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Ta-metru_defender

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Blog Entries posted by Ta-metru_defender

  2. Ta-metru_defender
    Warning: More Grownup Cyprinidae Coming:
     
    It's not that being an artist assistant is bad, it's just that it's kinda taxing, and the pay-by-hours isn't enough. But if I get this other gig, do I want that even though the pay is less, it's harder work, but maybe more hours? Do I want to do both? Hold out for something better? Can I hold out for something better? Am I selling myself short? But I need work.
  4. Ta-metru_defender

    Funded!

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Ghosts That We Knew is officially funded! As in all production costs are covered!
     
    I owe this to a couple of you for helping with the movie; expect to get a link to see it when it's done sometime in December.
     
    Still want a chance to get in on this? Any additional funds will enable me to go bigger with post-work for a more polished finished product. There's one more day for it!
     
    Again, thank you all.
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    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 has the memories of your ancestors and, if you’re lucky, your ancestors were hooded assassins. You spend much of the game romping around Crusades-era Jerusalem, Renaissance Italy, or Revolutionary War-era USA (depending on the game). What adds to the fun of stabbing soldiers in the back is the attention to detail the team at Ubisoft put in these games. Landmarks — both famous and less so — are rendered in game for your scaling pleasure. Not just that, though, every landmark/city/person of note you encounter is accompanied by a database providing a quick rundown of the Hagia Sophia/Boston/Cesare Borgia.
     
    So back to the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires. Revelations follows Ezio Auditore as he travels to Constantinople and his exploits therein. You’ll encounter a young Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim I, and Sehzade Ahmet, among others. Investigating the surroundings in Constantinople reveal those afore mentioned database entries and bits of history. Steadily, you begin to put together a functional history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the remnants of the Byzantines. Or, in my case, everything I know about the Ottoman Empire I learned from Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
     
    This is something that makes the Assassin’s Creed series relatively unique: they’re history lessons. Sure, the main plot of the game seldom revolves around real life incidents, but bits of actual history find their way into the plot (eg: how horrible the Borgias were). These games are decidedly not educational games, but by immersing the player in the world, you wind up learning stuff anyway. You’re able to recognize places like the Rose Mosque and the Basillica di San Lorenzo since you use them to navigate the city. Figures like Niccolò Machiavelli stick in your mind because of their importance in the game. You’re not so much taught by the game was you are immersed. You’re learning by doing.
     
    There’s another game I’ve been playing a lot this past week; Kerbal Space Program. It’s an independent game by Squad wherein you run, well, the Kerbal Space Program. What makes it different is that it’s a bizarrely realistic space simulator where getting into orbit requires managing thrusters, detaching stages, adjusting your angle of ascent, and paying attention to your apoapsis and periapsis. You also learn what words like apoapsis and periapsis mean.
     
    Kerbal is more intense than Assassin’s Creed in it’s ‘educational’ department. In order to be half-decent at the game you are forced to learn these concepts. Even if you’re not exactly clear on the math —and if you’re me, then you’re definitely not clear on the math — you wind up with a working understanding of stuff like thrust-to-weight ratios and atmospheric drag. Why? Because you have to. The information isn’t just background set dressing or details to make it seem more real; it’s vital knowledge to making sure your rocket doesn’t become a fireball. Though that’s fun too.
     
    I love video games and it annoys me to no end how often they get written off as meaningless drivel. A game like Kerbal Space Program teaches players rocket science, though more for the fun of it than any practical reasons. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty worked as a functional analysis of Meme Theory (amongst a lot of other stuff) — back in 2001, before memes were a thing. I learnt a lot of my eight-year-old vocabulary from the Pokémon games. All this to say that you can learn a lot from video games.
     
    Now then, I have a few more ideas to send Kerbals flying into space I wanna try out.
  7. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 252: Gaming Morality
     
    So here's the basic concept of Dishonored 2: the empress has been deposed. You play as either said deposed empress (Emily) or her royal protector (Corvo) and carve a path of revenge against the usurper and her cabal of those who dishonored you (hence the title). Along the way you meet the Outsider who gives you a bunch of magical powers, ranging from teleporting and stopping time to linking enemies together (so if you kill one you kill 'em all!) to straight up stopping time.
     
    Now, there are many ways to play Dishonored 2, something that's hyped up both in the promotional materials and the game itself. You can sneak through each mission, unseen by anyone, or run in obvious as a strobe light. You can assassinate each target or find another way to eliminate them. You can kill every enemy you come across or choke them into unconsciousness.
     
    Like I said: options! So many ways to play the game!
     
    Which is where the game's narrative gets in the way. Dishonored 2 has this thing called Chaos which is determined by how you dispatch targets and how many people you kill. Chaos determines your ending, and the way to get the good (or at least better) ending is through low Chaos. Essentially, the narrative encourages you to eschew violence (and some of those nifty powers). It makes sense, if you want the ending where Emily is a fair and just empress, wanton slaughter isn't becoming. It's this odd sort of ludonarrative dissonance where the game gives you these wonderful gameplay options the narrative then discourages you from using. Now, it does give replayability a boost which, given that I just finished my fourth playthrough(no powers, no stealth, high bodycount), does work.
     
    BioShock is held up as a treatise exploring the relationship between player and game (rightfully so). The ending of the game you receive, however, is based on what you do about the Little Sisters. These creepy looking girls can be either saved or absorbed for ADAM, a resource you can use to improve your abilities. Now, saving the Little Sisters gets you some ADAM too, just at a different rate from absorption. When I played BioShock, I saved the first Little Sister, then, wanting to know what would happen and how much ADAM I'd receive, absorbed the next, then chose to save the rest. Upon finishing the game, my ending was noticeably downbeat - which confused me: I'd saved all those Little Sisters! Some research (googling) turned up that to get that good ending you had to save all of them, and absorbing even just one earned you a pretty harsh one (absorbing all garners you one more sorrowful). I was kinda annoyed, I'd only absorbed one! But then, I had still chosen to absorb one, so I suppose that does still make me a bit of a villain. So it makes sense.
     
    Still harsh, though.
     
    At the least, Dishonored 2 and BioShock don't punish you gameplay-wise for your moral choices. Knights of The Old Republic allows you to make light side and dark side choices throughout the game because it’s Star Wars so Jedi and all that. In the late game there are armor and such that you can equip if you lean far enough in either direction. If you've been making decisions in both directions, though, tough. In the second KOTOR also has a whole section you can only access as a light or dark sider. Playing a more nuanced game gets you nothing. Which I suppose works in the Star Wars context, but, playing as an amnesiac former Sith Lord (oh, spoiler) and a Jedi exiled from the Order, I figure a level of permissiveness ought to color the KOTOR games.
     
    Mass Effect 2 (also done by Bioware, who did the first KOTOR) had a similar issue, where not leaning too strongly in a Paragon (saves the day nicely) or Renegade (saves the day meanly) fashion prevents you from taking certain dialogue options and getting certain outcomes later on. It discourages you from mixing up how you respond (also, taking too many Paragon actions makes your dope scars disappear, boo). Mass Effect 3 rectifies it somewhat by letting the player accumulate Reputation from taking Paragon and/or Renegade options rather than a more lukewarm approach. So instead the game rewards you for taking a strong stance either way.
     
    Perhaps the problem with video game morality is its binary nature. You, for the most part, are either good or bad and the narrative typically plays out accordingly – sometimes rendering judgment. I find that open ended narratives work better as in Mass Effect, where the decisions of your actions aren’t always so black and white: choosing to destroy the data earned by illegal vivisection means you won’t be able to save a character later down the line. Morality in video games – and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ endings – is an interesting and still developing facet of gaming that’s arguably limited by tech and designers’ patience. I’m undoubtedly curious to see how video games handle this going forward – especially Bioware’s upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda. The virtuality of gaming makes for a fun space to try things and see what happens, consequences are great, limiting gameplay less so.
     
     
     
    Or maybe Dishonored 2 could use just a few more non-lethal power options.
  8. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 081: Genre as Literature
    Originally published October 4th 2013
     
    I love science fiction. I’ve said that before on this blog, and I’ll say it again. I like spaceships. I like a world that’s a little more than ours. But when it comes to literary value science fiction almost always gets written off as being science fiction. Fantasy gets the same treatment. Why? Because it’s genre. Here’s the thing, though: science fiction can be as literary as it can be pulpy. Just like any other genre.
     
    First off, let’s look up what exactly literary means. Wikipedia sources Joyce Saricks and defines literary fiction as “serious,” “critically acclaimed,” and “complex, literate, multilayered novels that wrestle with universal dilemmas.” Most interestingly, the term ‘literary’ fell into common usage in the 60’s. Why? To differentiate ‘serious’ fiction from genre. Which doesn’t make sense.
     
    For example, look at The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. The former (published in 1969) deals with questions of gender and politics as well as being an outsider. There are layers and layers of this in The Left Hand of Darkness; some of it implicit and others not quite clear until after later thought. The Dispossessed (published 1974), on the other hand, looks at anarchy vs capitalism, individualism vs collectivism, and the tension when a person from one worldview visits a world where the opposite is practiced. So far, these seem to be pretty universal — and topical — themes. Both books are also extremely serious and have both been critically acclaimed (they won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, two annual science fiction accolades). So far this sounds very literary to me.
     
    What about Ender’s Game; does Orson Scott Card’s novel fall under Saricks’ definition of literary? First glance would imply not; after all it’s just about children saving the world from aliens. Only it’s not. Ender’s Game is, at it’s core, a novel about empathy. Throughout the book Ender struggles with the tension between hate and love. Can you still hate someone, even your tormenter, after you understand them completely? What happens if this capacity for empathy is used as a weapon? And what if you’re institutionally ostracized from everyone else into becoming a weapon? Here lies the focus of Ender’s Game, not in killing aliens (whether the upcoming film keeps these themes is another issue). Like LeGuin’s novels, Ender is also critically acclaimed and, arguably, quite serious.
     
    We can easily apply this lens to cinema as well. Underneath its slick action sequences, Inception asks questions about the nature of filmmaking and reality. Would you stay in a world where things were perfect, even if it wasn’t real? District 9 explores similar themes to Ender, albeit with regards to racism. Moon questions the meaning of identity in ways normal literature cannot.
    Granted, a lot of genre fiction can be bad. Pulp novels from the early 1900’s tend to lack any sort of depth (though they set a lot of genre conventions still observed today). But then, can’t ‘normal,’ ‘non-genre’ fiction be lousy You can find lousy detective novels, lousy historical fiction, lousy adventures, lousy fanfiction, lousy thrillers, and, redundant as it sounds, lousy romance novels. Why is some of it lousy? Because some of it is good; really good. Some might even be ‘literary.’
     
    So why was a term like ‘paraliterature’ coined to differentiate popular or commercial fiction from consecrated ‘literature?’ Does having the presence of anything outside the realms of normalcy instantly lousy a piece of fiction? Way I see it, there shouldn’t be a divide: genre can be literary. Video games can be literary, look at The Last of Us! Comics can be literary (Watchmen). The problem with setting up a hard and fast guideline about where the line between literature and genre/paraliterature is that, like it or not, some of what you’re trying to keep out will inevitably slip through the cracks. Even if a criteria is as subjective as ‘serious.’ The alternate would be completely arbitrary decision making which, frankly, is just plain stupid.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 323: Genre Bending
     
    Altered Carbon is an oddball of a show. It’s got a science fiction setting, but primarily draws on noir for a lot of its narrative structure. Beyond that, though, it draws on a whole host of other science fiction media for inspiration, to varying effect.
     
    The show is science fiction noir in the stylings of Blade Runner. And it’s really, really heavily cribbing from the Blade Runner stylebook. You’ve got flying cars that don’t look a hair out of place flying around a dingy, multicultural metropolis that’s pretty often rain soaked. There’s also a pervasive existential theme, owing to Altered Carbon’s conceit that human consciousness is held in a chip and thus the relationship between body and identity is a lot more tenuous than normal. A lot of this can be chalked up to the noir genre, what with gumshoes hired to take on a case and all that. The atmosphere, for the most part, is appropriately heavy and somber for the most part. It’s a lousy future, the rich get away with all sorts of (futuristic!) crime and the police are powerless. Like I said, very noir. Altered Carbon, however, goes in some very different places over its ten episodes.
     
    For all its noir trappings, Altered Carbon is really loathe to give up the gunfight. In lieu of tense shootouts that are the hallmark of noir films (and Blade Runner, which, this cannot be overstated, is a massive influence on Altered Carbon), we get a lotta gun play straight out of your big action movie of choice. Heck, there’s a sequence where two characters are surrounded by Yakuza and soldiers out to kill them and, what do they do? They go back-to-back to shoot the attackers in a sequence ripped straight out of the video game Army of Two. Now, I’m all for Big Action Scenes and I strongly support borrowing from video games for inspiration, but it all feels so incongruous set against what’s supposedly a very noir story. Altered Carbon tries to move around genres, but its noir trappings end up feeling like concrete shoes when it adds these odd things to the mix.
     
    Genre bending is totally possible, and it can be done well. I’m not just talking about mashing two together, like Spider-Man: Homecoming taking a John Hughesian teen movie and smooshing it with a superhero story, but rather a story that jumps around its genres. Consider Community: ostensibly it’s a sitcom set in a community college about a ragtag group of friends. In actuality, it’s a show that contains within its six seasons pastiches of gangster films, Apollo 13, Die Hard, zombie movies, Law and Order, and a Ken Burns documentary — amongst much more. It works, in no small part because Community sets itself up as being perfectly aware of what genre it exists in and by playing every genre/narrative to the hilt. It bends its genres to tell the story it wants to tell; how better to explore a rift between best friends Troy and Abed than by a Civil War-style documentary? The show also sets itself up as a very silly world, so spending a half hour in a spy movie is hardly out of the ordinary — especially as it does it with aplomb.
     
    Similarly, Cowboy Bebop (which I will not shut up about) refuses to be confined to any specific genre. Right off the bat, it sets itself firmly at the intersection of the western, gangster, and noir genres (in space!), leaning more into each of the three when necessary. Digging into Spike’s story lends itself well to taking on the hallmarks of a gangster movie, but following Jet means we’re in for a much more noir narrative. Throughout it all, though, Bebop keeps its other inspirations close at hand, it’s noir episodes have hints of Westerns sprinkled throughout. And, because Bebop positions itself at an intersection of genre, it’s perfectly in keeping with its stylings when it borrows from other genres, be they cyberpunk or horror. Bebop is a show so sure of itself that it can play around with its makeup and never lose its DNA. Conversely, Altered Carbon sets itself up so strongly in the noir genre that whenever it strays outside (ninjas! anti-establishment rebellion!) it feels like we’ve lost the plot. Genre bending is a lotta fun, but the trick is to do it within what you’ve set as the boundaries. The more flexible those boundaries, the more wild the story can go.
  10. Ta-metru_defender

    Genre Blending

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 084: Genre Blending
    Originally posted October 25th 2013
     
    Remember when superhero movies were just becoming a thing? They usually fell into the same pattern: someone gets powers and saves the world. Fairly straight forward, right? Sure, there were different approaches to the idea: X-Men drew on themes of discrimination and Spider-Man was about a hero trying to balance life and superheroing. The Dark Knight, Watchmen, and The Incredibles deconstructed several tropes associated with the genre, and Iron Man and The Incredibles reconstructed a deal of them (yep, The Incredibles did both). But at the end of the day, all of them were, for the most part, variations on a theme.
     
    Then Thor rolled around. While, yes, it was still about a superhero saving the world, the film and character were approached like a fantasy film in the vein of The Lord of the Rings rather than an out-and-out ‘superhero film.’ The result was a movie that felt very different from, say, Iron Man. Suddenly the superhero genre had expanded. Thor wasn’t just about a normal guy getting powers; it was about a fantastical superhuman progressing through the hero’s journey in a blend of fantasy and reality.
     
    A few months later Captain America: The First Avenger came out, transplanting a superhero movie into a period piece (like The Incredibles!). Unlike The Incredibles, though, The First Avenger fully embraced its time period: World War II. Just as Thor crossed into fantasy, this film blended the a war movie with superhero tropes. Yes, The First Avenger still has all the hallmarks of the superhero film, but it’s hardly a strict superhero movie. We have a superhero who’s more like a commando (or is it the other way round?). Similarly, X-Men: First Class (also released in the Summer of 2011) took place in the ‘60s, keeping its discrimination subtext and mixing it with Cold War imagery.
     
    Which brings me to The Winter Soldier, the trailer of which just dropped (if you haven’t seen it, go now!). The new Captain America movie seems to be, like The First Avenger before it, dispensing with a lot of ‘classic’ superhero tropes. If anything, The Winter Soldier is shaping up to be more like a political thriller in the vein of Patriot Games or The Bourne Identity rather than Iron Man. Yes, it’s still a movie about Captain America and there is an evil looking villain; but Blade Runner has androids and it’s not Star Wars. It’s not solely a film of one genre.
     
    As a genre, superhero movies, like science fiction and fantasy before it, are rapidly becoming far more diverse with their subject matter. The Avengers drew some aspects from war movies, Man Of Steel focused its central theme not on Superman vs Zod but on the question of Superman’s identity. Of course, this doesn’t always go so well; Green Lantern tried to create a space opera and, well, failed miserably. So what did Green Lantern do wrong? Does space opera simply not work with superheroes? No, Green Lantern was a reminder that blending genres isn’t enough: you always need a good story.
    Fun thing is, this trend shows no sign of stopping. Upcoming Thor: The Dark World is still a fantasy (directed by some Game of Thrones alum, no less), Guardians of the Galaxy is looking to be Marvel’s attempt at a space opera, and Ant-Man is gonna be an Edgar Wright film. Why is this so important? Folks, we’re watching a genre develop.
     
    Short post? Yes. Why? I’m working on a short film this weekend. I’m busy. Heck, I hardly have time to go out and watch movies.
  11. Ta-metru_defender

    Ghost Ship

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Another RPG session tomorrow!
     
    Unlike last time, this time I've got a detailed plan moving forward (I'm currently writing Page 4). The party finds an abandoned Old Republic military ship in the middle of nowhere. There's gonna be battle droids, droidekas, and a fight on foot against a vulture droid all while taking part in an old fashioned dungeon crawl through an Acclamator. Which, it turns out, due to a hyperdrive malfunction kinda time travelled!
     
    So Clone Troopers! Who were recently given Order 66! Which may make them less than happy with a certain almost-Jedi in the party!
     
    What do they find on the ship? Proof of Palpatine's machinations to become Emperor by controlling both the Separatists and the Republic!
     
    But wait, there's more! On the way out they run into an Emperor's Hand named... GERALD MARCION. With Death Troopers. Oh, and maybe an Imperial Officer or two who wants them dead.
     
    I can't wait to see how these guys take the adventure off the rails.
  12. Ta-metru_defender

    Giant Robots

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 289: Giant Robots
     
    It is no secret that I absolutely adore Pacific Rim. Granted, and watching giant mechs and giant mechs beat the stuffing outta each other is only a part of it. See, there’s the pure childish glee to it, the great speech, and, of course, its youthful and hopeful worldview. Pacific Rim is a movie about giant mechs and giant monsters, but it’s because it’s so much more than the battle between Jaegers and Kaiju that the movie made the impression it did, it’s why it matters more than you’d expect.
     
    A sequel was up in the air for a while, and, eventually, Guillermo del Toro stepped aside from directing again and Steven S. DeKnight filled in as writer/director and the project officially went into production. There were rumors online about the studio ousting del Toro, but given that he still has a producing credit and DeKnight was in touch with him, it’s safe to say his vision is still there.
     
    So naturally, I watched the trailer for the sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising as soon as I could. And man, it delivers on more giant mechs fighting giant monsters. And a multinational team, which is something very important to me, obvious. And it’s a glorious trailer, with new robots fighting new monsters in a city and stuff getting destroyed and swords slashing and all that cool stuff.
     
    But all the same, it seems to me that there’s a bit that’s being lost.
     
    Let me preface the following with this: It looks awesome. Mecha action is something near and dear to my heart, and getting to see a glimpse of those behemoths fighting is, of course, a joy. I’m here for it.
     
    But.
     
    Guillermo del Toro’s a self-described pacifist. He deliberately avoids making movies about war, and Pacific Rim was no different. The leader of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps isn’t a general, but rather a Marshal (named Stacker Pentecost, but the ridiculous awesomeness of that name is unimportant here). The Jaeger pilots aren’t Captains or Lieutenants, but rather Rangers. Pacific Rim avoids much militaristic imagery, and there’s no room for jingoism in a movie about an international team fighting monsters. This is all deliberate, as del Toro "…wanted was for kids to see a movie where they don’t need to aspire to be in an army to aspire for an adventure."[*]
     
    Even the action in the movie follows this trend. Sure, there’s epic destruction, but the operating protocol for the Jaeger pilots is to keep the Kaiju away from the city. When a kaiju attacks Sydney, it’s because it breached the wall that was supposed to keep them out. The fight in Hong Kong is after the defenders have been overwhelmed, and much ado (and a subplot) is made out of making sure civilians evacuate to shelters. When the punching and hitting starts, it’s a lot of punching and outlandish weapons. Gipsy Danger has an energy blaster and a sword, Striker Eureka rockets and knives, Cherno Alpha is really good at punching stuff. It’s fantastical, it’s fun.
     
    There’s a shot in the Uprising trailer that looks like one out of the matrix, with empty bullet shells falling to the ground behind a Jaeger. It’s cool — because of course it’s cool — but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it gave me a measure of concern. Part of what made Pacific Rim so wonderful was it being removed from reality; once the Jaegers started going there wasn’t much in the ways of actual guns. All the violence was out there, fantastical, giant robots punching and giant swords and rockets.
     
    I love Pacific Rim. And I wanna love Uprising too. But lightning in a bottle was caught once, and I’m wary of a followup. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe DeKnight’s got more going on than the trailer lets on. Maybe it’ll be as hopeful and idealistic as the first one. But as we get set to enjoy more mecha versus kaiju action, I want to remember how darn special Pacific Rim is, and how much a sequel has to live up to not only in quality but also in theming. Maybe Uprising won’t have the special sauce that made Pacific Rim so good.
     
    But.
     
    It’s still gonna be giant mechs beating up giant monsters.
     
    And I’ll take it.
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 328: Global Vessel

    I’m not really a sports person.
     
    But once every four years I get really hardcore into a sport. I am, of course, talking about the World Cup.
     
    Which should really come as no surprise. For starters, it’s got my mostest favoritest trope; the ragtag multinational team. They may be in competition, but there remains the fun of watching countries as disparate as Belgium and Japan share a stage.
     
    Then of course there’s the fact that soccer/football is the sport I know best. I didn’t move to the US until I was fourteen and so grew up around the sport that just about every other country cares about. I played it during recess in primary school and on the landing outside my apartment in Singapore. We played it on the quayside and in the confined rooms aboard the ship. Not only is soccer a sport I know how is played, but it’s one that’s familiar. The World Cup is a convenient reason to get invested.
     
    Never mind I have no horse in this race, that none of the four countries that make me up (Singapore, the US, China, and Norway) are represented – that’s half the fun! Whoever you support can be completely arbitrary! Spain gave us papas bravas and sangria, pull for them! I once had a crush on a German girl, good enough for me! Messi’s hot; go Argentina! Japan has a half-Asian on their team, I’m in! But more than anything else, it’s great to see so many excellent games played.
     
    Soccer (or association football, I never know what to call it) is as close to contained narrative perfection as you can get in a sport. Unlike American Football, which stops every play for planning and commercials, soccer keeps on going. Not only does this make for a sport more reliant on on-the-fly teamwork, but it creates an atmosphere of sustained tension throughout the game — with very little chances for catharsis. See, basketball, like soccer, doesn’t stop, but it’s also a game where goals come very frequently. We quickly find out if a play results in a goal and the points keep climbing. The somewhat more spaced out pacing of soccer makes for a more tense experience, at any moment an offensive play might succeed. That the score in soccer is typically lower also means that comebacks always seem within reach.
     
    Therein lies so much of the narrative excitement inherent in a good game of soccer. The pathos and excitement of stories are built on the almost-theres and could-have-beens. Every run on the Death Star is exciting for all the times the proton torpedoes could have hit but didn’t; thus making Luke’s success so much more cathartic. The downbeat ending of Infinity War is due in no small part to how darn close the Avengers came to beating Thanos. And so with soccer, every time a goal almost happens but doesn’t just adds to the excitement. Because when a player finally scores, the pent-up tension of however long it’s been pays off, either in relief or tragedy, depending on who you’re rooting for. But no matter what, a good game is exciting.
     
    I probably could get invested in non-World Cup soccer tournaments if I really bothered, but I’ll always love the multinational appeal when this particular series of games rolls around. We’re down to the semi-finals and most every team I’ve pulled for has lost. At this point I’m rooting for France and England, because I’m all about reigniting the Hundred Years War in the finals. But more than anything, I’ve got eight days left of caring about sports, here’s hoping for some really good exciting matches.
  14. Ta-metru_defender
    029: Go For The Heart
     
    Does anyone remember the movie Eragon? That horrible movie based on an alright book? It was a movie so poorly made and objectively bad we could ignore how lousy an adaption it was.
     
    But what about when it’s a lousy adaption too?
     
    M. Night Shyamalan cost himself his credibility when he put out The Last Airbender. Let’s ignore the lousy script, acting, and direction for a second. The movie was pretty. The tidal wave at the end going towards the ship was absolutely gorgeous. But, the script, acting, and direction were junk; like it or not. But more than that, the film complete missed the point of the TV show.
     
    Avatar is an incredibly layered show. Not only do we have the intricate relations between the protagonists, but we have the background complexity of the war between the countries. The heart of the show was the dynamic between Aang and crew; the big quest and saving the world was the plot and vehicle. You couldn’t have one without the other. Airbender replaced the characters with cardboard cutouts and put the quest front and center. Bending is cool and the Fire Nation must to be defeated! Screw everything else, this is what matters! To the surprise of no one, it sucked.
     
    How would one go about making a proper adaption of Avatar? By necessity, cut out much of the little adventures along the way but keep moments that help us establish characters (Katara and Sokka taking Aang in at the Southern Air Temple, Sokka growing trough meeting the Kyoshi warriors, Zuko choosing to rescue Iroh, etc), even if it means rearranging/combining them (an event on Kyoshi Island could result in Aang going Avatar and needing Katara to console him while Sokka and Suki help defend the island). All the while keeping that spirit of adventure. It’s not so important to hit every plot point as it is to make sure the heart of the work is there.
     
    Let’s do another comparison! BBC put out an adaption of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the late 80’s. It was alright at best, hit all the beats that the movie needed to to stay ‘true’ to the book and it worked well enough. It just.. wasn’t Narnia. Then came the new one in 2005. Due in no small part to advances in special effects, Narnia really came alive and proved itself to be a fantastic movie.
    It wasn’t the most faithful adaption of the book, though. The characters were all aged up by a few years, we saw the bombing of London, the characters had baggage, and the climatic battle was accentuated. But the spirit was there! The heart was the same! The movie captured that magic that makes Narnia Narnia. That’s what made the new one so much better.
     
    Take a cursory look at some of the really good adaptions these days: The Help and The Hunger Games for example. Both of them don’t follow the book blow by blow, both skip or change parts of their books, but both still remain true to the spirit of the book. The Help still deals with treatment of, er, the help, and attitudes towards them during the early 60’s. All the main characters stay true to themselves and are undeniably them. Katniss and her struggle to survive in a hellish battlefield are still there in the film of The Hunger Games. The brutality of it all is retained through the carefully reckless use of the camera, the dynamic between Katniss and Gale is quickly well established, and The Capitol and inhabitants shown for what they are. The spirit is there.
     
    The Lord Of The Rings stands as possibly the best adaption. Peter Jackson glossed over several plot points, changed characters considerably (Aragorn takes most of the journey to attain the regality he takes up immediately in the books), and even altered just where the books are divided. But the core was still there. The themes of the smallest being able to change the world, of standing up to the impossible, of living for more than yourself; it’s all there! The movies may be structurally and narratively different, but it still feels like The Lord Of The Rings.
     
    Why?
     
    ‘cuz they went for the heart.
     
     
    Also: buy my book In Transit! It's not an adaption and probably wouldn't work as one; so it's a book!
  15. Ta-metru_defender

    Going Further

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 292: Going Further
     
    The LEGO Ninjago Movie came out about a month ago and it was, well, firmly okay. Like, it's not awful — it’s entertaining enough — but it never rises to the delightful postmodern heights of its predecessors. But it didn't have to. While The LEGO Movie toyed with Campbell’s Hero’s Journey by making the chosen one as un-special as possible, and The LEGO Batman Movie used the narrative of a love story to reframe the conflict of Batman and The Joker to craft a hilarious new take on the mythos, all The LEGO Ninjago Movie really had to do was tell a raucous adventure story. Which it kinda does, but it’s very safe, one couched in winks at the audience and a foot still safely in the boat, never taking the plunge.
     
    It’s a shame, too, because The LEGO Ninjago Movie had so much in its hand, it just never went all in.
     
    Let’s just look at the setting. We’ve got Ninjago City, this cyberpunk-by-way-of-future-Asia setting with elevated highways and really cool buildings. But we never get to really explore it. All of our time in the city is set against the backdrop of big fights, which, while cool, are hardly space to get to know a setting. Instead, once the plot begins in earnest, we’re whisked out to a much more generic jungle. And like, sure, a jungle’s a cool enough setting, but it lacks the idiosyncrasy of Ninjago City. Jungles are generic, whereas Ninjago City had this spiffy aesthetic that marked is as different from, say Bricksburg or Gotham from the other LEGO movies or even New York and Coruscant. It wouldn’t be terribly hard to rejigger the central plot to go from exploring the jungle to spelunking in the depths of Ninjago City. There’s more personality there and room for imagination, something the movie really could have used.
     
    Because it plays it all so safe. We have this outstanding (and hilarious) cast who are mostly relegated to bit parts where they can offer commentary on the Quest At Hand. If Ninjago is gonna be a send up of typical adventure movies, then let the main characters be a bunch of savvy wiseacres taking the mickey out of the narrative. If it’s gonna be an actual adventure movie, then let it be that, with the silliness seeping in from all sides. But Ninjago couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, and instead we have a normal adventure story that’s undercut by its love of winking at itself. There’s no commitment.
     
    So let’s take The Princess Bride. It creates a delightfully silly world, replete with six-fingered men, Dread Pirate Robertses, and ROUSes, but with characters who are completely sold on it. Inigo Montoya searches for the six-fingered man, and though he’s a comedic supporting character, because he as a character is serious about it and because the narrative never ridicules his quest, he is given the ultimate catharsis when he eventually finds him. There’s no winking at the audience, where everything unfolding is an in-joke. Sure, it’s a silly world (there is a place called The Cliffs of Insanity) but because the characters are given a level of emotional honesty, the narrative feels whole.
     
    Even Shrek 2 (objectively the best of the Shreks) treats its characters’ arcs with a great deal of respect. Yes, the movie absolutely skewers fairytales, particularly of the Disney variety, but the story of Shrek trying to fit into Fiona’s world is committed to wholeheartedly. As such we still have a great story in this bizarre world (that we also get time to explore).
     
    A lot of its faults can be blamed on The LEGO Ninjago Movie’s absolutely frenetic pace. The movie barely slows down to give us a chance to be. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a fast paced movie, but the movie barely ever fleshes out anything it has in play, never letting us just be in the space it’s created. It’s a rotten shame, too, because there was so much interesting at its fringes, so much mileage to be had with the banter between the characters, so much capacity for cool with some LEGO-ized martial arts action. Plus, you’ve got the Hero With an Evil Dad trope with the wonderful twist that everyone knows Garmadon is Lloyd’s father. But frustratingly, characters don’t fulfill arcs so much as they check off narrative beats. The movie never trusts its assets enough to capitalize on it, it never goes all the way.
     
    Instead, well, we get something that’s just fine.
  16. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 331: Good Bad Movies
     
    I like bad movies. I really do. Take Outcast as an example; its plot is pretty simple: Former crusader Hayden Christensen winds up in China where he’s protecting the rightful prince from said prince’s vengeful older brother. Also, Nic Cage is in it as Hayden Christensen’s old mentor-turned-hermit who’s acting in a very different movie from everyone else. All this to say, it’s an utter delight. Not that it’s a good movie; Outcast has a host of issues, ranging from being unable to decide what accent the Chinese characters should have when speaking English (the same family has one with an English accent and another with an American) to the fact that it really reinforces the whole White Savior narrative, what with the best summary of it being "Hayden Christensen and Nic Cage save China." Yet it’s an enjoyable mess, and Nic Cage’s performance alone is worth the couple hours in front of the tv.
     
    It’s really easy, especially in cinephile and filmmaking circles, to get caught up in the whole idea of Quality. Like, is a movie Good, is it Important? There’s a canon of sorts for what’s allowed to be considered The Best (woe unto you if The Godfather doesn’t crack your top ten list). For the most part, though, a lot of these movies rightly deserve their hallowed spot; The Godfather is indeed excellent and holy ###### is Casablanca a masterwork of film. In light of this, more pulpy fare like The Avengers or Scott Pilgrim get relegated since, sure, they’re entertaining, but they aren’t that Important.
     
    But why isn’t entertaining enough? I’m very partial to both The Avengers and Scott Pilgrim for telling really interesting, well-wrought stories that despite a flashy exterior, touch on deeper themes (sacrifice and unity for the first, self-respect for the second). And most of all, they’re really fun. There’s no denying that Whiplash is an excellent movie, but it’s not one I’ll pop in while hanging out with friends. Though Ant-Man and The Wasp is undoubtably a movie worse in quality and critical reception, it remains a movie that’s just plan fun. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a movie that I’d call aggressively stupid, but I was grinning ear to ear for just about the entire film.
     
    There’s much to be said for that. I could spend a very long rant essay discussing all of the fallacies and nonsensical plot developments of Fallen Kingdom, but, really, does that even matter? I had fun watching the movie, more fun than I had watching, say, Molly’s Game or even Deadpool 2. It’s why Fallen Kingdom is a movie I can recommend wholeheartedly to anyone in it to watch dinosaurs wreck stuff rather than a treatise on the sublime majesty and horror of those extinct terrible lizards. And really, that’s all the movie sets out to do. It has no assumptions about itself as something more than that; it wants to be a really fun movie and it succeeds. Heck, look at Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, a movie with a tangential grasp of narrative consequence and character development, but it’s such darn fun and a great way to spend a couple hours.
     
    I don’t deny that there are bad movies (and good grief, there are some that are truly awful), but I think there is still a delight to be found in movies that aren’t great and yet are enjoyable all the same. Not even necessarily movies good in their badness like The Room or even the aforementioned Outcast, which are enjoyable for how poorly they missed the mark set out for themselves, but rather ones that have low aims and succeed wonderfully. There’s a movie about a giant killer shark coming out, The Meg, and it looks incredibly silly, but also super fun. And if I’m going to the movies to chill out after work, why not be willing to turn off my brain and enjoy a fun, bad movie?
  17. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 087: Good Female Protagonists Revisited
     
    This blog's inception came about a year-and-a-half ago due to an essay (not a rant) about Katniss of The Hunger Games and other strong female characters. In light of the fact that we're once again a week away from the release of a movie about Katniss Everdeen, I figure, hey, let's look at this subject yet again. And again.
     
    Strong female characters are strong characters. Period. There's no special checklist that needs to be applied to women characters. There aren't any set of traits that a female character must or cannot embody, just as there aren't for male characters. To suggest otherwise is not only kinda dumb, but also robs characters of the incredible depth that real people have.
     
    So, essentially, a woman in fiction doesn't have to be out kicking butt to be a strong character. I think this is something we get mixed up a lot. We suspect that Katniss is stronger than Bella Swan because Katniss can shoot stuff with a bow when, as I've said before, it's rather because Katniss has agency and is active in pursuing her goals.
     
    Firefly is another strong example of this. Compare Zoë and Kaylee. Zoë's ex-military and frequently joins the captain in fighting bad guys. Kaylee is a mechanic and freezes up when she's handed a gun. Gut reaction could be to say that Kaylee is a dull, cliché character. Yet anyone who’s watched the show will quickly realize that Kaylee is as well developed as Zoë.
     
    How? Because Kaylee’s an interesting person, plain and simple. As a character she has her own quirks, she has her own agency, she’s her own person. What makes Kaylee interesting is that she’s a layered, developed character. She’s someone you feel like you could have a full conversation with, even if taken out of her setting.
     
    Agents of SHIELD is another great example of this. I talked about this a few weeks ago, though with regards to non-combatant characters in general being given their moment. It excels with its female characters too. Skye and Simmons are both fleshed out and interesting enough characters, even though they aren’t out actively fighting. Furthermore, they aren’t treated patronizingly. They aren’t those moments where the plot almost conspires to create a situation where the character would be proven right or put in a very I-told-you-so moment, almost elevating her above the others. (It’s interesting to note that while Skye falls victim to patronization on occasion, it’s due to her hacktavist nature rather than based on her being a woman)
     
    A lot of the women in Game of Thrones are also well-developed, even the ones who aren’t swinging swords. Sansa Stark, who’s basically a prisoner-of-war, would be very easy to come off as being very damsel-y. Yet she’s still a cool character, we can see that she’s not meekly complying with everything but instead has her own agenda, however powerless she can be.
     
    So what’s the point of this? Shockingly, women are people too. A strong female character doesn’t have to be out kicking butt (see Salt for evidence of how it can go wrong), just be an interesting person. For every Katniss and Black Widow we need a Sansa and Simmons. Keep things interesting, y’know?
  18. Ta-metru_defender
    So yesterday, well, Wednesday, I was at Yankee Stadium for the all NYU graduation where the entire NYU class of 2016 commenced. Or did commencement. Whatever. Was cool.
    Today (Thursday), though, was the Gallatin graduation, the one specific for my school. Gotta walk across the stage and all that.
     
    Did the thing.
     
    Got a degree in Narrative (Re)Construction; now to find a job. But first, wooo!
  19. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 056: Great Artists Steal

    When explaining what make the Mac so good, Steve Jobs quoted Picasso saying “Good artists copy, great ones steal.” In an interesting twist of fate, that quote often gets attributed to Jobs now instead of Picasso (who may or may not have said it first). It’s a fun quote that definitely is the background for the Mac, it’s also very applicable to, y’know, art. And here that means everything.
     
    Especially Neill Blomkamp’s filmography. Who, you ask? You might know him from the Halo: Landfall short and as the guy Peter Jackson chose to be the one to direct the Halo film. When plans for the Halo film fell through, Jackson instead gave Blomkamp the resources for District 9, an amazing piece of serious science-fiction that showed a few shades of the Halo games in its design and look. It’s subtle, but there’s some resemblance.
     
    E
nter Elysium, the trailer for which dropped earlier this week. It’s Blomkamp’s next film and it looks just as cool as District 9. It too has some stolen design influence. Let’s look at the titular Elysium. It’s a ring-shaped megastructure, like the titular Halo (which wasn’t the first, but more on that later). So we have that look, but it doesn’t look just like a Halo but like Mass Effect’s Citadel as well (the spokes and the interior design). Artificial world inhabited mostly by the rich? Looks like the Citadel’s Presidium to me. It’s an almost uncanny resemblance. But it’s not bad. It’s a good idea, and Blomkamp’s not just copying the idea, but he’s stealing it and mixing it into his own work. He’s using it for a different story.
     
    Halo’s a thief too, particularly from the film Aliens. How much? Halo’s Wikia has an entire article listing them. Not only are the marines’ armor very similar, but Sergeant Johnson is more or less Sergeant Apone. They even have some of the same lines. More than that, the setting of a ringworld is similar to the titular structure in Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld. Halo took conventions, ideas, and designs (and a secondary character) and gave it a new life with a totally new story. Halo doesn’t feel or look derivative; that’s good stealing.
     
    Uncharted is another culprit. Globetrotting treasure hunter who more often that not finds something with a supernatural power? Nathan Drake might as well be Indiana Jones without a whip. They’re often in similar predicaments: already up against lousy odds, everything goes wrong and they’ve gotta fumble —sorry, improvise— their way out. Nathan Drake is Indiana Jones set sixty years late. Yet the works as a whole are different enough. Uncharted’s supporting cast is more different and consistent than Indy’s and the plot and character arcs are very different. Uncharted takes what’s essentially the Indiana Jones mythos and reworks it for a more modern age. The end result is a fantastic video game that, for no small reason, has been called the best Indiana Jones video game.

    The trick with stealing is to not take something wholesale and repeat it. As Steve Jobs said in the interview where he quoted Picasso: “It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done, and then try to bring those things to what you’re doing.” Just copying something isn’t enough, you have to blend it in to what you’re making. Look at Dungeons & Dragons. Much of the setting is taken from JRR Tolkien’s work; you’ve got Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs (all of which had to be renamed in later editions). But Gygax and Arneson gave the world its own spirit, mixing in influences from other worlds as well. Super 8, Mass Effect, The Secret of Monkey Island; everyone steals from everyone else. The thing is to make it new, to make it work, to make it yours. Don’t copy; steal.
  20. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 276: Hanging Out
     
    Upon having it recommended to me independently by two friends, I’ve finally started reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. And the book’s delightful; it’s a space opera about people on a ship written by a writer who’s clearly seen the same movies, read the same books, and played the same video games as me. It’s one of those books I can’t stop reading but don’t want to end.
     
    It's a very episodic book; while there is a definite narrative throughline, thus far (I'm about halfway through) it's been secondary to the misadventures the crew have been having along the way. And I'm totally fine with that.
     
    Which is strange, because last week I harangued Crazy Rich Asians for spending too much time lollygagging and not enough time plotting. Asians is characterized by episodic misadventures until a whole lot of plot shows up in the final hundred-odd pages, but I found it frustrating.
     
    And I think there's a clear reason why.
     
    And it's not the spaceship thing.
     
    It's characters.
     
    Like I said last week, the folks in Crazy Rich Asians are more cipher than characters, bodies with a trait or two slapped on them to say what's needed for the scene. They've no inner life. The characters in Long Way, conversely, are sharply defined with a rich sense of history to them. They feel distinct, different; like you could hold a real conversation with them. And so, when placed in an episodic narrative, it's fun to see them interact with each other, to watch them hang out.
     
    It's a benefit of long-form storytelling. The deft writing in The Avengers characterizes the heroes well enough that you wish there was more time to see them hanging out together. A book has plenty of space for that to happen.
     
    As do video games. Arguably one of the strongest aspects of the original Mass Effect trilogy is how well Shepard and (most of) his/her crew is sketched out. You have someone like Mordin, a former black-ops scientist/commando turned doctor who also sings showtunes. Which is interesting enough, but it's when he's mixed in with Shepard that things get really good. Interacting with Mordin on his loyalty mission in 2 has you grappling with the morality of the Genophage (a virus that affects the reproduction rate of a martial species). Was it a necessary measure? Do the krogan deserve a second chance? Good characters enhance each other; iron sharpens iron and all that. Captain America and Iron Man each push each other on and force the other to be more stubborn. It's around Inara that Malcolm Reynolds will let the holes in his armor show. Barney and Robin drink scotch and smoke cigars.
     
    The final DLC for Mass Effect 3, Citadel, is essentially all hanging out with your crew. You get small side quests with each one and then throw a big party with these characters you've spent tens of hours over multiple games getting to know. It's great fun and a fond farewell. It wouldn’t work near as well had these characters not been so well done. If the games didn’t give you the time to get to know them or made these characters worth knowing, it’d just be a drag of cutscenes while you waited to get back to shooting stuff.
     
    I think that's a hallmark of good characters; you feel like you know them. The characters of a tv show start to feel like your friends. When I talk about my crew in Mass Effect, they’re my crew, who I fought the Collectors and Reapers with. And with characters like that, I don’t mind watching them going on misadventures.
  21. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 277: Haven’t We Heard This Before?
     
    Spider-Man’s a superhero whose central theme is conveniently spelled out for us: with great power comes great responsibility. And it’s a great one too. A nobody gets given amazing powers and has to learn what to do with them. It's a pretty essential part of most incarnations of Spider-Man, be it Miles Morales or even more recently when it's Gwen Stacy that gets bitten by the radioactive spider and becomes Spider-Woman. It's always that balance of power and knowing what to do with it.
     
    When there comes time for a cinematic Spider-Man that's the theme of the (two) hour(s). In Sam Raimi's original film, Peter Parker's irresponsibility is what gets Uncle Ben killed, and his acceptance of his responsibility leads to him fighting Green Goblin. The conflict of the second Spider-Man is him giving up the mask, only to take it back up because he's the only one who can stop Doc Ock. In Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man we see Uncle Ben die (again), providing the impetus for Peter to use his powers to stop crime. Powers, responsibility, and Peter Parker reluctantly being the hero.
     
    So Spider-Man: Homecoming seems to have its theme waiting for it: responsibility and all that (most likely through the death of Uncle Ben). Except Peter is already Spider-Man. And Uncle Ben is already dead. And Peter really likes being Spider-Man.
     
    Right here this sets up a different sort of superhero narrative. The usual internal conflict for a superhero is their unwillingness to do the heroing (and so the climax is them deciding to hero). Tony Stark becomes Iron Man out of a sense of guilty responsibility, not for the fun of it. Thor’s a self-serving blowhard who learns humility. Batman operates out of a just vengeance. Spider-Man usually Spider-Mans out of a sense of responsibility. But this Spider-Man really likes crimefighting; he gets a thrill out of the heroics. In fact, he wants more: he wants to be an Avenger. Like Iron Man.
     
    It's hard to give an eager hero internal obstacles. Tony Stark is hung up on guilt and the idea that he has to do it alone which makes things difficult for him. The Guardians have to overcome their infighting and greed to fight Ronan. Even Captain America questions if it's worth it. But Homecoming's Peter is go-go-go. He's got the power, and he's fighting crime with it. Where's the classic Spider-Man theme?
     
    Here's part of Homecoming's genius. Responsibility in this movie doesn't just mean crimefighting and heroing, it's the reason for doing so. Peter, in the aftermath of taking part in Civil War's airport battle, wants to be an Avenger. He wants in on the big leagues. He bugs Happy Hogan to tell Tony about what he's doing and he chases the Vulture because this is his chance to make it big.
     
    The film's climax, and Peter's self-actualization, comes when Peter decides to hero not for the glory or to impress Tony, but instead to save the day. It may not sound like a huge difference, but, without spoiling anything, the film makes the distinction clear. It’s when Peter heroes for the greater good and not for himself, that he becomes a real hero. Spider-Man Homecoming is still a movie where Spider-Man learns a lesson in responsibility, it just plays out differently than usual.
     
    We've had enough versions of Spider-Man over the past fifteen-odd years for the idea of a new Spider-Man to be met with a hint of tiredness. Here we go again, Spider-Man has to learn how to Spider-Man and responsibility. And Homecoming is about that, but it handles it in a much different manner than prior renditions. You don't need an edgy and avant garde narrative with brand new everythings to tell a new story. Sometimes just digging into your core theme is enough. I think that's why Homecoming is able to be quintessentially Spider-Man while still feeling incredibly refreshing. Jon Watts and the team didn't feel the need to completely reinvent Spider-Man, rather they explored the story a bit more and found something new.
  22. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 099: Heart of a Child
     
    I grew up in the 90’s with a steady diet of Lego, Jedi, superhero cartoons, mecha anime, Power Rangers, and Ninja Turtles. All this was peppered in with bedtime stories from my Dad, some of which were about the Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang, others were about Han Solo and Luke Skywalker going on adventures, and still others about Superman and Batman teaming up to fight bad guys.
     
    There are side effects that come with this; the firm belief that giant robots are awesome, for example. Others are the ingrained image of a
    , or memories of Captain America and Iron Man showing up on Spider Man’s cartoon. But then, those are all cartoons and stuff, puerile parts of childhood. 
    Only not.
     
    A lot of the stuff I grew up with is being tapped and turned into cinematic fare these days. Sure, there’ve been Batman and Superman movies since well before I was born, but a movie about Iron Man? And Captain America? And one where they team up with the Hulk and Thor? In a movie? Eight year old Josh would be giddy at the idea (as twenty-two year old Josh still is).
     
    Here’s the thing, I’m not eight anymore. How does a movie work to appeal to me now? Characters like Batman and Spider Man have had several incarnations in various media for various audiences. Adam West’s Batman differs sharply from the one in Justice League who in turn differs from Arkham Asylum’s. Sure, there’s the same character but differences in tone and style. There are many different ways to interpret characters and genres these days.
     
    Especially Batman. Christopher Nolan approached the Caped Crusader from a much more mature point of view than we’d really seen on screen at the point. He deconstructs the idea of a superhero throughout the Dark Knight Trilogy. This is how Batman would work in a ‘real’ world: masks bought in bulk to avoid suspicion, for example. Gone is the romanticism of being a superhero.
     
    Nolan’s Gotham is awash in a gray world of corrupt cops, sold-out lawyers, and mob rule. Batman himself is not entirely in the clear and, as he Commissioner Gordon puts it at the end of The Dark Knight, isn’t the hero Gotham needs. This is Batman for a more grown up, more adult world, a blurry world where right and wrong aren’t quite distinct.
     
    Then on the other end of the spectrum we have Pacific Rim. The movie has, as director Guillermo del Toro put it, the heart of a 12-year-old and the craft of a 48-year-old. The movie is brimming with the hope and excitement you had when you were 12. There’s little attempt to ‘grow up’ the mecha genre, at least as far as growing up means how everything must be brooding, dark, and deathly serious. Sure, characters die and sacrifices are made, but it’s a clear view of Good and Evil; it’s that idealistic dichotomy.
     
    Pacific Rim, like The Avengers, is a reconstruction of its genres. The Avengers acknowledges the problems of having a team of six superhero egos, but factors overcoming it into a plot. Pacific Rim makes Kaiju terrifying and Jaegers awesome, crafting a movie’s world where it not only works but is acceptable. These are movies that have grown up but remember the romanticism of being younger.
     
    There is, however, yet another point on the spectrum: The Lego Movie. This movie doesn’t give a rip about growing up. There’s no playing at re/deconstruction; instead it takes it’s idea — a movie about Legos — and runs with it. It’s a movie about being a kid, about those times when you built a spaceship and ran around your room making laser noises and chanting “spaceship!” over and over again. If anything, The Lego Movie is an ode to childhood in the purest sense. It doesn’t just have the heart of a child, it’s about being a child.
     
    Is one way of doing it better than the other? Nah. I love the grittiness of The Dark Knight as much as I love the colorful cacophony of The Lego Movie. I was ten once and these movies, with all their different interpretations, remind me of what it was like.
  23. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 372: Here Comes The Ending
     
    In many ways, I’m super jealous of the writers behind the Game of Thrones tv show. Over the years, they’ve built up an array of excellently developed and flawed characters, well-rounded, conflicted people who are often their own worst enemy. It’s Jon Snow’s loyalty to his homeland that makes his relationship with the Free Folk so fraught, but it’s that relationship that ends up saving his life. Petyr Baelish is delightfully conniving – he’s someone who wants power and will double cross anyone — even himself — if it gets him there. They’re complex, with shifting and conflicting loyalties that mean that sometimes the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. The show gets a lot of mileage from throwing curveballs at these characters and watching what happens.
     
    But then, I’m really happy I’m not writing Game of Thrones. Part of every story is its ending and I really don’t want to have to figure out how to bring that behemothic narrative to a resolution. Where do these characters’ arcs have to go? How will these myriad conflicts be resolved? What’s up with the White Walkers? There’s a lot going on.
     
    The show’s finale airs tomorrow night, after a truncated season. It’s been rough; a lot of character arcs have been quickened in an effort to get everyone where they have to be before the end. Some have gotten the short end of the stick, some others have been given their moment to shine, and most have gotten some combination of both. There’s a lot in this season that I like, if not necessarily its execution.
     
    Endings are hard.
     
    I’m one of the few who adores the conclusion to Lost. After six seasons of mysteries and lore building, the series needed to come to a satisfying conclusion. And boy howdy, there were a lot of questions. Who put that wheel there? How’s time travel work exactly? Why did that bird screams Hurley’s name? Questions.
     
    I figure the showrunners of Lost realized early on that short of an FAQ session, there was no way to answer every single question. So they wisely decided to hone in on the characters of the show and give them the resolution they needed. Some mysteries were solved, sure, but the focus was more on giving closure to the characters.
     
    Take Sawyer, unapologetically my favorite character alongside Desmond and Ben. At the start of the series, he’s nothing more than a selfish jerk who wants to be hated. But as the series progresses, he discovers a gentler, protective side of him. Naturally, the culmination of it all has Sawyer making choices that are a testament to how far he’s come and finally, finally getting his happy ending.
     
    Not all of our questions are answered — we never found out what the deal was with that dang bird — but by the time the final episode’s credits rolled I felt satisfied, I felt like my investment in Lost, its world, and its characters had all been worth it.
     
    Honestly, that’s what really matters. Was it worth it? I have seen some awful movies in the past, but I remember more than a few of them fondly because of the circumstances of my viewing (like running a commentary with a friend in an empty theater). Lost was worth it for the journey it brought me on, for the characters I met and loved. I have no doubt that the ending to Game of Thrones will be far from perfect, but I think I’ll be happy so long as I get my closure, as long as l feel like my time with the show has been worth it.
  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants 063: Heroic Motivation
     
    I'm gonna do something a little different this week. A few weeks ago I wrote a post as a sounding board for a Research Paper I had to write for a class. Now I figured "hey, why don't I post that research paper?" So I am. Its much longer than a usual post (nearly 5 times as long), but I feel like it's one of the best things I've written. So here it is, in all its A-, MLA-ish glory:
     
     
    “Heroes. There’s no such thing.” So says Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3 as he threatens the titular hero and, to an extent, the villain is right. Lately, heroes, particularly in adventure narratives, have taken a turn for the unheroic. Where once there were heroes like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins who, through and through, were good to the core, now heroes are of a murkier sort. Even Iron Man is not a clear cut hero. In the past, protagonists were motivated to do their heroics simply because it was good. They were the good guys; the prince saves the princess and slays the dragon because he’s good and the dragon is evil. But time went on and fiction began to explore princes who weren’t so clean cut, heroes who weren’t good for the sake of good. Yet these protagonists remained heroes; they would still ultimately rise up to do the right thing and save the day (even if saving the day had little effect on the outside world). So what is it that motivates these protagonists who aren’t strictly heroes to heroism? Perhaps it would do to examine reluctant heroes from books, movies, video games, and television as diverse as Pi Patel, Tony Stark, Nathan Drake, and Malcolm Reynolds in the hopes of finding some commonality between them. What drives characters who are ordinary teenagers, irresponsible playboys, selfish treasure hunters, or lawless rebels to acts of heroism?
     
     
    Pi Patel, of Life of Pi, is an ordinary boy for whom the fate of the world does not hang in balance. He has no superpowers and there is no princess in a tower waiting for him to save her. Yet this Indian boy, who survived over two hundred days drifting in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with an adult Bengal tiger, is a hero nonetheless. Furthermore the narrative of his story falls in step with Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the heroic archetype in the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Most striking is Pi’s long trials in the lifeboat, which Campbell appropriately describes as The Road Of Trials: “Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials” (Campbell, 97). That Pi’s conflict is primarily internal makes him no less of a hero in his victory. He spends his days trying desperately to survive and to defeat his enemy. Indeed, Pi has an enemy. It is not the tiger itself but rather fear: “I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent” (Martel, 161). Pi’s time in the lifeboat is marked by his battle against fear: his fear of the sea and fear of the tiger named Richard Parker. To not give in to his fear and the despair it brings is a heroic task given the hopelessness of his surroundings. Pi, the ordinary boy, is able to defeat his enemy of fear and perform the heroic task of surviving due to being a religious man three times over.
     
    For Pi, an adherent of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, that voice within himself would be attributed to God. Pi makes the decision, due in no small part to that voice, to survive day after day. In his situation, just giving up would be the easiest thing to do, but he instead does his best to overcome the odds and defeat his unseen adversary. Not only does Pi choose to not give in to fear, but he is able to maintain his humanity in a place where it would be all too easy to become as feral as Richard Parker. His experience in the lifeboat could have left Pi raving mad and unable to adjust back to ‘normal’ life, yet in the narrative we find out that Pi is able to go on to a career in academia and to start a family of his own despite his ordeal. During those trials the tiger in the lifeboat is a very real enemy that Pi must face: embodying both his fear and the temptation to give in to his animalistic side. Pi’s heroism is his resistance to both pulls and his survival with his humanity intact. Pi’s motivation to survive both physically and spiritually lies in his faith, in his devotion to God.
     
     
    But if we accept the interpretation that religion is the cause of heroism we then rule out many heroes who are not religious. As writer K. Dale Koontz points out, “it is very possible to be moral without faith and be immoral with all the trappings of faith” (Koontz, 106). So perhaps we must expand our scope beyond a religious motivation. Self-described genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist Tony Stark is a man marked more by his hedonism than the remotest trace of religious piety. In the 2008 film, Iron Man, before he takes up the mantle of the titular hero, the arms-dealing Tony Stark is seen sleeping with a reporter, gambling during his award presentation, and displaying an overall negligence towards any form of responsibility. His world appears perfect and he sees no need to want to alter anything. This all changes after he is grievously injured in Afghanistan and taken hostage by terrorists who demand that he build them a new weapon to complement their arsenal of Stark weaponry, weapons which Tony was not aware were being sold to the the enemies of the American soldiers he thought he was supplying. Trapped, Tony decides to start building, only not the weapon his captors desire. Instead he creates a weaponized suit of armor to facilitate his escape. On his way out, Tony is issued a challenge by his dying mentor: “Don’t waste it, don’t waste your life” (Iron Man, 0:38). Tony takes this newfound purpose to heart, using the Iron Man armor to fight terrorists and bring peace: he becomes a hero, albeit a flawed one. Tony is still reckless, disrespectful, and generally irresponsible of anything falling outside his duties as Iron Man. He’s not the cut-and-dried ‘good’ hero; he’s far from perfect and does things that no ‘proper’ hero would do. Yet despite not having the characteristics commonly associated with the hero, for some reason Tony still plays the part. Christopher Robichaud explores this side of Iron Man, looking for a reason for his heroics. He investigates the idea of guilt; whether, for example, Tony Stark is indeed responsible for the crimes committed with weapons he designed. The conclusion is that whether or not he actually is responsible is unimportant in light of Tony’s need to redeem himself: “Tony clearly feels that he must somehow “right the wrongs” Stark Industries has done, and that the best way he can do that is as Iron Man” (Robichaud, 62). It’s a valid motivation, one that not only spurs him to greatness but will plague him so long as he lives. Tony Stark is the atoner. Before the cave in Afghanistan Tony was happy to waste his life cruising by with women and money. Now the electromagnet in his chest is a constant reminder that he must seek redemption for his past and Tony will stop at nothing to achieve it. The driving force in Tony’s life is his relentless need to make things right. In a similar vein, Pi adheres to Christianity and Islam; two religions which preach strongly on man’s need to atone. Like Tony, Pi would seek to do good to make up for his sins. Perhaps this desire for redemption then works as the motivation for heroism.
     
     
    Not all heroes seek redemption, however; Nathan Drake of the Uncharted video game series seeks treasure and riches. Furthermore, in his adventures seeking El Dorado, Shambhala, and Iram of the Pillars, Nathan Drake makes few references to any deity beyond colloquial interjections. Like Tony Stark, he is a man of neither religion nor God. Yet he consistently ends up being the hero (if a regretful one). Drake’s selfish; he wants treasure, he wants riches, he wants an adventure. He will happily shoot his way through soldiers and mercenaries or break into a museum to steal a treasure if it could yield profit. But in all three games in the Uncharted series he ultimately chooses to forgo treasure in favor of stopping the villain from carrying out their nefarious schemes. In the second game, Among Thieves, Nathan Drake is in a race with war criminal Zoran Lazarevic for the mythical Cintamani stone of Shambhala and the riches and power it contains. At Drake’s side are two women: Chloe Frazer, a fellow treasure hunter posing as part of Lazarevic’s team to find Shambhala; and Elena Fisher, a reporter on the trail of Lazarevic, eager to bring him to justice. Both have a romantic history with Drake and both are fascinating characters in their own right, but Chloe and Elena also bring out Nathan Drake’s inner duality of being a selfish thief and a selfless hero. On the one hand is Chloe. In the game’s early chapters she and Drake plot to scam a member of their group out of the treasure and carry on without him. Her ultimate goal is to save her own skin no matter the cost, even if it means sacrificing an injured ally. On the other hand we have Elena, very nearly the antithesis of Chloe. She’s in Nepal because she wants to help bring Lazarevic to justice. After Drake barely survives a brutal train-wreck he decides it’s time to stop searching for Shambhala and the Cintamani Stone despite the legends of it granting nearly unlimited power. It’s Elena who insists that he continue after it.
     
    In the end, Drake sides with Elena choosing to pursue justice and stop Lazarevic over escaping the recently discovered broken paradise of Shambhala. Chloe protests that it’s suicide, but Drake stumbles down to the Tree of Life to confront Lazarevic anyway. He does what he does not out of some religious fever or even a desire for redemption but simply because it’s the right thing to do:
     
    Deep down, Nathan Drake has an occasional fiber of moral responsibility within him. He may be selfish but there can be little doubt that Drake acts like a hero. Though Drake is usually content to just not take part in whatever’s going on, to profit off of Lazarevic rather than confront him, for example, on occasion Drake will overcome his selfishness. He has a conscience, one that gets activated when he realizes that it’s the only option left that will allow him to live with himself. Stuck in the lifeboat, Pi knows he will not forgive himself if he gives up. Similarly, Tony Stark’s transformation left him with a need to exact justice to make up for his prior irresponsibilities. For these characters, it’s when the chips are down and this sense of right and wrong becomes overt that they step up to become heroes.
     
     
    Captain Malcolm Reynolds, of Joss Whedon’s TV show Firefly, is not an irresponsible man, but he lacks Drake’s sense of justice, Tony’s need for redemption, and certainly Pi’s religion. And no wonder; after the crushing defeat of the Independents by the Alliance during the Battle of Serenity Valley, Mal is left faithless and listless. By the time the TV show picks up, “Mal has spent the intervening years attempting to deliberately calcify himself into a dark, bitter husk of a man, unlikely to be touched or moved and therefore, unlikely to be disappointed or hurt” (Koontz 103). But the calloused man sometimes shows signs of decency. He sends the mercenary Jayne away from the dinner table when he insults Kaylee (Firefly 1.01: “Serenity”) and he chooses to return the cargo he was hired to steal when he discovers it to be medicine for impoverished settlers (1.02: “The Train Job”). Clearly the man will step up and be a hero, he has a morality to him. But Mal’s conscious isn’t as clear as Nathan Drake or Pi’s since “Mal’s inner code is further complicated by the fact that his moral compass lacks the true north of a belief in anything larger than himself” (Koontz 107), or, as Mal himself discloses in the film Serenity: “I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north. That's who I am.” He’s not a simple character, he’ll shoot a man in cold blood one moment and sacrifice himself for his crew the next. Here, more so than with the others, we have a nuanced character whose heroics are difficult to attribute to any belief system or even a sense of duty. Yet there can be little doubt that somewhere Mal has a shred of goodness; or as Koontz puts it: “it is the conflict between his desire to be an empty, unfeeling crook and his inherent, bone-deep decency that makes Mal so intriguing” (104). Mal doesn’t want to be a hero; he has neither cause nor belief, yet for some reason he still plays the part. The motivation for his heroics is best found in how his decency manifests itself. In the episode “Safe,” fugitive siblings Simon and River Tam are taken captive by a tribe of crazy hill folk. Mal is faced with a choice. He can either leave the siblings behind and fly away, no longer having to worry about the Alliance chasing him in search of the Tams, or he can go back for them. In a move that doesn’t help his desire to be left alone by the Alliance and the law, Mal opts to save River and Simon from being burned at the stake. This is an oddly selfless act for a seeming amoral captain. Simon confronts him afterwards, asking him why he returned for him. Mal’s response is to curtly inform the young doctor that he’s on his crew. But Simon presses further only to receive the same response:
     
    We see the captain’s care for his crew again in the episode “Ariel” when, after crew member Jayne nearly turns Simon and River over to the Alliance, Mal threatens to eject him out the airlock. Why? Because “You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me!” (1.08, “Ariel”). Mal has an intense devotion to his crew that supersedes any other code he might embrace; “Mal has worked very hard to create this family and he will protect it at all costs” (Koontz, 106). The question that must now be asked is why does Mal protect his crew. Is it because they make him feel as if he can control some aspect of his wandering life? Is it because they give him a sense of security he believes he lost years ago in Serenity Valley? Is it because they have become his family? The answer is more than any of that: it is that core of love under all that bitterness and hatred that motivates him to heroism. Koontz agrees: “Love is the force that will galvanize Mal to take action, rather than continuing to mourn his losses by becoming increasingly brittle and bitter” (111). It is love that drives Mal. His love for freedom caused him to join the Independence movement and years later still harbor disdain for any attempt to subjugate people. His love for his ship, Serenity, inspires him to keep her safe and to refuse to leave her behind no matter the cost. His love for his crew will drive him to the ends of the universe if it means he can keep them safe from whatever evils are thrown at them. Mal sticks his neck out for Simon and River not because he thinks it’s the right thing to do but because as much as he is loathe to admit it the two have somehow wormed their way into his care. He returns the medicine to the settlers and risks the wrath of his client not out of some desire to please a deity or a want to redeem himself for prior slights, but because his love for his fellow man outweighs his greed. It appears that love might be the only immaterial thing Malcolm Reynolds truly believes in. This is driven home at the end of the film Serenity, when, after the crew endure hellish trials and the death of their friends, Mal tells River what the first rule of flying is: “Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home” (Serenity). Mal loves, Mal believes in love, and love is the only force in the ‘Verse strong enough to drive an angry calloused man to heroics.
     
     
    Is it love then, in all its forms, that motivates people to heroism? Adrift in the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with only a tiger for company, Pi admits that keeping his faiths — his love for God — was not easy. The storms would rock him and food would be scarce and Pi would nearly despair. But all was never lost. “The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving” (Martel, 209). Despite enduring a hellish trial, Pi does not lose sight of his love. He chooses to love Richard Parker rather than hate it, because loving the tiger causes him to seek to understand it and learn to coexist. His love for life encourages him to force himself to stay alive. Most of all, his love for God gives him the motivation to survive his ordeal and come out the stronger for it. Pi loves.
     
     
    Superhero Tony Stark would adamantly and charismatically deny that he acts out of love. That said, the climax of the film The Avengers has Tony Stark realizing that the only way for him to save Manhattan is to carry a nuclear missile into a portal to space, sacrificing himself in the process. This moment is an act of love that fits the very Biblical description of selfless love: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). He acts because his love for his fellow Avengers, his girlfriend Pepper, and indeed the whole of Manhattan now outweighs his love for himself. There is little doubt that it is the self-sacrificing, altruistic form of love that motivates Tony’s purest single act of heroism. Tony loves.
     
     
    In the resolution of Among Thieves Nathan Drake shares a kiss with Elena. Not only does he choose the path of justice, but he chooses to be with the woman who represents it too. Drake doesn’t want to let Elena down. Drake’s Deception, the sequel that takes place two years later, depicts them as an ex-couple who’ve drifted apart in the interim. In a moment of quiet when Elena asks an exhausted Drake to rest for a moment he apologizes for letting her down as he strokes the wedding band on her finger (Drake’s Deception, Chp. 15, Sink or Swim). It is his love for her and her love for him that brings out Drake’s own sense of justice. He cares about her opinion and wants to do right by her. Because of this, and because Elena supports and loves him, Drake is able to find in himself the motivation to step out and be a hero. Drake loves.
     
     
    Love is different from goodness. Whereas goodness tends to be a state of being, love is active and directed at something. The prince who saves the princess is good, but with that goodness comes a love of good that he then acts out. His love of righteousness drives him to overcome the evil dragon. Though it seems to be the material for a very special episode of some Saturday morning cartoon, it is love that serves as the catalyst for even the most unlikely of heroes rise to heroism. Even for characters who are the Chosen One or ones who have been uniquely tasked with thwarting the villain, we find that it is love that will drive them. The core motivation that brings out the best in people goes to the root of religion, atonement, and even morality: the motivation for an act of heroism is love. Perhaps then we no longer have true heroes in modern fiction, merely ordinary people who are driven by love to become heroes.
     
     
    Works Cited
    Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1968. Print.
    Martel, Yann. Life of Pi: A Novel. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Print.
    Koontz, K. Dale. Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. Print.
    Robichaud, Christopher. "Can Iron Man Atone for Tony Stark's Wrongs?" Iron Man and Philosophy (2010): 53-63. Print.
    Iron Man. Dir. Jon Favreau. Prod. Avi Arad and Kevin Feige. Perf. Robert Downey Jr, et all. Paramount Pictures, 2008. BluRay
    Iron Man 3. Dir. Shane Black. By Shane Black. Perf. Robert Downey Jr, et all. Walt Disney Studios, 2013. Film.
    Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Dir. Amy Hennig. Perf. Nolan North. Naughty Dog. 2009. Video Game.
    Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Dir. Amy Hennig. Perf. Nolan North. Naughty Dog. 2011. Video Game.
    Whedon, Joss. Firefly. 2002. Television.
    Serenity. Dir. Joss Whedon. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Nathan Fillion. Universal Pictures, 2005. BluRay.
    The Avengers. Dir. Joss Whedon. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Robert Downey Jr, et all. Universal Pictures, 2012. BluRay.
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