Resident Evil 7

 

          The Resident Evil franchise is one that I cannot help but have mixed feelings on.  The first three games are straight up classics of the 5^th generation era of gaming and really brought the horror genera to the medium in a way that few video games had managed to do.  But one cannot deny that they do not hold up particularly well.  Between the tank controls, god awful voice acting, constant use of tired genera clichés and a plot that got more and more ridiculous as time went on, the original games are a very hard sell for anyone who didn’t grow up with them.  Resident Evil 4, on the other hand, is not only a classic that holds up very well but a game that helped redefine the entire medium.  While there were undoubtedly other games that had tried, Resident Evil 4 was the first game to really prefect things that are now clichés of the medium such as epic scripted events, pop and cover shooting as well as the now hated quick time event.  The game also wisely abandoned the ridiculous story elements of the previous games in order to tell its own story that was equally ridiculous but was clearly more aware of just how silly its was and is one of my all-time favorite games as a result.

            Then Resident Evil 5 happened and the franchise went into a downward spiral that it never quite recovered from.  The game took itself far too seriously and tried to hammer in a political message regarding colonialism in Africa that went about as well as a man sporting a swastika showing up at a Holocaust memorial service.  And then we have Resident Evil 6.  Oh.  My.  God.  Resident Evil 6.  This game may have been the worst game that I ever had the displeasure of spending 60 dollars on.  It would take an entire article to go into why it is that I despise this game so much but should suffice to say that it was the game that effectively killed the entire franchise for me and up until recently I’ve wanted nothing to do with it.  But then 2016’s E3 happened and Nerd Hub editor Jack Flowers recommended that I take a look at Resident Evil 7’s first hour demo.  And, as anyone who read my E3 articles knows, it really put the hook in me and all but guaranteed that I would be taking a look at the game.  Now that the game has finally been released I can honestly say that it is easily the best installment since Resident Evil 4, even if it is far from perfect.

            In the game, you play as Ethan Winters, a relatively ordinary man who is called to an apparently abandoned estate in Louisiana by his wife who went missing three years ago.  At the estate, he finds a number of derelict buildings inhabited by the deranged Baker family affected by some mysterious affliction.  With little hope of rescue, it’s up to Ethan to fight and sneak his way through the estate, rescue his wife, find a cure for what is afflicting her and stop the force that caused all of this in the first place.

            The first thing most fans of the franchise will notice is how radical of a departure it is from previous installments.  Everything from the gameplay design to the narrative to the characters have next to nothing in common with previous entries.  In fact, had it not been for a few Easter Eggs connecting it to the larger RE Universe, one could have easily mistaken this game for an entirely new IP.  And if we’re being honest, this is a big part of what makes the game work so well.

            A lot of this has to do with the scale of the story being told.  Previous games had a tendency to focus on UN Bio CTU forces and Secret Service agents involved in world ending conspiracies fighting baddies who were equal parts Cronenbergian body horror mutations and hammy, sliver age comic book villains.  Resident Evil 7, however, abandons all of this to tell a smaller, more intimate story and this slips into nearly every aspect of the game.  The closest thing that one can compare it to is the 2014 game, Alien: Isolation.  Like Isolation, you play as protagonist who is by no means a soldier and is stuck in an isolated location with little hope of rescue and is one of the few sane people left to do anything about the current situation.  You're faced with seeming invincible enemies and are forced to sneak around them, finding ways to unlock new locations, dealing with a few generic enemies here and there, scavenging for supplies to make much needed weapons, ammo and med kits while doing a significant amount of back tracking to previously inaccessible points.  But in spite of all of these similarities the gameplay still manages to be incredibly satisfying.

            The first thing that it does right is create an incredibly creepy atmosphere as you are never sure what will be waiting for you around the next corner.  The lighting, sound design, voice acting and unsettling set design all help to create an unnerving environment that makes you take each step with caution.  This is especially true in the first half of the game where you are forced to sneak around invincible antagonists that each have their own unique abilities that you have to overcome.  The level design is a big part of this.  In total, the game only has 6 areas to explore and all of them are relatively small and do require a lot of backtracking.  However, like the antagonists, each environment has its own unique theme, be it bugs, bombs, or the natural uneasy feeling one gets from seeing a house in disuse and ultimately gives us an atmosphere that continues to be creepy but also manages to remain fresh with its variety.  Granted, these environments and antagonists borrow very heavily from franchises like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead and Saw but they come off more nostalgic tributes as opposed to blatant rip-offs

            Like Isolation, a good portion of the game involves running around these areas while looking for keys, wrenches and other tools in order to progress further in the game while sneaking around nigh invincible enemies.  However, the game manages to be a radical improvement over Isolation in two big ways.  The first is that antagonists don’t kill you in one hit, nor do they automatically sprint towards you the moment they spot you.  They will come at you and turn you into mints meat if they can but in taking away the one hit kill rule, they manage to keep the tension but lacks the same level of frustration as a result.  The second is that you never stay in any of these areas for too long.  Where as in Isolation you spend an infuriatingly amount of time backtracking to the same places over and over again, Resident Evil 7 knows just how long to keep you in certain locations.  You ultimately spend just enough time in each of these areas to become intimately familiar with them but not long enough to become sick of them and is where this game went right where Isolation went wrong.

           Unfortunately, like Isolation, the game features a pretty weak crafting system that felt very tacked on.  The entire system is more or less done by combining chemical fluids with other raw materials such as gunpowder and herbs to create ammo, med kits and such and lacks any real depth or variety.  However, the game does succeed in giving you just enough to get by for the most part.  Throughout the majority of the game you only ever have just enough ammo to get through enemies and only just enough healing materials to keep you alive.  This forces players to manage their resources carefully and actually think about when and how to use them as using too much at the wrong time can result in a position where the game in unwinnable.

            Unfortunately, this level of tension does not last the entirety of the game.  As the game goes on, Ethan obtains increasingly powerful weapons and by the time the game’s final act rolls around he’s armed like a space marine with assault rifles, flame throwers, and even a grenade launcher and is able to turn the enemies into goo without much problem.  By the time this happens most of the invincible enemies have been dispatched and your only left with the game’s generic enemies and the thing turns into a pretty bland corridor shooter and throws small waves of said enemies at you seemingly just to pass the time.  It tries to compensate for this by adding in phycological horror elements to the mix but they don’t work particularly well and ultimately feel like cheap attempts to make the player jump.

            Everything else about the game follows a similar pattern.  It’s all really good and entertaining but it usually comes with a pretty heavy stipulation.  The game’s main character Ethan is, in some ways, the perfect example of this.  Unlike all the other RE protagonists, Ethan, as far as we know, is just a regular guy who got caught up in this mess.  He is certainly capable but is very clearly out of his element and works perfectly as a player insert character.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t really amount to anything more than this.  He has no real defining characteristics and we know next to nothing about him by the time the credits roll.  We never see his face and what little dialog he has is very lazily voice acted and never amounts to much more than asking questions that the player is also more than likely asking.  One of the best examples of this is at the start of the game when you find Mia, Ethan’s wife.  Before long she goes berserk due to whatever affecting her and you are forced to put an axe in her neck.  It’s a pretty grisly scene but we get nothing in terms of emotion from Ethan.  He finds his wife who has been missing for three years only for her to try and kill him and is forced to apparently kill her in self-defense and his attitude on the situation amount to, “Huh.  That was freaky.”  It’s a very odd emotional disconnect that he has throughout the game and cannot help but take one out of it.

            Thankfully the game does make up for it with its antagonists.  Resident Evil villains have always been one of the more memorable parts of the franchise and this game is no exception.  In fact it could be argued that the game has the best antagonists that the franchise has ever produced.  At first the Bakers come off as a family of stereotypical redneck psychos and throughout most of the game they don’t really shake this appearance.  But they do manage to be the best version of the stereotypical psycho redneck family that you can possibly ask for.  Family patriarch Jack Baker is just a charisma machine and manages to find the perfect balance of humor and terror and you get the impression the voice actor was having a ton of fun doing the role.  The same can be said for his son, Lucas Baker.  The character is indeed horrifying as he takes sadistic pleasure in putting people through Saw-like death mazes but the voice acting behind it manages to find the right balance of horror and humor that you can’t help but have fun with it.

            In the end, what really elevates these characters past most Resident Evil antagonists is that there is a certain air of tragedy to them.  We don’t get a whole lot of information as to who these people were before the events of the game but what information we do get seems to indicate that they were otherwise pretty decent people.  Perhaps a little on the reclusive side but decent folks all the same.  In fact, it’s highly implied that it was that decentness that got them into this situation to begin with.  The same can be said of the game’s final antagonist.  I won’t spoil anything but it’s pretty clear that the character is one whose motivations are actually kind of pure in its intent, making the character’s situation feel all the sadder.

            The only character that they really dropped the ball with was Mia as she is one who has very little functionality or personality beyond being a damsel in distress.  Even when she finally breaks that mold she ultimately ends up inadvertently undercutting the quality of the story writing.  Later in the game she is eventually revealed to actually be one of the uber competent badasses that usually make up the protagonists of the this franchise.  At the same time, it reveals her to be the cause of all of the game’s problems as well as quite possibly the worst human being in the entire game.  The problem is that the developers don’t seem to be aware of this.  Revealing just what it is would constitute as a major spoiler but their does seem to be a major disconnect between the text and the subtext regarding this character.  As a result it’s kind of hard to figure out if this was meant to be a darkly ironic twist or if the writers didn’t actually know what they were implying with this.  Either way it just doesn’t work as well in its execution as it should have.

            In the end, Resident Evil 7 is a flawed game but still a fun one.  It features great antagonists, a fantastic horror atmosphere and tense gameplay that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.  Is it a masterpiece?  No.  Is it the best game in the franchise?  No.  But it is a decent little horror game that’s sure to scare and excite you for a good 15 hours or so.  Sometimes that’s enough.

                So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter and let's hope that 2017 can keep producing good games.  It's shaping up to be an interesting year and it's still early enough to hope for the best.

Suicide Squad Review

            I think that it’s pretty clear by now that I am not the biggest fan of the DC Extended Universe.  Man of Steel was easily one of the most crushingly disappointing films that I ever saw and actually caused me to rethink my then hostile attitude towards the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Then Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came along and somehow ended up worse and felt like some kind of negative antithesis to the MCU; as if the gods had decided that for having one overall pretty good comic book movie universe we had to have one that was truly and utterly awful.  Because of this and that low Rotten Tomato score, I went into Suicide Squad with about the biggest chip on my shoulder one could have.  This was a film that I went into expecting to utterly despises and to be the final nail in the coffin that was the DC Extended Universe. As it turned out though, the film wasn’t all that bad.  Before I continue, however, I need to make one thing clear; the film is not great.  On the whole, it doesn’t amount to being much then being an average action movie at the tail end of summer nor does it even begin to compare to most of the efforts of the MCU.   But as far as the DCEU goes, it’s a breath of fresh air that helps clear the stunk of Batman v Superman away and feels like the first step in the right direction for these films.

            The film begins sometime after the end of BVS with a government official named Amanda Waller convincing her superiors to form a group known as Task Force X; a team that is primarily made up of C and D list supervillains who will perform whatever task Waller requires in exchange for reduced sentences.  Not long after, an ancient witch with a personal connection to squad leader Rick Flagg manages to get free of Waller’s control after freeing her brother from his ancient prison.  Soon after, they being to construct a doomsday machine powered by her magic and it’s up to our team of supervillains to save the day while the Joker harasses the squad in an attempt to get Harley Quinn from their hold.

            One thing that can be said in the films favor is that the initial premise is pretty good and when it finally picks up, it delivers the goods.  While the actual plot involving Enchantress and her plot to destroy the world isn’t the most novel, it does do the job of providing our protagonists with a heavy foe to unite them all against.  It also does a great job of establishing just why it is a group like this is needed.  As Waller puts it, Superman is dead and who is to say that the next Superman to come along will be a good guy?  And if they don’t weaponized these people and try and use them for something good, someone else will.

            The big problem with the plot is pacing and direction.  David Ayer is a decent enough writer/director but his work here sometimes has trouble pulling out the right emotion out of an audience.  Sometimes a moment that is meant to make us cry fails to pull that emotion out of us.  Sometimes the jokes fall flat and some moments that are meant to make us cheer just…don’t.  The second problem is pacing.  The film literally spends the first third of its running time as set up before the inciting event of the main plot even occurs.  Up until that point, the entire movie is made up of montages and flashbacks that explains the backstories of all of these characters and how it was they were captured.  As a result, the first hour or so feels extremely clunky and can’t help but draw attention to itself as the exposition act of the film that does nothing to move the actual plot along.

            Unfortunately, this contributes to the film’s biggest problem: the character development.  For the most part, the film fails to properly develop the characters in what was obviously supposed to be an ensemble piece or give them any fully realized arcs.  For better or for worse, it’s pretty clear that it was going for a Guardian’s of the Galaxy feel; i.e. a band of morally compromised thieves and killers coming together and forming a deeper friendship and comradery that surpasses their own selfish interests.  The problem is that we really don’t get this impression up until the very end and there seems to be a lack of a middle act for their developments.  One moment they barely know or trust one another and the next thing we know they all pull a 180 and start going on about thinks like family, friendship, honor among thieves and sacrifice.  What makes it even worse is the fact that it’s pretty clear that they have only known one another for about a day and really stretches one’s suspension of disbelief.  Minor spoilers in the rest of this paragraph but the best example of this come at the end of the second act of the film.  During this scene The Joker successfully gets Harley away from Waller and the rest of the squad.  In response, Waller orders Deadshot to kill her in exchanged for his freedom as well as full custody of his daughter.  Yet when he has Harley in is sights, he “misses”.  The idea is that he has grown to like Harley and feels a loyalty to her that surpasses his personal interests.  But again, he has known this woman for less than a day and he is giving an otherwise fantastic deal to kill her and he just doesn’t.  The film is full of head scratching moments like this and can’t help but call attention how poorly structured and paced the whole thing is. 

           

         On the whole, however, the cast is actually the film’s biggest strength.  Will Smith’s Deadshot might not be the self-loathing sociopath of the comics but the man does manage to bring a level of likeability and charisma to a character who ruthlessly kills people for a living and is one of the few who gets a fully realized story arc.  Margot Robbie is about as perfect as one can get to being a live action Harley Quinn.  Sure she doesn’t have the character’s classic outfit but her personality and backstory perfectly match that of the source material; a mentally unhinged nutball with an extremely dangerous, unhealthy relationship with an even more mentally unhinged nutball who is all at once annoying, charming, tragic and horrifying.  Joel Kinnaman doesn’t have that much to work with as Rick Flagg, but he does do a decent job as the straight man in a group full of psychos.  Like Deadshot he is also one of the few who gets a fully realized character arc in gaining an increasing amount of trust and respect for his team as the film goes on.

Jai Courtney probably gives the best performance of his career as Captain Boomerang.  The character doesn’t really have anything resembling an arc but Courtney does a great job of playing this character who is completely and utterly despicable and probably deserves to be in prison more than any other.  Likewise, Jay Hernández’s El Diablo lacks a believable arc but he is believable as a guy who has clearly done bad things but no longer wishes to.  Killer Croc brutally kills people and throws in some good one liners.  What more can you want?  By far the best, however, is Viola Davis as Amanda Waller.  The woman manages to perfectly encapsulate everything that it both great and horrible about the character, showing us a woman who is undoubtedly a horrible person who does bad thing for a greater good.  She is an overall commanding and intimidating presence and you fully buy Davis as this woman who would kill everyone in a room if she thought it was for some hypothetical greater good. 

           

          The one main weak length in the cast is Jered Leto’s Joker.  Now to be fair, this may not have entirely been the actor’s fault.  By now it’s common knowledge that a big chunk of the character’s scenes were cut out of the film and when watching it, it’s pretty clear that he was meant to be a reoccurring pest for the team that caused Harley to question where her loyalties were.  But ignoring this, this version of the character just made me feel...dirty to watch.  Unlike Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger or Mark Hamill, this version of the Joker just isn’t scary.  If anything, the character comes off more as a sexual predator than anything else.  After getting out of the theater, I felt like I needed a shower after watching this character on screen and I just can’t buy this version as Batman’s greatest nemesis.  And then we have the look of the character.  To be fair, the majority of the characters don’t look like their comic book counterparts but the design of this one is simply ridiculous.  It is a look that I could see the Joker trying out at some point but the “jailhouse gangster in his 20s appearance” is one that comes off as some idiot’s idea of modernizing the look of the character and is most distracting aspect of the film.

            What one cannot deny, however, is that the film is fun.  The characters might be underdeveloped but they all have great chemistry with one another and helps sell the humor.  They all get in good one liners and the situational humor really hits even if it’s clearly not the director’s strong suite.  The action, though nothing special, gets the job done and manages to be entertaining by playing to all of the characters’ unique abilities.  The special effects are also pretty good with the enemy army coming off as convincing and the work on Killer Croc being perhaps the most convincing makeup job ever done on a comic book movie character and really goes to show what can be pulled off through practical means. 

            In the end the film is okay.  It’s not great and doesn’t amount to being much more than an average action film with above average cast at the tail end of summer.  However, it really feels as if DC and Warner Brothers are finally taking this movie universe in the right direction.  It’s a good way to spend a couple of hours and an otherwise decent way to spend a summer that has been mostly flooded by disappointments.  I say give it a watch.

            So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook Page, and follow me on Twitter.  Until then let’s hope that D.C. can keep the momentum up with Wonder Woman.

Batman: The Killing Joke Film Review

            Holy Mother of God people!  I’m honestly not sure where to start with this one.  For the first time since I started this blog, I am at a complete loss as to where I should go with a post.  Such is the magnitude of the failure I have witnessed.  This film version of Batman: The Killing Joke is, to put it simply, an utter catastrophe on nearly every conceivable level and I can honestly say that I would rather do just about anything then having to suffer through it again.  It fails to be a faithful adaptation of the comic.  It fails to be its own thing.  It fails to entertain.  But worst of all, it feels like an overall waste of time that craps all over the legacy of one of the most influential comics in the history of the medium.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The plot of the film of the film is more or less the same as the comic.  The Joker has once again broken out of Arkham Asylum and kidnaps Commissioner Gordon after shooting his daughter and subjects him to extreme physiological torture in order to prove that all it takes is one bad day for someone to become like him as the film flashes back to the events that turned him into The Clown Prince of Crime.  Now before I go any further, you should know that this article will contain significant spoilers for both the film and the comic.  If you haven’t already read the comic, it is one that I would highly recommend, especially if you’re interested in how the modern version of The Joker came to be in our popular culture.  If you’re trying to see the movie without any spoilers, again you should just go and read the comic as it’s an overall better way to spend both your time and money.

            Now that we have that out of the way, there was always going to be three major problems with directly adapting The Killing Joke into a feature film format.  The first is that the influence of the comic can quite literally been seen in everything The Joker has been in and has far overshadowed the comic that it is based on.  You can see a more through breakdown of this in an article that I did at The Nerd Hub, but the basic idea is that, when all is said and done, everyone has already adapted some part of this comic in some way or another.  It can be seen in parts of The Animated Series, the films, the video games and even stretches all the way back to the comics, making a direct adaptation of it feel redundant at best.  The second major problem is the plot itself, as it doesn’t really lead itself well to a feature length format and is surprisingly simple.  The third is the crippling and implied sexual assault of Barbara Gordon which has garnered a lot of controversy in recent years and something that has always been an undeniable flaw with the book.  Now in theory, none of these are insurmountable obstacles and a clever creative team could have found a way to deal with these problems while still staying true to the source material.  Unfortunately, the creative team on hand decided to tackle these problems in the worst possible way.

           

          First, let’s get the Barbara Gordon thing out of the way.  In hindsight, this is easily one of the worst things that Alan Moore has done.  On the whole, the man’s books have a tendency to be some of the most sexually charged in the medium.  In his better works it adds layers of subtext to what is on the page and helps further develop the characters in books like Watchmen and Miracleman.  In other cases, it’s gratuitous and just in place for shock value, most notably in books like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Lost Girls.  Unfortunately, in The Killing Joke it’s clearly a case of the latter.  It’s an unmistakable case of a major female character being victimized and violated for the sake of shock value and to further the storylines of the male characters of the story.  The whole thing is an undeniable flaw in the story and was something that the film was going to have to address and was more than likely going to draw controversy regardless of what direction that it took.  Unfortunately, the way they address it by adding an extended section where Batgirl is the main character that ultimately does nothing to solve the problem or even contribute anything meaningful to the overall plot.

            The section in question is effectively an extended prologue that goes on for about thirty minutes of the film’s ninety-minute runtime that feels more like an episode of the animated series that Bruce Timm couldn’t get green lit in the 90s.  The intent was obviously to flesh out Batgirl so that when the inevitable shooting scene came it would have more of an impact.  Unfortunately, the way they flesh out the character is by her coming to terms with the fact that she is more or less useless as a crime fighter and that she may or may not be involved in this whole thing because she has the hots for Batman.  By the time it ends, it ultimately contributes nothing to the main plot outside of sort of giving an explanation as to why Batman went to visit The Joker at Arkham Asylum in the first place.  What makes it even worse is that by the time the iconic shooting scene comes, none of the problems of the comic are properly addressed or dealt with.  Barbara is still just a plot point in someone else’s story and her injury and implied sexual assault is still just in the story for the sake of shock value.  And quite frankly, it’s 2016 and that way of writing female characters is outdated and just wrong by today’s standards.

            The we have the rooftop sex scene.  Outside of the fact that it’s wrong in about a dozen different ways, like the rest of the Batgirl prologue, it contributes nothing to the rest of the story.  I get that Bruce Timm really wants to ship Batman and Batgirl together for some God unknown reason but if you’re going to do something like this and not piss people off it needs to actually contribute to the story.  After the Batgirl prologue, it’s never mentioned again.  Batman continues to pursue the Joker with the same stoic attitude that he has maintained throughout the entire film and shows no indication that the encounter meant anything to him.   As a result, it just comes off as some misogynist’s idea of what it means to flesh out a female character and it’s just offensive.  

           

           The second problem is the plot.  As mentioned earlier, one of the key problems with adapting The Killing Joke is that the plot itself is surprisingly simple and would be difficult to adapt directly onto film.  To the creative team’s credit, they did try.  For the most part, the film is a page to screen version of the story, as it uses nearly all the dialog and locations from the comic.  It’s just that, when all is said and done, the plot of The Killing Joke isn’t a very elaborate or interesting one.  There aren’t any mass murders or complex obstacles for Batman to overcome.  It doesn’t really dig that deeply into the phycology of the characters and doesn’t say as much about the relationship between the two as other comics have.  As a result, the writer’s slavish adherence to the text of the story becomes the film’s undoing.  As mentioned before, the influence of the comic can quite literally be seen in every story involving The Joker.  We’ve seen the influence in the 1989 Batman film, the 2008 masterpiece, The Dark Knight, a bit in The Animated Series and probably the best version of it in the Arkham Games.  Each one of these shows the influence of the comic but ultimately tells their own and often story and are often more interesting because of it.  Because of this, the plot of the film ends up coming off as a by the numbers Batman Vs Joker story that’s been seen a million time before.

            It’s not at all helped by the fact that while the included all the text of the comic they completely forgot about the book’s visual splendor and the subtler things that left lasting impressions on the people who read the book.  The comic, for example, jumps from the past and the present through images that mirrored one another in each point in time that made the transition smooth.  The film simply lacks these and, as a result, the transitions from the present to the past just feel random.  It’s made all the worse by the fact that the past segments are visually repulsive.  Whereas the comic used beautiful shades of black, white and gray to highlight the difference, the film just desaturates all the color, making the whole thing look lifeless and depressing.  As a result, some of the subtler things were colored in the past segments were lost, such as the colors of red, purple and green being the only colors to pop up in the past.  Because of this, the full impact of the final transformation of The Joker is completely lost.

            Even from a technical side, this film seems inept.  The animation often seemed off, the color pallet for the main plot is bland, and the scenes aren’t as well directed as the could have or should have been.  The biggest example of this is the ending.  At the end of the comic the Joker tells the big Killing Joke at its end; one that final gets Batman to laugh as the rain comes down on the two.  The two continue to cackle as Batman puts his hands on The Joker’s shoulders looking far more sinister and threatening then he had in the rest of the book, the police arrive and the image shifts to where their feet are and finally a puddle, leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Batman finally snapped and killed The Clown Prince of Crime.  Unfortunately, in the film, it just kind of stops.  It lacks the arrival of the police and the sinister edge to Batman’s design and can’t help but lack the ambiguity of the original comic and feels more like an abrupt ending to the story more than anything else.

            The voice work in the film is also pretty lackluster.  Tera Strong’s Batgirl comes off as whiney and Gordon’s voice is very high pitched and lacks the authority other actors have brought to the role.  Even Kevin Conroy seems like he’s just in the voice booth to collect a paycheck.  Granted he doesn’t have a lot to work with, but it’s pretty clear that the man wasn’t as invested in the material as he usually is.  The only real exception to this is Mark Hamill as The Joker.  As usual, the man’s voice manages to be funny and menacing at the same time, giving the character far more charisma than any other actor has ever managed.  He also does some fantastic voice work as the “before” Joker, giving as a character who is sympathetic but still an utter looser and we could easily see getting into a situation like this.  But even Mark Hamill’s voice work isn’t enough to save this whole thing.

            In the end, The Killing Joke is easily the most disappointing animated film that DC has put out and the second worst comic book film to come out this year.  It doesn’t do the comic justice, utterly fails to address or improve upon the comic’s problems and is just an all-around bore to watch.  Honestly, you would be better off reading the comic or just revisiting the various works that have been inspired by it.  It’s a far better way to spend your time and money.  But this film is one joke that completely missed the punchline.

            So until next time please follow the site, like the Facebook page, and follow me on twitter.  Until then, let’s hope that the Suicide Squad film turns out better than this.

            Oh that’s just great….

Star Trek: Beyond Review

            So here is yet another dark confession that I have to make to my fellow nerds:  I like the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films.  They aren’t masterpieces by any means but they are solid enough summer blockbuster fare and watching the films is a decent way to spend a couple of hours.  The first film was an okay origin story and was, if we’re being honest, the shot in the arm that the franchise needed to bring it into the modern blockbuster environment.  It featured a great cast, fantastic special effects, cool action and a decent plot involving time travel and an insane Romulan.  The second film was…forgettable.  Even if you ignore the fact that the film was more or less a remake of Wrath of Kahn, it’s not a particularly memorable one.  Like the first film, Into Darkness had good acting, action and special effects but you’ll be hard pressed to remember a thing about after the credits roll outside of comparisons that you’ll inevitably make to Wrath of Kahn.  This latest film is more or less a successor to that format.  It’s a decent enough summer block buster and is a pleasant way to spend a few hours but is not something that you’ll be remembering in the long term, even if it is more true to the franchise’s roots.

            The story takes place a few years after the end of Into Darkness with the crew of the Enterprise well into their five-year voyage.  After arriving at a space colony known as Yorktown at the edge of the frontier, the crew of the Enterprise is contacted by a scientist fleeing from an uncharted nebula and asks Kirk and company for help to retrieve her crew.  After arriving at the planet she claims her crew is on, they are soon attacked by a swarm of tiny ships that quickly destroying the Enterprise and capture the majority of its crew and leave the rest stranded on the planet.  Outnumbered, outgunned and without a ship it’s up to Kirk and company to rescue the crew, find a way off the planet and prevent their leader from obtaining the final piece of an ancient weapon that recently came into their possession. 

            An accurate description of this film and all of its predecessors is that, for better or for worse, they all have a tendency to feel like feature length episodes.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but because of this the films end up feeling a bit…well episodic.  You have characters, plotlines and villains that are introduced in each film and they go through their own little arcs and storylines that are resolved by the time the credits roll.  Generally speaking, you never see or hear about these new characters ever again and the storylines have little overall effect on the status quo of the series.  Ultimately this is what this film feels like.  It probably isn’t going to have any long term repercussions on the lore of the series but the plot on display is satisfying in the context of being the latest chapter of these characters’ lives.  For the most part the film is well paced and appropriately builds each plot point throughout its length, with every set piece and plot point introduced ultimately factoring in to the overall story.

            Ultimately, however, the film is not so much a plot driven one but a character driven one.  The characters all have natural chemistry with one another, resulting in some great humor throughout the film that feels natural.  For the first time it feels like the characters are growing as people and becoming more like the characters from the original show.  Unlike the previous films, it actually feels like an ensemble piece that give each of the characters an appropriate amount of screen time and, for the most part, develops them in a pretty significant way.  Spock and McCoy, for example, are stuck together for a significant portion of the film and as a result come to realize how much respect that they have for one another.  The biggest arcs, however, come from Kirk and Spock.  I won’t give too much away, but both characters have significant, potentially life altering events thrust upon them at the start of the film and by the time the film has ended, it feels as though these arcs have come to their natural conclusion.  The standout, however, is Idris Elba as the film’s villain, Krall.  Despite a god-awful makeup job, Krall manages to be an otherwise menacing antagonist with a pretty diabolical plan with a pretty good, tragic backstory to boot.  After a certain point, you’ll probably see some of the twists regarding the character coming but it’s a depressing one all the same that makes you feel for the character in ways that were impossible in the previous two films. 

            The problem with this film is everything else.  Say what you will about the previous films, but they were visually impressive and this film lacks the same level of imagination and technical skill.  The ship and its interior, for example, have been redesigned from the Apple Store look of the previous films to something that looks more like a modern update of the design of the original series.  It’s not a bad move, per say, but it ended up looking far less visually impressive and ended up looking cheaper as a result.  The outpost of Yorktown, likewise looks off.  From a narrative point of view, they manage to pull off what they wanted with this city but from the technical side it looks subpar.  It was obviously going for a sprawling space metropolis look with buildings pointing every which way but a good portion of this city ended up looking like a bunch of building models nailed to 2X4s hanging upside down.  Likewise, the makeup jobs in this film are pretty bland as well.  They’re by no means the worst things I’ve seen in a Star Trek film but while watching this films I was always aware that I was seeing an actor run around with pounds of makeup and prosthetics on their face.  Elba probably gets the worst of it as he unable to do much in terms of facial expressions and seems to be constantly wheezing through his mouth because the makeup won’t allow him to breath.  The action is also pretty bland as well.  The swarm ships are pretty cool and the final solution to how they defeat them is pretty creative, if a bit of a shark jumper, but the rest of the action was just subpar.  Most of the action is made up of the pointing the camera at the actors while they fight and lacks any inventiveness, stunt work, or set piece design that would have made them more interesting. 

            Overall, watching the film is a decent way to spend a couple of hours.  The character play is solid, the humor is good, the action is flawed but never boring and actually succeeds in evolving the characters.  It won’t change your life and is by no means the best Star Trek film out there, but in a summer that has been filled mostly with disappointments and outright disasters this one is a welcome change of pace.  I say give it a watch.

            So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook page, follow me ontwitter and come back next time.  Until then, have fun in the final frontier.  

Ghostbusters (2016) Review

So here is a dark confession that I have to make regarding my nerd status: I don’t think that the original 1984 Ghostbusters is an untouchable classic.  This might seem odd when you consider what I am into and the stuff that my blog tends to cover but for me it’s just a decent genre film that was part of a decade that just happened to be full of better genre films.  It lacks the over the top violence and blunt satire of Robocop, the fun factor of Back to the Future, the low budget grit of The Terminator, the sheer industry redefining power of Star Wars and the directorial masterwork of Steven Spielberg in the Indiana Jones films.  Don’t get me wrong.  I feel that the film is a genuinely good one.  It’s just that when it comes to so called classics of the 80s the original Ghostbusters never registered that high on my meter.

            Despite this, even I thought that a remake of the film was a bad idea.  This is primarily because I think that remakes are, in general, a bad idea and waste of everyone’s time and money.  This is especially true when genuinely talented people are involved who could be spending their time and energy doing literally anything else.  The film also didn’t do itself any favors by casting the new Ghostbusters as all women.  There was a good amount of outcry over this but the full force of it wouldn’t be seen until the debut of the first trailer and by God, the negative reaction to it was uncanny.  The various misogynistic jackasses who hated the fact that the film was a female led one, coupled with general remake fatigue and the fact that the trailer itself didn’t look very good effectively created the biggest wave of anti-hype in film history.  The initial trailer was, at the time, the most disliked YouTube video in history and the follow-up trailers didn’t fare much better.  The jokes weren’t particularly funny, the ghosts not very well designed and the characters came off as annoying.  The odds of this film being successful or even good were so stacked against it that I almost skipped it all together.  But, in spite of all of this, the film is actually pretty good.

            The plot revolves around physicist Erin Gilbert, (Kristen Wiig), as she is reunited with her estranged best friend, Abby Yates. (Melissa McCarthy), when she is contacted by a man who is aware of her past as a paranormal researcher to investigate a local tourist attraction that he is convinced is haunted.  Upon investigating the site, they very quickly discover that not only are ghosts real but that someone is intentionally using paranormal technology to bring them into our world.  The two are joined by nuclear engineer, Jillian Holtzmann, (Kate McKinnon), and subway worker/New York City historian Patty Tolan, (Leslie Jones), as hunt for ghosts, create new ghost catching devices as well as fight off the idea that they are frauds who are just looking for attention. 

            The film’s biggest strength is the cast.  All four of the main characters are hilarious, well written, have perfect comedic personas and all have great chemistry with one another.  Wiig, for example, really pulls off the role of a person whose motives are a bit split.  On one hand she wants to be taken seriously by the scientific community but at the same time can’t resist the call of the supernatural when proof of it is, quite literally, floating in her face.  She also proves at several points that she is, when all is said and done, human and that when she is pushed too far she can and will snap.  McKinnon is a ton of fun as the engineer of the group, who brings just the right mixture of mad scientist energy, blunt “this could blow up in your face” humor with a dry, sarcastic demeanor.  The biggest surprise, however, was Jones as Patty.  In spite of all the horrible things that were on display in the trailers, the thing that I was most dreading to see on screen was this character.  Every single advertisement for this character indicated that she was some kind of annoying Tyler Perry-style caricature or would be this film’s equivalent to Chris Tucker’s role in The Fifth Element; i.e. the one African American character in a film who is brought in as comedic relief but ultimately comes off as annoying and possibly racist.  But thankfully, this is not the case.  Patty is, like Winston in the original film, the straight one of the group.  She’s funny and freaks out when the situation calls for it but she quickly proves that she is just as smart and capable as the other members of the team whose knowledge of the city and its history proves invaluable as they chase ghosts.  The only one who gets a little shortchanged is McCarthy.  She’s hilarious and perfectly delivers all of her jokes with the right tone and facial expressions but there just isn’t that much to her character beyond being the other Ghostbusters leader and Wiig’s best friend.  Ultimately though, they are all likeable, funny and you’ll find yourself wanting to spend more time with these characters.

            Another great strength of the film is how it goes about subverting certain genre clichés and film clichés in general.  Remember how in the first film the NYC government immediately dubbed the Ghostbusters as crazy until they needed them for the final act?  You know how something like this happens in every genre film?  Well, within this film, this isn’t the case.  About midway through the film it is actually revealed that the government is fully aware of the existence of ghosts and asks that the protagonists to keep it quite so as not to panic the public.  It’s actually something that makes perfect sense and was a welcome change of pace.  Sure the government officials can be jerks but they never go anywhere near Walter Peck levels of jerks and it made for a refreshing spin on the whole thing.

            Then we have Kevin, played my Chris Hemsworth who is just hilarious.  The whole joke of his character is that he is effectively the male version of the hot but useless secretary that everyone in the office is trying to bang and he pulls it off perfectly.  It’s hilarious just to watch this guy bumble around while trying to figure out how to do basic tasks around the office.  But what’s even funnier is just how creepy Wiig’s character is around him.  Every chance she gets she flirts with him and makes no secret whatsoever that she wants to sleep with him and feels like she is just one wrong step away from a sexual harassment suite.  It’s the one time that the gender flip thing actually effects the characters in the movie and everyone involved pulled it off perfectly.

            The final good thing to note is the technology used in the film.  One of key problems of the original film is that we really don’t see the beta versions of the Proton Packs or how exactly this technology was developed.  They just kind of appear in between scenes and it was something that always made me scratch my head.  This time around we actually get to see an early version of the Proton Packs and the process by which they decided to make certain adjustments to them.  We also get a nice variety of ghost catching weapons that was lacking in the original film and promised interesting ways for the characters to battle ghosts.  The testing periods of the film made for some great physical comedy and the actual functions of the weapons were creative and inventive and is the one area that the film where it undoubtedly improves upon its predecessor.

            Unfortunately, the film suffers from three very big problems.  Two are the main antagonist and the plot.  The main bad guy is just boring.  His ultimate plan is to bring fourth an army of ghosts to overrun the world with him at its head is the kind of plan that we’ve seen a million times by now and it’s just old.  It’s not at all helped by the fact that the character lacks any charisma and his whole motivation is that...you know I don’t think his motivation is ever made clear.  He’s just some random, creepy dude who just decides to start the end of the world because he thinks he will become lord of the ghosts.  That’s about it.  The plot itself doesn’t really amount to much more than the characters running around the city while trying to prevent this guy’s plan from manifesting itself.  The whole thing just feels like it was an afterthought and lacks the subtle satire of the occult and overly elaborate plots that films featuring them tend to contain that the original movie had.

            The final problem is the third act of the film.  The whole thing starts throwing WAY too much fan service at the audience, from the inclusion of Slimer to the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and even the bad guy taking the form of a something that one of the protagonists thinks up.  While these were nice shout outs, they came far too late in the film and couldn’t helped but feel crammed in, almost as if the producers had a checklist of things that they needed to include in the film lest fans riot.  It’s not at all helped by the fact that the whole third act devolves into a special effects driven action fest that the filmmakers just can’t pull off.  CGI tends to get a lot of crap these days for its overuse but in the case of this film it’s fully deserved.  All of the ghosts look generic and undersigned and you won’t believe that any of them were ever in front of the camera.  The action at the end also feels very by the numbers and obviously staged.  I understand that Paul Feig isn’t exactly an action director and to be fair this isn’t an action film but if you’re going to stage a big, action heavy finale you need to put a little more effort into it.  The whole thing is comprised of “pointing and shooting the camera” while the actors fight off the ghosts and lacks any real tension and fails to thrill.  It’s not at all helped by the fact that while there is supposedly an army of ghosts surrounding them and they only come after the characters a few at a time.  It’s a strange move that breaks not only the tension of the situation but also my suspension of disbelief and is the kind of action movie flaws that filmmakers found ways around over a decade ago and it baffles me that they couldn’t find a better way to stage this whole end fight.

            In the end the new Ghostbusters film is an overall entertaining film.  Is it as good as or better than the original?  Honestly, I don’t know and that’s an argument that I will leave more hardcore fans of the franchise to fight out.  But the film that we have on display here is smart, funny, full of entertaining characters, clever subversions of genre clichés and is a lot of fun.  It’s not a modern classic but I at least recommend that you give it a shot.

            So until next time please follow the site, like the Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.  Until then let’s just hope that the backlash against the trailers doesn’t affect the performance of an otherwise good film.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition Review

            Of all the films that were due for release this year, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice was probably the one that I anticipated the most.  Man of Steel was a film that I absolutely despised but the prospect of seeing Batman and Superman on the big screen for the first time was too good of a selling point for me not to ignore.  It also helped that the trailers for the film looked really good and promised sprawling, epic fights between the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel, ending with a climactic battle with a big bad in Doomsday.  Unfortunately, the critical reception to the film was overwhelmingly negative and you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that isn’t a complete D.C. fanboy to give the film a glowing review.  Everyone seemed to agree that the first 10 minutes or so were good along with Ben Affleck’s performance as Batman but that the film as a whole was a boring, incoherent mess.  This, coupled with some personal problems, resulted in me deciding to pass on seeing the film and just wait for the inevitable directors cut to come out. 

Earlier this week I was able to see this version of the film.  And, despite all the negative receptions to the film, despite all of the crap talked about, despite having nearly all the major plot points being spoiled for me, somehow it was far worse than I ever imagined.  The Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition is perhaps one of the most boring and lifeless big budgeted summer blockbusters that I have ever seen put to film and fails spectacularly on nearly every level.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The film starts during the climax of Man of Steel with Superman and Zod brawling and destroying half of Metropolis.  After his building in the city is destroyed and killing several people he knows, Batman decides that a creature with as much power as Superman needs to be destroyed.  At the same time, through an overly complicated series of events, Lex Luthor begins to taint the public’s perception of Superman as well as push Batman to kill Superman. 

If there is one positive thing that I can say about the writing of this film, it’s that the initial setup is very well executed.  When you look at what happens in Metropolis at the start of the film, particularly with one child caught up in the mix, you see that not only are Batman’s motives justified through Superman’s actions but that the whole thing affected him on a deeper, personal level and was a brilliant character moment that kind of blew me away.  In fact, most of the stuff that deals with Batman is all around pretty good.  The intro that shows the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents is probably the best version of it ever put to film and Ben Affleck really did defy my initial expectations as the Caped Crusader.  Jeremey Irons performance was simply perfect and may actually be the best live action version of Alfred.  His condensing demeanor and dry sense of humor had me laughing every time he dropped some negative remark about Batman and his life choices and I hope that future Batman films take full advantage of this.  On the same note, Superman is actually pretty good in this as well.  He still isn’t great and it’s obvious that the filmmakers still have trouble deciding what to do with him but he is a big improvement over the version that was portrayed in Man of Steel.  In this film he actually goes out of his way save people instead of endangering them and they really do a great job of establishing why it is he has a beef with Batman.  Unfortunately, the film manages to piss away this otherwise great setup with a film that is not only needlessly grim, but just boring.   

The first major problem with the film is Lex Luthor.  Ignoring the fact that this version of the character has nothing in common with its comic book comic book counterpart, the character has far too big of a role in the film and the vast majority of it has little to contribute to the overall narrative of the film beyond needlessly padding out the runtime.  For example, the character is revealed towards the end to be one who pushes Batman into fighting Superman, mainly though the manipulation of a former Wayne Enterprises employee who was hurt during Superman’s fight with Zod in Man of Steel.  Unfortunately, from a writing standpoint it makes no sense as to why they would include this subplot when Batman’s motivations are made abundantly clear the prologue section of the film.  Supposedly he’s also trying to defame Superman through these actions as well but outside of making him mope over the fact that he can’t always save everyone for a few minutes it really doesn’t have any effect on the character overall.  In fact, the only meaningful things that the character contributes to the plot overall is the importing of the kryptonite rock, the kidnapping of Martha Kent, and the creation of Doomsday and just about everything else involving this character could have easily been cut from the film.  In fact, the creation of Doomsday just adds another problem to the overall narrative of the film.  If, for example, Luthor knew that Batman would more than likely kill Superman, why did he create Doomsday to begin with?  Why did he start the whole thing without a way to take Doomsday down himself?  Better yet, WHY IS DOOMSDAY EVEN IN THIS MOVIE?!?!?

What makes the whole Lex Luthor narrative problem even more infuriating is that it could have been solved with a simple rewrite or a few tricks in post-production.  Lex Luthor fears what Superman could do so he gets the Kryptonite.  Batman catches wind of this and wants it for himself.  Luthor realizes he no longer has the Kryptonite and creates Doomsday to take Superman down so he can serve as the third act monster that unties the heroes together.  How would that have been so hard?

It’s not at all helped by the fact that the film is very grim with an unexpectedly high body count.  Iconic characters like Jimmy Olson and Mercy Graves are unceremoniously killed off in very grizzly fashions with little to no acknowledgement of their legacy in comic book history.  Perhaps what threw me off the most, however, was just how high of a body count Batman had under his belt.  I had heard beforehand that Batman killed a few people in this film but I had always assumed it was similar to the way he “killed” people in the Dark Knight films; where the deaths were either ambiguous or brought on by the actions of others.  HOLY.  MOTHER.  OF.  GOD!  WAS.  I.  WRONG!  He massacres people by the dozens in any way he can.  He uses machine guns, grappling hooks, missiles, his fists, guns and even a wooden crate at one point.  And those that he doesn’t kill he effectively marks for death by branding them with a bat and making them a target for a good shanking in prison.  And I cannot lie.  This really bothered me as a Batman fan.

One of the core rules of Batman, (or at least the modern one), is that he does not kill people.  It is the one line that he refuses to cross because he knows that once he crosses that line he is no better than those he hunts.  While I am aware that this hasn’t always been the case, for a long time it has been and is often a key component between Batman and his relationships with fellow heroes and villains.  What we have on display in this film, however, is that Batman is in fact no better than those he hunts.  In fact, the argument could be made that Superman’s beef with the Bat might actually be more than justified given just how much brutality is on display here.  While he doesn’t quite go into Crazy Steve territory, he gets dangerously close and if this is the direction that they’ll continue with the character I’m not sure I want anything to do with it.

Now all of this could be forgivable is the film was any fun.  Plenty of films have poor narratives and character writing but they can sometimes get away with them by the sheer amount of spectacle and humor that they throw on screen.  But Batman V. Superman offers none of this.  Say what you will about Man of Steel, (lord knows I have plenty to say), but it did offer some pretty cool action sequences that really showed how destructive and over the top a battle between kryptonians would be.  But this film offers none of that.  Outside of one admittedly kick ass fight involving Martha’s kidnappers, not a single action sequence shows any kind of imagination or manages to thrill.  At least half of the film passes before we get our first action scene that amounts to a boring car chase between Batman and Luthor’s goons and then we have to wait another hour before we finally get our battle between the two characters for the first and last time.  Unfortunately, all it amounts to is Batman using some kryptonite gas on the Man of Steel before pounding the crap out of him with his fists and grappling hook and offers none of the imagination or spectacle that was on display in either Man of Steel or The Dark Knight Returns animated film.  And quite frankly, if an animation team working with maybe a tenth of the budget can do a better battle between Batman and Superman that the big budgeted film version something is very wrong. 

Likewise, the final battle with Doomsday is completely unmemorable.  While it is cool to finally see Wonder Woman on the big screen for the first time the fight itself is completely unremarkable.  The whole thing consists of Wonder Woman going after Doomsday with a sword while Batman runs from its heat blasts, as it cuts back to Superman grabbing one of Batman’s kryptonite spears and taking to Lois and utterly fails to choreograph/animate an interesting battle and I found myself wondering if this was really made by the same man who did 300.   

From what I have been told, the theatrical version of this film was an incoherent, boring mess of a movie that appeared to be the negative antithesis to the MCU and any good comic book films that have come out over the past decade.  This Ultimate Edition isn’t quite that.  It is a coherent, boring, mess of a film that appears to be the negative antithesis to the MCU and any of the good comic book films that have come out over the past decade.  The film does have an admittedly good start but is bogged down by a pointless subplot with Luthor, fails to give us any decent action scenes and is just so grim without any real point to it.  I hated Man of Steel when it came out three years ago but this film registers little to no emotion with me.  The whole thing bored me to tears and by the time the credits rolled I was just glad it was over. 

Supposedly the overwhelming negative reception has caused Warner Brothers to realize that they need to rethink the way they do these films.  The Justice League film, for example, is apparently set to have a lighter tone then BVS due to the extremely negative reaction to the film.  Ben Affleck, who was visibly upset at the reception of the film, is promising a Batman film full of sardonic, dry humor and is determined that the project will not move forward until the script is perfect, release dates be damned.  Warner Brothers has also decided to restructure the way it goes about making the films, creating the DC Films Division that will be headed by DC writer Geoff Johns and Warner Brothers Executive Vice President, Jon Berg, so it is obvious that they are at least taking steps to fix the errors that have been made.  However, only time will tell if they have taken the correct steps.

So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook page, follow me on twitter and come back next time.  Until then, let’s just hope that Suicide Squad proves better.  

Now I Write on the Nerd Hub!

            Well everyone, it’s time for an announcement.  Today I have officially joined The Nerd Hub, a group that deals with all things nerdy be they video games, comic books, movies or T.V. shows, they cover it all.  Every month I will be contributing at least one article a month to the site as well as helping them promote their articles and vice versa.  It’s an exciting new prospect and I cannot wait to see how it unfolds.  Give their site a look, read a few articles and give the Facebook Page a like and lets all have fun with this stuff.  Until next time, give both our pages a like, follow our sites and twitter accounts.  Let’s all connect in this world.

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