Essays, Not Rants! 248: Prequels Can Work Prequels, by their nature, face an uphill battle in that we know how they are going to end. We know that Logan is gonna lose his memories in X-Men: Origins, we know that Sully and Mike are gonna be best friends (but only one of them a scarer) in Monsters University, and we know that Anakin is gonna become Darth Vader. By explicitly being movies of the stories that came before, we enter into them knowing where they end up, and, well, already being spoil
Essays, Not Rants! 108: Interconnected I’ve been waiting for Agents of SHIELD to really get into its groove proper. It finally did last week, courtesy of some major plot points from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Which is kinda odd, really. A feature film bearing a different name affecting a TV show that much. I mean, it makes sense within the universe they’re creating, but from a meta perspective, it’s terribly uncommon. And that’s one thing I love about the stories Marvel Studios’
Essays, Not Rants! 095: I didn’t get Blue Is the Warmest Color There. I said it. A lot of press surrounds Blue Is the Warmest Color for one reason or another, and with it winning a bunch of awards and ranking on some year end movie lists, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Long story short, I wasn’t a huge fan. Short story long, well, that’s what the rest of the post is for. The concept seems interesting enough; we follow Adèle and the ups and downs of first love in her relati
Essays, Not Rants! 325: Adaptation By Someone Else One game that got some press at last week’s E3, the game industry’s annual event where games are announced and/or demo’d, was the upcoming Total War: Three Kingdoms. Apparently it was announced back in January, but I hadn’t heard of it until now. And I am intrigued. The Total War series are strategy games that unlike, say, StarCraft or Red Alert, tend to focus on real wars, be they Roman, Napoleonic, or set in Feudal Japan. They’ve been on
Essays, Not Rants! 223: Sticking To The Obvious I put off watching Spotlight for a while. It had a lot going for it — talented cast and the subject matter — reporters investigating child abuse covered up by the Catholic Church — was charged, tragic, and topical. Way I saw it, this was gonna be a heavy, intense movie. Hence putting off watching a presumably gut-wrenching movie Which is why it’s so frustrating that Spotlight wastes so much potential in favor of being painfully obvious at best
Essays, Not Rants! 194: What Makes A Superhero Story? Spike Lee was a guest on The Nightly Show the other day and one of the things they discussed briefly was people of color as superheroes. Lee offered up Bruce Lee as an example of an Asian superhero. Which raises an interesting question, what exactly is it that makes a superhero narrative? Could be the narrative type. The typical superhero plot follows an outsider/everyman (so, Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Clark Kent) who has some special abi
Essays, Not Rants! 037: In Defense of Science Fiction You ever caught yourself explaining the conceit of a piece of science fiction and, halfway through, realize how stupid it sounds? No matter how cool it is, it just sounds silly on its way out of your mouth? Compare these two ideas: • A group of kids make a movie and wind up learning about life and moving on in this coming of age film. • A mysterious alien appears in small-town Ohio giving a group of kids the adventure of a lifetime. The
Essays, Not Rants! 240: Bang for A Buck Movie tickets here in New York short you around $15 a pop. Which is a lot for a movie, but we go anyway because, y'know, movies. So it's worth it, price of admission and all that for those two hours. Conversely, your typical new video game costs $60 at base, ignoring deluxe editions, special editions, and inevitable DLC. Which makes it come up to around a lot; Star Wars Battlefront totals out $110 if you buy the bundle for all the expansions, which I h
Essays, Not Rants! 074: No Detail Wasted I’m reading the Harry Potter books again. What really strikes me, even more so than the last time I read them, is just how well planned the whole series is. I don’t just mean the incredibly well-developed characters here, I’m talking about how J.K. Rowling clearly had the whole story prepared before she began writing. Sirius Black gets mentioned in the first chapter of The Philosopher’s Stone, but doesn’t come into play until The Prisoner of Azkaban.
So NYU cancelled classes today and tomorrow. This is particularly wonderful since I'm kinda behind on my homework this weekend (A Joss Whedon Appreciation Club meeting, a swing dance party, and a spontaneous 11pm movie and walk to Times Square does that to you). So that's awesome. And because just text is boring, here is a picture of what it looks out my window. More on this story as it develops.
So for gins and griggles (but actually for practice) I'm working on a full length screenplay. Because I figured it'd be easier to start from something I decided to write a Captain Marvel movie, because she's the best (this was back before they announced that they were actually make one). Much procrastinating later and I finished a beat sheet a couple weeks ago and am going to script. This is the first script I've written since "Ghosts That We Knew" last August and kinda the first bit of fictio
Essays, Not Rants! 073: The One With Aristotle Around 2,300-odd years ago this guy named Aristotle wrote a thingy about what makes good stories. Yes, I’m referencing Aristotle; this is definitely an essay and not a rant. Now, I think storytelling as a whole has progressed beyond some of his ideas (his limitation of fiction to tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, for example), but one thing that still sticks is his idea of catharsis. Aristotle figured that a story should arouse a lot of emotion in
Essays, Not Rants! 243: Of Hope in Stories I've never been a huge fan of tragedies. Don't get me wrong, I love stories like Othello, Whiplash, and Sicario; but those aren't the ones I count my favorite stories. I sometimes joke that I tell hopeful stories because if I want stories of injustice and despair, I can just read the news. I skim headlines and it’s not hard to see Othello and Chinatown being reenacted in current events. There is, of course, a greatness to using tragedy to comment o
Essays, Not Rants! 301: 2017 In Review 2017 has been a year. And it ends in a couple days, so that means it’s time for me to phone it in and post about posts! Five Most Popular/Viewed Posts #5: Hanging Out You know that thing where you talk about fictional characters as if they were your actual real life friends? This post is about how really well crafted characters make you happy just to watch them interact. #4: Trusting The Story It’s nice to be able to shut off your brain when y
Essays, Not Rants! 166: Obligatory Fury Road Entry I haven’t seen any of the old Mad Max trilogy, more for lack of bother than anything. Pop culture osmosis ensured I knew what it was about, though; post-apocalyptic wasteland, lots of leather, cars, machismo. So Fury Road flew below my radar during much of the lead up to its release. That is, until the press surrounding it started to discuss how it was surprisingly feminist and was [annoying] a lot of Men’s Rights Activists. That got my atte
I've been wondering why this latest season of Game of Thrones hasn't felt as enticing as usual, why it feels a little meandering-y. And I think it may be because of a lack of conflict? Last season had clear bits: Tyrion and Varys were going to Meereen (politicking their way there), Jon Snow was trying to save the wildlings (against Alliser), Jamie, with Bron, was trapped in boringland trying to get his daughter-neice back (against the boringones). This season hasn't had that much of a conflict
Essays, Not Rants! 117: In Defense of Michael Bay Michael Bay gets a bad rap. His movies are criticized as being low on plot and depth with anything worthwhile being substituted with mindless explosions. His characters are either terribly dull or more resemble caricatures than actual people. Also, sometimes they’re Megan Fox. Michael Bay makes movies that, when boiled down to it, are just excuses for big action set pieces that feel ripped from a lousy Saturday morning cartoon. And, way I see
Essays, Not Rants! 317: Letting Lara Down I was pretty excited for the Tomb Raider movie that came out a couple weeks ago. I’m a huge fan of the game it was based on, the Tomb Raider reboot that came out in 2013. The game was an origin story for Lara Croft, one that gameplay-wise took cues from the Uncharted series it had partially inspired but then been eclipsed by. One thing I really liked about the game was how it made Lara less of a sex object. Gone were the catsuits, short shorts, and cro
Essays, Not Rants! 255: Experiencing Life I really really liked 2013’s Tomb Raider. I wasn’t much of a Tomb Raider fan prior; Lara tended to be a little too sexualized for my tastes. Too much like if Indiana Jones had T&A than, well, an adventure story. The reboot, though, was more interested in Lara as a character than her figure. Plus, y’know, I’m a sucker for survivalist story on an island with crazy fanatics. Gameplay was a lotta fun too. So yeah, I really liked the game. Hence my di
Essays, Not Rants! 094: Relationship Advice from Scott Pilgrim Scott Pilgrim vs The World is one of my favorite movies. There’s the video game-y nature of it; a world that’s realistically unrealistic where fights look like Street Fighter and people explode into coins. With that, Edgar Wright and team put a great deal of love into making it; sound effects are borrowed everywhere from Legend of Zelda to Seinfeld. It’s a great movie. For those of you who haven’t seen it (or fall outside its fai
Essays, Not Rants! 097: Gamey Education For some reason, my high school World History teacher saw it fit to skip over the entire Ottoman and Byzantine Empires. This thus left me with the general feel that those empires were a completely disposable era of history. That’s high school in South Carolina for you. This all changed when I begun playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The basic conceit of the Assassin’s Creed series is built around genetic memories; that is the idea that your DNA
Essays, Not Rants! 146: Concerning Hobbits I finally saw The Desolation of Smaug Thursday night, and with that out of the way saw Five Armies yesterday. So it’s time to talk about them as a whole, since the trilogy’s so interconnected you’d think they were supposed to just be two movies and not three. But first, it has to be said that what the movies do well, they do well. Any scene with Smaug is wonderful; he looks great and Benedict Cumberbatch turns in a fantastic performance. The bits in
