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Ta-metru_defender

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Blog Entries posted by Ta-metru_defender

  1. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 096: Playing with Expectations
     
    In celebration of the wonder of Netflix, I decided to watch Drinking Buddies the other night. The premise is nothing new, Luke and Kate are coworkers with incredible chemistry who are, unfortunately, in relationships with other people.
     
    What makes the movie such a joy is how the film plays with this idea. All the building blocks are in place, but the plot dances around them and subverts them. The scene where the Luke and Kate would/should kiss and fall in love is there. However, well, they don’t. Not then, and though the sexual tension is brimming between them, it never happens throughout the plot. Instead, the film looks at Luke’s relationship with his fiancée and Kate with her boyfriend while exploring the nature of Luke and Kate’s relationship. It’s been classified as a romantic comedy of sorts, but it disregards elements of the genre at will. Drinking Buddies teases the idea of a romance, but ultimately tells a story about, well, drinking buddies.
     
    For someone who consumes as much media as I do it’s always fun to see a story that does something different (in a meaningful way, as opposed to just adding lesbians). Pacific Rim hit every beat the usual blockbuster does, but did so while running its own commentary on the world as it is. But I’ve written extensively on that movie (and will continue to do so), let’s look at another movie.
     
    Like (500) Days of Summer (so much for something new). Like Drinking Buddies, it’s been billed as a rom-com and it, for all intents and purposes, at first seems to shape up to be one. One of the earliest scenes is of Tom and Summer sitting on a bench holding hands, a ring on her finger. We’re told this takes place on day 488, so we know it’s near the end. As an audience, we expect Tom and her to end up together, even as we see their relationship fall apart.
     
    Many of the tropes of the romantic comedy are in full effect, yet they’re used almost ironically. Tom’s happy walk after getting together with Summer concludes with a flash-forward to his dejection after they break up. The whole idea of Meeting The One is taken brutally apart. But then, the narrator did say it was a story of boy meets girl, but not a love story. It plays with what we’d expect from the sort of movie it is, ultimately giving us something very different. And y’know what? It works.
     
    Similarly, one would expect Scott Pilgrim vs The World would be a relatively straightforward movie: Scott fights Ramona’s seven evil exes in order to be with her. Basically an action movie’s formula mixed with a romantic comedy. Easy.
     
    Only, this is Edgar Wright; it’s never that simple. As I said a couple weeks ago, the movie offers an interesting look at what’s vital in relationships. This isn’t what you, heck, this wasn’t what I expected at all when I first saw the movie. The movie seemed simple enough going in, but proved itself able to supersede both genres to create something new. Edgar Wright gave us an honest look at relationships through a comedic, video game-y, action-y lens. It did something different.
    Back to Drinking Buddies, a movie unlike much else you’ll see; it’s slow, the dialogue is improvised, and not much happens. It’s a slice of life. I saw it based on a poster I’d seen a few months ago outside an independent cinema (and hey, Olivia Wilde and Anna Kendrick) and while watching expected it to go the rom-com route. But it didn’t, and it didn’t in a way that made for an interesting story. And for that, it succeeds.
     
    Writer’s note: The discrepancy that I harbor an intense dislike for Blue Is the Warmest Color yet really liked Drinking Buddies is not lost on me. Especially given the critical/audience dissonance on the former (that is, audiences didn’t like Drinking Buddies as much as critics did). Chalk this one up to personal taste.
  2. Ta-metru_defender
    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 fairly narrow demographics), here’s a rundown of the plot: Scott Pilgrim falls in love with Ramona Flowers, but in order to be with her he has to fight her Seven Evil Exes. Mixed in with that is his struggling band, dealing with baggage from an old relationship, and breaking up with Knives Chau. Again, it’d be easy for this to be pure pulp and just a fun, silly story, but Wright and team give it its due. Though their world may not be strictly realistic, the characters and their relationships are. We see the effect ‘meeting’ Ramona’s exes has on Scott and we watch tension build between them (especially when Knives is involved).
     
    So where’s this relationship advice, you ask? In the climax, we find out that love isn’t enough for a relationship.
     
    Let’s back up. What’s the biggest in most romances? It’s, usually, the moment where the guy decides to throw it all away and go after the girl. Harry runs through New York to find Sally. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet. Lloyd Dobler holds the boombox over his head (although, wonderfully, this isn’t the climax, but you get the idea). It’s that Big Moment of Love.
     
    Scott Pilgrim, being at its heart a romance, plays this trope straight. Having lost Ramona to Gideon, Scott decides to set out to the Chaos Theatre to win her back by fighting Gideon. He arrives, fights his way in, and tells Gideon he wants to fight him for Ramona. When asked why, Scott responds that he’s in love with her. Scott thus earns The Power of Love and is awarded a flaming sword (from his chest!) with which he duels Gideon.
     
    Great! That’s our Big Moment of Love! If there’s anything years of movie-watching should have taught us, know that Scott knows he’s in love with Ramona, he’ll beat Gideon and live happily ever after.
     
    Only that’s not what happens here. Instead Scott gets himself killed.
     
    Fortunately, however, Scott got a 1-Up earlier in the film and, after some brief soul-searching, uses said 1-Up to confront Gideon again. Again, Gideon asks him if he’s fighting him for her. Scott’s reply is different: “No, I wanna fight you for me.” And this time Scott earns the Power of Self Respect, gets a purple flaming sword, duels Gideon, settles things with Knives and Ramona, and fights Gideon again. With the Power of Self Respect.
     
    Herein Scott Pilgrim vs The World suddenly does something that most romances don’t. Love isn’t enough. Thus far Scott has been fighting the exes simply because he has to if he wants to be with Ramona. It was Gideon who orchestrated the whole thing and, the first go round, Scott fights him like any other of Ramona’s exes, so he can be with her.
     
    Only that didn’t work out.
     
    The second time round, Scott fights Gideon for himself. This guy’s been screwing him over all along, yanking Scott’s chain. So Scott fights him not to win over Ramona, but to get his own back. Scott isn’t playing Gideon’s game anymore at that point, this time he’s engaging him on his own terms. The idea implicit is that in order for a relationship to work, you have to be able to be a person in your own right.
     
    Sure, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is hardly the only place you’ll see this. (500) Days Of Summer did something similar: Tom gets his life together after Summer, dragging himself out of the routine and finally into doing something he loves, no longer looking for love to solve all his problems. What makes Scott Pilgrim special is that in a movie with bass battles and subspace highways we have an interestingly important commentary on relationships.
  3. Ta-metru_defender
    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 relationship with Emma. It’s something we’ve seen before, this time in a lesbian context. So far so good, but things fall apart when the concept leaves the paper and gets on screen.
     
    Blue Is the Warmest Color is visually dull. Sure, there’s a lot of blue in the beginning, but it’s there almost indiscriminately (rather than in a way that would relate to Emma and her blue hair). The camera angles are repetitive; it’s the same medium close-ups and close-ups over and over again with framing just a little too tight. It wouldn’t be so bad were it not used for the majority of interactions. But then, maybe that serves the story. There’s little attempt to beautify the action. When Adèle eats it’s messy and pasta sauce dribbles down her chin; crying in the movie is snotty and unattractive; and dialogue is (at least translated) to sound banal at times.
     
    So it could be then argued that the film wants to discard the hyperrealism so frequently found in ‘normal’ film, and this supposedly honest look at a relationship will be shot accordingly. Basically, the antithesis of (500) Days Of Summer, which, like Blue Is the Warmest Color, was more of a story about love than love story, except this time rather than seeing things through Tom’s hyperrealistic, romanticized point of view it’s told ‘realistically.’ Cool.
     
    Only all that is thrown out the window when it comes to those scenes. Y'know the source of half the film’s press and, arguably, a large amount of its problems. Now, they’re shot in that same non-hyperrealistic way as the rest of the film: the lighting is stark and harsh and there’s no sweeping romantic soundtrack in the background. Yet it lacks a sort of emotional honesty. There’s no prelude to any of Adèle and Emma’s scenes and, barring the third, there’s nothing of pillow talk. They just happen.
     
    Granted, this is hardly unique to Warmest Color, but it struck me as jarring that a film that focuses so heavily on relationships would have this be so abrupt. Worsening them is the lack of character showing through in the scenes. There’s no dialogue between Adèle and Emma nor attempt for their relationship (beyond the obvious) to show through their actions, it simply transpires as a sort of pseudo-pornography devoid of personality.
     
    But then personality isn’t something the film thrives on either. Emma, the focus of Adèle’s affections, comes off as just another, albeit lesbian, Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It’s when Emma enters the story that Adèle is brought out of her unsatisfactory heteronormativity into a more interesting life. She’s quirky, she’s an artist, she’s different, and she has blue hair makes her stand out, especially when juxtaposed with Adèle’s bland surroundings. Now, Emma is by no means the worst offender, Adèle does not achieve a ‘happily every after’ through her and Emma has a measure of an inner life (though it is still primarily defined more by outlying qualifiers [her job, class, sexuality] than her own personality), yet she still plays the part. That aspect of their relationship feels like something we’ve seen dozens of times before. Adéle’s character suffers in a similar way; she feels defined more strongly by her nature as bookish, working-class teacher than by some of her other traits.
     
    Not to say it’s all bad. There’s a fight between Adèle and Emma towards the end that is powerfully acted and genuinely compelling. For me it was the first time I suddenly felt myself really caring about their relationship and it became painful to watch, in a good way. The film does have its moments of excellence, it’s just bogged down in all the rest.
     
    Which then confuses me as to why its receiving all those accolades. Now, I’m aware I’m someone who tends to harp on the idea of ‘high art,” but I found the only thing truly remarkable about Blue Is the Warmest Color to be its frank approach to LGBTQ themes. Have it be about a heterosexual relationship and it’d be all-but-mediocre.
     
    It’s not enough to praise a movie simply because it features an LGBTQ romance at its center. It’s the same problem I have with Christian films or some approaches to women protagonists. As much as I’d like to see a good LGBTQ film, I can’t bring myself to just give it an A-for-effort. So yeah. I didn’t get Blue Is the Warmest Color when I watched it and, given its overlong three hour runtime, don’t much feel like trying again.
     
    Writer’s note: Look, I just didn’t get it. Maybe if someone broke it down bit for bit and explained just why it was so great, sure. But ‘til then, I don’t understand the fuss.
  4. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 089: Why I (seldom) Write About Ships
     
    I grew up on a ship. I also like writing.
     
    Now, these two should go hand-in-hand. Write about living on a ship, it’s what you know! But then, who lives on a ship. No one would believe that. So I write science fiction. Because it’s easier to believe folks living on a spaceship than on a real ship. Less time explaining stuff. Also, I really like science fiction.
     
    But, and I do get asked this, why don’t I write about a real ship instead? After all, then I can reap the prestige literary fiction. Why do I waste my talents/history on science fiction?
     
    Because, surprisingly, living on a ship is actually quite boring. Yes, you travel, but that’s hardly unique (you could do the same in a bus or plane). The actual parts of living on a ship are terribly routine. You wake up, go to school (or work, but I went to school), come home, read, homework, video games, eat, whatever, sleep. Whether we were in Sierra Leone or Barbados, that’s what we did. Life is life.
     
    So what is it then that makes living on a ship special? Relationships. Bonds. The sense of a weird sort of family formed by virtue of having no one else.
     
    Like in Firefly. I’ve found that show to be the most honest take on life on a ship. Sure, my ship was lacking in the fugitive doctors and smuggling part, but there was certainly that sense of community. On the show Jayne may antagonize Kaylee, but when the chips are down he’s as ready to protect her as the captain. Serenity’s crew has a decided “we’re in this together no matter what” mentality. Sometimes it touches on the idea of family, but, as cemented by Mal’s speech at the end of Serenity, it’s about making a home. You want a story about life on a ship? About what makes life on the ship special? Look at Firefly and Serenity.
     
    But that feels pretty obvious, y’know, Serenity is a ship, of course it’s going to have parallels. What about when there’s no ship?
    Well, this might explain one of the many reasons why I love Chuck. Over the series, Team Bartowski and the other characters slowly come together to form, well, a crew of sorts. Even though the lot of them don’t always get along, they’ve formed a sort of family. Yeah, it’s very similar to my example from Firefly above, but it’s that idea again. For much of the series Casey doesn’t even like Chuck, but again, will come through for him when it counts; as will the others for him. Everyone has this forged bond with each other. That’s the essence of life on a ship.
     
    Sure, there’s the incredible sublime feeling of being in the middle of the ocean at night, the ship’s running lights extended less than a stone’s throw away; but it’s nothing that can’t be transported elsewhere or substituted. Because that’s just setting, it’s not the interesting part.
     
    I suppose that’s one reason I love writing science fiction; it gives me liberty. If I want to explore the idea of home I can add a plot device that threatens it. Could be, say, a mysterious box that shows an alternate world. Wanna stress the bond between the Captain and his Bosun? Arrest one of them. There’s a great freedom in a world where you get to make the rules.
    Not to say I don’t put everything in science fiction. One of my short stories I’m the most proud of is set in a small town (though there’s a ship in a character’s past) and the screenplay I’m working on with my brother is set in the real world, though on a boat. But the former is about coming home and the latter is about an adventure. Writing about a ship in and of itself is boring. It’d like be writing about everyday life in the suburbs or a city or anywhere.
     
    But writing about home, about family, about leaving? That’s interesting. So I seldom set my writing aboard an actual ship; but I always write about life on a ship.
     
     
    Writer’s Note: Yeah, did something this week. Something almost...bloggy. Stuff in this vein may show up again.
  5. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 092: In Defense of Escapist Fiction
     
    A term that I see thrown around a lot regarding my preferred fictions is “escapist fiction.” You might have seen it before; films like The Avengers and Pacific Rim are just escapist fantasies, especially when compared to ‘real cinema.’ Or video games are just ways to live out a fantasy and science fiction a way to avoid problems and reality.
     
    It’s an interesting criticism, to say the least, one that sometimes culminates in me giving up and closing the tab halfway through. The idea is that a lot of fiction (and, of course, video games) are easily written off because they’re escapist.
     
    So what exactly is escapist fiction? Wikipedia has a (surprisingly short) article on it that sums it up as “fiction which provides a psychological escape from thoughts of everyday life by immersing the reader in exotic situations or activities.” So basically, it’s genre.
     
    As I said before, it’s here that the criticism comes out; the idea being that these forms of fiction are a method of avoiding problems; a means of escape. Rather than confronting or dealing with problems, they encourage readers/viewers/players to just ignore it and go off in a fantasy world. They’re fluff; shallow, non-serious entertainment.
     
    I disagree. Hence the name of this blog post.
     
    Way I see it, there’s enough of life happening in the real world. Enough irresolvable conflicts, enough wars without a good guy and a bad guy, enough people leaving, enough [crud] in general. Escapist fiction often offers a world where there is a solution, where there might be meaning and, when barring that, action can be taken. Because in fiction, the Evil Empire can be overcome by a backwater farmboy.
     
    These ‘escapist fantasies’ are ways out. When life gives you lemons it’s far more fun to read a story where those lemons can be overcome rather than one dwelling in them. Returning to the Star Wars example, it’s at its core the idea that some nobody could wind up as the hero, save the princess, and defeat the bad guys. Luke’s predicament early in the film is relatable to any nineteen year old (or older, as the case may be). Stuck in a lousy job, feeling trapped in the middle of nowhere and wanting to do something more. Something bigger. He does and, by proxy, so do we.
     
    Pacific Rim is a ‘millennial’ approach to the apocalypse, one that may not be quite as nuanced and subtle if it were a film by David Fincher and Daniel Day Lewis, but the movie does address ‘topical’ issues. There’s the idea of self-sacrifice, of overcoming grief, and of connection all wrapped up with saving the world. No, it’s not ‘serious’ fiction in the way that, say, The Book Thief or Dallas Buyers Club are, but it’s not to say that reality isn’t woven into its being.
     
    All this to say, escapism is awesome. Escapism is coming home from a lousy day at work and running through Renaissance Italy and attacking guards. It’s a way out, a way to do something beyond life. There is a time for more ‘real’ fiction, but that is not to say that escapism is any less serious. In any case, J.R.R. Tolkien defended his work in two sentences better than I did in this post: “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?" In other words; life can be a bit of a bummer sometimes, so let’s get out of it sometimes.
     
     
    On a different note, watch my new short “
    ” now!
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 091: Defying Conventions
     
    I’m still not done spitballing this essay (which is problematic, seeing as it’s due on Monday) but I’ve narrowed in my focus to make it more relevant to the class. Rather than comparing Mass Effect 3 and The Last of Us, I’m going to look at the latter game and how it does away with many of the accepted conventions of narrative video games.
     
    Academically. Because I can.
     
    See, for the most part narrative video games have taken on three very common tropes. Now, these aren’t bad. Phenomenal games like Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Halo 4 employ these to great effect. What The Last of Us does is dare to do away with these.
     
    Take saving the world. We see it everywhere in games; just looking at my shelf we have Mass Effect and the Jak and Daxter trilogy, all about saving the world (or community or what have you) from some evil. Within these games a lot of the drama comes from the need to save the world. Look at Mass Effect 3, in it Commander Shepard has to save the galaxy from the apocalyptic Reapers. There is great tension in the game due to the ever-present threat of the reapers. Every action Shepard takes, particularly with diplomacy, is heavier because if he fails the galaxy then the galaxy is lost. Commander Shepard must save the day.
     
    Joel, the protagonist of The Last of Us, does not have the world at stake. The story is not about Joel saving the world, it is about Joel bringing Ellie to a destination. It’s a video game about a journey where the goal is almost irrelevant. The tension in the story is steadily born not out of any grand importance but out of the relationship between the two main characters. The Last of Us goes smaller and far more personal and manages to pull it off. Here we have a video game with a comparatively small focus, one unlike many of its contemporaries.
     
    So then what is the central tension of The Last of Us? In most video games (and even several books and movies) it boils down to the fundamental conflict of good versus evil. And why not? It’s a universal conflict. The central theme of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is such. Will Nathan Drake do the right thing? It’s handled with a deal of nuance better than other games (say, any Final Fantasy), going so far as to have each love interest in the game embody one side of Drake’s duality. Among Thieves is a stellar game about good and evil. Sure, there are a few shades of gray thrown in, but still; a story about good versus evil is not bad.
     
    The Last of Us is built on shades of gray. Joel is not a good man. We hear hints throughout the narrative of what he’s spent the twenty years since the outbreak doing. He was a raider, he killed people, he’s been a thief. He is not a nice man, if anything, he’s a hollow man no better than the others in the wastes. So what then of Ellie, the fourteen-year-old you’re charged with protecting? In any other story, no matter the medium, she would be Joel’s morality pet. Instead, Ellie is a fallen character unto herself: she’s willing takes up arms to kill others and will fight to survive no matter what. She is by no means an objectively ‘good’ character in the way Nathan Drake or Shepard are. What we have in The Last of Us is a story that hinges not on any sort of morality. Instead it is a story about surviving at any cost.
     
    Which brings us to the third trope. Video games are more than about survival, they are often power fantasies, whether it is mowing down terrorists or fighting off invading aliens. Again, this, along with the other two tropes, is not bad. Video games, like many other mediums, are a form of escapism. In Halo 4 you are the Master Chief, an incredible super soldier who can stop the Covenant and The Didact and his Prometheans. You singlehandedly take on entire armies, thereby defeating evil and saving the world. In Halo 4 you get to be the hero and you are capable of being a one man army.
     
    In The Last of Us you are constantly on the run. You never have enough ammo (it’s the only game I’ve played where having seven bullets is considered a lot), you are frequently low on health, and any more than two enemies usually means you’re in trouble. Rather than making you feel powerful, The Last of Us makes you feel desperate. If you miss this shot you won’t have enough ammo to kill the other soldiers hunting you. Unlike many other contemporary games, your health in The Last of Us does not regenerate, meaning if you take damage you have no way to recover beyond expending a valuable medkit. You are not all powerful: you are vulnerable and doing what you can to survive.
     
    Though it discards many of the accepted norms of its medium, The Last of Us does it with a finesse seldom seen. The game does not subvert these tropes just for the sake of them, but rather to drive home the theme. The comparatively small stakes, the lack of a grand morality, and the vulnerability all work together to create something unique. The Last of Us is a AAA-studio game unlike many others before it, due in no small part to it daring to do something different. Neil Druckmann, creative director of the game, wanted something to raise the bar for the industry as a whole. It’s arguable this game has helped elevate the medium.
     
    Now then. Let’s write this essay.
     
     
    What else do I do for school? Make movies. Watch my newest short, “
    ” now!
  7. Ta-metru_defender

    Little Things

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 088: Little Things
     
    The biggest difference between fiction and reality is that the former is not real. Duh. Ergo, one of the greatest challenges of fiction is making it seem real. Doesn’t matter if it’s Star Wars, Pacific Rim, or Chuck; it’s gotta feel realistic. Lived in, real.
     
    The crew behind Star Wars, Pacific Rim, and the film adaption of The Lord of the Rings achieved this through set design. There are tiny, almost unnoticeable details all over the movie. The ships in Star Wars are old and worn; the Jaegers in Pacific Rim show signs of years of use. Compare to being told that the heroes in Pacific Rim had been fighting the Kaiju for over a decade but everything looked bright as new. We wouldn’t buy the history nearly as well as when we can see it for ourselves. It’s the same principle as in writing: show, don’t tell.
     
    Take the simple example of the presence of the kill markings on some of the Jaegers in Pacific Rim. We don’t have any context for that, just that Striker Eureka has seen its share of combat prior to the film. It’s never elaborated on, nor is attention ever directed at it; it’s just there for the audience to see. It’s a little detail that gives a great deal of history and context for the story. Hardly anything would be lost without details like that, but its presence belies much.
     
    The same thing can be found in characters’ dialogue. Sure, the world may be (partially or entirely) fictional for us, but not for the characters. Unlike us, they know the world, and, as such, should talk about it as if they do. Some of my favorite examples of this comes from the original Star Wars. When we first meet Han Solo he boasts about making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. What the heck is a Kessel Run? We don’t know, but Han does (and Luke the farmboy acts like he does too). At one point Leia mentions Dantooine, Obi Wan says something about some ‘Clone Wars.’ What I love is that we don’t know what any of these things are, but the characters talk about them fluidly, as well as someone in our world would discuss London or Atlanta. It makes it all feel that much more real.
     
    But that's just the world. Characters have history too. They know people, and they know people a certain way. Let’s look at Chuck, because I love that show and am rewatching it. Whenever Chuck refers to his old friend Bryce, it’s most commonly as ‘Bryce Larkin from Connecticut.’ Let’s look at the fact that ‘from Connecticut’ is in it. It’s just two added words, but all of a sudden Bryce is given a home and we learn that he’s from somewhere. It also gives us a measure of context, seeing as it implies that Bryce was from outside Chuck’s usual world (that is, California).
     
    You can see this in The Avengers, when Black Widow and Hawkeye mention Budapest, or Summer’s exes in (500) Days of Summer. The usage of specifics (Budapest, Charlie) lend credence to their past and make it more real.
     
    These little things in movies (and television, books, video games; everything, really) wouldn’t really be missed if they weren’t there, but when they are they help immensely.
  8. Ta-metru_defender

    Two More Hours

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 085: Two More Hours
     
    The book Ender's Game is near to my heart. I listed it as my favorite book on my college apps years ago (in lieu of The Lord of the Rings — too cliché). I've read it at three different stages of my life: in high school, in the army (during basic training and later as a corporal), and for class during my freshman year of university. What I'm saying is I love the book. Not just because it's about kid-soldiers saving the world, but because it explores questions of warfare, empathy, and trauma.
     
    See, Ender's Game is a two-headed beast. You have the story of Ender, the child chosen to save the world. The novel follows him from earth through his trials at Battle School and on to Command School. We see him grow and excel in this environment, triumphing despite the odds being stacked catastrophically against him.
    Alongside that it’s a story about a boy forced to deal with isolation and detachment; Ender never has the luxury of friends. Ender’s Game is also about a boy being molded into the weapon at the cost of his psyche and the effect it has on him and those around him. As the novel comes to a close it becomes a story about PTSD and atonement.
     
    So it was with cautious hope that I saw the film of the book Thursday night. It wasn't bad; it touched on the themes and hit on many of the book's highlights. But it was too short. It’s really hard to condense all of that into a single movie. Which brings me to the greats flaw of the film of Ender’s Game: It needed two movies.
     
    The movie desperately needed more time, another beat in Battle School, another beat in Command School, and another at the end. Ender’s Game is on of the few books that really needed two movies to tell its story.
     
    That’s the main criticism I can levy against the film. The cast was exceptional, Harrison Ford as Graff in particular. Some of the script was a little wonky, but never enough to drag down the rest. The visuals were beautiful (though I would have done something different camera-wise in the Battle Room). The movie was great, just too short.
     
    Which just might make it that much more painful. It’s easy to hate a movie that’s just plain shoddy (See: The Last Airbender) or fails to capture the spirit of the book (See: BBC’s The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe). Then it’s easy; the movie felt nothing like the book, missed the point, and sucked. In those cases you laugh off the movie figuring, hey, they tried, whatever.
     
    Ender’s Game came so close as a movie. It had all the pieces it needed for a great adaption. Everything was freaking there, the movie had it all. And it was great, for that. But it needed the chance to breathe. It needed the time to get into Ender’s isolation, to explore Dragon Army, to explore the consequences of his decisions. We needed two movies!
     
    Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the movie. I almost cheered when we met Bean and later Petra. Every one of Graff’s scenes was an absolute blast (Ford was able to capture Graff’s severity and warmth like no other). It was great; it just needed more time. What makes it more painful is that if someone ever tries again in the future, the parts will no longer be here. We won’t be able to have Harrison Ford as Graff again nor many of the other people involved.
     
    Ender’s Game is by no means a bad movie, great even; but it came this close to being incredible. Movie’s worth a watch, but definitely read the book.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 086: Once Again On SHIELD
     
    Yep. I’m talking about this show again. Because it’s great and I don’t have much time to watch new movies (besides The Dark World) or read or play much video games. So we’re talking about Agents of SHIELD again.
     
    The show started strong and since then has steadily improved in itself. Characters have been fleshed out, dynamics enhanced, and it's proved itself capable with taking on different sorts of plots. What's even better is that all of this is usually done together, rather than individually.
     
    See, it's easy to do these one at a time. When How I Met Your Mother does a high-concept episode it's usually at the expense of characterization. This isn't necessarily bad, there's nothing wrong with a plot-powered episode in a show that's usually very character driven. Shows like Community and Lost occasionally mix new concepts with character growth (see “Remedial Chaos Theory” and “The Constant”), but beyond that mixes are few and far between.
     
    SHIELD is one of them. The most recent, "F.Z.Z.T.," dispenses with the usual good-guys-fighting-bad-guys typical of shows like this in favor of a far more internal conflict, one that can't be shot at. What's remarkable is that the writers take this in stride, maintaining high tension throughout an episode where the action could be described as "they science stuff."
     
    Not only was it well done, but the plot allowed for some fantastic character moments. With the conflict science based, we were able to see Ward grapple with being powerless. Similarly, it allowed the show to further explore the dynamic of Fitz and Simmons. Prior they'd been presented as two parts of a whole, albeit two parts with a few contrasts. "F.Z.Z.T." explored those contrasts, really highlighting not only what makes them individuals, but also why they work together. It's a character study facilitated by a shift in the nature of the conflict.
     
    The best character moment, however, is probably Coulson's. With a relatively quiet threat, we're able to see more of Coulson's character. When he comforts a firefighter we begin to see the consequences his death had on him. When Simmons is at risk we his his steadfast devotion to saving his team. And lastly, his own doubts about himself show is another side of him. He becomes far more deep and we, as an audience, are informed that there is baggage there to be worked out. And baggage makes for good television.
     
    "F.Z.Z.T." is another step forward for Agents of SHIELD for so many reasons. Characters are stronger, humor hits more, and the drama's more dramatic. I was excited when the show first aired, now I'm thrilled with where this show is going.
     
  10. Ta-metru_defender
    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. Grindewald is also mentioned in Stone and only becomes important in The Deathly Hallows. Even the location of the seventh Horcrux (a major plot point in Hallows) is foreshadowed/basically revealed during a short conversation between Dumbledore and Harry in The Chamber of Secrets. Tiny details that seem to just give the world some color end up affecting the story in a big way. In other words: Chekhov’s gun.
     
    Now, Chekhov’s gun is not foreshadowing. When Nick Fury tells Tony about the Avengers initiative in Iron Man, it’s hinting about the plans they have for the story. Chekhov’s gun, as described by Anton Chekhov himself, is that if there’s a gun hanging on the wall, the gun will be fired. If Tony encounters an icing problem when testing the Mk. II it will come back in some way.
     
    Rowling unquestionably excels at this. There’s a great economy to her exposition. She’ll describe a pretty looking diadem in one book only for it to gain significance in the next. A ghost will be covered in blood for seemingly no apparent reason, only there is a reason that comes in to play later. Here’s the thing: not only do these details serve the story, they add detail to the world. The motorcycle Hagrid rides in the beginning of Philosopher’s Stone could have belonged to anyone, even himself, but by mentioning a Sirius Black this world we’re stepping in to suddenly seems so much bigger. There’s more to this world than what we see. Sometimes these details don’t need to serve the plot (though they usually do), sometimes it just makes everything that much more real.
     
    Consider Roy Batty’s Tears in Rain speech in Blade Runner. He mentions things like c-beams and the Tannhäuser Gate. What are c-beams and the Tannhäuser Gate? We’re never told. We don’t need to be, but the mention of it implies so much more than what we see. In a more contemporary example, when we’re introduced to Cherno Alpha in Pacific Rim we’re told the pilots and their jaeger have defended the Siberian Wall for six years. Again, we don’t know that means, just that it’s important and adds texture to the world. Sure, they could have just said that Cherno Alpha’s one of the best or that Cherno Apha’s defeated four kaiju; but by adding a detail like ‘perimeter patrol, Siberian Wall’ gives the world that much more. Maybe the writers do (Travis Beachman has a horde of story information on the world of Pacific Rim), maybe they don’t (the Tears in Rain speech was ad libbed), but it adds to the world all the same.
     
    These details play an essential role in world building, they make it feel alive. In the case of Pacific Rim or Blade Runner they add details, with J.K. Rowling they set up the plot. Timothy Zahn, of Heir to the Empire and other books, also does this. You can bet that just about everything he describes will play a role later, no matter how small. It’s what I referred to earlier as the economy of exposition. Writers like Beachman and Rowling use these details to not just further the plot or establish characters but make it all seem so real. It’s an enviable reality, really.
     
    Anyway, I’m gonna go back to reading The Goblet of Fire now.
  11. Ta-metru_defender
    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 its audience, and then purge it in the end: catharsis. So, why is this vital to a good story/movie/book/video game/tv show/ballad?
     
    Super 8 is a story on many different levels. People call it a story about an alien in a small town, I say it’s a story about kids making a movie. But underneath all that, is the story about a boy growing up and learning to move on. The movie carries this theme and tension, we see it when he interacts with his dad and with his friends and it’s reflected in the conflict with the alien. For most of its runtime we’re drawn into Joe’s turmoil, we feel his refusal to let go and understand how he has to. This is the thing that Aristotle called ‘arousing feelings of pity and fear.’ The movie culminates in Joe letting go of his mother’s locket, symbolically expressing his willingness to accept life as it is now and, with that, purging us of all that built up emotion. That feeling you get when you watch the ending of Super 8? Ladies and gentlemen: catharsis.
     
    Using that dramatic structure thing you learned back in middle school, this is called the resolution. But resolution implies that everything has to be resolved, catharsis does not. Take The Empire Strikes Back, for example. It ends with Han frozen and captured, the Rebels scattered, and Luke finding out that Darth Vader is his father. There’s little resolution to be found (Will Han be okay? Obi Wan lied! Who did Yoda mean by ‘another’? [i bet it’s Han!]), but it feels complete all the same. We got our catharsis through the escape from Cloud City and the scene aboard the medical frigate. Unlike the second movie in many two-part trilogies (Dead Man’s Chest, Matrix: Reloaded), you get that sense of closure even without the third entry. Interestingly, the same goes for The Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers. During the Breaking of the Fellowship or Sam’s speech about the stories that really mattered we find our catharsis. Though the plot is tied up yet and though the ring is yet to be destroyed, we feel fulfilled.
     
    Catharsis, if done right, can be more important than tying up plot. Like the finale of Lost, which, yes, I will constantly and vehemently defend. Instead of trying to tie up every loose end, Lindelof and Cuse opted instead to give the audience catharsis for their emotions. Sure, we didn’t find out why that one green bird said Hurley’s name that one time, but we did get the resolution that despite all the stuff they went through, the survivors were reunited. They got their happy ending, and we felt all the better for it. Least we did if you weren’t watching Lost just for the mysteries. And why not? Focusing on the mysteries of Lost rather than the characters resulted in an intellectual rather than emotional investment, and thus, none of Aristotle’s desired feelings of fear and/or pity.
     
    It all comes down to caring about the story. If we don’t give a hoot about what’s going on, we won’t feel anything with the inevitable catharsis (for example: Hereafter). We go to the movies, play video games, and read books to feel something. Maybe it’s the wish-fulfillment of shooting up the Covenant as Master Chief or the sense of familiarity from watching Firefly, we wanna feel something. We just need that moment of release afterwards.
     
    And yes, I did actually read Poetics, though it took Michael Tierno’s Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters for it to really make sense.
     
    Note: When done right the lack of proper catharsis is catharsis in and of itself. See: the ending of The Last of Us, though it could be argued that the catharsis comes during that final chapter. Either way, it still works due to our heavy investment in the characters and Druckmann’s incredible script.
  12. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 068: Violence and Video Games
     
    Violent video games are a hot topic, or at least they really were six months ago. Well, here’s the thing: video games aren’t violent. Angry bears are violent. Video games aren’t. That said, there is violence in video games. The thing is, the portrayal of violence in video games is as varied as in books of film.
     
    Can video games glorify violence? Sure. Look at Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel. You play as two mercenary-commandos sent into a cartel-run town in Mexico to escort/rescue/defend a mayoral candidate. Like any action movie with a similar pitch, Devil’s Cartel is light on the thought and heavy on the guns and explosions as you blow limbs off cartel members. Is it violent? Yes. Is it fun? Yes. Is it clearly fictional? Yes. Despite some tidbits in early loading screens, the game is completely detached from any semblance of real-life cartel warfare. It’s a video game; the characters even call out some of the more ridiculous aspects of the game. Like The Expendables or one of the GI: Joe movies: it’s over the top and meant purely for entertainment. Being unable to distinct differentiate a game like this from reality is a problem that lies not with the game itself.
     
    But video games with violence aren’t all senseless and flashy with blood flying everywhere. There are games out there that attempt to address or at least justify the violence in the game. It could be Elizabeth calling Booker out on his ease of killing in BioShock Infinite or Snake forced to walk a ghostly river populated by everyone he’s/you’ve killed thus far in Metal Gear Solid 3. They’re often just in passing as the game’s focus lies elsewhere.
     
    At first blush, Spec Ops: The Line seems like your standard military shooter. Captain Walker and his squad are sent into Dubai months after its been ravaged by a massive sandstorm in search of John Konrad and the 33rd Battalion. Then you realize it’s been nicknamed Heart of Darkness: The Video Game and it starts to set in. Sure, in early combat you’re shooting faceless middle-eastern men like many other shooters. Then you meet members of the 33rd. And you find out they’ve gone rogue. And now you’re shooting American soldiers.
     
    It’d be a ballsy move in any form, but in a genre and medium where more often than not you’re Sergeant American gunning down terrorists, nazis, or soviets, seeing the familiar American ACU in your reticule is especially jarring. Spec Ops: The Line revels in this discomfort and uses it again and again. Sneaking around a building you see two soldiers at the foot of the stairs, one asking the other for a stick of gum. Not only are they not wearing balaclavas or any kind of face mask, they’re speaking English — with an American accent. You have to kill them. The game does not give you a choice.
     
    The Line has a feature where any explosion causes the game to briefly switch into slow-motion. In most games it’d be a cool little gimmick where the player gets to delight in their destruction. The Line isn’t much different: you get to watch your target — more often than not a familiar American soldier — get blown apart or lose his legs by the grenade. Then suddenly you’re reminded of wounded veterans and any sense of empowerment quickly dissolves. At another point you might, out of reflex, shoot someone running towards you only to realize immediately after your target was an innocent woman running to safety. You will encounter soldiers and civilians burned alive by white phosphorus. You will become a monster. You’re not playing a hero here; you’re doing horrible, terrible things. The game doesn’t let you forget it either. There is little glory in the violence of this game.
     
    Similarly, The Last of Us will never let you glibly take a life. Whether if its you as Joel sneaking up on a sobbing Infected — are you executing her or putting her out of her misery?— or Ellie swearing as you blow a man’s head off with a shotgun, The Last of Us will not let you forget the consequences of your actions. You will wound a man and fire the killing blow just as he begs for his life and exclaims he has a family. You see the effects of violence on the relatively naive Ellie and as it chips away what little that’s left of Joel’s soul. The Last of Us is the only action game I’ve played where I’ve wished I could continue the game without having to shoot anyone else.
     
    Games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Last of Us force players to think about the violence they deal out. There is violence in video games, and the violence can be gruesome. But it’s not always mindless. There are games out there that give violence its due diligence and those that revel in it, just as there are movies or books that do. To write off video games as a whole because of their violence is a thoughtless disservice to the medium.
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 072: Humanity, Hubris, and Canceling The Apocalypse
     
    Did you ever read The Day of the Triffids? It’s by John Wyndam and was probably the first piece of proper post-apocalyptic fiction I read ten years ago. It’s typical of the genre. We’ve got the world impairing event, the monsters that begin wiping out humanity, and of course the few survivors who band together to try and find a way to continue civilization. It’s a classic.
     
    Now, like I’ve said before, science fiction provides a great way to examine reality and the issues therein. As such, it’ll heavily reflect the world in which it was written. So let’s see what The Day of the Triffids says about culture then. It was written in 1951, six years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Post-apocalyptic fiction began to flourish then, reflecting the horrific visions of what humanity could do and how we kept looking for more ways to destroy the world. This is what happens in Triffids; nukes in space blind most of the population and genetically engineered killer plants set about, well, killing people. Humanity brought this on themselves, their hubris caused the apocalypse.
     
    We see this in more recent (post)-apocalyptic fiction too. In The Terminator we created Skynet with our computers; in The Matrix our drive to technology created The Machines and enslaved us. Within this and, yes, Day of the Triffids and countless zombie movies too, lies the implicit fear that as society delves into technology we’ll destroy ourselves. The solutions vary. InThe Terminator our heroes destroy the evil technology. The heroes of The Matrix and The Day of the Triffids find a way to overcome their creations to create a new civilization. It could be argued that it reflects some of the sentiment we find today; the world’s so screwed up the only solution is to start over.
     
    Yet the trend in recent fiction has been to focus less on the how of the apocalypse and more on the what now. We never find out what caused the fungal outbreak in The Last of Us, but we do see Joel and Ellie develop twenty years later. In Zombieland, Columbus mentions that no one knows where the zombies come from. No longer are we watching us destroy ourselves, now we’re figuring out what we’re doing in the aftermath. We see the relationships form, we see the recreation of a family. Fiction like The Last of Us and Zombieland presents a world where the protagonists are handed a lousy hand and make the most of it. Starting over may be rough, but there remains that glimmer of hope.
     
    If anything, Pacific Rim takes that conceit and fires it at other apocalyptic fiction. Suddenly, the technology classically feared is not the root of our problems but instead a savior. As protagonist Raleigh puts it early on: “You see a hurricane coming, you get out of the way. But when you’re in a Jaeger, you can finally fight the hurricane. You can win.” Today’s culture is reflected in Pacific Rim in that technology isn’t something to be feared, but something to be used. How? To fight back against what we cannot control and to become closer to one another.
     
    Pacific Rim introduces drifting, two people sharing a mind to control a Jaeger. The closer the pilots’ bond, the better they’ll fight. We love to deride the Internet and all as the death of true relationships, but Pacific Rim accepts this sort of digital connection and physicalizes it. With that, the film acknowledges the growing global identity facilitated by these connections. The heroes in Pacific Rim aren’t just all-Americans; we have an international coalition of Americans, Japanese, Australians, Russians, British, Chinese, and Idris Elba saving the world together.
     
    It all culminates with where Pacific Rim goes with its story. It doesn’t matter who you are; if you’re a self-perceived failure, an egotistical kid with daddy issues, a haunter young woman, or a research scientist you can hardly walk properly: you can save the world, you can be a rockstar. It is paramount that Pacific Rim takes place before the world ends: the protagonists refuse to accept it. When the authorities opt to cancel the resistance and to hide behind a wall instead, the heroes choose to fight on. In the traditional pre-final mission heroic speech, Stacker Pentecost declares that they will “face the monsters that are at our door and take the fight to them!”, they will stand up the end of the world because they refuse to accept that the world they’re given. We don’t need to start over from scratch, we can make a better world with what we have. Or as he says a moment later: “Today we are canceling the apocalypse!” It’s no longer important who caused the end of the world: we’re stopping it.
     
    Jon Foreman wrote a piece for the HuffingtonPost a few years ago reflecting this dream of a better world. As he says: “Against all odds, against all that we know about this world, we could choose to hope for a better one — to hope for love, for peace, for a form of contentment and solace that we have never fully realized.” Pacific Rim is saying the same thing: no matter how bleak the world may seem, we can hope to save it, to fix it. It isn’t so much that we’re no longer blaming ourselves for the world gone wrong; it’s that we know we can make it better, with or without giant robots.
     
    Though giant robots would be nice.
     
    Credit where credit is due: This sort of ‘close reading’ of Pacific Rim grew out of this Tumblr post. Jon Foreman’s column is named "What's in a Word?" and can be found on the HuffingtonPost website.
  14. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 071: Where’s My Dang Black Widow Movie?
     
    Comic-Con was last week. As in, the, Comic-Con. And we got news, like how Avengers 2 is actually Age of Ultron and how we’re having a team up between Superman and Batman and how there’s gonna be a friggin’ Star Wars and Phineas & Ferb crossover. They also screened a new Marvel short, one that focuses on Agent Carter from Captain America, who you’ll remember as his love interest. Also, Black Widow will be having a large role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
     
    Cool, women are having a growing presence in the Marvel-verse. And yet, to my annoyance, there’s no friggin’ Black Widow movie planned. Understand, this isn’t some hyper-feminist rant about how there needs to be more women in everything. This is me asking why, when we have such a fascinating character, she doesn’t get her own spin-off film.
     
    When it comes to wanting an action movie with a woman in the lead, there’s the difference between wanting it because you want a movie with a woman in the lead, and wanting one because there’s a good character. Yes, there is a dearth of action movies/blockbusters with women as the leads; but the solution isn’t to throw more women on screen, but to write more interesting stories about interesting women. Let’s talk about Salt. Frankly, I didn’t really like it. Her story just never enthralled me, it felt bland. Sure, we had Angelina Jolie running around doing Bourne-y stuff, but so what? Jason Bourne with boobs is not inherently a good movie.
     
    Compare The Hunger Games’ Katniss. Katniss clearly has a goal and motivations. We know what she wants, and, rather than pulling a Bella Swan, she goes to great lengths to achieve them. Most importantly, she’s an interesting character. She lives in an interesting world, finds herself in interesting circumstances, and makes interesting choices. And, unlike in Salt, the choices make sense and create a cohesive plot. Furthermore, Katniss isn’t some boring perfect character; she has her share of flaws and issues to work through. Why is this important? It adds layers to her and helps us get invested.
     
    Look, I enjoy baddonkey women in fiction. Let’s take Buffy as a prime example: She fights vampires. But she’s finely layered, within her fighting spirit there’s a vulnerability to her. She’s a fascinating character who’s not a teenage girl for the sake of being a teenage girl. Like Katniss, she’s a teenage girl because it makes for an interesting character.
     
    Black Widow was a cool supporting-character in Iron Man 2, but it was in The Avengers when we really saw just how friggin’ awesome she was. She doesn’t have superpowers or a suit of armor, but she still fights bad guys and holds her own. Furthermore, rather than awkwardly trying to avoid it, The Avengers has Black Widow using others’ perception of her as a woman to her advantage. She keeps pace with the likes of The Hulk and Captain America, all the while being absolutely vital to the plot. And not someone else’s plot or development, The Plot and her own arc. Ever notice that after The Avengers people referred to her as Black Widow rather than as Scarlett Johansson? The character is more interesting than the woman playing her.
     
    I want Marvel to take the gamble and dare to feature Black Widow in her own solo film (fine, have Hawkeye as a deuteragonist). Not just because she’s a woman — that’s a lame and patronizing reason — but because she’s a layered, complex superhero who deserves to have a story written about her.
  16. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 070: Dialogue in Fight Choreography
     
    Did you see Man of Tai Chi? Don’t bother; the acting’s questionable, plot is tenuous at best, and the dialogue is stilted. And that’s just the surface. The one thing that makes the movie remotely remarkable is its choreography: more so than in many other movies, the fight scenes seem to convey not only the growth of the protagonist but a sort of dialogue between the characters as well.
     
    Let me explain (and I will spoil everything because there’s no need to see the movie besides this). Tiger (yes, that is the main character’s name) is a naive practitioner of Tai Chi. His first fight or two are in tournaments where he’s primarily defensive and uses his opponents’ strength against themselves. After he’s recruited as a prizefighter by Donaka and becomes more accustomed to it, his fighting style shifts to a more aggressive form. So great. There’s character development. Big deal.
     
    Where Man of Tai Chi gets really interesting is during the more important fights, that is Tiger versus his mentor and Tiger versus Donaka. The way each combatant fights speaks in lieu of meaningful conversation or much in the way of substance. In the former fight we see just how far Tiger has fallen: he’s gone over to the kung fu dark side and he attacks his mentor who deflects every blow as Tiger grows more and more frustrated. It’s this fight (especially in comparison to an earlier training scene) that informs us of their shifting relationship. Where before Tiger was content to be bested, now he vainly tries to overpower his master. When Tiger mirrors his master’s stance in the final showdown against Donaka, we see that he’s come back to the light side. That and the fact that he’s fighting the villain/his prior employer, obviously.
     
    This isn’t anything new. The exponentially better film The Princess Bride has the famous duel between Inigo Montoya and The Man In Black. Yes, they talk throughout the fight, but there’s no dissonance between their swordplay and intentions. Each has garnered a measure of respect from the other and, if anything, the fight seems friendly. Neither are employing dirty tricks to gain the upper hand (thereby showing that killing the other is his priority) nor is one taunting or baiting the other. In light of the duel is it any wonder we readily accept both of these seemingly villainous characters as heroes by the end?
     
    It’s this sort of communicative swordplay that made the duels in the original Star Wars films so captivating. Where the prequels had a lot of flash and epic scores, the classics had character. Look at the duel between Luke and Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Vader lets Luke take the offensive for much of it. Why? Because Vader’s plan rests on him imprisoning Luke rather than killing him. Like The Princess Bride, we’re told this beforehand but it’s reflected even stronger in the choreography. In The Phantom Menace, why do Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul end up in the exhaust shaft? Is Maul leading them there or is he being pushed back? Where’s the dialogue?
     
    Now, Neo fighting a seemingly endless number of Agent Smiths or Gipsy Danger brawling a Kaiju aren’t duels in the same way as the other examples. Sure, there’s an understood dialogue to those fights, but it tends to be limited to deciding who’s better. Duels like in The Empire Strikes Back or The Princess Bride have a conversation to them. In the case of Man of Tai Chi the fight choreography carries more than anything said verbally. Still doesn’t redeem that movie, though.
  17. Ta-metru_defender
    Three years ago to the day I was hospitalized for the first time on account of my heart trying to kill me.
     
    What's happened in the last three years? Here's the quick timeline:
    July 13 2010, Josh goes for a cardiac stress test, his heart goes into Ventricular Tachycardia and hits 255 BPM. Is subsequently hospitalized and diagnosed with ARVC: his heart is turning to fat.
    Plans emerge to implant an ICD (defibrillator), however an MRI discovers water near his heart and the surgery is postponed and Josh is sent home to recover.
    Josh's Dad speaks at a relative's church, after someone offers to see Josh for free.
    After much consultation, it's decided that Josh probably doesn't have ARVC, tests are done to try and figure out what exactly it is.
    After stuff keeps coming back negative, it is theorized that Josh's pectus excavatum (sunken chest) is rubbing on his heart and causing trouble. CT Scans show that, yeah, his sternum and ribs are pushing on his heart. It looks almost heart-shaped from above.
    Nuss Procedure is performed on November 8 2010 to correct his chest.
    Normal procedure entails a bar being inserted and turned, breaking the sternum out and the ribs along with it. Josh's doctor has the idea to nick the cartilage between the sternum and ribs, causing nothing to break and reducing recovery time. Due to some plotting on the doctors' part, this is all done through the public system and paid for by the Singapore Army.
    Everything seems normal.
    In December 2011 Josh temporarily goes off his medication and another stress test is performed. No VT. However, ECG still shows an anomaly.
    Late October 2012, Josh stops taking his medication again because, y'know, Hurricane Sandy. Never gets back into the habit. Terrible.
    March 21 2013, date is booked for Josh to have bar removed on June 24.
    May 3 2013, Iron Man 3 is released, in which Tony Stark has his Arc Reactor removed. Josh checks over his shoulder.
    June 12 2013, Josh does another stress test (still off medication). No VT. ECG appears normal. Prior anomaly is gone.
    June 24 2013, the exact same team that put the bar in take it out, at a different hospital, and, due to more plotting on the doctors' part, all covered by Josh's insurance. Now with no metal bar in the way, an MRI is done
    July 5th 2013, Josh's cardiologist informs him that everything checks out. No more scarring on the heart. Heart is no longer weirdly shaped. ECG is normal. Josh doesn't have heart disease.

    So yeah. As that last sentence says: I don't have heart disease anymore. I'm fine. Healthy. Normal. Or at least as normal as I'm gonna get. Bad news is I can't use heart disease as an excuse anymore.
     
    Frankly, it's been a heck of a time. No one likes being told their heart tried to kill them when they're 19 and no one knows why. Yet every twist and turn since has fallen so perfectly into step (doctors accommodating financially, timing being perfect, not dying at any other point along the way, etc) that, well, it's hard for me not to see a plan in all this. This could have gone very differently. I could have had the ICD in me and needed my batteries changed every few years (and the whole thing replaced every so often too) and been unable to do a lot of things I do. I could have died at any point along the way. This could have all gone down at a point when neither army nor insurance could help pay. And yet it all happened when it did and how it did.
     
    So what now? Well, tonight, a beer or two and video games and movies, as is tradition. After that I've got another stress test coming up (because the insurance is paying for it, so let's go for it again, yeah?) but in the couple weeks since the surgery I've worked up enough of a sweat/pulse that it's certain nothing will happen. I'm fine. The bar that used to be in my chest is sitting on my desk next to my phone.
     
    Thanks to all of you; thanks for listening to my late night ranting, thanks for the prayers, thanks for the hugs, thanks for putting up with my endless barrage of heart disease jokes. Seems like this heart disease thing is finally over.
     

  20. Ta-metru_defender
    Been listening to Relient K's new record more or less incessantly since yesterday.
    Gotta say, I really like it. No, not quite as good as Forget and Not Slow Down, but that's more because it's incredibly different (And FNSD is one of my favorite albums ever (up there with Vice Verses and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and Scars and Stories).
     
    But I really like the differentiness. To that, "If I Could Take You Home" is an early favorite ("Don't Blink" and "When You Were My Baby" are other highlights [so are "Boomerang" and "PTL", actually]).
     
    So yeah. Different. But great.
  21. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 067: Protagonists, Goals, and Conviction
     
    Let’s talk about the characters in The Last of Us. Because I still want to talk about that game. For the sake of direction, we’ll focus on Joel and Ellie, because they’re the protagonists (and arguably each other’s antagonist) and you spend nearly eighteen hours with them.
     
    I’m going to try to keep this mostly spoiler-free, but since this’ll be discussing characters and arcs and development, be warned of mentions and implications and stuff. If you’re playing the game right now or are planning to in the near future, might be best to avoid this.
     
    So. Characters.
     
    The dynamic of Joel and Ellie is not like Batman/Robin’s hero/sideckick or even a sort of Riggs/Murtaugh case of contrasting partners. Sure, they have their joint task of getting Ellie to the Fireflies, but there’s nothing personal to that; it’s what they’ve been told to do. That hardly makes for interesting characters. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: “Every character has to want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” So what do Joel and Ellie want?
     
    Ellie’s goal is made clear in early conversations: she wants her life to be for something; she doesn’t want to just exist. Like all good goals, it sheds a lot of light on her character. See, Ellie was born after the outbreak, she’s used to a world where people have resigned themselves to the bleak status quo (and eventual death). She wants more than that.
     
    Joel’s goal is more fluid. At the outset, he’s content to just get by. Enter Ellie, the other protagonist. She’s serves as his antagonist just as he does hers; she interferes with his life and forces him to find a new goal and he is the catalyst for her ability to journey after her goal. Joel can no longer live just for the sake of surviving, he has to change. There are no other candidates for an antagonist in the game; the Infected, hunters, and other enemies are exactly that: enemies without personification. Eventually, Joel does change and he does achieve his new goal, he finds a new reason to live.
     
    What complicates this is that Ellie’s goal cannot coexist with Joel’s new goal. Joel now wants to protect Ellie best he can, but this protection means that Ellie cannot do the thing she thinks she might be meant to do. Now we see Joel as Ellie’s antagonist in full. There’s tension in the dynamic but no enmity; rather it’s iron sharpening iron as Joel and Ellie rub off on each other and challenge the other to do more as they forge their pseudo-father/daughter relationship.
     
    The Last of Us, however, merrily subverts any innate expectation a player might have of that dynamic. Ellie doesn’t sit around waiting for Joel to save her: she’ll often stab people in the back or save Joel from a dead end. But, like Elena and Chloe from Naughty Dog’s other PS3 games, Ellie’s not just there for support or a sort of surrogate daughter but a strong character in her own right. Her cheerfulness masks a strong sense of survival’s guilt (which, again, stems from her want). She’s used to the violence littering the post-apocalyptic world but she’ll still wince at Joel’s brutality. Neil Druckmann wrote a character who’s incredibly interesting, and, yes, happens to be a woman in a video game. On that note, it’s worth mentioning that she’s never portrayed patronizingly or as an act of affirmative action. More so than Joel, Ellie has a sense of personal direction for much of the game. Though she’s not quite sure where she’s going, she has a conviction about her life.
     
    Interestingly, Joel lacks much of this conviction. More interestingly, he’s the character you play as for almost the entirety of the game. In The Last of Us you only play as a character when their conviction is shaken and they’re not entirely sure what they should do. Often Joel’s not even sure how to get somewhere and is following someone else’s lead. He’s listless and without any driving force for much of the game. He’s looking for a reason to survive, remember?
     
    Contrast this with Uncharted where Nathan Drake’s going after the treasure or saving the world (he’s a little sketchy on the how) or Halo’s Master Chief who has a very clear direction of defeat the bad guys and save the world. This is what sets The Last of Us apart, the perennial “what now?” And where do we see this the most? In the characters: the complex, layered characters of The Last of Us.
  22. Ta-metru_defender
    tl;dr: I no longer have a bar in my chest.
     
    Longer version:
    Got into Singapore on the 10th. Spent the intervening time playing video games and eating, Monday morning local time went into surgery to have my bar removed. Since, y'know, it's time. Everything went well; the bar's sitting on a shelf here in the hospital room (along with some chips of bone [my bones]); I can walk and move and stuff. Useful abilities, those. Current signs point to heart being alright.
     
    So yes. I did just pull an Iron Man 3.
     
  23. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays Not Rants! 066: With Regards to Capes
     
    In Man Of Steel Superman has lost his usual red underwear. Well, more he never has it in the first place in this adaption. It's no wonder why, no one, not even Batman, wears their underwear outside anymore.
     
    That said, Superman still has his cape, something that's seemingly as much an artifact as the underwear thing. Yes, Thor and Loki both have capes, but they're demigods. Batman's cape is explained away as serving not only the effect he creates but a utilitarian purpose as well. Hardly anyone wears capes these days. In The Incredibles, the first superhero deconstruction you saw if you’re my age, Edna Mode goes to great lengths to explain the impracticality of capes in a morbidly comedic sequence.
     
    So why does Superman still have his bright red cape? It's doesn't make much sense (see Edna Mode's list for reasons), yet it's part of his costume and and he doesn't rip it off. More importantly, why did the filmmakers choose to keep the cape? It's iconic, sure, but nothing is sacred in adaptions. Here's the deal: capes are heroic. There's the image of the kid with the towel tied round his neck pretending to be a superhero. That's Superman. He's the Boy Scout, the Kansas-bred all-American hero.
     
    And his cape is an integral part of that. Look at the use of capes in the film. General Zod, when we first see him, is wearing a cape. It doesn't take long, however, for him to shrug it off and, of course, become the villain he is. When we first see Superman in his outfit we first see his red boots and red cape. When Superman meets the military, we once again focus on his cape. His cape is what sets him apart. Zod doesn't have a cape, nor do any of his followers; but Jor-El, Superman's father, does. It's a beautiful visual cue, one that speaks to the basis of our pop culture mythology: the person wearing the cape is a good guy, a hero.
     
    Such is Superman: he's the archetypical superhero. The cape-wearing, evil-fighting man in tights. Contrast him to Joel, from The Last of Us (because that game is amazing and bears referencing). Joel is not a hero, he's not even a good guy. Joel is a desperate man who's more than willing to do horrible things. Joel is a survivor, he acts solely to survive and protect his own interests. Superman, conversely, simply is good and will protect anyone.
     
    So where do we get a narrative? Joel's comes from challenging his interests and upsetting his status quo to see how he reacts. The narrative/arc is clear from the onset, though Naughty Dog makes several bold choices with where to take it. Superman has no obvious arc. He's invincible and infallible; any impending doom or moral dilemma lacks tension because we know Superman can't be hurt and will always do right. After all, he's wearing a cape. So where does the narrative tension come from? How does Man of Steel craft a story that doesn't undermine his character but still delivers an engaging story?
     
    The movie addresses the question of the cape. The story's primary tension comes not from Superman vs. Zod, but rather within Superman himself. Clark Kent must become Superman... Or must he? The Clark Kent we meet is a Clark Kent divided. He has these powers, but should he use them? How should he use them? There lies the conflict; the tension is the question of should Clark Kent wear the cape or hide in anonymity. Granted, we already know the answer, but it's a far more interesting arc than "will he survive?". Once that question is answered, however, a new one arises: to what lengths will Superman go in pursuit of what the cape means? How far will Superman go to protect someone?
     
    Zack Snyder has described Man of Steel as the least ironic movie he's made. It might be the most honest recent superhero movie besides Captain America, there's no attempt to give Superman the dark and gritty treatment so common in our era of antiheroes. Where The Last of Us gives us an antihero who rings closer to a villain, Man of Steel presents a hero with no doubt of his goodness. So Superman wears a cape.
  24. Ta-metru_defender
    Part Two of TMDs Fifth Annual Movie Awards
     
    Alright guys. Time for the individual awards. As you should expect (if you've been following my awards [which you totally should be]), we've got my… unique categories. Which are the categories you should care about.
    ——————————
     
    Worst Movie
    Basically, what sucks. These movies are not so-bad-they're-good, but are so-bad-they're-worse.
     
    Nominees:
    October Baby
    A movie so heavy handed with its message the story barely gets told.
    Rock of Ages
    Great soundtrack! Too bad everything else sucks.
     
    Winner: The Watch
    This movie's main redeeming quality is Richard Ayoade. Sadly, he's not enough of a factor to save this lousymovie that had so much potential but just crashed and burned right out the gate.
    ——————————
     
    Baddonkey of the Year
    Every good action movie's got him. You can throw an army and the kitchen sink at him, and he still prevails. And for that, he is awesome.
     
    Nominees:
    Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    The 16th President uses a silver axe to kill vampires. That is all.
    Judge Dredd, Dredd
    Karl Urban's chin has never looked quite so manly and intimidating.
    Black Widow, The Avengers
    Proof that a Baddonkey doesn't have to be pure muscle or a man, Natascha Romanov earns her nomination due to fighting not just smart but hard too.
     
    Winner: James Bond, Skyfall
    James Bond really shines in this reconstruction of the James Bond mythos.
    ——————————
     
    Best Dialogue:
    Is it stilted or awkward or does it roll of the tongue?
     
    The Avengers
    Joss Whedon. 'nuff said.
     
    But if not, here's more: Y'see, Joss Whedon is a fantastically economical writer. He uses dialogue to quickly establish exposition without it ever seeming outright and can also establish characters with just a few lines. It's impressive (and something I am very jealous of). Then of course his dialogue is just brimming with wit. This man is one of the best writers of dialogue today.
    —————————
     
    Best Comedy
    Did it make you laugh? And more importantly, did it make you laugh well?
     
    Ted
    It's a foulmouthed teddy bear. if that's not your cup of humor, fine. But if it is you'll spend the movie's duration laughing incessantly. The humor's twisted and dark (due in no small part to, again, the incongruity of a foulmouthed teddy bear). It's hilarious, and you'll text your friend the thunder buddy song when it rains.
    ——————————
     
    Best Soundtrack
    Music carries a film. Duh. Here's the best:
     
    Nominees:
    Rock of Ages
    Lousy movie, epic 80's music.
    The Avengers
    This soundtrack is epic. Leaving the BluRay's menu on while getting ready to watch it yields the most epic walks down a hallway. You want a soundtrack that captures the heroism of this movie? Alan Silvestri delivered.
    Django Unchained
    Why? Because mixing Rap/HipHop into a Western about a black man is awesome.
     
    Winner: Paperman
    Just listen to Christophe Beck's score for this and try to disagree with me.
    ——————————
     
    Coolest Movie
    This is the movie that makes you think "Holy snap that's frickin' awesome"
     
    Nominees:
    John Carter
    This movie gets an oddly bad rap despite being a slick, really really cool piece of science fiction.
    Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    It's a relatively historically accurate biography of the 16th president except he hunts vampires. And. It. Is. Awesome.
    Skyfall
    It's James Bond being James Bond, only better.
     
    Winner: The Avengers
    It's Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye on screen together fighting Loki. What more do you want?!
    ——————————
     
    Who needs character/plot development when you've got booms?
     
    Nominee:
    The Expendables 2
    Sure, it's not as beautifully gruesome as the first, but it's still a wonderful action movie.
     
    Winner: Dredd
    It's not quite as mindless as my usual nominees for this category, but the slomo action scenes are just gorgeous. Who knew a skull exploding could be so beautiful?
    ——————————
     
    Most Innovative
    This is the movie that did something new, something cool, or just special.
     
    Nominees:
    Dredd
    It played with 3D and slow motion, using it as a narrative device as much as for spectacle
    The Avengers
    Proved that a superhero team-up not only works, but can be amazing.
    Blue Like Jazz
    Wait, a movie by Christians about a Christian that's not hawking dogma? Impossible!
     
    Winner: Cloud Atlas
    No, it's not an amazing movie, but it tried something new and kinda pulled it off. So props to them.
    ——————————
     
    Best Special Effects
    If I need to explain this, then, well, stop reading.
     
    Nominees:
    Ted
    The bear, man. Of special note is the fight between Mark Wahlberg and Ted. That's all around impressive.
    Life of Pi
    No bear, but the composite work with the animals deserves a mention.
     
    Winner: The Avengers
    ILM made a CGI model of a chunk of Manhattan. That alone would be enough for a spot on the list, but the Hulk just notches them up here.
    ——————————
     
    Best Actor:
    Daniel Day-Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln
    I get the feeling this is the image of Lincoln everyone will think of from now on out (which is a shame; I wish everyone thought of him hunting vampires). But Day-Lewis' performance is so amazing no one else can even enter this list.
    ——————————
     
    Best Actress:
    Jennifer Lawrence, Tiffany Maxwell, Silver Linings Playbook
    For the record, she was my pick before the Oscars. She was fantastic in 2011's X-Men: First Class and really took off in The Hunger Games, but it's in Silver Linings Playbook where we really see her shine.
    ——————————
     
    Movies That I Really Like For Reasons That I'm Not Quite Sure
    These aren't the best movies of 2012, but they're up there.
     
    Blue Like Jazz
    It's not the most amazing movie, but it gets points for its honesty and dedication to telling the story it wants to tell.
     
    The Cabin In The Woods
    I'm a big fan of deconstruction and post-modern storytelling. This film takes that and applies it to a genre I usually avoid and creates masterful results.
     
    The Amazing Spider-Man
    Yes, I liked this one more than the old ones. Maybe it's casting Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Martin Sheen, maybe it's the closer focus on telling a story about Peter Parker, maybe it's because freakin' Marc Webb's directing, or maybe it's because Till Kingdom Come is in it.
    Probably all of the above.
     
    Skyfall
    There's just so much going for this masterpiece of a movie. It's a reconstruction that serves as a brilliant, fun movie that's able to capture both highs and lows.
     
    Silver Lining's Playbook
    I don't even know where to begin with this movie, just that I really really loved it.
    ——————————
     
    Best Animated Film:
    Paperman
    This is probably my favorite non-Pixar piece of animation Disney's produced since Tangled (and before that, The Lion King). It's magical, something that suddenly makes the world outside the animation seem more real. Coupled with the phenomenal soundtrack and, it's beautiful. Just beautiful.
    ——————————
     
    Best Moving Picture:
    The Avengers
    Look, you knew this was coming. I wrote too many Essays, Not Rants about it, but let me list the reasons why this is unquestionably the best movie of 2012:
    Incredibly deft screenplay that balances exposition and action
    The team dynamic hits the appropriate speed bumps
    Every main character has an arc
    Joss Whedon's banter is in full effect
    Fantastic action that never loses the characters
    Great special effects
    That one long shot of each of the six during the final battle
    It paid off on the last four years of hype
    Shawarma

  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 065: A Grownup Video Game
     
    Something big came out on Friday. It was produced by a legendary team known for their amazing work. No, not Man of Steel: The Last of Us, the latest game by Naughty Dog, a team most recently known for the Uncharted series.
     
    It’s also a video game that will have you in tears after the first half hour.
     
    Understand, The Last of Us is a grownup’s video game. No, not because of the gore or language, but adult because it’s not childish. The game does away with many tropes associated with games in its genre and instead creates a story that feels genuinely new and, more than that, genuinely emotional and heartfelt.
     
    The Last of Us takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Like most stories in the genre, order has been lost. There are quarantine zones where martial law is in effect but, for the most part, it’s lawlessness. But what are the quarantine zones quarantined against? Not zombies per se, but rather people who’ve been infected by this weird fungus-like thing. It’s a great scenario for a video game: put us in control of a late-twenties/early-thirties man who carves a wave of destruction through the military and infected for some reason or other. Fantastic.
     
    But writer/director Neil Druckmann and the rest of Naughty Dog are having none of that. You don’t play as some supersoldier and this isn’t some story about a hero shooting his way to victory. In fact, the first character you play as is a helpless teenage girl looking for her father in the middle of the night. For the rest you play as Joel. His hair is graying and he’s very, well, normal. He’s like John McClane from the original Die Hard: incredibly vulnerable. He’s just an ordinary guy without training, gadgets, or even a fitness regime. Joel’s job — and by proxy the player’s — is simply to smuggle a girl, Ellie, out of the quarantine zone. He’s not out to save the world.
     
    It’s easy enough to have this in the narrative only for it to be disconnected from gameplay. After all, the Planet may be in danger but if Cloud and friends want to go on a few side quests to level up, what’s stopping them? Not so with The Last of Us. It forces you to think as Joel. The game doesn’t let you run into firefights guns blazing, if anything it will punish you. You never have enough ammo, nor do you have enough health. The game bucks the trend of letting your life regenerate: if you get hit you’ll have to scavenge items to restore it. This reinforces your feeling of vulnerability in fights. More often then not you’ll try to avoid conflict: it’s easier.
     
    That said, conflict in the game is visceral. Naughty Dog lays on the blood and gore in their first M-rated game; even strangling an enemy from behind is punctuated by gargles and resistance. You feel every life you take. Violence is unrestrained, but it never quite feels gratuitous. There’s no glory in it. Joel’s comments in cutscenes touch on that idea, but more the it’s desperation of battle that the game instills in you. All this is without touching on the moments of pure terror that characterize an encounter with the infected Clickers.
     
    But large sections of gameplay are without active conflict. Sometimes it just serves story. The Last of Us takes the medium of a video game and blends it with cinema and fully utilizes both aspects. All the gameplay I mentioned earlier is married beautifully with Neil Druckmann’s script and exceptional acting and animation from all involved. I’m only a few hours into the game, but the opening — which takes place on the eve of the outbreak, twenty years before the main game — is one of the most powerful moments of storytelling I’ve experienced in any medium.
     
     
     

    WARNING: The following paragraphs contains SPOILERS for the game's opening. If you’re like me and try to avoid any spoilers whatsoever, skip it.










    The game quickly establishes the characters: Joel’s tired from work, he’s a single dad whose daughter stayed up late to give him an early birthday gift — a watch. If you’ve paid attention you’ll notice that nothing in the game’s marketing suggested that Joel had a daughter, and then it dawns on you that something has to happen to her. When you first take control of Joel the car he, his brother, and daughter were trying to escape town in has just been wrecked. Infected swarm around them and Sarah has broken her leg. In any other game you would play as the survivor shooting his way to safety while the girl limps behind. In The Last of Us you play as a father carrying his daughter to safety. You can’t fight, you can only run through town. You are the one carrying Sarah to safety, right now you are the father trying to protect his daughter. You feel immersed because it’s a video game; Joel’s goal has become yours.
     
    Which makes Sarah’s death at the hands of a soldier when you’ve almost reached safety all the more painful.
     
    You watch a phenomenal cutscene as Sarah dies in her father’s arms. You’re no longer in control, you can’t do anything. You feel that helplessness as Joel tearfully pleads with his daughter to live. And tears well in your eyes as you and Joel watch her die. You couldn’t protect her. You failed. Then the game cuts from Joel’s hopeless face to the opening credits.
     
     

    That’s it, no more spoilers.










    The Last of Us uses its interactive medium to immerse you into not only its world, but the emotions within. Like the conversation you can start with Ellie about an arcade game or the subtle glance Joel gives a familiar looking watch in a cutscene: the moments are easily missed, but so typical of The Last of Us’ storytelling. Druckmann and Naughty Dog aren’t talking down to you as a player or spelling everything out for you, and they certainly aren’t trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. They’re telling a grownup story. When you watch someone you’ve spent the past ten minutes trying to protect die in your arms it hits you all the more.
     
    This is the power of video games. This is the game that elevates the medium.
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