range of a place that might have a copy.