In the old days, there were monsters.
Demons hiding in the dark corners of the earth, trolls in the forests, imps, goblins, Fae. Monsters, all. These creatures were evil, and in contrast to them stood humans. Light, goodness. Good is the opposite of evil.
In the old days, there were dark places where the dark things hid.
Today, there are no trolls. No demons, no imps, no goblins. No dark places where the dark things can hide. There are no dark things. We have out-scienced the darkness. There is no longer true evil. All modern evil can be seen from its own point of view, and understood.
What happens when we, as a culture, as a race, have outgrown our fear of the dark? Where does goodness go when there is no more evil? Does the scale shift? Are we less good, now that there is no true evil to balance the scales?
Perhaps we need our Leslie Vernons.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Resident Evil and 3D
Alright, let me just make one thing clear to you, people who made Resident Evil: Afterlife. If you have, at the end of the last movie, introduced a very large number of clones of the now superpowered protagonist, it is considered a cheap fucking cop out to start the next movie with a short and storywise rather redundant scene in which ten or twelve of them show up to murder some dudes, before blowing them all up, conveniently forgetting that there were another 80 or so, never mention them again and subsequently rob the real one of all her superpowers. If you also forget that she does not have superpowers for the rest of the movie, then you will not only look like incompetent writers, but also tremendously stupid.
Right. As you may have surmised, we went to see the new Resident Evil tonight. It has, as Yahtzee would put it, full 3D up the arse, but I'll get to that later. I had read a few of the reviews printed about this movie, but I rather felt they all missed the point. It seems a bit unfair to mark down a Resident Evil movie by a lot because the story is bad, while also remarking on the great effects and awesome fight-scenes. Story has never been a very strong point in the RE-movie franchise, and they have really only had effects and violence to sell. This one did this pretty well, although it was a bit hampered by the new and improved 3D.
There are of course several situations where people get to hold the idiot ball. Let me list a couple:
1. If you spend time, effort, bullets and a life to get into an armory stocked full of military grade weapons, do not, I repeat, do not leave the room bringing nothing but three pistols, some explosives and one sub-machine gun. Especially not if you are there to get weapons for eight people against a horde of thousands of zombies. Bring automatic weapons for everyone.
2. If you are holding a motivational speech in front of roughly 20 helicopters, each stacked with roughly 20 armed and armored soldiers, and you use the phrase "This will be the fight of your lives", you had better make sure you are not talking about them fighting about a hundred people standing about on top of a cargo ship, if those hundred people have two pistols and a pair of sawn-off shotguns to go around. It will not be the fight of anyone's life. It will not be a fight.
Now, for the 3D aspect. I personally felt that it was nice when it was not doing anything spectacular. I liked it when it was just subtly showing distance between characters in a crowd or some similar neat little effect. Whenever it did it's gimmicky bullshit of making someone point a gun at the audience, just so we would remember that we are watching a 3D movie, I felt that it broke the immersion. Even more so when I had to turn my head to look straight at the edge of the screen to make the 3D work properly over there. You don't want to remind people that they are watching this through a medium, you want to immerse people in what you are showing them.
Not to mention the times the 3D just plain didn't work properly, although that was thankfully rather rare. More common was 3D where there was no reason for there to possibly be 3D, like on the monitor of a guy in a security station. How exactly is his job made any easier by the fact that the face of the guy he is talking to is 30 cm further away from his face than the rest of the screen, where all the vital blocks of information is? Why does this feature exist in his workplace?
Right, while we are on the subject of effects: It would actually be nice if there was one single moving organism in the entire movie that was not either 1: One of the few surviving uninfected humans, or 2: A very large boss-type character showing up, fight without splitting it's face open. Seriously, every single zombie did this. They looked a lot like the bloodsuckers from S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which got old really fast. I'm sure there are things doing this in the games, but why couldn't you have some of the normal zombies from the first three movies? What was wrong with them? Did they all die?
Conclusively, I can't say that 3D was worth it, really. It had a few neat, subtle things about it, but the times it didn't work or overworked itself pretty much undid it all by breaking the immersion.
Oh, right, I almost forgot. It was a fun, but pretty strange, touch to have the guy sitting locked up in prison claiming not to be a criminal, and having a fully hatched plan to break out of it, be played by Wentworth Miller.
Right. As you may have surmised, we went to see the new Resident Evil tonight. It has, as Yahtzee would put it, full 3D up the arse, but I'll get to that later. I had read a few of the reviews printed about this movie, but I rather felt they all missed the point. It seems a bit unfair to mark down a Resident Evil movie by a lot because the story is bad, while also remarking on the great effects and awesome fight-scenes. Story has never been a very strong point in the RE-movie franchise, and they have really only had effects and violence to sell. This one did this pretty well, although it was a bit hampered by the new and improved 3D.
There are of course several situations where people get to hold the idiot ball. Let me list a couple:
1. If you spend time, effort, bullets and a life to get into an armory stocked full of military grade weapons, do not, I repeat, do not leave the room bringing nothing but three pistols, some explosives and one sub-machine gun. Especially not if you are there to get weapons for eight people against a horde of thousands of zombies. Bring automatic weapons for everyone.
2. If you are holding a motivational speech in front of roughly 20 helicopters, each stacked with roughly 20 armed and armored soldiers, and you use the phrase "This will be the fight of your lives", you had better make sure you are not talking about them fighting about a hundred people standing about on top of a cargo ship, if those hundred people have two pistols and a pair of sawn-off shotguns to go around. It will not be the fight of anyone's life. It will not be a fight.
Now, for the 3D aspect. I personally felt that it was nice when it was not doing anything spectacular. I liked it when it was just subtly showing distance between characters in a crowd or some similar neat little effect. Whenever it did it's gimmicky bullshit of making someone point a gun at the audience, just so we would remember that we are watching a 3D movie, I felt that it broke the immersion. Even more so when I had to turn my head to look straight at the edge of the screen to make the 3D work properly over there. You don't want to remind people that they are watching this through a medium, you want to immerse people in what you are showing them.
Not to mention the times the 3D just plain didn't work properly, although that was thankfully rather rare. More common was 3D where there was no reason for there to possibly be 3D, like on the monitor of a guy in a security station. How exactly is his job made any easier by the fact that the face of the guy he is talking to is 30 cm further away from his face than the rest of the screen, where all the vital blocks of information is? Why does this feature exist in his workplace?
Right, while we are on the subject of effects: It would actually be nice if there was one single moving organism in the entire movie that was not either 1: One of the few surviving uninfected humans, or 2: A very large boss-type character showing up, fight without splitting it's face open. Seriously, every single zombie did this. They looked a lot like the bloodsuckers from S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which got old really fast. I'm sure there are things doing this in the games, but why couldn't you have some of the normal zombies from the first three movies? What was wrong with them? Did they all die?
Conclusively, I can't say that 3D was worth it, really. It had a few neat, subtle things about it, but the times it didn't work or overworked itself pretty much undid it all by breaking the immersion.
Oh, right, I almost forgot. It was a fun, but pretty strange, touch to have the guy sitting locked up in prison claiming not to be a criminal, and having a fully hatched plan to break out of it, be played by Wentworth Miller.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Boll and Quality?
Uwe Boll made a good movie?
A good movie by Uwe Boll?
Uwe movie Boll good?
Boll good movie Uwe?
Movie Uwe Good Boll?
...
My mind fell off.
A good movie by Uwe Boll?
Uwe movie Boll good?
Boll good movie Uwe?
Movie Uwe Good Boll?
...
My mind fell off.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Star Wars Holiday Special and DEATH!
GAAH! FUCK! EVERYONE MUST DIE! JUST DIE! MAKE IT STOP! SHOOT EVERYTHING!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
A Bunny, and All The Time In The World
(For some reason, hotlinks did not work. No clue why, can't be bothered at the moment, so I'll just leave it like this:)
This Comic:
http://www.prguitarman.com/index.php?id=103
This Game:
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm
That is all.
(No need to thank me, you go on ahead and waste the rest of your day.)
This Comic:
http://www.prguitarman.com/index.php?id=103
This Game:
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm
That is all.
(No need to thank me, you go on ahead and waste the rest of your day.)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Murderers and Cameras
Assassin's Creed II update #1:
Just a very small thing, but if anyone does not want one very small aspect of gameplay spoiled, I guess stop reading.
Ubisoft: STOP IT WITH THE FUCKING CAMERA ANGLES!
They add nothing to the game and it's a cheap-ass way to lengthen gameplay by making us do each fucking timed puzzle three fucking times to memorize exactly when the camera is going to lock itself in a corner to give me a useless hint (read "Bat to the face") of where to go next, while simultaneously making sure I Do Not Go There, by changing what my previous "Run straight ahead" command means!
Other than that, the game rocks.
Just a very small thing, but if anyone does not want one very small aspect of gameplay spoiled, I guess stop reading.
Ubisoft: STOP IT WITH THE FUCKING CAMERA ANGLES!
They add nothing to the game and it's a cheap-ass way to lengthen gameplay by making us do each fucking timed puzzle three fucking times to memorize exactly when the camera is going to lock itself in a corner to give me a useless hint (read "Bat to the face") of where to go next, while simultaneously making sure I Do Not Go There, by changing what my previous "Run straight ahead" command means!
Other than that, the game rocks.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Storygnomes and Payne
Let me just get this one thing straight with all of you movie-producers who regularly read this blog:
If you take a game and make a movie out of it, and upon looking back at your work realize that you have managed to make the story and the characters worse than they were in the game, you have failed miserably. This is much more evident if the game you took only gives the player three ways to interact with things: Jumping over them in slow-motion, punching buttons/cabinets/doors, or shooting them in the face. How you managed to take this, on the surface rather simplistic premise, and ruin the otherwise actually surprisingly good story, is beyond me.
What was your intention, really? You take an archetypal anti-hero who shoots more or less everyone he sees, while wearing a smug grin and tossing around dark city noir poetry made up on the fly, and make sure he has virtually no discernible personality, who only starts killing people for real after he almost ODs on some superdrug? How is this in any way an improvement?
If you take a game and make a movie out of it, and upon looking back at your work realize that you have managed to make the story and the characters worse than they were in the game, you have failed miserably. This is much more evident if the game you took only gives the player three ways to interact with things: Jumping over them in slow-motion, punching buttons/cabinets/doors, or shooting them in the face. How you managed to take this, on the surface rather simplistic premise, and ruin the otherwise actually surprisingly good story, is beyond me.
What was your intention, really? You take an archetypal anti-hero who shoots more or less everyone he sees, while wearing a smug grin and tossing around dark city noir poetry made up on the fly, and make sure he has virtually no discernible personality, who only starts killing people for real after he almost ODs on some superdrug? How is this in any way an improvement?
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