#I want a Batman Beyond remake for so many reasons and one of them is because I feel like a more traditional plot structure

[cluescorner]

A Batman who kills people is a bad Batman. Except for Terry because he is my special boy. Terry can drown a man it's ok. He can literally shatter a woman it's fine.

[thecruellestmonth]

I was reading your Lazarus pit madness post and I disagree a little bit personally. The wording from that interview doesn’t come off to me like he is blaming the pit itself as what is influencing Jason but rather coming back from the dead screwing him up a little bit. That same interview says that Jason was always screwed up so I don’t think it’s fair to say the pit is influencing his actions. There is far more evidence against pit madness than there is for it, and tons of characters have been in it with no adverse side effects in that same writing era like Cassandra.

Yes, I'm aware of what the Lazarus Pit lore is in Cass' book.

In a setting where Bruce Wayne becoming Batman is a reasonable response to the ills of society, I don't think Jason or anyone else needs to have Lazarus Pit side effects to do what the Red Hood did.

I'm not a huge fan of tying up the characters' agency in Magic Evil Juice. But I say the possibility is open. DC writers do whatever the heck they want with the Lazzy Pits. A flexible interpretation is available to them and to fans.

Bruce previously said he wouldn't use the Lazarus Pits to revive his parents, because the effects of the Pits are corruptive to the point that they are better off dead rather than twisted beyond recognition.

The Pit brought Cass back from death without many problems.

Other lore states that the Pit can't truly resurrect people, and can only heal injuries and diseases up to the brink of death. (Why is it called the Lazarus Pit is it can't even resurrect people? *eye roll*)

Again, the Lazarus Pit brought Cass and Shiva back from being freshly dead. And yet on another occasion, Bruce decided that the Pit wouldn't be strong enough to heal Jason's catastrophic brain injury. And then way back in the Bronze Age, the Lazarus Pit resurrected Ra's from a pile of ashes. And then Paul Dini and Alex Ross drew up a concept that the Lazarus Pit would heal Barbara Gordon's spinal injury at the cost of twisting her personality into something darker. Now "Lazarus Resin" is available in a conveniently portable form, and this Lazarus Planet event has a Lazarus Volcano eruption giving and nullifying superpowers for people across the planet.

My point is that--in this case especially--I really don't think fans can pretend to be the undisputed expert and argue for one definitive interpretation. On the list of the many flexible and inconsistent elements in Batman lore, the Lazarus Pit is high up there.

I'll probably remake the Jason-focused post into a multi-part overview of the history of the Lazarus Pit starting from the Bronze Age, and including Elseworlds and adaptations and their influences.

[tyrantisterror]

I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun!  You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like.  I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points.  I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece.  It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences.  It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it.  Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so.  It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom.  Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison.  It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei!  Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone.  Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations.  From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well.  It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore.  Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond!  It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight.  My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers.  READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out.  Read at your own peril!  YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song.  “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers.  The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper.  I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song.  I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one.  Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya.  Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout.  So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera.  His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.”  It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by.  AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.  

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc.  In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions.  This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing.  Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick.  I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong!  I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women.  Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies.  Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong.  Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions.  Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes.  Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile.  Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human.  Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat.  On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset.  There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars.  The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there).  Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years.  Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion.  There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis.  Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim.  There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out!  Oh wait you did.  I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein.  Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM.  I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy.  His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park.  John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit.  There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right?  One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2.  Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong.  Got that?  Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this).  Ok?  Ok.  So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1.  There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.”  And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently.  I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters.  Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.”  Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger.  Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster.  The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey.  It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me.  Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head.  He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis.  He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle.  That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference.  Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan.  I opted for something a little more toned down here.  

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM.  Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness.  See?  Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral.  I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen.  I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way.  They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did.  But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown.  I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though.  We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM.  I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion.  Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates.  During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win.  Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero.  Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here.  As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions.  There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go.  An ending, if not THE END.

[valkyrieelysia18]

My Thoughts on Reboots, Remakes, Sequels, and Spinoffs

Hey there everybody! I know that everyone and their mother have an opinion on this topic, but I just wanted to added my two cents on to to something that wasn’t going to be that long.

Part of the reason I’m doing this post is because two series I loved dearly when I was younger, Winx Club and Inuyasha, have gotten a live action remake series and a sequel series. Now I’m not here to talk on the many MANY wrongs of Fate The Winx Saga or the issues of Yashahime because other people have already went into detail on that stuff. Instead I’m going to talk about what I feel like adapting old properties as whole.

As we fully know and acknowledge, nostalgia is a powerful force with an iron grip and Hollywood and other film/tv makers are doing their best to exploit our nostalgia for as much cash as they can get from us. It’s considered less work and less risky to adapt an older project with a ready fanbase than it is come up with an original property. Most of the time these things aren’t made because there is more to expand on in either the work’s world or characters or bring a new fresh take to it, but because it would make money. Manipulative as it is, its sound business logic.

That being said: remakes, reboots, spinoffs, and sequels aren’t inherently bad. When done well, they don’t just keep to the heart and soul of the original work, they SURPASS it. There’s nothing wrong with changing things from the source material, especially if it’s to add more diversity to the line up or correct a problematic element found in the original series. Even if an interpretation doesn’t hold a candle to the original, it’s still fun to see what creators can dream up for a franchise. For example, Batman the Animated Series will always be the definitive Batman experience for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy Batman Beyond, Batman the Brave and the Bold, the Dark Knight, Arkham Asylum, or other adaptations of the character.

The problem is more often than not, these projects are not handled well. As I said before, it’s more to make money than to actually be a good and/or faithful adaptation. I think everyone remembers the fiasco that was the live action Jem and the Holograms film from a couple years ago. That movie did the worse thing an adaptation can do for fans: used the the name for brand recognition and threw just about everything out from the original series to appeal to the modern crowd (by the way the makers of this movie didn’t even seem to understand THAT demographic), spitting in the face of the original fans. It honestly wasn’t that surprising the film was pulled from theaters so quickly. As a Winx Club fan, I can relate to Jem fans now in a way that I wasn’t able to back then.

Now some would say fans can be extremely judgmental and toxic when it comes to any changes to their beloved franchises. To an extent, I do agree. For example, I was almost five years old when the Star Wars Prequels came out and thus didn’t really get the hate for it because I didn’t have the nostalgia the older fans did. Now that I am older and have watched both trilogies, I can acknowledge that the original trilogy was better in terms of story and characters, but those films are far from perfect. And you got to give the prequel trilogy credit in that had a distinct definite vision and that it was telling its own story, not just relying on what came before. 

But in my honest opinion, I think a lot of the hate from fans of these series comes from the fact that these adaptations more often than not seem to spite the fans and butcher the things they used to love. And considering this is where the original buzz and money come from for these projects, it feels like those behind these projects are going for short term cash rather than long term gain.

I think sequel series in particular can come as off very problematic if their continuation seems to retcon or destroy a very good and satisfying ending. Part of why I can’t really get behind Yashahime is because it feels like the series kind of invalidates the really good ending of the original series and how poorly it has treated the og characters. A series’ ending is arguably the hardest thing to pull off well, it’s one thing to start strong but its another thing to carry that quality to end of the story. And even if a finale isn’t bad, it can still be controversial or divisive among fans. Ducktales 2017 is a great series, but even it stumbled in its finale. Anyone who’s seen it can probably guess what I’m talking about. 

So, how should we approach these projects? I think the best mindset to going into these continuations is cautious optimism. That way you’ll be surprised if it turns out to be good, but not too disappointed if it turns out to be the opposite.

And if nothing else there is this comfort for us who live in this time: where canon fails, there is fan fiction. Seriously, I see more passion, creativity, and quality from things I read and view for free on the internet than things that have huge production teams and tons of money poured into them.

Sorry if this just seems like a ramble to you guys, but you know sometimes that there are things you just need to get out there. And hey it turns out this my 100th post on tumblr. So yay to me.

Don’t worry for those who are here for my Rewrite post. Next time we’re going to get to Cinder....AND I HAVE THOUGHTS.

See you soon!

[femmescripter]

Assurance of My Stay & Special Announcements

Hey there. I hope that y’all are doing well today. I don’t know how many of my friends and followers are still here after The Great Purge not long ago, but to the ones who do see this it’s good to see you! I hope we can talk some time. 

So I wanted to tell you guys some important things, and I won’t prolong it and will just get into it.

Ahem...

So first off - one of the reasons why I’ve been almost nonexistent here on Tumblr is because I’ve been busy with writing commissions and looking for steady work. The whole ban on risque content for Tumblr didn’t help either. Then we have the world wide pandemic of the C-Virus which really kicked things up from ten to ten thousand. And in between all of that I have been dealing with a...rough situation, to say the least of it, in my personal life that is still ongoing. I won’t go into the gory details but I’ll say that it’s the primary reason for looking for steady work in order to make enough money to get my own place. Having explained all of this I want you all to know I’m not trying to purposely keep away from you. Nor do I plan to leave Tumblr even with the ban. I just got important things to focus on. 

But I still love all of you and didn’t forgot you! It’s my end goal to finally get at least my work load done and be able to come back to Tumblr and try to enjoy the site once more. And if you’re all willing to accept me again that would make it even better. So yeah. This about covers the announcement that I am truly alive.

Now, onto some cheerful news I want to share with y’all. 

For the past two years I have been working on revising the plot, world setting and characters of my original light novel series. It’s been a long and grueling process but immensely fulfilling. And I think you’ll really enjoy this light novel series. At the moment I am currently working with @lucy-dont-give-a-fuck to make the character artwork for the main characters first and foremost. After that we’ll work on the other artwork needed for the pilot. And in between all of that I’ll be writing the story of said pilot. I can’t go into more detail than that but I will say that once things are done and sorted I’ll be posting a link to a crowdfunding page where you all can donate to support the project. It’s my goal to make the pilot both available in physical print and also put it up on Tapas for people to view it digitally in case you can’t come to the locations I’ll be selling it.  That’s cheerful news bit #1. Cheerful news bit #2 involves a fanfic remake and the mass editing of another fanfic. The fanfic that I’m going to remake is an old Tygra/Lion-O alternate universe fanfiction I made based on the 2011 Thundercats reboot series. Which, by the way, is criminally underrated and did not deserved to be cancelled on such a cliffhanger as it was. They should have focused on that instead of giving us the trash that is Thundercats Roar. Regardless - that’s the fanfic I plan to remake. Having grown as a writer I’ve developed a better plot for it and plan to delete the old version and replace it with a new one. I will post it exclusively to Archive Of Our Own and FanfictionNet. Now to go over the mass editing of a different story, Batman Beyond: The Heir. It really amazed me how many people liked that fic so much. And I’m ashamed of my for neglecting it like I have. Again this has to do with work and other major things that have gone on in my life that make updating stories difficult. But I plan to continue that story! Before that however I need to do a lot of editing with the current chapters and fix some mistakes, clear up loose ends, ect. So be sure to stay tuned for more Rex/Terry goodness! Additionally I will be likewise editing my Thief/Dishonored crossover story Business & Pleasure so that I can continue that as well. I also got a lot of new one-shots I plan to put out to keep you guys entertained in the meantime. I got other fanfics in the work as well. Also to anyone who still likes Voltron: The Legendary Defender and likes Lotor/Keith or James/Keith please do reach out to me! It’s so hard to find people who like either pairing as a genuine couple and not as hateful exes or with Lotor or James being a creepy stalker to Keith. And I got stories and headcanons planned for them, too. Lastly - I want to put out a notice that I’ll be editing and completely revamping some of my old Justice League: Gods & Monsters character biographies. I’ve recently found myself reconnecting with the franchise and after delving more into DC lore and media I came up with some new ideas. So expect changes on that end too. I will probably end up reblogging old character biographies I edit and making posts for new, revamped bios. And don’t worry. I’ll make bios for new characters, too! I can honestly say that I have evolved a great deal in my writing skills and have learned many new techniques to make my stories better for my audience, you lovely people, to enjoy! If you don’t want to stick around though I can understand that. I have been gone for a long time. But if you guys do want to see how much I’ve improved with my work then I’m happy to share in my journey with you.

Welp. That’s everything. I’m sorry that this was such a long read but I didn’t want to leave out anything. Also if you want to follow me on Twitter and Instagram just reach out to me and I’ll give you the handles for those profiles. Until next time - all of you please take care and remember to wash your hands! I love you guys very much.

[brunhiddensmusings]

an issue i have with movies

or, rather, that the movie industry has and im calling them out on it that the movie industry makes stupid assumptions about what does or does not work while ignoring the real reasons why a movie succeeds or fails because that would take too much effort and thought despite ‘filmography’ being a legitimate course of study that i would really hope that people paid tens of millions of dollars to make movies have some understanding of and/or hire people with the relevant degrees because i KNOW when a movie like ‘midway’ flops hard  the reaction of the movie industry is ‘i guess people dont like historical war recreation dramas’ instead of looking a bit harder and realizing ‘i guess people dont like a movie with no main characters, nothing to tie the existing cardboard cutout characters together beyond a vague setting, and a strange inability to make anything its showing on screen relevant as a plot rather then just listing things that happened with no explanation, narrative, or point of reference character’..... although im okay with ‘WW2 movies’ being put back into dormancy because theres more then enough of those and they have kind of messed up how every other war movie made after saving private ryan functions ive seen this time and time again that a movie that is badly made flops because its badly made, and the film industry then acts like some other element is why people avoided it its kind of crazy to think now but before LOTR came out the film industry had considered fantasy movies to be toxic for years, despite the 80s and 90s having some very well loved fantasy movies like ‘willow’, ‘neverending story’, and ‘labyrinth’ because of the number of really shit fantasy movies produced in that time. or if not shit then at least movies that didnt do well until much later when people started enjoying it for different reasons like ‘legend’.... but the sheer number of fantasy movies at the time that were given mediocre budget, garbage writing, and the only saving graces were how much effort the lead actors tried to give their inarticulate screams as the stabbening commenced made the industry think ‘i guess people dont like fantasy movies’ instead of ‘i guess people are not impressed by corny stories with no setup and are ultimately destined to be reviewed by drunk youtubers who heckle B-movies’. yall remember ‘deathstalker’? cause there were like 40 of that movie, conan was a rare gem in a sea of halfassery and then AFTER lord of the rings they try a fit of fantasy movies trying to cash in on this ‘hip new trend’ and while a few of them are okay, most of them are pretty blatantly trying to copy what LOTR did by the numbers as shamelessly as possible, then theres also quite a few that limply flop over the line of mediocrity until movies like ‘your highness’ where the drunk prince wears a minotaur wang around his neck as a battle trophy and ignores sexual molestation by a wizard (ah yes, great comedy recounting those times a wizard touched you when you were a young boy, hilarious for the whole family) ultimately bring people back to square 1 instead of asking ‘maybe if we made a -good- fantasy movie again instead of throwing larger piles of money at bad ones’ and so have movie genres been thrown under the bus for the failings of individual film studios making openly shitty decisions instead of acnowleging that a movie lives or dies on if its GOOD rather then by ‘i guess people dont like full costume period movies anymore’ and its the death of so much potential on the example of costume period movies you may have heard Lindsay Ellis talk about pirates of the carribean on this exact kind of concept, if you hadnt i will gladly add a link to her video on it upon request, but the point is that the assumption at the time was ‘people dont like pirate movies anymore’ because of the dearth of mediocre low budget and shit writing pirate movies made in the 60s-80s, and building on that people kept assuming that what we today would consider the ‘interesting bits’ about pirates of the carribean such as the zombies and jack being a loon the filmmakers at the time were considering ‘ruining the movie’. now i have many complaints about the pirates of the carribean franchise but the first movie is a cinematic classic that fully stands on its own merits, yet i would have been bored to tears trying to watch the version that would have been made if the cut out the zombies, curses, crazy people, and.... really what would be left of that movie? and yet still it happens time and again like clockwork when a robin hood movie is made once a decade, its either only alright or a complete flop, and then nobody wants to make that movie again for eight years then they make another robin hood movie copy/paste that last paragraph but replace ‘robin hood’ with ‘king arthur’ because holy damn are there a lot of bad robin hood/king arthur movies out there. granted theyre public domain so nothing to stop them but when will people learn? literally only two king arthur movies were unanimously good and one of those was monty python and the other was a disney animated classic. literally only three robin hood movies were any good and again one was a disney animated classic and one of the others was Mel Brooks making fun of the Kevin Costner one if public domain was the key element there then you would expect them to keep pumping out..... oh yeah, i forgot the movie where the frankensteins monster does parkour in modern cities to kill gargoyles was a thing, and the beauty and the beast remake where ‘the beast’ is a rich kid in suburban america who is ripped but bald and covered in tattoos and theres some shit about prom.... uuuuuuuugh, theres actually a lot of these ‘reimaginings’ that while the idea of reimagining a timeless classic is cool, they ultimately handle like a steaming turd and then, again, claim its that it failed not because they made a moist cowpat but rather it failed because nobody today likes the frankenstein monster- i for one would argue that an audience today would LOVE a faithful reimagining of frankenstein that really digs into the meat of that premise instead of making him a large green zombie that goes ‘fire bad’ and lets people get dug into the byronic shenanigans of that time im losing my train of thought but moral of the story is that people who make movies will always blame them failing on the -type- of movie it is rather then that they made a bad movie or draged something on way longer then it should be (just because one well written gritty retelling of batman did well does not mean every superhero movie must be dark and gritty without the well written, just because some of the marvel movies put the ‘fun’ back into comic movies doesnt mean we need 34 of them) blegh, i should have used visual aids for this but its too late to figure out what to use now discussion encouraged

[noonmutter]

Mun Dash Game

Rules: Name your top 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people.

Editor’s note: These are in no ranked order or anything like that, they’re just ten favorites as I could think of them.

Bismuth - Steven Universe. You may notice a theme here; I like my characters complex, their motivations valid, their decisions misguided, and their actions questioned by everyone, often including themselves. I loved Bismuth’s entire concept and I’m sad that she hasn’t had more time front and center to develop beyond her introduction as both a plot device and as a catalyst for Steven’s advancement. Same story with Jasper, though she got a few more appearances. I want to see these people grow and for the people they hurt to grow with them, damn it. Even if that growth is downward into an even worse state, I want to see it because positive or negative, emotional fallout is awesome.

Demona - Gargoyles. There was going to be a Gargoyles character here and I am basically legally obligated to pick either Demona or Thailog because I am a sucker for great voices and tragic villains. Demona’s story wins out by a decent margin because her suffering was entirely borne of her own poor decisions, many of which she felt were right at the time. She just refused to accept that she was wrong or that she could try to make things better at any time, and I was fascinated by that from the first time I saw it. This shit was in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 19 years.

Baby Doll - Batman: TAS. She only showed up once (in the original animation style, anyway) but good god damn did it count. She was angry, hurt, belittled, and so unbearably lonely that when everything fell apart and the dust settled and she couldn’t kill all her problems away, she just broke down. “Why couldn’t you just let me make believe?!” is still crystallized in my head, and it still gives me little pangs when I think of it. And at the end of it all, she sobbed “I didn’t mean to” as she hugged Batman’s leg. And he comforted her. Also in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 21 years.

Scanlan Shorthalt - Critical Role, Campaign 1. I bet you thought after those first three it’d probably be Vax or Percy, but... Look, the character was fantastic and the player made him that way and frankly made that campaign. He’s my go-to for when I need a good cry, and he’s why I learned to build a bard. The same man who started the campaign by asking his bestie what the worst race/class combo was and saying “Okay I’ll play that,” at the end of the campaign made the word “Nine” hit his fellow players and viewers in the chest like a sledgehammer, and nobody has topped that since. His second campaign character, Nott, has also got one of the most poignant backstories I’ve heard in a while, and man will it twist yer gut. Meanwhile both of those characters provide some of the best goddamn comic relief you’re liable to find. Emmy Winner Sam Riegel, ladies and gentlemen.

Francis - Left 4 Dead. I love this grumpy asshole biker. I love that Steam took his “I hate everything” (except vests) schtick and ran with it. I love that the trailers for the second game included him and Rochelle meeting up and commiserating on their hatred of everything, up until Rochelle says she hates his vest and he short-circuits. I miss Francis and I miss playing Left 4 Dead all the time and I yearn for a remaster or rerelease that works better with current setups cuz the original one has uh... not aged well, technologically. Francis and Zoey made life worth livin’ in that game.

Jogurt - Shining Force. This is probably the most obscure one on my list but that’s because Shining Force is an old-ass Genesis game/franchise that is, I admit, pretty generic as far as the plot goes. I love it to pieces regardless because it had some fun with it, and the character designs were wierd and some of the interactions were downright silly. Jogurt was the easter egg secret character in this game, and he’s a little hamster thing with a football helmet on. At the time you get him, most of your fighters have stats in the 20s or potentially 30s and their level is 9, 10, or they’ve been promoted to a new class; every single one of his stats is one and he had not been promoted. If you are able to keep him alive long enough to get him the XP necessary to level up just once, which takes some doing since an enemy can be unarmed and as long as they don’t miss, they kill him, you’ll get a ring called the Yogurt Ring.

When worn, it makes a character look like Jogurt. In the remake for Game Boy Advance, the image for the character shows that it’s a costume with a huge visible zipper up the back. That’s all it does. That’s the joke. And I adore it.

Freddy Krueger - A Nightmare on Elm Street series. I have a love-hate relationship with Freddy. On the one hand, creativity in horror movies--especially in the kills--is something to be embraced, and no matter what else you think of them the Elm Street movies got real fuckin’ creative most of the time. On the other...there have been nine (official) movies with Krueger in them, and only the first three were good. The remake in 2010 was disappointing because it tried to both play to nostalgia and ignore it at the same time and also made Freddy darker, which made him less fun to watch.

Still, I enjoyed the hell outta Freddy’s concept, for much the same reason that I love Chucky the Good Guy Doll so much: they’re both snarky monsters who really enjoy the horrors they’re inflicting and they have incredible presence because of the actors who brought them to life. (Mark Hammill worked with what they gave him for Chucky but uh...what they gave him sucked).

Lorewalker Cho/Margeaux - World of Warcraft. The first, because he’s voiced by Jim Cummings and he’s a knowledge-hungry panda who Blizzard has not been stupid enough to kill off thus far. In the middle of an attack by what is basically Cthulhu, he wants to you bring him research notes on Cthulhu’s fishmen. I love him and I would commit war crimes for him.

The second, because she was a bit character that had me fully invested in her and her story within ten minutes. And then Blizzard ripped my fucking heart out. And I yelled at Questifer about it. Aaaaaaaa.

Granny Weatherwax/Sam Vimes - Discworld. They’re both staggering badasses who have neither time nor tolerance for the bullshit trappings of men, while at the same time harboring a deep and abiding love for their fellow beings. They also approach that from completely different ends. They are also both unquestionably the most noble characters I’ve ever read. They are the sum of their principles and their refusal to budge. Steve Rogers could learn from them. In D&D, they’d be paladins to their core, and they’d absolutely hate that.

Spawn - Image Comics. I have, admittedly, read exactly one Spawn comic book, and mostly love him because of his design, his backstory, and the fact that he’s voiced by Keith David in all animated iterations including video game appearances (and only the animated ones were ever good--the 90s movie was fucking horrible). I am hoping the rumored new movie will make things a bit better for the live-action version, but until that actually comes out, I’m not holding my breath.

Tagged by: @safrona-shadowsun and @ourcollectivefantasy

Tagging: Have you done it? Then you’re it.

[bitch-a-la-mode]

Okay this is a hella long rant, but ive been thinking about posting this for a long time and well,,,, yea,,,

You know what the overall problem that Into the Spider Verse brought to light in relation to the overall superhero genre (and animation as a whole)? Grown ups are afraid to watch an animated superhero movie out of fear of being called a baby or a weeb or something so the MCU was basically like “let’s make this into a billion dollar industry by making these interconnected live action movies” and people of all ages ate that shit up. From the get-go, comics and superheroes belonged to kids. They were a kids thing. And if you read or watched that stuff as an adult you were made fun of. These live actions were a marketing ploy of the grandest scheme and we all fell for it.

There are so many amazing animated superhero movies, Made with a fraction of a live action budget and with ten times the heart. Yes we all know into the spider verse, but what about:

- Batman: under the red hood

- Batman: mask of the phantasm

- All star Superman

- Batman beyond: return of the joker

- Big hero 6 (y’all forgot about this)

- The LEGO Batman movie

- Wonder Woman (the 2009 animated movie)

- Justice league: gods and monsters

- Teen titans: trouble in Tokyo

- Justice league: flashpoint paradox

- The Incredibles 1 and 2 (yes I’m counting them)

- Planet hulk

- Reign of the supermen

And this isn’t even including some very iconic superhero animated series (*cough cough* teen titans). Some of these films are so iconic they literally changed comic book lore (I’m looking at you, under the red hood). DC comics has a whole, interconnected animated movie universe that no one talks about (and is direct to video/streaming).

Animators are great at what they do, and superheroes are a thing that should and deserve to get animated. You can use all the special effects you want, but it has been proven time and time again that superheroes generally look better animated. They do complicated things that can’t be captured behind a green screen, and deserve an artist’s hand. Even worse, the only animation people take seriously these days is CGI, because it looks the most “realistic”, aka the most like a live action, even though spider verse looked the least realistic and was the most visually appealing in my opinion. And even sometimes, we respect (or claim it acceptable to like) ridiculously “edgy” adult animation like South Park, family guy, or similar shows (y’all know the kinds im talking about).

However, this all goes back to two things: 1) the west has bullied adults into hating animated movies/shows because we equate them with being “childish” and 2) marvel and other industries practically egged this on so they can make these billion dollar movies and get even more billions back in revenue. The reasons spider verse is so highly regarded is because 1) Sony did SO MUCH to get that movie the credit it deserved, 2) people had been begging for a miles morales Spiderman movies for YEARS, 3) the creators held themselves up to such high standards (which can surely be about the whole diversity in media aspect and minority movies needing to be perfect, but lets ignore that for now, and 4) it was tied into the “highly regarded” MCU, so many fans looked beyond their prejudice and saw the movie, witnessing how phenomenal it was.

If we applied this to other animated superhero movies (or animated movies in general) then animation would get the respect it deserves. I feel like in this day and age, we only care about Disney’s most highly anticipated animated film of the year (which is almost always a Disney princess movie or a sequel to an older Disney animated movie). And even then, Disney has disrespected the art of animation by going and remaking their classics into live actions for various reasons. We can argue the legal implications of copyright, but the big thing is that those animated films were GOOD, and Disney thought it would be a good idea to squeeze more money out of people in addition to claiming “why watch the original, silly animated film when you can watch the real, serious, live action”.

Animators are not respected, and its sad to see because some of the most beautiful and memorable ideas were made through animation. And sometimes, people won’t respect animation as “art” because it doesn’t look “good”, even though their might be various reasons for that (such as budgeting since only mega corporations will kind of pay well for animation, awful scheduling because “draw fast so we can churn out this new product, and so many other factors). Look at stuff like avatar the last Airbender, cowboy bebop, carmen San Diego, and others. Amazing stories with phenomenal (or memorable) art. And sometimes, animation doesnt even have to be so amazingly well designed for it to be good. Shows like freaking bobs burgers, and kids shows like phineas and ferb have been heralded as amazing shows with great plots and yet the designs are simple, with a focus on other aspects like plot and characters (on another note, I think some voice actors are better than live action actors tbh).

But again, we dont respect this genre and this art the way that we should (at least in the west), and I think thats so sad. Yes there are people who respect it, but the overall consensus in mainstream American society (at least from what ive seen) is that animation is for kids, and nothing can ever be as good as something “real”, even though that marvel movie you just saw was once a comic, a drawing, an animation. But whatever.

[listoriented]

“B”een There

done that.

So here ends my time playing games that start with the letter B. Thanks for reading! It's been three years plus change. Back in early 2016 when I pondered how the world might look when I finished another letter, I never imagined, even from that unsteady ground, just quite how different things would become (in terms of global political-psychological landscape) - though really all the top-down drama happened that year, and everything since then has just felt like the normalisation and ratification of it, this splintered-systemic madness, the post-parody, post-fake fake-real. Or whatever you want to call it.

Nor did I imagine that it would take me so long. But, life. I went overseas, moved houses, moved cities, went through a breakup, started a PhD, rode a bike, read some books, faffed around. I anxiously played hundreds of hours of Rocket League; I ticked off every achievement in Mini Metro; I spent too long trying to remember what I was doing in Stardew Valley. I reviewed some games over at Gamecloud, which wrapped up earlier this year.  Time accumulated in a predictable but upsetting way.

Beloved demigod of gaming blogs RPS went through a full staff turnover, pretty much. It's weird, man. VR happened but remains a bit beyond my periphery, even if it gets brought up from time to time in the groupchat. Battle Royale games weren't a thing a few years ago, then they became everything, now they are still a big deal, the biggest deal, or maybe a large-medium deal, or just a large part of the background - I honestly don’t know how to quantify this. Steam's ubiquity has slipped markedly, through a mixture of managed negligence and increasingly aggressive competition. The inherent limitations of being bound to one commercial distribution system on one hardware platform have always been at the back of my mind, but I do increasingly wonder if my time would be better spent on a project that dug through other veins. The answer is, for now, that sometimes you've gotten keep doing the thing you said you were gonna do, if no other reason than because. 

Tumblr, our home since 2016, has gone through its own shifts and controversies in this time too. They no longer seem to allow unencoded links (so no-one ever knows what they’re clicking on), it became less friendly to adult content, and as of today apparently Tumblr has been sold on to wordpress. I don’t really know the implications of this last thing.

Some Maths

I played fifty one games beginning with B. Of the forty-eight that I'd deem to have some notional metric of completability, twenty-four of those I (often in the most flexible sense possible), "completed". 50%: Not as bad as I'd expected, TBH, especially as that includes a couple of painful six/seven game streaks where I didn't finish anything.

Ceremonious Award Giving for Games Starting with ‘B’

It is always hard to pick favourites, and from any given vantage point they tend to change. Nevertheless, an act of self-canonisation is in order, as is tradition. Given the nature of this project, I do put a lot of value in titles that surprise me in one way or another. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Bulletstorm were equal Best Goofy Action surprises (it pays having low expectations, sometimes), with an honourable mention to Brigador. The Banner Saga was the most surprisingly thought provoking. Davey Wreden’s autoficitive The Beginners Guide gets the Anodyne Prize for Most Enjoyably Difficult To Put In A Box. 

Botanicula was probably my Favourite (total) Revisit, or the best non-surprise. 

B was a letter characterised by a few high-budget action series (of which my favourite part was Bioshock 2 (Minerva's Den)), held up by substrate of modest indie things of varying impact. My attention span was all over the place, too. We had a lot of short forays with little to say, but there was there were also more than a few wordier attempts at thought. I'm bad at judging what makes "good" writing, particularly of my own, which I oscillate between accepting and loathing, but I can tell you which games/posts took the cake for length and effort: Baldur's Gate for longest playtime; Burnout: Paradise for highest word-count (and longest gestation period); Battleblock Theater for the most time-consuming method of putting a post together; The Beginners Guide for the most times played through a game in order to try and parse it; Braid for the most external reading and referencing.  

I think the most absurdly Expensive-at-purchase game here was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which also gets the newly thought of I Can’t Believe It Still Has Functioning Online Multiplayer prize. I'm handing the Most Disappointing badge to Broken Age, despite (or because of) already having played it a bunch before attempting it for the list, though Before the Echo (fka Sequence) takes the Aquanox Award for game I inexplicably sunk the most time on trying to finish despite not really enjoying. I hold the Most Contempt for Breach & Clear. Black Mirror had the Worst Voice Acting, and it was also the Oldest Game here (2003), at least in terms of no-significant-alterations though depending on how you want to factor in remasters and remakes, you might alternatively give that prize to Broken Sword (1996) or Bionic Commando Rearmed (1988). Blueberry Garden was Purchased Most Long Ago, in 2009, though the Aquaria Trophy for Longest Unplayed Incumbent goes to Bob Came in Pieces, which I'd bought in 2010 then never installed (it's pretty good, it turns out!). However, the special Emotional Closure Award goes to Baldur's Gate, with which I already had nearly two decades of fond, scattered memories, before finally finishing for the first time during this project.

More Maths

When I started this letter I had 438 games in my steam library. Right now I have 1049 games, which is almost exactly three times the amount I had when I started this blog in October 2015 (~350). I've played 70 games total. A further 57 entered the list behind the marker, into the exempt scorched land of the already visited alphabet, which means we're at 127/1049 = 12.11% of the way through the list, which is a +7% increase on where we were at three years ago. That's not nothing. But at 2.5% per year, it's not a lot. Globally, the average human lifespan is 68 years.

Terrifying Implications For the Future

The maths says that the current terms aren't working, that I'm drowning in a heady mixture of my own relentless consumerism, hesitation, and procrastination from this task which is itself an avenue of procrastination - that at this rate I will probably die (or certainly give up) before even getting to the halfway point, and that we can't continue like this in good faith. 

So I'm going to get a bit reckless, even change the rules slightly, in order to try and breathe new life into this thing. All games must still be played for at least an hour - yes, that one stands. But. BUT. I'm setting a hard time limit of one week, from one game to the next, post to post. For now at least. No more lofty words about striving to "finish" games as a rule rather than exception. It's quantity over quality (pretending for a second that quality was ever a concern) from here on out, business over pleasure, irreverence over lengthy considerations, scrapbooking over essays.

On the bright side, this means I can have a weekly posting schedule. Let's say Tuesdays? Tuesdays seem like a good day for posting.

A couple of other things: 

List Oriented now has a ko-fi tip jar, just in case you, dear reader, enjoy this blog - or did before it went completely silent for the first half of this year - and feel like helping to pay for my caffeine addiction and/or encouraging me to keep going with this task. 

Another thing I want to do is compile a list of links to good places for games-writing and other things that I like, because a) I feel like such a page would be helpful for me to keep a record, even if for nobody else; b) my conception of the internet is permanently stuck in 2008 but also; c) it's hard to remember where to look for good things on the internet, sometimes, these days, given our habitual over-reliance on various platforms to direct us to CONTENT. But one thing I want to include is a list of other places where people are doing this kind of list-oriented project thing. I remember a bunch of them sprung up a couple of years back when we gained a brief and relative flash of notoriety, though I’m not sure how many stuck at it. If you yourself are doing one, or you’re aware of any others who are, Let Me Know! 

Anyway, looking ahead. C. An obtuse but interesting letter. Not so many of the big-hitters. A buuuuunch of city builders and management games, a few influential and/or janky platformers, more than a handful of puzzlers, some famed RTS series, a heap of question marks, a coupla interesting art things and a few uh *squints* Shooting Game. Happily for me, a lot of titles that I've not yet gotten round to giving a go, so this will be all...fresh.

I have a vague memory from when I got through A, of looking ahead to C and thinking at least it was a much more compact section than B, at the time, some light on the other side of what I'd already known would be a slog. But here we are three years later, and now there's fifty seven such games beginning with C, so there goes that thought. You'd think, having identified the consumerist-excess problem that catalysed this stupid thing, I would have stopped buying game bundles at some point, made this ridiculous project a bit easier for myself, a little more plausible for everyone else. 

But, we must continue. It's a new day. A new letter. A new schedule.

The way is long and it is littered with videogames.

above: “celebrating” my “achievements” with a ‘b’eer

[onetruesporkbot]

One or the Other...Preferably the Non-Stupid One

A website I frequent, the Outhouse, has an article pertaining to Detective Comics #980, and the potential effect it (and to a degree, Flash War) has on the lives of Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. I’ve mentioned my problems with their reinventions before, but...well, I’m doing it again. Sue me. And yeah, this’ll be a long one, so maybe go for a walk around the block to stretch your legs first, make sure you got to the bathroom, and maybe grab a drink before reading on.

I've had my own ideas on how to fix the error of Cass and Steph’s altered histories. Mostly they involve retconning Harper Row into either non-existence or just not being an attention/glory leech on the Bat-Family’s butt-cheek, praised as a paragon of splendor. Even if someone can find evidence that editorial/executive mandates forced the spotlight on that character throughout the Eternal books, the interpretation/execution of that, vis-a-vie how she affected Stephanie's and Cass' lives, is on Tynion (and, granted, the other writers who were working off his ideas), and acts as a basis for his ‘Tec run. As is her lack of development, off-putting but still happily accepted bad attitude and generally not really doing much, but still being treated like royalty by her experienced betters. She’s a bad character, and none of the Bats or Birds, acting in their right mind, would tolerate her like they did. THAT is the core of the problem with those stories and these reinventions, and they aren't solved simply because Harper became the Mr. Wick to 'Tec's Drew Carey Show, and just isn't seen very often later on.

           Not the most fair comparison, because the depraved, abusive, lying,        cheating, over-privileged misery-mongering manager is by far more likable.

While heavy-handedly-hoisted Harper is a large part of the problem, there are others where these characters are concerned. Steph's reinvention started out well enough, but then Tynion decided to charter her a flight from "beginner" to "accomplished crime-fighter" in a mere few issues. Stephanie lost a big part of what I've seen draw her to readers (like a friend of mine): her tenacity. Instead of a girl that kept doing the hero thing after being frequently told by those around her, including Platinum-Status Crook-Scarer Batman, to quit, and publicly (off-line) actually spoiling her Dad’s schemes, training hard to better herself...she was remade into a girl running around with her mask down half the time, leaving vague hints online that are ignored or hacked away. It’s later discovered didn't really want to catch her Dad, regardless of what that meant for Gotham, a city she’s quick to abandon when the s#&t hits the fan. She could swing across the sky and fight off assassins despite little or no training (excelled in this regard only by...you know blue). So, she’s got a skill-level and bravery on par with vigilantes with years of experience...until she doesn’t.

Cassie's changes are the biggest offense to me. While Steph started somewhat strong and had any thunder thoroughly absorbed by Harper, Cass' entire EXISTENCE became tied to Row. Every movement, every action, every breath was about some unlikable wastrel with delusions of perfection. Remaking a pre-existing character's life all about a newer one’s is even worse when that newer one has all the originality of the comic Diesel (see Linkara's review for context). Their "friendship" had zero basis, other than one party's guilt and the other party needing constant attention and praise heaped upon her. It makes Cassie’s her entire motivation more about appeasing Harper, proving herself to Harper, even asking for death in Harper’s name...as opposed to realizing that, regardless of who the victim was, killing someone was wrong. I don't recall if they ever named the guy Cassie originally killed, but it was better that he didn't have some "important" connection to a character like a bad soap opera desperate for ratings. Now it’s felt more like “killing that person was wrong...because it was Harper’s Mom.” Just like the Wayne Murders, it's better and more poignant if it were left random. But again, the problems go beyond Harper. Having Cass speak so early changes her "neurologically atypical brain", or how, when you think about it, slaughtering children and piling them up (seriously, what the eff, Jimbo?) kind of defeats the whole revelation Cass has when she takes her first life. Even if she feels she has no family, Cass taking the name of a serial killer makes no sense...I would think the body count would outweigh “feeling alone” element to the name (really, Jimmy’s stretching for that one). Then there’s the fact that Tynion’s blithering idiot version of David Cain never loved his daughter, except as a passing reference in his kamikaze strike, which was mostly about Mother not appreciating him enough. And probably just an excuse to kill another characters father because some at DC has Daddy Issues. I mean, they cut Cluemaster’s throat, THEN cut Orphan-Cain’s throat...but he somehow survived...oy, now I’m remembering all the plot holes. So many plot holes. I mean, Cassie turning evil was incompetent, but not only did that give fixed in under two years, Adam Beechen excelled in other respects during Robin, and wasn’t prone to unbearable slog.

                                      This is the crap you’re making me miss, DC.

Harper Row was either the standard or the launching pad for Tynion’s versions of these characters, and much to their detriment. This vision OMAC-Tim gives Cass and Steph just proves what I've been saying, that these characters of Orphan and...Not-Quite-Spoiler...aren't "just the same" characters as before Flashpoint, despite some similarities. They haven't earned what they did beforehand, Tynion just tried rebuilding them from the ground-up, then a few issues later just wrote "it's this way now" to closer resemble their pre52 versions, with no build-up or effort put into it. Heck, after hearing 'Tec readers talk about how Steph has been acting insane, these last pages suggest that, perhaps, she was playing Achilles or whatever his name is, which...I could kind of see Batgirl-era Steph doing...not a bumbling idiot who let Gotham burn over her stinkin' parental disputes and took orders from an ego-maniacal brat.

Cassie and Steph can hug all they want when things get emotional, it doesn’t change that the versions under Tynion had one called the other subhuman, and then when they next saw each other, spontaneous group-hug-invite. That is nowhere NEAR the same as the two of them disliking each other, and their rivalry developing into a friendship.

“Remember when I said you weren’t a person only because you didn’t speak?                                     AHAHAHAHA! Good times, GOOD times...”

And really, I think fans of these characters are just so glad to have ANY version of them, they're more forgiving of Tynion's writing, whether it's error-heavy or just serviceable. They’ll excuse the problems to support the characters. Sure, Jimbo tosses in some emotional moments, hugging, crying, but given his previous work and history with them, I question if it had any real structure to it. He didn’t hesitate to have Tim bone Steph, even though that’s not something pre52 Tim would do, so why should I believe he put any effort into the Clayface/Cassie friendship, or...any character/Cassie friendship? But even if he did...how does it justify what he changed or how he changed it? I’d say it doesn’t; his mistakes aren’t better just because he and/or DC refuse to acknowledge them (hence the absence of Harper). NOTHING justifies these problems.

So, moving forward from Steph and Cass learning they had alternate, better-written lives...we don’t know how that’ll go. ‘Tec 981 could see them decide they (for some unholy reason) prefer to have started out as side-characters in their own origins if it props Harper up further, never having actually ever been the same as before (but “different” and “change”, so that makes it better somehow). Or, in a rare show of intelligence, this will lead to them ACTUALLY getting their lives back, no reinvention, no dead Dads either influencing their sociopathic negligence or wanting them dead, no stupid changes mandated by a bunch of witless baboons in charge...none of it. Because none it was good, none of it improved or equaled what was done before, and none of it is justified by long slogs in between distracting heart-string-tugs. Tynion’s changes, including but certainly not limited to the spotlighting of Bluebird, brought nothing new or good to the table, regardless of circumstances, and I fail to see why they or their effects should continue.

The characters CANNOT have both histories; they just don’t work together. Steph’s beginnings cannot be both humble AND tied to yet-another city-wide massacre. Cassie’s life cannot be about her AND someone that has no right, rhyme or reason to be associated with her. David Cain cannot be a trained assassin at odds with a daughter he genuinely cares for AND...whatever the Hell Tynion thought he was writing Orphan to be. None of this deserves passive dismissal, not after all the years of crap DC has flung our way. They’re mistakes don’t deserve the validation of continuance for these characters or their world.

We’ll see.

[lushscreamqueen]

Bloodlust 1961 on the Schlocky Horror Picture Show

OPENING: Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. My name is Nigel Honeybone… You know, sometimes, when you're on a boat, fishing and frolicking with your best friend and your best gal, and your best friends best gal, and your best friends drunken sea captain's best bottle of whisky, the idea of jumping ship to explore that strangely deserted island that no-one has ever heard of and isn't on the charts just seems to darn good an idea to let pass. And if anyone ever did think about the logical reasons why NOT to go, then we would of course be 70 minutes short of time. Let's think for a second about what Ralph Blake, Writer, Director, Producer, might have done better with this 70 minutes!!! (stare at screen for a few seconds) Are you still here? Oh well it was worth a try. Please sit back, Grab something cold one and enjoy- "BLOODLUST"

BREAK: Do you dare sit and watch with the lights off as soon horrible grating voices will soon regale and revile you with….a word from our Sponsors. We'll be right back, so stay tuned to the "Schlocky Horror Picture Show" and "BLOODLUST"

Middle: Hi and welcome back to the "Schlocky Horror Picture Show" we me your Host Nigel Honeybunch….sorry Honeybone. That's it, I'm firing the autocue! As you can probably tell by now, tell Bloodlust borrows heavily from the plot of Richard Connell's often-imitated 1924 classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game" and its 1932 film adaptation of the same name where its main character is a big-game hunter from New York, who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean is hunted by a Russian aristocrat etc etc yadda yadda yadda. Bloodlust is a 1961 teen-sploitation riff-off *cough cough* tribute, and is still to this day a Drive –in Schlock classic.

This version of the story stars reclusive island psycho Dr Albert Balleau played by Wilton Graff of "Valley of the Zombies"," Who killed Doc Robbin"," Million Dollar Mermaid" and "My Friend Flika" fame. Although for much of his working career he goes by the name "Uncredited" Including the one he produced himself called "The Screen Writer in 1950"..*sigh*, I know the feeling too well. How many times have I, Nigel Honeybone, been used in films, INCLUDING this one, and never credited. See if you can recognise me on the Tree of Death, it's next to the shrubs of mediocrity, but I digress. This movie pits Dr Balleau against teenagers Robert Reed who shows us what happened to the first Mrs Brady and June Kennedy of "Teenage Dolls", "Attack of the Puppet People" and "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent" fame AGAIN! Along with Gene Persson and Joan Lora in a simple let-them-loose & hunt-them-down plot. Troy Patterson comes straight from his big break in "Earth Vs the Spiders" via "Attack of the Puppet People" and proves as an actor he really knows how get drunk and pass out. Obviously a method actor. The rest of the cast is fleshed out with, among others, Bobby Hall a henchman, Who went onto Batman to play…a Henchman, a funny lunatic in the forest played by Bill Coontz aka William B Foster aka that guy from the "The Son of the Blob "and the Doctors fearful wife played by Lilyan Chauvin who went on to do legitimate acting on "The Man from Uncle","McCloud"," The Man from Atlantis"," Magnum PI" and later on "Different Strokes"," Facts of Life", "Hart to Hart","X-files","Star Trek DS9", "CSI", & most recently "Ugly Betty". Walter Brooke has 192 television and movies under his corduroys so if he doesn't seem familiar, then you obviously have a social life... This is stupid stuff sure, but it's blessedly only a little more than an hour in length, & campy enough to be lots of fun for one of those nights when one wants intentionally to watch a bad movie.

CLOSING: There is no denying it, Bloodlust is a brilliant film! Nope, just seeing if you were still awake. I know I am. Bloodlust is one of the worst offenders in the teen-sploitation Horror Movies of the 60's genre. It may be one of the worst things to have been made 60's, If you don't count Elvis movies and Pamela Anderson's decision to go into acting. In the post-"Bloodlust!" era we have had "Woman Hunt" in 1975, "Turkey Shoot" in 1982 "Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity" and "The Running Man" in 1987, "Deadly Prey" in 1988, and "Lethal Woman" in 1990, and more recently "Farmer Wants' a Wife" where the story took a decided turn away from the violence and just concentrated on Hunting for sex. Suddenly, "Bloodlust!" looks pretty good in comparison, especially if you are into campy remakes. That Brady Bunch trip to Hawaii could have been a whole lot more fun than it actually was. And Gilligan's Island might have actually rated! Anyway, please join me next week when I will take you even closer to the black hole that is fear-a-thon to the dark side of the Public Domain on...The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

by Lushscreamqueen Nov 9, 2008

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND February 8, 2018  - THE LEGO MOVIE 2, WHAT MEN WANT, COLD PURSUIT, THE PRODIGY

Well, folks, this week I’m travelling down to Oxford, Mississippi for the 16th Annual Oxford Film Festival (and my third time there as a juror), so that’s really what I’m most excited about this week, although there are a whopping four movies released Friday then another three wide releases next week, so I’ll be looking forward to when things slow down again.

You’ll also notice a pretty major change in this week’s column, and that’s because I’m happy to report that I’ll now be previewing and reporting box office for my good friend Heidi McDonald over at The Beat (Comicsbeat.com), so you’ll be able to read my box office stuff there but still get some insight into the new movies coming out here, especially if you’re interested in the lower-profile limited releases, streaming and repertory stuff.  But I’ll still write about the wide releases, and this is most likely where I’ll be reviewing many of them still, since I haven’t been asked to write reviews for The Beat just yet.

Either way, as long as I still have time to write a modified version of this column focusing on the limited releases, I will do so, including a link to my column over at the Beat every week, so you won’t miss out on what I know some people read the column for, which is my box office analysis. If for some reason, you don’t care about anything besides the studio releases, please let me know, since it’s a lot of writing if nobody is writing. THIS WEEK’S BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS AT THE BEAT

THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warner Bros.)

Directed by Mike Mitchell (Trolls) Written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (with story by Matt Fogel) Voice Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Maya Rudolph, Will Ferrell MPAA Rating: PG

This is one of the easier movies this weekend to talk about, since it’s the year’s second sequel after M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, and it’s not exactly reinventing the LEGO wheel, as it follows shortly after the events of 2014’s The LEGO Movie, which became another hit for Phil Lord and Chris Miller after having hits at Sony with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (plus its sequel) and 21 Jump Street.

In the five years since that hit, the Warner Animation Group released The LEGO Batman Movie, which also did fairly well, but Lord and Miller are coming off their recent animated hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which seems to be heading towards an Oscar in the Animated Feature category at the end of the month.

Reviews for the movie have been great, just like the original movie, but as seems to be the case with me a lot lately, I’m the outlier as I really didn’t care for the sequel at all for reasons you can read in my review linked below.

MY LEGO MOVIE 2 REVIEW

WHAT MEN WANT (Paramount)

Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray, Bringing Down the House, Rock of Ages, The Pacifier) Written by Tina Gordon, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Wendy McLendon-Covey, Erykah Badu, Max Greenfield, Peter Davidson, Kellan Lutz, Shaquille O’Neal MPAA Rating: R

Offering the first bit of counter-programming is the latest movie from mega-producer Will Packer, who has had hits with Girls Trip, Think Like a Man, Ride Along and many more (including sequels to two of those). This one is a reenvisioning of the 2000 Nancy Meyers comedy What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, which scored an astounding $182.8 million over the holidays that year.

This remake switches genders as well as races as Taraji P. Henson plays a woman who can suddenly hear what men think… and I feel very badly for her to be subjected to that, although it’s bound to lead to a lot of funny moments, some of which you can see in the trailer.  Helming the movie is Adam Shankman, who has had great success in the comedy realm with movies like Bringing Down the House, which paired Steve Martin with Queen Latifah, and mixed results with musicals. (I actually didn’t like Hairspray very much, compared to the John Waters film, and was also kind of disappointed with Rock of Ages, having seen the musical on Broadway.)

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to see What Men Want in time to review – and most reviews probably won’t show up until Thursday either -- but I do hope to see it down the road sometime, as I’m definitely a fan of most of the cast and the cast.

COLD PURSUIT (Lionsgate/Summit)

Directed by Hans Peter Molland (In Order of Disappearance) Written by Frank Baldwin, Kim Fupz Aakeson Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Emmy Rossum MPAA Rating: R

Also hoping to appeal to older guys who might not be interested in the above two movies, this is the second remake of the weekend and fourth for the year as Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Molland transports his 2016 film In Order of Disappearance to Colorado with Liam Neeson as a father getting revenge for the murder of his son. The original movie was quite innovative but didn’t get much attention when it was released by Magnolia a few years back, but one presumes Neeson’s fanbase, who have supported him in similar high concept action-thrillers, will give this one a look as well. I’m not even sure I want or need to mention the trouble Neeson faced recently with a few controversial statements, but I have a feeling those who might be interested in a straight-up revenge movie like this won’t be upset by Neeson’s confession.

Shockingly, reviews for this have also been great, right up there with The LEGO Movie 2, and of course, I hated it! Incidentally, I interviewed Molland for In Order of Disappearance along with original star Stellan Skarsgard, which you can read here.

Mini-Review: Normally, I am not one to trash a remake merely for being a remake, although so far this year, none of the English remakes I’ve seen have stood up to the original foreign language films on which they were based.

I was kind of wondering why Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Molland would make the same movie over again with different actors, but maybe he had some ideas of how to reimagine it to rural snow-covered Colorado with Liam Neeson as snowplow driver Nels Coxman. Nels has just learned that his son has died of an overdose, so he goes after the men he thinks is responsible.

There’s quite a few changes from the original movie but few of them are any good, especially the number of unnecessary characters added like a couple local police officers, one played by Emmy Rossum, who just make this seem more like a straight-up Fargo rip-off than the original movie did.

There are plent of other problems with Molland’s attempt to reenvision the original story, including how erratic it is in its storytelling. For one thing, Nels immediately goes after his son’s killers, brutally killing three men after getting information from them, then dumping their bodies in a roaring river. Obviously, Liam Neeson seems more than capable of handling his revenge, so one wonders why he would bother to waste money hiring a hitman to go after Tom Bateman’s Viking, the head druglord in the region who may have ordered his son murdered.

It’s sad that Americans might watch this movie and think anything positive about Tom Bateman’s awful performance, but it’s even sadder when you realize how extraordinary Pal Hagen was in the original role of “The Count” – Bateman just doesn’t have a handle on the character at all.

Worst of all is how the film is fairly misogynistic with Laura Dern (barely in the movie as Nels’ wife) and Rossum being two of the only women in the film not depicted as hateful shrews but really not given very interesting roles to play.

Cold Pursuit never seems as clever or innovative as the original movie, and many of the jokes just fall flat compared to the original where the Scandinavian quirkiness added so much to the film’s dark humor. Cold Pursuit just doesn’t offer anything particularly interesting beyond the typical Hollywood revenge flick with the film’s better action setpieces being taken almost verbatim from the original movie. Rating: 4.5/10

THE PRODIGY (Orion)

Directed by Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) Written by Jeff Buhler Cast: Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore, Brittany Allen MPAA Rating: R

But wait, there’s more! And it’s this high concept horror film that exists within my favorite sub-genre of horror: evil kids! This one stars Orange is the New Black star Taylor Schilling, whose son (played by Jackson Robert Scott) is the prodigy of the title, but he also might be an evil killer.  I also won’t have a chance to see this movie before heading down to Mississippi on Wednesday, so not sure I have much more to add, although I did like the trailer when I finally had a chance to see it.

Furthermore, STX and Alibaba released the Chinese animated PEPPA CELEBRATES CHINESE NEW YEAR, based on the British sensation seen on Nick Jr., into 65 theaters across the country Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and I hear that many showings sold out!

FESTIVALS

Sadly, not many of my readers will be able to join me down in Oxford, Mississippi where I will be one of the jurors for the 16thOxford Film Festival, but I might try to write something about my experiences, as I have in previous years, because it’s often one of my favorite annual experiences involving movies.

Besides the Oxford Film Festival, the annual Berlinale runs from Feb. 7 through Feb. 17 AND Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects runs from Feb. 6 through 10… but like I said, I’ll be at Oxford, so that’s what I’ll be covering. Got it?

LIMITED RELEASES

This weekend begins the annual OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS (separated into four programs with the short docs split into Part A and B), playing at the IFC Center in New York and at the Landmark Nuart in L.A. If you want to do well in your office Oscar pool at the end of this month, you’ll make an effort to see all fifteen of the nominated short films, as that often is the make or break for most predictions. I know that I will try to watch and write something about them (although most of my shorts-focus right now is on the ones I’m judging for Oxford, to be honest).

Two-time Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi returns with the Spanish language film EVERYBODY KNOWS (Focus Features), starring Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Argentine actor Ricardo Darin (from The Secret in Their Eyes), which involves Cruz playing a woman named Laura, who returns to her childhood home for her sister’s wedding only for her teen daughter to get kidnapped by people who think her husband (Darin) has lots of money.  To find her daughter, Laura calls on her former lover (played by Bardem) and secrets start being exposed about their relationship. I liked this film quite a bit, as it employs much of what has made Farhadi’s Iranian films so special – he’s a fantastic writer who really pulls many emotions out of his actors while slowly building a story into a third act full of interesting developments. Everybody Knows opens in select cities Friday, and likely will expand over the next couple weeks.

The Audience Award winner from last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Shawn Snyder’s TO DUST (Good Deeds Entertainment), stars Geza Röhrig (Son of Saul) as Hasidic cantor Shmuel, who recently lost his wife and tries to find solace by looking into how her body would decay. In order to learn this, he partners with Albert, a community college bio professor played by Matthew Broderick, to perform experiments about body decomposition.

Just a couple weeks after Netflix streamed his movie Polar, Jonas Akerlund’s previous film LORDS OF CHAOS (Gunpowder and Sky/Vice Films), which premiered at Sundance last year, will open in select cities and On Demand. It follows Norwegian black metal band Mayhem whose new singer (played by Jack Kilmer) goes by the name “Dead” … and then he actually kills himself. Fun! The very dark comedy stars Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen (Brooklyn), Sky Ferreira, and it’s pretty entertaining in the vein of the doc Anvil: The Story of Anvil. I’ve seen a lot of hilarious movies about the music biz with This is Spinal Tap and Tapeheads being two of my favorites, and I have a feeling this has the potential to become another cult classic that will be found on almost every band’s tour bus for years to come. In other words, significantly better than Polar.

The next film in the series of anthology films based on major cities around the world is BERLIN, I LOVE YOU (Saban Films), a series of ten fairly humorous and romantic shorts set in Berlin starring Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Luke Wilson, Mickey Rourke, Diego Luna, Jim Sturgess and many more.  The directors involved in this one are a mixed bag including German filmmakers like Til Schweiger and Mexico’s Fernando Eibecke (Duck Season) and even Glee star Dianna Agron making her directorial debut.  It opens in theaters as well as on VOD and digital HD, similar to most Saban Films movies.

From Berlin, we move to Paris as Veep star Matt Walsh stars in Archie Borders’ Under the Eiffel Tower (The Orchard), playing Stuart, a man dealing with a mid-life crisis after losing his job, so he tags along with his friends’ family on a vacation to Paris. After embarrassing himself, he heads off to the French countryside with “ladies’ man” Liam (Reid Scott, also from Veep) and cross paths with a vineyard owner, played by Judith Godrèche from The Overnight.

Following its world premiere at last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, Robert D. Krzykowski’s directorial debut The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Big Foot (RLJE Films/Epic), starring Sam Elliot, will open in select theaters and on VOD/Digital HD Friday. In the comedy, Elliot plays Calvin Barr, a man who… well, read the title. It’s fairly descriptive. Calvin did indeed kill Adolf Hitler and now the government has called on him to kill Bigfoot before the legendary creature spreads a deadly plague to the populace. In other words, Elliot can expect another Oscar nomination this year. (it also stars Ron Livingston, Aidan Turner and Caitlin Fitzgerald.)

A long-running horror franchise returns with The Amityville Murders (Skyline Entertainment), written and directed by Daniel Farrands, who previous directed a History Channel documentary about the 1974 murders when Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his entire family as they slept, saying that “voices” commanded him to commit murder. This dramatization stars John Robinson, Chelsea Ricketts, Diane Franklin (who appeared in Amityville II: The Possession!) and Paul Ben-Victor from various Netflix shows.

Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s doc The Gospel of Eureka (Kino Lorber), narrated by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, looks at the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas in the Ozarks where pious Christians mingle with the queer community in a local gay bar, breaking down the divide we’re currently seeing in the country.

“NFL player turned actor” Thomas Q. Jones (Luke Cage) stars in Matthew Berkowitz’s A Violent Man (GVN Releasing), playing an unknown MMA fighter who beats the undefeated champ (played by actual MMA champ Chuck Lidell) at a local gym and gets a shot at a fight for the title until a female reporter covering the story is found dead with him as the main suspect.

Lastly, Emma Forrest wrote and made her directorial debut on Untogether (Freestyle) stars Jamie Dornan as a writer who has an affair with his teen prodigy (Jemima Kirke from Girls), while her real-life sister Lola Kirke (Mistress America) plays her younger sister, who has an affair with an older man (Ben Mendelsohn). 

STREAMING

One week after Dan Gilroy made his Netflix debut, Steven Soderbergh continues his run of low-budget indie films with HIGH FLYING BIRD, starring André Holland from Moonlight as sports agent Roy Burke, who is caught in a dispute between the pro basketball league with the players. It’s also written by Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote Moonlight.

Also, the Netflix series One Day at a Time returns for its third season, while Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj also returns this Sunday.

REPERTORY

Before we get to the repertory regulars, I just want to share that BBQ Films, a fantastic group of film fanatics who create unique cinema events around films like Beetlejuice and Blade are kicking off their new program  GREEN SCREEN this Sunday, Feb. 10, with a screening of  David Chappelle’s 1998 movie Half Baked at the Chelsea Music Hall on West 15th, which will include pre-show entertainment, stand-up comedy and more.  I won’t go into details about the all-encompassing theme of Green Screen, but you can probably figure it out by clicking on the link. Next show is March 3 with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which actually celebrates its 30thanniversary on February 17.

METROGRAPH (NYC):

I haven’t been to my favorite local theater in a while but hopefully that will change soon.

This weekend’s Late Nites at Metrograph offering is Luis Bunuel’s 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, while Playtime: Family Matinees  screens Tom Moore’s 2014 Oscar-nominated animated film Song of the Sea.

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Tarantino’s theater will show the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn film Woman of the Year  (1942) on Wednesday, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II  (1974)will screen from Weds. through Sat. with The Black Godfather (also 1974) screening at midnight on the same nights. The weekend matinee is the 1968 Carol Reed musical Oliver!   Sunday and Monday, the theater screens double features of Paul Wendko’s Battle of the Coral Sea (1959) with Angel Baby  (1961), as well as screening Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle Monday afternoon. Tuesday’s “Grindhouse” double feature is Shark!  (1969) and Shamus (1973), both starring the late great Burt Reynolds!Oh, and Tarantino’s own Oscar-nominated film Pulp Fiction (1994) will screen on Friday at midnight.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Far Out in the 70s: A New Wave of Comedy, 1969 - 1979  celebrates one more full weekend with Albert Brooks’ Real Life (1979) on Thursday, as well as a double feature of Smile (1979) and Stay Hungry (1976), starring Jeff Bridges, Sallly Field and one Arnold Schwarzenegger. Friday is a double feature of The Late Show (1977) and Harry and Tonto  (1974), then Saturday sees a single screening of Peter Yates’ 1972 film The Hot Rock, plus a double feature of Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H with Brewster McCloud, both from 1970. Sunday’s amazing line-up is Burt Reynolds’ Smokey and the Bandit, Bread and Chocolate (1974), Hal Ashby’sThe Landlord (1970) and Shampoo (1975)… sadly the latter two aren’t a double feature. Monday is a double feature of Mike Nichols’ The Fortune (1975) and Jack Nicholson’s Going South (1978), and then the rest of the week is mainly repeats.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Luchino Visconti: Cinematic Nobility kicks off on Thursday with Burt Lancaster in The Leopard  (1963)  and Ludwig (1973) on Sunday.  (There’s a Happy Death Day double feature with Happy Death Day 2 U on Saturday night but that’s not quite “repertory” even if it sounds cool.)

AERO  (LA):

The one and only Norman Jewison will be appearing in person for A Tribute to Norman Jewison with a number of double features through the weekend. On Friday night, there’s a double feature of Moonstruck  (1987) and …And Justice for All (1979), followed by The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! (1966) with Jewison joined by Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint, plus a separate screening of 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof and then on Sunday, there’s a double feature of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Cincinatti Kid  (1965).

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Actor Jeff Goldblum is getting the retrospective treatment with The Goldblum Variations featuring a wide variety of the actor’s work running through Feb. 23. Some of the highlights this weekend include The Big Chill  (1983), David Cronenberg’s The Fly  (1986), Invasion of the Body Snatchers  (1978) and Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou  (2004).

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Beginning Wednesday, the Brooklyn Arts Museum (or at least that’s what I think BAM stands for) begins a series called Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs looking at the work of the filmmaker who brought a voice to gay black men, which includes a 30thanniversary screening of Tongues United, as well as his documentaries Ethnic Notions  (1986) and Color Adustment (1992) as well as more, including a screening of  Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning Moonlight, which was inspired by Riggs’ work.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Early Godard  takes the weekend off, but Waverly Midnights: The Feds  shows one of my favorite Ridley Scott films, Hannibal, starring Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore.  Late Night Favorites screens Tom Hanks’ popular favorite Big (1988), directed by the late Penny Marshall.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet  (1986).

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):

Most of the Film Society’s repertory screenings this weekend are part of Film Comment Selects, including a rare screening of Jerry Schatzberg’s Honeysuckle Rose (1980) with Schatzberg in person for a QnA.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Sir Sidney Poitier screens 1962’s Pressure Point on Weds, the 1966 Western Duel at Diablo on Thursday and Paris Blues (1961) on Friday. Cinema of Trauma: The Films of Lee Chang-dong also continues through Saturday with 1999’s Peppermint Candy on Friday afternoon and Lee’s latest Burningon Saturday night.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

MOMI begins its latest retrospective series Poets of Pandaemonium: The Cinema of Derek Jarman and Humphrey Jennings  with Jarman’s 1993 film Blue (paired with the short Listen to Britain) on Friday, 1985’s Angelic Conversation andThe Last of England  (1987) on Saturday and In the Shadow of the Sun  (1981) with The Birth of the Robot on Sunday. It runs this weekend and next. Also, See It Big! Costumes by Edith Head (which started last week) continues this weekend with Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) on Saturday and To Each His Own  (1946), The Heiress  (1949) and Roman Holiday  (1953) on Sunday.

That’s it for this week, but time-permitting, I’ll write something about the new movies coming out next week, which includes the sequel Happy Death Day 2 U, the Manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angeland the rom-com Isn’t It Romantic?

[elizas-writing]

Netflix’s Death Note: A Trailer Analysis

So Netflix released a trailer for their Americanized (aka whitewashed) movie based on the beloved Japanese manga/anime series Death Note and, what a shock, everyone and their mother hates it. I’ll be honest, I knew about the casting months before, and it’s still pretty shitty, but given what happened with Ghost in the Shell, should we be surprised at this point? And that one’s getting a theatrical release. But the problems with this Death Note adaptation go beyond just whitewashing two characters; that’s just scratching the surface of the confusing mess and even more problematic implications we might expect from this movie. Also it should go without saying that I will be going into spoilers of the original series, so if you’re one of the five people unfamiliar with Death Note until now, you have been warned.

DISCLAIMER FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS I’M BEING TOO HARSH ON A ONE MINUTE TRAILER

Okay, I know there are gonna be a few people going “Just give it a chance! Maybe there will be something good! It’s unfair to judge before it’s even released!” And with all due respect, that kind of mentality completely disregards the entire point of marketing. Trailers are supposed to draw in an audience and give them a reason why they should spend their time and money to see a movie, TV show or any piece of media ever to exist. How many of you saw the trailer for The Force Awakens and almost shit your pants out of nostalgia when Han Solo came on screen and said “Chewie, we’re home”? How many of you got chills listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda sing for Moana? How many of you got pumped to see Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman together on the big screen? That is the power of trailers when done successfully, even if the movie itself doesn’t turn out well; if film makers want to make money, they need to show that their product is worth something.

If all you have to show is shit, then people will think it’s shit. This is increased exponentially when doing an adaptation of a pre-existing work because there’s already an audience with their own visions on what everything is supposed to look like down to the smallest of details. Most everyone I’ve seen who’s into Death Note now has low expectations for this movie. It’s fine to give the benefit of the doubt and hope some good will come out of it, hell, I always want to hope I’m wrong in some cases. But there is a fine line between (sorry live-action Beauty and the Beast, I just have to) going “Okay, maybe this will be a good Disney remake and they’ll do something new” and “Oh my fucking God, Emma Watson can’t sing. Please fire someone.”

So yeah, I’m still judging the trailer. I’m a Taurus, I’m stubborn, and I got some grievances.

From the get-go, the most glaring issue we can tell is that it is not going to follow remotely close to the original story at all. When is Light running from the police in his early days as Kira? And what even is up with the Ferris wheel bullshit? At that point, they might as well have created original characters; it would have saved themselves a lot of criticism of whitewashing and turning Light and Misa into absolute edgelords even when it’s so out of character, and topping it all off by giving them 4Kids dub names as a way to rub the salt in the whitewashed wound. At least Ghost in the Shell had some decency left to leave Motoko’s name alone. But thanks for getting rid of Light’s literal juxtaposing name of light and darkness to emphasize the moral ambiguity of his actions.

It’s only made worse when in fact an Asian American actor, Edward Zo, did audition for Light and was rejected for “being too Asian.” TOO ASIAN FOR LIGHT YAGAMI, A JAPANESE CHARACTER. What the fuck does that mean “too Asian??” So these filmmakers went out of their way to NOT cast any Asian American actors since apparently people still think American equates to whiteness (spoiler, no it doesn’t) and instead get that kid from the Naked Brother’s Band and some obscure HBO actress.

Not only are Light and Misa unrecognizable because of the whitewashing, they don’t even match on the same damn personalities. Yes, Light becomes a sociopath, but he doesn’t start off as some misunderstood loner or whatever vibe I’m getting from Natt Wolf (by the way, wash your damn hair, it looks greasy). Light was actually a very popular student with good grades, good manners and could easily get dates with any girl he wanted. And he’s very clever to hide his true intentions and manipulate. He’s your average, unsuspecting young adult which works well for the series to show how no one is above this kind of descent into madness. This white kid looks like fucking Dylann Roof, it’s so unsettling and ruins any subtlety to Light’s character. Even this whitewashed Mi(s)a suffered the edgelord syndrome with the image of her against grey colors smoking a cigarette. “Look at me, I’m so fucking dark and edgy.” You’re not making Heathers, give me back the hyperactive idol.

But what about Keith Sutherland, a black actor, as L? On one hand, I’m not too bothered with this change since L is canonically only a fourth Japanese so casting him as a black person isn’t too much of a stretch even though it takes away the iconic image. But at the same time, it lends itself to a lot of problematic territory when setting up a black character as the antagonist to the white character. L is killed in the original series, he loses, and his fight is picked up by his successors. So now we’ll potentially have a case of a white male serial killer with a god complex killing a black man who we’ve only seen so far in shadow and in a hood. Because that is not familiar to cases of racially motivated crimes of black people being killed because they looked “suspicious.” Classy, real motherfucking classy. I can only hope that they change up L’s fate like the Japanese live-action movies did, but this is already looking like a slippery slope to racist tropes as old as time.

And what the series chose to Americanize and to leave alone is just a set up for confusion as they left some of the original Japanese elements. For starters, the hell is Ryuk still doing here? Yeah, I want to see Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, it fits perfectly, but what is a JAPANESE god of death doing in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Like how will you explain yourself out of this one, because I doubt your typical white American teenager will be familiar with Japanese spiritual beliefs. There’s also some graffiti briefly seen that says “Justice of Kira,” but in the original series, Kira comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “killer.” So where do these Americans get Kira from? Explain, movie! Explain!

The themes will also not carry over well in this adaptation because of the differences in justice systems between America and Japan (this one I borrowed from @tadasgay‘s critiques, and it really puts into perspective the problems of Americanizing a Japanese story; giving credit where credit is due). A major driving force of Light’s motivations in the original series are because of criminal cases that don’t even make it to court. Therefore, criminals who are obviously guilty get away with their crimes despite the evidence against them. With the Death Note, Light acts as the prosecutor to "properly” deliver justice because of the facts he can obtain from police records. We don’t know if they will follow through with this, or if this Light will just kill whoever because they are bad. To top it all off, the American crime narratives tend to be biased on race, especially given the disproportionate amount of people of color in the for-profit prison systems. Japan doesn’t have that because it’s a mostly racially and culturally homogeneous country. Just a reminder that our protagonist is now a WHITE guy with a god complex and a black man as his antagonist. This is a slippery slope to twist the original narrative into something horrible and potentially racist. I’m sure I’m not alone when I hope I’m wrong on those aspects, but the fact is that we don’t know, and we won’t know for certain for another few months. These thoughts will be lingering over our heads until then.

At this point, we can only hope that the filmmakers will come out and explain themselves, and more trailers can be released to see more of the story and characters. At best, it will probably just be mediocre, but at worst, it could probably be another shitty American adaptation of an already great Japanese manga/anime. We won’t know for a while, but for now, we still have the original and I think we can all agree nothing will ever top it.

[jehanimation]

The Jehanimation Awards: separating the best of 2016′s animated movies from the rest

Between all the political turmoil, the near-relentless stream of high-profile deaths and the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it has been widely accepted that 2016 was A Bad Year. As a member of the human race, last year probably was a bit of a disappointment in most respects; look at it as an animation enthusiast, though, and the picture starts to look quite a bit rosier.

In fact, I’m going to go a step farther than that and call 2016 one of the best years for feature animation in recent memory - which is saying a lot given how much the bar has been raised since the 1990s. Since the advent of CGI tore up the rulebook and made it easier for newer studios to compete with Disney on an equal footing, it’s felt like we’ve been constantly on the cusp of a new, more diverse landscape for mainstream animation, allowing a wider range of studios and directors to present wildly different visions in a competitive marketplace, rather than a single company monotonously ruling the roost. Obviously, the conservative and formula-driven nature of the business has meant that potential hasn’t always been realised, but in 2016 we got a glimpse of how that theoretical vision would play out in reality - and it was a pretty exciting thing to behold. I can’t think of many previous years in which so many companies - from the US and elsewhere - were able to produce such a broad spread of high-quality movies for different audiences, resulting in a glut of animated movies occupying the top spots in not only the worldwide box office rankings, but also in lists of the best-reviewed films of the year.

Faced with such an embarrassment of riches, it feels difficult and somewhat reductive to pit them against each other and pick out a small handful as being the best - but that’s just what we do around this time of year anyway, so who am I to argue? Still, my intention here is not to add to the somewhat adversarial sentiments that awards season can sometimes generate; this is simply my personal evaluation of all the new animated movies I got to see in 2016, with my favourites highlighted. Your own mileage will, of course, vary, because such variety is the spice of life; with that said, I’m pretty sure this list is 100% objectively correct, so I’ve no idea why you’d disagree.

Immense thanks go to the wonderful Jamie Carr for the header image and icon for this blog! Go follow her on Twitter at @neurodolphin!

THE NOTABLE OMISSIONS

Before I get into evaluating the best of 2016’s crop, I should probably acknowledge that, contrary to assumption, I am not omniscient, and was therefore unable to see every animated movie that came out last year. There are upsides to this, as it means I missed out on having to watch bargain-bin garbage like Norm of the North or Robinson Crusoe (aka The Wild Life), and was able to judiciously pass on higher-profile but poorly-reviewed efforts like Blue Sky’s Ice Age: Collision Course and Rainmaker Entertainment’s Ratchet & Clank; unfortunately, it also meant not getting to see most of the less widely-screened animated movies from overseas, which is a great shame. I haven’t, for example, been able to see The Red Turtle or My Life as a Zucchini - two of the five nominations for this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar - nor did I catch the well-reviewed French-Canadian production Ballerina (known in the US as Leap!). I also freely confess to being underexposed to anime, meaning I didn’t see anything from Japan this year - with one important exception, which I’ll come to later. I’ll certainly hope to correct some of these oversights at a later date.

THE ALSO-RANS

The following movies are the films that - for one reason or another - didn’t quite connect with me this year. Some are better than others, but to some degree or another I wouldn’t say they succeeded at what they set out to do.

The Angry Birds Movie

This was probably the weakest animated film I saw last year, which - given its essentially functional mediocrity - reflects pretty well on 2016’s lineup as a whole, even though it doesn’t retroactively make The Angry Birds Movie any more impressive.

I’ve already written a complete review of this film, so I don’t want to waste too much additional time on this one, but looking back I do find it striking just how middling this film was, especially when viewed in the context of everything else that came out after it. It remains deeply frustrating that The Angry Birds Movie actually did a lot of the groundwork necessary to produce a better-than-expected adaptation of a plotless physics-based puzzle game - devising a striking look, hiring great actors and laying the foundation for a potentially interesting thematic discussion on the role of anger in a healthy society - before totally squandering that potential on a script that favours lightweight, rambling and puerile comedy over any opportunity to advance the characters or emotional stakes. It’s a film that lazily follows a bog-standard Shrek-lite formula of cheap pop culture gags, toilet humour and sitcom punchlines, seemingly without realising that said playbook is now several years out of date - which, I suppose, is somewhat fitting for a belated spinoff to a mobile app whose popularity peaked about five years ago.

As I say, there are aspects of The Angry Birds Movie that are slightly better than they needed to be - and I’m willing to accept that it’s not easy to reverse-engineer a script that culminates in birds launching themselves into a pig’s castle via catapult - but I feel less charitable towards it in hindsight having since seen DreamWorks’ Trolls, another brand-derived movie that applied infinitely more honest craft and creativity to its subject matter, and achieved exponentially superior results as a consequence. The fact that Angry Birds was able to utilise its stronger brand recognition and well-timed release window to ultimately outgross Trolls on a worldwide basis just emphasises the point that this isn’t a film in need of my charity, or one worth holding up for any reason other than as an example of the kind of lazy work the rest of the industry has long moved beyond.

The Secret Life of Pets

2016 was a banner year for Illumination Entertainment, as the studio not only made the jump to releasing two films within 12 months for the first time ever, but was also able to turn both into bona fide global smash hits without any reliance on their flagship Despicable Me/Minions franchise. The Secret Life of Pets was the more conventional of the two outings, with its higher box office takings showcasing the strength of the Illumination brand as it exists today; however, the film itself also offers an equally sharp insight into the how much room the studio has to grow.

As I alluded to in my recent post about Illumination, there’s a lot to admire in The Secret Life of Pets, and its great success is no mystery to me. It leans heavily on many of the studio’s established strengths, including a flair for kinetic caricature and imaginative physical comedy, and its bright visual style and design work meant it played a significant role in a broader reawakening of the general public’s love affair with talking animal movies. However, it’s also an unintentional showcase of Illumination at its weakest, particularly in its willingness to foreground shallow slapstick over meaningful story development, and its allergic reluctance to challenge the audience emotionally. That the film’s plot is essentially a beat-for-beat pet-oriented remake of the original Toy Story invites comparisons that do not flatter Illumination’s movie, as The Secret Life of Pets is an infinitely shallower film that passes up several golden opportunities to give its characters proper dimension, resulting in an experience that’s basically sweet-natured and inoffensive, but never comes close to making a lasting impression.

With $875 million grossed worldwide, The Secret Life of Pets was undoubtedly one of the year’s biggest success stories, and represents the start of a franchise with considerable potential mileage; however, the series will require a significant injection of depth, pathos and substance if the resulting series is ever going to be able to aspire to anything more than a vehicle for the episodic and rote delivery of middlebrow gags with a bare minimum of investment.

Kubo and the Two Strings

A passion project by Laika Entertainment’s president and CEO (and sadly forgotten rap legend) Travis Knight, Kubo and the Two Strings didn’t do huge business at the box office, but it’s quickly emerged as one of the critical darlings of the year, and a major awards contender. While I love pretty much everything this hugely admirable piece of work represents, I can’t quite bring myself to extend the same feeling to the film itself as a piece of storytelling.

In fact, I’d probably rate Kubo and the Two Strings as one of the bigger disappointments I experienced last year, which is a real bummer, as I have a deep and unbroken fondness for Laika’s work, dating back to their days in their previous incarnation as Will Vinton Studios. Kubo is in most respects their most ambitious film yet, blending their traditional focus on emotional intimacy and dark atmospherics with an epic fantasy sweep. When it works, it’s absolutely magnificent - their stop motion animation and design work has now evolved to the point where it almost looks indistinguishable from CGI at times, and their grasp of subtle melancholy is as peerless - but there’s a shakiness to the story’s fundamentals that I’m unused to seeing from a studio as famed for their attention to detail as Laika are. The tone lurches wildly from tearjerking grimness to flippant buddy comedy and back again; the actual quest narrative is irritatingly coincidence-driven and never more than vaguely explained, giving the audience little scope to share the journey of discovery; and most damagingly, the script doesn’t seem to know what it wants the lead characters of Monkey and Beetle, setting them up as jovially bickering sidekicks before saddling them with dramatically pivotal backstories that feel overly on-the-nose and don’t mesh with their personalities at all. The result is a film to which I gradually lost my emotional connection as it progressed, which is pretty fatal for a story that ends as intimately as this one does.

Add to that some questionable decisions regarding casting - I won’t harp on this too much, but I will say that it’s weird for a film this conscious about authenticity and tone to pass up the benefits that an Asian cast would provide in that regard, and that none of the actual cast give such indelible performances that they couldn’t have been swapped out - and you get a film ranks as my least favourite Laika movie to date. Admittedly, it’s a difficult category in which to compete, but it’s still a shame not to be able to join in the general chorus of appreciation surrounding a film that generally reflects so much of what I love about animation. I still thoroughly appreciate Laika’s work in almost single-handedly propping up the medium of stop-motion through sheer passion and bloody-mindedness, but for me the narrative elements of Kubo and the Two Strings got away from them - and when you’re making a film specifically designed to celebrate the power of storytelling, that creates a hole in the middle of the movie that no amount of technical splendour can fill.

Finding Dory

The top-grossing animated movie of the year, Pixar’s Finding Dory was always going to be a commercial slam-dunk, given the special place its predecessor Finding Nemo holds in the hearts of many; the big question was whether it was going to be able to measure up to the first movie’s legacy in terms of filmmaking. The answer? Ehhh.

That’s certainly not due to a lack of effort, of course; as I’ve touched upon in my previous post concerning this movie, Finding Dory is not a phoned-in sequel, and you can tell that returning director Andrew Stanton has put thought and consideration into how to expand the self-contained story of Finding Nemo outwards in a way that feels organic. The resulting development of the character of Dory - a mentally impaired protagonist seeking to make peace not only with her own past, but also with herself and the way her condition affects her - is rich with emotional pathos and feels like a natural continuation of Finding Nemo’s key themes, as well as forming a meaningful statement on disability in its own right.

Beyond the oasis of that central storyline, however, Finding Dory enters choppier waters. Dory’s journey may be significant in emotional terms, but dramatically it feels small, with the epic, sweeping journey of the first movie swapped for a claustrophobic single-location setting for the majority of the sequel. That reduced sense of scale isn’t helped by the flimsiness of the supporting cast, populated by half-formed ideas like Hank the octopus (who feels like he has a character-defining backstory lying on a cutting room floor somewhere) or one-note gag characters like Destiny, Bailey, Rudder and Fluke (who never come close to being properly developed). Worst of all, Finding Nemo’s protagonist Marlin is purely along for the ride this time, with very little to do other than complain in a way that becomes grating and unentertaining fairly rapidly. The result is a two-hander where one hand is significantly more developed than the other, which - as Nemo himself would tell you - makes it much harder for Finding Dory to swim in the smooth, straight lines you’d expect from a Pixar film.

That said, I’m not sure exactly what I expect from a Pixar film these days. Finding Dory is far from a bad movie, but it’s a pedestrian effort from a studio that seemed to effortlessly maintain a much higher orbit before the turn of the decade. Finding Dory owes a lot of its success to goodwill left over from those peak years, but the lack of love the movie has received on the awards circuit suggests that at least some of that is starting to run dry. There’s a Dory-style lesson to be learned there: old memories aren’t enough to sustain you forever - you have to be able to form new ones, too.

THE RECOMMENDATIONS

The following movies are the films I saw that didn’t quite make my best-of list, but nevertheless worked well enough to make a positive impression. These aren’t the year’s best animated movies - but they are good ones.

Storks

Storks seemed to come and go without anyone really noticing it happened. I myself missed it at the cinema, and catching up with it many months later, I can sort of understand why; it’s a thoroughly odd duck that doesn’t quite fit with any preconceived notion of what an animated feature would look, sound or play like. The aesthetic splits the difference between big-screen polish and Cartoon Network stylisation; the tone wants to be manic, but grounded; flippant, yet also heartfelt; rambling, but wholly plot-driven.

You know what? For all that, I rather enjoyed Storks, although I’m not sure I’d call it a completely functional film. The first animated movie from live-action comedy director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors) is a relentlessly high-energy experience that is inevitably irritating and wearying at times, but feels full of a certain kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for the boundless absurdist possibilities that animation can provide; it is also a movie that understands the importance of having a heart, and keeps it beating in the right place. Ultimately, Storks doesn’t have anything more profound to say than “babies are nice, and finding your family is great”, but it’s sincere about the way it says it, whether that’s through the oddly charming quasi-romantic chemistry between the avian middle manager Junior and scatterbrained teenage orphan Tulip, or through the engaging B-plot of a young boy reconnecting with his workaholic parents as they wait for delivery of a new baby brother. It’s also an understatedly progressive movie in a couple of ways - it’s nice to focus on a mixed-gender comedic pairing where the female member gets to be the zany one for a change, and you even get some pleasantly matter-of-fact representation of LGBT parent couples thrown in towards the end for good measure, albeit in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fashion.

That said, this is also an incredibly ramshackle piece of work, full of non-sequitur narrative detours and extended joke sequences that don’t really land - antagonist Toady, an obnoxious business-bro pigeon, feels like an out-of-control SNL skit in place of an actual character, for example. That’s a weakness that cuts across many parts of the film, in fact; Stoller gives the script more of a mannered, improvisational feel than is strictly good for it, resulting in a whole lot of gag lines that feel purely like punchlines crafted by a writer, rather than effective expressions of character. Nevertheless, on balance, I’m happy that the revamped Warner Animation Group are using their post-The Lego Movie relaunch to establish a distinct identity for themselves, rather than going down the me-too route of their Quest for Camelot days; I think it’s even better that their chosen identity is one that tries to honour the company’s offbeat Looney Tunes legacy, as that’s a style we don’t see often enough in the modern feature animation landscape. Clearly, we’re going to be getting a lot of Lego spinoffs and sequels that uphold a Phil Lord/Chris Miller-flavoured variation of that approach, but that type of comedy is good for more than just endless Lego movies - and so are Warner Bros. In that respect, I’d like for Storks to be the beginning of a more diversified lineup from Warner Bros, not the end, which is why this imperfect little movie just about edged its way into my recommendations category; the quality isn’t always there, but the right spirit is there in spades.

Kung Fu Panda 3

In another year, Kung Fu Panda 3 would have been a much bigger deal than it ended up being. It was a very good animated movie in a year full of them, a talking animal film coming out just as the genre suddenly became ubiquitous, and a high-quality sequel to a franchise that had probably been away from the big screen a few years too long for audiences to still be invested. Heck, even in China - the market where this US-Chinese co-production was clearly ordained to sweep aside all comers - this belated threequel had its thunder stolen, reigning briefly as the region’s highest-grossing animated movie ever before the breakout success of Disney’s Zootopia took the title away after only one month.

All of that is a bit of a shame, because - as I’ve mentioned - Kung Fu Panda 3 is a very good movie, even if it is unquestionably the weakest instalment in the trilogy. It lacks the energetic freshness of the 2008 original and the impressive emotional scope of 2011’s Kung Fu Panda 2, the bracing darkness of which Kung Fu Panda 3 largely backs away from in favour of something a bit cosier and smaller-scale. In that respect, this is very much the Return of the Jedi of this series, with all that entails - right down to being set in a hidden village of cuddly bears - but none of that makes it anything like a bad film. For one thing, it’s absolutely beautiful to look at - one of the most aesthetically gorgeous pieces of animation I’ve seen for a while, with vivid colours, stylised action, stunning 2D sequences and masterful incorporation of the look of Chinese paintings into its visual style. That respectfulness goes beyond the visual elements, though; the first Kung Fu Panda may have been a watershed movie for DreamWorks in adopting a tone of loving pastiche rather than broad spoof, but the sequels have been so reverential to the genre and culture that inspired them that you almost wish they’d dropped the comedy focus altogether and pivoted the series in the direction of full-on anthropomorphic wuxia adventure, with a tone closer to the How to Train Your Dragon movies.

Still, what we’ve got from Kung Fu Panda is pretty great, thanks not only to their embrace of the excitement and philosophies of martial arts cinema, but also to their commitment to strong characterisation of their key players. Po the panda remains a delightful creation, with Jack Black consistently finding and underplaying the notes of earthy wisdom and spiritual growth in a character who could easily have come across as 100% fanboy goofball, and his relationship with the elderly goose Mr Ping - voiced with wonderful warmth and eccentricity by the brilliant James Hong - remains one of the most oddly affecting father-son relationships in animated cinema. The addition of Po’s birth father Li Shan (Bryan Cranston) to that dynamic in Kung Fu Panda 3 is handled maturely, in a way that celebrates unconventional family structures, and that emotional throughline works in tandem with the spiritual concepts of the story to provide a strong foundation. In truth, there’s not all that much going on beyond that, other than colourful action setpieces - once again the supporting cast, including Po’s brothers-in-arms the Furious Five, are left frustratingly underused and underdeveloped - leaving Kung Fu Panda 3 feeling like the slightest entry in the series; nevertheless, it’s still a satisfying, funny adventure that brings the series to a fitting thematic conclusion. In truth, Kung Fu Panda probably is a series whose time has passed; if that’s the case, I’m glad it got to impart a few more words of wisdom before moving on.

Sing

The second and less conventional of Illumination Entertainment’s 2016 efforts, the musical extravaganza Sing may have been the lower-grossing and slightly less well-reviewed of the two outings, but for my money it outdoes The Secret Life of Pets on every level creatively - to the point where I’m wondering if everyone else saw these two movies the wrong way around.

When I call Sing “unconventional”, I’m not really talking about its approach to genre and storytelling, because frankly it really couldn’t be any more conventional in those respects. This is a big, broad, goofy, follow-your-dreams jukebox musical that garnishes the X Factor/American Idol template with a sprig of Muppets-style save-the-theatre backstage drama - you know, in case the overstuffed ensemble cast didn’t already have enough underdogs to root for. Said ensemble, which includes a shy teen elephant with an angel’s voice, an overworked mother pig with dreams of stardom, a young gorilla seeking to escape a life of crime and a punk rock porcupine breaking away from her controlling jerk boyfriend, is packed to bursting with character arcs that you’ll be able to predict with perfect accuracy the moment they begin - or perhaps even before then, if you’ve seen any of the too-numerous trailers for Sing that essentially summarise the entire story beat for beat.

But when judging a movie like this, it’s important to remember that cliche is not inherently a sin - a familiar recipe can still taste fabulous when the ingredients are prepared with care and attention, and so it proves with Sing, a movie that’s made with infinitely more sincerity and ambition than it’s been given credit for. It feels good to be able to praise an Illumination movie for those qualities, and that’s where the “unconventional” aspect comes into play, as this is a film that has clearly benefited from the studio searching outside its usual creative talent pool and taking a punt on Garth Jennings, the likeable British filmmaker responsible for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow. A prolific director of music videos, Jennings is clearly someone with a passion for music that saturates Sing, turning what could have been an empty exercise in celebrity animal karaoke into a genuine celebration of the restorative power of music. That earnestness also bleeds into the characterisation, which - for as formulaic as it unarguably is - is written and performed with enough heart-on-sleeve honesty to paper over many more cracks than Sing actually has. Sure, there are times where it feels like the sheer multitude of characters means certain moments don’t get the focus they need, and there are certainly notes and song choices - particularly the use of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during a moment of sombre redemption - that will be too on-the-nose for even the most wide-eyed audience member, but beyond that there’s really nothing wrong with this movie at all, to the extent that I’m a little confused every time I see a bad review of it. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s assembled with such professionalism and such a conscious eagerness to make you happy - especially during its barnstorming, impossibly fleet-footed finale - that it seems churlish to refuse.

Despite what I perceived to be a relative lack of appreciation of its full merits, I’m happy to see that this film did well for itself, and I hope it encourages Illumination to make more movies with this kind of heart behind it. Sing’s emotional stakes may be somewhat prosaic, but they’re big and bold and dominant in a way that prior Illumination movies, with their focus on slapstick silliness, have seemed shy about embracing. In a previous post, I lamented the studio’s inability to produce a truly classic movie up until this point, and expressed a hope that Sing might be a step along the right path; in that respect, it delivered. Sing may not be the first great Illumination movie, but if they keep going in this direction, they may just get there.

THE BEST OF THE YEAR

In descending order, these are my top five animated movies of the year. They may be very different films operating and succeeding on different levels, but in my view these are the films that really encapsulated all the facets of what I love about animated cinema, and exemplify the form’s boundless versatility.

5. Sausage Party

In film criticism, originality is often taken to be a cardinal virtue; we mark films down for adhering to weathered formulas or archetypes, and give credit for the ones that do things we haven’t seen before. When Sausage Party was released last year to rock-solid reviews, many were shocked, but really, they ought not have been that surprised - after all, it’s not often that we get to see what a truly original movie looks like.

On paper, Sausage Party seems transgressive without being all that groundbreaking; after all, we’ve seen crude animated movies for adult audiences before, from Fritz the Cat through to the works of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but there’s something about the way Sausage Party was positioned that made it unique - sure, it was made for a mere $19 million, but this was that rare R-rated animated film that was ordained to compete in the big leagues, rather than breaking out from some underground niche. US-produced adult animations usually accept their status as esoteric oddities, embracing unfashionable visual styles and anti-mainstream sensibilities; Sausage Party rejects that, using modern tools and an aesthetic that credibly approximates the familiar look of its Disney/Pixar contemporaries to mark itself as a film designed to be seen and embraced by the biggest possible audience. Regardless of what you might think of the film itself, the manner of Sausage Party’s release was trailblazing - the first proper attempt by a studio in years to break American adult animation out of its enthusiasts-only ghetto and show that cartoons for older audiences can be appeal on the same level as a live-action movie of the same genre. That Sausage Party went on to gross of nearly $100 million in the US should be seen a massive win for the medium, and will hopefully embolden the industry to further experiment with the kinds of animated stories and visions they’re willing to bankroll in future.

Of course, this victory would feel tainted if Sausage Party had turned out to be exploitative trash, but watching the final film, even hardcore Sausage-sceptics would have to admit it’s a movie that embraces substantive ideas and commits to them, hard. Your mileage is likely to depend on how well you click with the sensibilities of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, This is the End, The Interview), who’ve made a career on exploring challenging concepts in unabashedly juvenile terms, because this movie represents the apotheosis of their operating model to date; taking the Pixar template of “what if X had feelings?” to its most lurid conclusion, Sausage Party is a deceptively literate spiritual odyssey that confronts sentient food items with the brutal reality of what they were created for, sending them spiralling into existential crisis and surreal voyages of self-actualisation. As a deconstruction and critique of religious thought, it’s intelligent in a number of ways, opting against abrasive confrontationalism in favour of a humanist, pluralist conclusion that encourages people to reject the limits that society places on them and be their authentic selves in a non-judgemental fashion; what’s just as impressive is the way it’s able to explore this essentially benign, moderate message in such relentlessly coarse, taboo-shattering terms, without feeling like it’s working at crossed purposes with itself. This is a film with legitimately interesting things to say about the evils of dogma, the need for respectful discourse, the importance of actualising your sexual identity and the destructiveness of identity-based conflict - and does so almost entirely through the medium of cartoon violence and dick jokes. All of this builds to a jaw-dropping third act of insanely violent, sexualised excess that’s honestly unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a mainstream movie - and yet somehow still feels reverent enough to the spirit of Toy Story that its credentials as a legitimate entry in the same animated adventure genre remain unbroken.

I’m ardent in my admiration for what Sausage Party represents, and I say that with full acceptance of its problems. Its gleeful indulgence of ethnic stereotyping, for example, doesn’t really pay off with a satirical point clever enough to justify it all, while the sheer crudeness of the film - the villain is literally an anthropomorphic douche - is likely to stop a lot of people from connecting. I also need to give acknowledgement to the widespread stories of mistreatment and exploitation of the animation team by production company Nitrogen Studios and co-director Greg Tiernan, which puts that thrifty $19 million budget in a different light; that can’t really be excused, but it also doesn’t invalidate the fact that the resulting film is a valuable, singular piece of pop art that’s worth much more than the sum of its parts. It’s up to you to decide whether knowing how the sausage was made is enough to put you off; all I’m saying is that it’s worth trying, because Sausage Party is both tastier and more nutritious than you might expect.

4. Trolls

One of the main reasons why 2016 ended up such a good year for animation is that, due to some strange quirk of scheduling, many of the major studios ended up releasing two films during the year. I’ve covered Illumination’s pair already, and I’ll be coming to Disney’s duo momentarily; for now, I want to give some much-needed kudos to the oft-criticised DreamWorks, who not only turned out a fine Kung Fu Panda sequel, but also somehow elevated a reboot of the Trolls toy franchise from cultural detritus into a genuinely joyous moviegoing experiences.

I expounded at length quite recently about the many virtues of Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn’s cuddly little movie, so I won’t add too much here, other than to say that my admiration for a film that still stands out as a surprise of the most pleasant variety hasn’t dimmed. There’s always a special kind of joy that comes with being blindsided by a great film that comes out of nowhere, and Trolls is the very definition of that: the concept sounded terrible, the early marketing was appalling, and yet the final film is confident, earnest, visually beguiling and bursting with an infectiously guileless goodwill that’s much harder to evoke in a sincere way than Trolls makes it look. Indeed, in a world where Sony Pictures Animation continues to struggle to strike the right tone with its various adaptations of the esteemed Smurfs franchise, DreamWorks deserves applause for nailing the right mix of sweetness and spice on the first attempt at what’s essentially the same concept. That’s not to say Trolls is wholly derivative, though; if the “happy forest friends” setup isn’t exactly groundbreaking, there’s ambition to its lightly-sketched philosophical exploration of the spiritual origins of happiness, while its sharp humour and aesthetic exuberance ensure it never forgets to make you feel the emotion it’s examining. If there’s one lingering disappointment, it’s that more people didn’t notice exactly how impressive this fluffy and genuinely uplifting jukebox musical turned out to be; with its theatrical run topping out at a solid but unspectacular $339.5 million worldwide, Trolls remains one of 2016’s better-kept secrets, a movie that seemed to pass most people by. That’s an unfortunate outcome for a film that I’m willing to list among the best animations of the year, but it does at least preserve its status as a surprise package waiting to be opened, shared and discovered by more people.

I hope, too, that DreamWorks take solace and pride in the quality of the work they put out in 2016. Both Kung Fu Panda 3 and Trolls both ended up as modest rather than overwhelming commercial successes, but there was a solidity and assuredness to both movies that the studio hasn’t always found easy to come by; these are qualities that will serve the company well as it prepares for life under the new ownership of Universal. Of course, DreamWorks will always be DreamWorks, and maybe inconsistency is baked into their DNA: the fact they’re following up such a strong 2016 with a 2017 slate consisting of The Boss Baby and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie seems like a testament to that. But hey, this time last year I was busy writing off Trolls, so what the hell do I know?

3. Moana

It’s weird for me to think about this, but most people born after about 1990 or so probably don’t actually remember a time when Disney were the undisputed kings of feature animation. Ever since Pixar released Toy Story in 1995, they’ve ceased to be the only game in town, and there were times during the mid-2000s when they looked to be drifting into irrelevance; since then, however, they’ve come roaring back, and I feel as though 2016 will be seen in years to come as a point where Walt Disney Animation Studios really reasserted their dominance, even more so than their historic success with Frozen in 2013. I’ve praised Illumination and DreamWorks for the impressive feat of releasing two good movies in the same year, but that pales in comparison to Disney, whose achievement in releasing two potential all-time classics within eight months is little short of a miracle.

Due to its choice of genre, Moana was probably seen as the safe option out of the two movies, but anyone who’s seen it will know that writing it off as just another Disney princess musical is doing the film a massively reductive disservice. Veteran directors Ron Clements and John Musker’s (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Princess and the Frog) first CGI movie feels like a substantial and welcome reinvention not just of their filmmaking approach, but of the “princess movie” template in general. This is a formula that Disney have been committed to tinkering with since the 1990s Disney Renaissance era, but never to such a root-and-branch degree as Moana, which takes only the most essential components of the template - to paraphrase the script itself, the fact that its protagonist “is the daughter of a chief, wears a dress and has an animal sidekick” - and builds a rousingly individualistic seafaring action-adventure with a refreshing perspective. It’s not just the fact that Moana feels different from her predecessors, with her Polynesian origins and stockier build, it’s that she functions differently; unlike any other Disney princess, she’s a swashbuckling hero first and foremost, embarking on a world-saving quest through active choice, rather than stumbling into one as a byproduct of some mission of family duty. On that foundation, Musker and Clements build a film that consistently zags where other Disney movies zig. This is an action-adventure that’s basically without a true villain; where the male lead, the blustering demigod Maui, remains strictly a supporting player, with no hint of unnecessary romantic intrigue; where the main animal sidekick is a scraggly idiot rooster that actively hinders the quest, while the cute, marketable pig stays home.

Of course, different isn’t necessarily better, but it certainly feels like a value-added bonus when your film is already as good as Moana is. Technically, it’s one of Disney’s most accomplished efforts, with astounding water effects and a beautiful oceanic palette, and it benefits from the same sparky dialogue and buddy-comedy chemistry between its leads that’s become a Disney trademark. Musker and Clements seem to have made progress on overcoming the somewhat episodic feel of their previous movies, with more of a sense of coherent driving momentum pushing forward the story, and they’ve certainly come on leaps and bounds in terms of cultural authenticity since the days of, say, Aladdin, with the Pacific Island setting treated with great respect in aesthetic, spiritual and casting terms. Then, of course, there’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i and Mark Mancina’s compositionally intricate and effortlessly catchy soundtrack, which is probably the finest from Disney since The Lion King - and hell, even The Lion King didn’t have a glam rock David Bowie style parody sung by a giant kleptomaniac crab, so maybe Moana has even that one beaten. It’s not all perfect, though; much as I loved the film, it does have a few pacing problems; the story spends an unusually long time getting Moana to leave her home island of Motunui, only to occasionally feel becalmed once the journey actually gets underway. The open ocean is an evocative setting, but it can also get pretty repetitive, and there are points in Moana where you start to miss the broader ensemble cast and diverse backdrops that we might have gotten if not for all the lonely, endless blue.

None of that was enough to prevent Moana from becoming one of the best and biggest animated movies of the year - though you get the sense that some pundits were expecting a bit more commercially from Disney’s first big princess musical since Frozen. It’s true that Moana’s solid $575 million-and-counting worldwide total doesn’t bear comparison to Frozen’s record-setting $1.27 billion - but then, when you think about it, Moana didn’t really turn out to be all that comparable to Frozen anyway. It’s possible that Moana reinvented so much about what makes a princess movie that it no longer registered as being one in the eyes of the audience - or perhaps it was never really a princess movie in the first place, and scored its own success on its own terms. Princess or not, she is Moana, and that’s good enough for me.

2. Your Name (Kimi no Na wa)

As I mentioned before, I have an unfortunate blind spot when it comes to anime, with my exposure to Japan’s prolific feature output basically limited to Studio Ghibli films and a small handful of others. That’s something I’d like to work on, so I jumped at the chance to see Makoto Shinkai’s blockbusting romance Your Name at the cinema last year as a way of putting that right; what I got was an outstanding and emotionally overwhelming reminder of everything I’ve been missing out on.

Your Name is a difficult movie to categorise - my best attempt would be “supernatural gender/body-swap tragicomedy-drama disaster romance epic”, but even that would be underselling the deft changeability and tonal fluidity of this marvellously-constructed movie, which came within a hair’s breadth of ranking as my favourite of the year. Part of that versatility comes from its mastery of the medium - I know it’s not intended to function as a primer on anime, but it couldn’t have done a better job if it tried, such is its command of everything that defines the format at its best. Here’s a 2D animated film that feels truly modern, that pushes hand-drawn animation to new levels of technical beauty and adventurous stylisation without feeling even slightly retro; here’s an animated film that can speak directly to a teenage and young adult audience, with a pop soundtrack and frank allusion to concepts of sexuality and gender identity, and evoke that lived experience of yearning adolescence in a way that feels sophisticated and universal; here’s an animated film that knows how to bring metaphysical mystery, power and spirituality to its narrative with a light touch, leaving just enough traces of magic to lend an edge of unknowable enormity to the intimate character story we’re being told. These are areas in which the best anime movies uniquely excel, and Shinkai seems to understand implicitly how to leverage these strengths without any of the weaknesses.

But Your Name isn’t designed to be appreciated on a beard-stroking conceptual level; for all its artistic accomplishment, it’s a weepy teenage romance at heart, and you couldn’t ask for one better. Its protagonists - small town girl Mitsuha and Tokyo boy Taki, who mysteriously find themselves intermittently swapping bodies - are enormously likeable leads with whom it’s easy to empathise, whether it’s Mitsuha’s longing to experience life beyond her idyllic but fishbowl-like rural community, or Taki’s increasingly passionate desire to connect directly with the girl who’s literally changing his life from the inside. The latter quest comes to form the driving emotional engine of the film, and writer-director Shinkai does a fine job of creating a palpable closeness between the two characters, whilst at the same time putting them in a situation where every conceivable obstacle - time, space, fate - stand in the way of them ever meeting. If that sounds melodramatic, that’s because it is, but Your Name knows exactly how to sell a brand of epic romance that makes the audience feel like they’re seeing something much more profound than the feelings of two people; that’s partly a function of the gorgeous hyperreality of the visuals, but also a testament to the way Shinkai unfolds the story, expanding what starts out as a light, sweet body-swap fantasy into something larger and more mythic. To say more about how Your Name pivots and pirouettes through different plot ideas and genres would give too much away about a film that benefits greatly from being unpacked at its own pace, so I won’t go further, other than to say it builds to something that’s sweeping, exhilarating and wistful in all the right ways.

If it sounds like I’m giving this movie the hard sell, that’s very much intentional - certainly, Your Name doesn’t need any more of a push in Asia, where it’s been a record-breaking success, but Western audiences seem to be much less aware of it, as evidenced by its surprise omission from this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees. This may be partly because because the film isn’t actually due to be released in US theatres until April 7th 2017, a stunningly long delay that nevertheless gives me an opportunity to urge any American readers to make sure they catch it on the biggest possible screen. After all, Your Name helped to show me everything I’m missing by not watching enough good anime; the least I can do to return the favour is to make sure nobody misses this one.

1. Zootopia

Nobody who’s followed this blog for any length of time will be shocked by this choice; in fact, nobody who saw the Oscars or pays any attention to the film industry in general will be too surprised, as Disney’s Zootopia has proven a commercial phenomenon, a darling among reviewers and an awards magnet. Inevitably, this means the film has started to attract a few contrarian potshots, but I’m not interested in engaging with that; after all if we can’t take a moment to earnestly celebrate one of the best and bravest films Disney have made in decades, then why do we even watch movies?

I’ve spent a lot of words talking about Zootopia over the last 12 months, and yet it still doesn’t feel like it’s left my system; with its incredible visual design, instantly lovable character chemistry, deft pacing and bubbling comedic energy, it encapsulates pretty much every one of Disney’s traditional strengths, while also excelling in areas where the studio have never traditionally dared to tread. As a piece of worldbuilding, its thoroughness exceeds many science-fiction films - the breathtaking wonder of the first train ride into the city of Zootopia is a Disney moment for the ages, rendered with such immersive intimacy that I’d love to see it retrofitted as a VR experience - while the film’s vaulting thematic ambitions and willingness to delve into challenging social commentary feel like a seismic sea change for a company with a reputation for corporatised artistic conservatism. That I rate Zootopia as the best animated film of an incredibly strong year doesn’t preclude acknowledgement of its imperfections - the police procedural elements are a little oversimplified, it can be episodic at times, the metaphors can sometimes be heavy-handed - but it’s the intelligent, open-hearted generosity of the thematic dialogue it opens up with its audience that makes those concerns feel small. This is a pointed, satirical and often overtly politicised piece of work, addressing deeply divisive issues of prejudice, system bias, internalised privilege and societal identity, and yet it manages to do so in a way that feels pluralistic, universally empowering and non-judgemental - a feat that most adult-oriented media struggles to achieve. It’s a film that educates without lecturing, that shows asks you to find your own answers rather than spoonfeeding you solutions, that shines a light on the problems that society faces but still lets you walk out feeling energised, rather than depressed. That’s difficult for any movie to achieve; for Disney, with almost no experience of making topical satire, to be able to pull this off while still ticking all the boxes of a superlative, adorable and hilarious family adventure is one of the greatest accomplishments in their entire 80-year history of feature animation.

Honestly, if I have any lingering feeling of disappointment about Zootopia, it’s the question of why the message it expressed so eloquently didn’t end up making a bigger impression on those who saw it. That a movie with such an explicitly educational theme of cultural unification and overcoming differences was able to gross more than $1 billion in a year as riven by political division and opprobrium as 2016 is a testament to cinema’s value as a means of escape; unfortunately, it also probably tells us a lot about the cognitive dissonance that prevents people from actually living up to the virtues expressed by the media they enjoy. I started the year wondering whether Zootopia would be as good a movie as we deserve from Disney in 2016; I ended it wondering whether 2016 deserved Zootopia. Nevertheless, I’ll try to hold on the virtues the film embodied, and take heart from the fact that children raised with this heartfelt, articulate and deeply empathetic movie stand a much better chance of learning the right lessons from it than the rest of us did. After all, if a naive rabbit and a jaded fox can learn to overcome prejudice, see things from other perspectives and make the world a better place, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us mammals as well.

[wassupskylieskye-blog]

Break Up Ave., I have my heart but other things too

It’s amazing what you find while cleaning your room. Like, oh I don’t know, things from your exes.

So I originally had a different idea of what I wanted to do about this. My first thought was to actually give their shit back and talk about why we broke up in the first place. But they like to remind me all the time that we dated and why we broke up. They’re awful.

But I wanted to talk about this in general because I know people can relate or they need to hear this. For myself and everyone I’ll sound like a Taylor Swift song.

From 14 exes I have a rubix cube, a Batman rubber bracelet, 10 notes, a Yu-Gi-Oh card, a school ID, a red flannel, a LOTR book (no I never read it), some weird camera thing, a paper weight, vans key chain, two shirts,ticket stubs, two pictures, a stuffed otter, and a teddy bear.

The first guy I ever dated was in the 5th grade and he gave me the rubix cube and one of the pictures. It was your typical elementary school relationship but I remember how blushy I got around him. Also that I gave him my home phone number and that he actually did call me, which made 10 year old me really happy, and we had a pretty awkward conversation as were both shy kids. It’s been seven years since I’ve last seen him so I can’t say he’s an awful person or anything (sadly).

 I don’t have anything from the next three guys I dated after him but I’ll save those for a different story. 

From this particular ex I have three notes, Roosevelt the teddy bear, a scar on my knee, and repressed 8th grade memories when it comes to him. We had band together but that’s not how this all started. It started at lunch because my friend brought you to the table and we started talking then we ended up dating, I know I said you weren’t but I think you were a rebound. 

Honestly, we should’ve talked more before we started dating because we spent most of our time arguing. And why he thought it was good idea to catch himself on me, a tiny person, when someone pushed him is beyond me. All it resulted in was my jeans being ripped and a whole layer of skin coming off my knee that got infected and I had to clean everyday, twice a day for three weeks and was left with a scar. 

Our relationship in one word was awful. Sure, he’s a better guy now but his first couple relationships were bad. I’m not saying he did awful shit, cause he didn’t, he just didn’t know how to be a good boyfriend.

And no, we don’t get along to this day.

The boy who shared the same initials as me was honestly one of the nicest guys I’ve ever dated. When I said I liked his Batman bracelet because he’s my favorite hero he took it right off and gave it to me. I also have three notes from you, two of them saying why you liked me so much and one was an apology. 

I don’t hate him because he liked my friend while we dated. Honestly, I don’t hate him at all. While we did break up because I was nice person who wanted my friend happy so I wanted them together I never hated him. But we were also two different people that could’ve worked but we never tried but it’s okay because we turned into pretty decent people. Sadly. I don’t have anything bad to say about him. And yeah, we’re still friends.

Okay, okay, yes, this next guy was right about us. I did date him mostly out of peer pressure. All of our friends said we should date and my best friend at the time talked me into it. But it was weird and awkward and I ignore his text so I didn’t have to see him. I found his flannel so yeah, he can gave it back now and stop asking.

Summer lovin’ was meant more for Danny and Sandy, not for me and this guy. I’m not saying anything bad happened in this relationship because it was alright. I only have three notes we passed back and forth in Drivers Ed because I think I threw the rest away. Or maybe he did. But what I remember clearly from this relationship is when I said, “We should break up.” he said no. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. But now he’s dating one of my friends and they deserve each other.

I don’t mean that in a bitchy way like they’re both assholes but in they’re both little Hufflepuffs and complete each other and work so well together. Honestly, they’re pretty adorable together.

I wanted to go in order of exes, I honestly did, but I wanted these two next to each other.These are the relationships that hurt the most and I still think about them.

It’s my 7th grade year and we have gym together. One day my friend talks to him and so I start talking to him. One week later we start dating. Three weeks later we break up but quickly get back together the next day. One month later I find out I’m not the only girl but I’m a dumbass and stay with him.

In the course of a year we break up five or six times and he cheats on me I don’t even know how many times. For five months we’re fine then out of nowhere he ignores me for three days straight and when he finally talks to me he says he’s been talking to another girl for a couple weeks and that they’re now dating. He tries to apologize to me but I tell him don’t because I don’t want to hear anything from him ever again. When I got home that day the Yu-Gi-Oh card I cut up after an argument in front of him ,which he literally ignored me for for 10 minutes, but put back together, I cut it up again. 

He left me with really bad trust issues with my next couple exes. I was never able to fully trust them because he left me with this constant doubt that they didn’t really give a shit about me. He left me completely heartbroken.

I know I sound dramatic but I was 12-14 during this and I was a dumb girl who thought some dude actually cared but turns out he didn’t.

Before I started high school I talked to him after six months, I asked him why he treated me like such shit and his answer? “I don’t know really.” But all I could think about was when he once said I didn’t put out and maybe I already knew the answer. But maybe I didn’t either.

This last relationship, the most recent, I’ll be honest and say it still hurts. It’s been almost two months since we’ve been broken up and it still hurts.

We started dating in February after a week of talking. We dated for almost eight months and honestly they were so amazing. But all good things must come to an end.

He was the first person to ever take me on a date which was seeing the live action remake of Beauty & the Beast. In return we saw Power Rangers. Our last date was a movie, A mutual agreement on It. He was also the first person to take me to the aquarium without my family there. 

He was the first person I ever trusted to come with me to therapy. Granted, he couldn’t come into the room with me so he had to stay in the waiting room but still. 

He was the first person I ever truly saw a future with and that I wanted one with. After being introduced to his family my first thought was, “Wow, this is one day going to be my family, too.” When I told him this later he smiled so big.But missing a family that was never really yours hurts.

I remember clearly the night he held my face in his hands and said that he never felt this way about anyone and that he would never hurt me. But he did.

We broke up because of school and family. But it really wasn’t because of school and family. So when I threw his bag of shirts at him I had everyone reason to and he should’ve told me he went on a date. He should’ve told me that he didn’t really want to get back together. He should’ve been honest.

But he can go ahead and say he never did any of this shit again. I don’t care anymore.

But I’ll be honest, during the relationship he was an amazing guy. I’m not saying this to defend him or anything. I’m saying this because it was the after part that sucked. 

It also sucked that one day when I was wearing an infinity ring he took it off and started playing with it I grabbed it and put it on his pinky finger, the only finger that it fit, and said, “It’s a pre promise ring, baby, because I swear I’m going to get you a real one.”

It sucked that a couple days later we broke up.

I’m not sure if I was foolish or hopeful or both for thinking we were actually going to get back together. I’m not sure what I am for still loving him. Probably human. 

And I’m sorry too.

But tomorrows Thanksgiving so let me say my thanks. Thank you, guys, for breaking my heart. I mean it. If it wasn’t for them maybe I wouldn’t be who I am today and maybe they learned something for us. Or maybe I would’ve ended up how I am regardless and they didn’t learn jack shit.

But still, thank you boys. Now most of you can fuck yourselves.

[bltngames]

Gut Check: Sonic Central 2021

When Sega announced Sonic Mania, there was an undeniable electricity. A moment of, "wait, WHAT?!" upon seeing who was working on that game and what it looked like. With the way it builds up and then unveils itself, it was the perfect reveal. I'll admit, as a Sonic fan, it even made me a little misty-eyed. We did it. They did it. I may have my complaints about Sonic Mania now that it's out, but those are weird, personal complaints that I still haven't entirely, accurately unpacked. If someone told me Sonic Mania was their favorite Sonic game ever, I would smile and nod, and think, "yeah, it was kind of amazing they pulled that off." And then I'd think of that reveal again, and the impact it had, and how the music swells at just the right points. The hearts of many Sonic fans soared that day.

I cannot say the same for the Sonic Central 2021 announcement stream. And to tell the truth, this isn’t an article I really wanted to write (though some of that is because I had immediate knee-jerk reactions over on my personal blog).

Look, I get it. There was a pandemic last year. It's still a pandemic right now, actually. Things were weird and will continue to be weird for at least another year, possibly even two or three, as the effects of covid on the work place environment continue to ripple outwards. But the thing is, this isn't my first rodeo, and it's not Sega's first time botching something like this. Five years ago, it was Sonic's 25th anniversary (the fun number everyone treats as a real serious milestone) and while that live event was where the magical Sonic Mania reveal took place, there’s plenty of clips of how awkward and bizarre the rest of that event was. Some of the misplaced hype for this 30th Anniversary can be blamed on a hungry fandom who was getting punchy without any news, but this is also the company that gave us Sonic 2006 as part of Sonic’s 15th anniversary celebration, you know? There’s almost a precedent being set here, where Sega talks a big game only to trip and spill their chili all over the carpet.

So what do we have, then? Beyond the brilliantly deranged idea of putting Mascot Suit Sonic in to several games and hiding a port of Sonic the Fighters inside of a different, $70 game, Sonic Central really revolved around three major announcements: Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, Sonic Origins Collection, and a mysterious teaser that almost instantly stopped being mysterious once it was discovered how little Sega did to protect its secret.

Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition was definitely one of Sega’s worse kept secrets. It had leaked from multiple sources weeks ahead of the announcement, and managed to make a pretty underwhelming display on stream. The issue was something common with remasters of this type -- it’s something I guess we could call “The George Lucas Effect,” where needlessly twiddling with an already-finished product slowly makes it worse. We’ve seen this before -- the lighting in “Batman: Return to Arkham” looks noticeably worse than the original Arkham Asylum trilogy, and “Mass Effect Legendary Edition” boasts improved skin rendering and higher resolution textures that just make those games look more inhuman.

For a big release like this from a major publisher, deadlines must be met, which means there’s little time to delicately repaint textures or make sure lighting looks totally correct. Still, more often than not, preserving the original visual identity of a game is more important than whatever clumsy touch-ups most publishers put these games through. For Colors Ultimate, this manifested in significantly darker lighting and lower quality lightbloom, dramatically impacting the mood of some levels.

In the days since the Sonic Central stream, evidence has mounted that the trailer shown during the stream featured an older build than anticipated. Better looking screenshots of a more recent build surfaced from Famitsu, and a technical artist working on the game revealed short video clips through an ArtStation account that made the game look a bit more accurate to how it originally appeared in 2010 (that Artstation post has now been removed). Though, if we’re being honest, whatever style of lightbloom they’re using still makes the game look pretty washed out. Hopefully that’s still being tweaked.

What’s most curious is how much they’re actually changing about Sonic Colors. The more we learn the less it sounds like a port and more like a complete recoding of the game using Godot, an open source game engine similar to Unity. Promised features include not only enhanced framerates and “improved controls” (whatever that means), but even a rudimentary cosmetics system, with Sonic being able to wear different shoes and gloves. Other additions include the ability to race against Metal Sonic, and a restructured lives system, where Tails rescues you from bottomless pits. It’s a far cry from the days of Taxman and Stealth’s Retro Engine remakes of Sonic 1 and 2 for mobile phones, where it was said that Sega rejected simple bonus features like a boss rush mode because they’d rather “preserve the original experience.” For Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, it appears they’re going hog wild changing and adding new things.

On the subject of Retro Engine remakes of classic Sonic games, we have the Sonic Origins Collection. It’s not really known if these are the same "Retro Engine" versions made popular on phones and tablets, but they have confirmed that all five games will be in 16:9 wide screen and have additional bonus features. That certainly sounds like Retro Engine to me, but we’ll need to wait and see. The Retro Engine versions had a lot of little nips and tucks that made those games even better than they originally were, so it would be great to have those specific versions on a proper console at long last.

The big shocker here is the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. In recent years, Sega has avoided even referencing Sonic 3 in anything -- it was missing in action from the console versions of the Genesis Classics Collection, Sega rejected a Taxman and Stealth Retro Engine remake, it was missing from the Genesis Mini, and Sega even seemed adverse to referencing Sonic 3 in casual conversation. The example I always use is the “Sega Tower Mini”, a fake accessory for the Genesis Mini that included a miniaturized Sega CD, 32X, and a fake cartridge of Sonic & Knuckles. But, instead of locking on to a Sonic 3 cart, the Sega Tower Mini came with a Sonic 1 cartridge instead. There almost seemed to be an agenda to bury its existence.

That has changed over the last few months, as Sega’s social media accounts have begun hinting at Sonic 3 in things like wallpapers and character profiles. Now that we know the game is finally coming back for real, we’re faced with a question: what of the music? Depending on who at Sega you ask and when, there have been opposing claims that Michael Jackson both was and was not involved in composing some of the game’s soundtrack. As I mentioned in my video a couple years ago, it sounded like there was some legal trouble, as Jackson collaborators Scirocco Jones and Bobby Brooks were claiming Sega owed them unpaid royalties for their very real, credited work on Sonic 3. Has Sega finally made peace with those two? Or have the offending music tracks been replaced, now that an alternate, prototype version of the Sonic 3 soundtrack has been recovered? Only time will tell, I suppose.

It’s exciting to think that this may mean the Retro Engine versions could finally be seeing a home console release, but it’s hard to ignore what a mess this will look like on the consumer end, given just how often some of these games have been re-released in the last few years. For Nintendo Switch owners, it’ll be possible to buy Sonic 1 and 2 as part of the Sega Ages collection, as part of the Genesis Classics Collection, and now as part of this new Sonic Origins collection. And each of those versions will have been produced independently of each other, with different features and extras. Sega Ages Sonic 2 features the drop dash from Sonic Mania and a special ring challenge mode, whereas the Genesis Classics version of Sonic 2 has emulator rewinds and a mirror mode. Sega has always leaned on re-releases of old Sonic games, but never has the market been this over-saturated.

Which lastly brings us to the stream's "One More Thing" reveal -- a cryptic video of Sonic running through a forest followed by some glyphs. Sega's always been a fan of mysterious promotions for Sonic games, dating all the way back to 2000's reveal of Sonic Adventure 2, where they spent months teasing the identity of Shadow the Hedgehog and his role in the game. The teaser shown during Sonic Central was so lacking in context and content that I honestly found it difficult to care. In order to set up a mystery, you should probably actually, like... tease something mysterious, right? There wasn’t enough here to grab on to.

You also have to consider the fact that, after the poor reception to games like Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces, Sega doesn't have much goodwill to cash in on cryptic hints these days. It's not a good time to be shy about what the next Sonic game is going to be.

Graciously, the mystery didn't last long. The community ended up getting their hands on the source-quality version of the teaser given to the press, and noticed the file's embedded project header mentioned it was for something called "Rangers." That same day, Sega accidentally referred to a "Sonic Rangers" in a press release that was later scrubbed of that detail. This name was quickly cross-referenced with imageboard posts made last year from people who were apparently in a focus group test for a game called "Sonic Rangers." When the posts were originally made there was no reason to believe they were legitimate, but combined with the newfound context of Sega confirming the name, it began to paint a picture of the game that just might be true.

Going by the alleged focus group posts -- one in August of last year, and another in January of this year -- Sonic Rangers is an open world game where players run around a semi-realistic fantasy setting, completing puzzles and doing rudimentary quests. A new ability was talked about named "SpinCycle," where Sonic runs loops around enemies, sounding similar to the "paraloop" ability from Sonic Team’s NiGHTS: Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn. After completing puzzles in the open world, players can enter portals to "cyberspace" levels, which were described as being the most similar to levels from Sonic Generations. Completing a cyberspace level earned you a Chaos Emerald, and after collecting all seven, a boss could be faced: a massive titan the player had to fight as Super Sonic. Both focus group posts implied they understood this was only a small piece to demonstrate the mechanics.

For many years, I was against the idea of an open world Sonic game. There was definitely a fad during the PS2 and Xbox 360 eras where developers were trying to make all games open world. Racing games, platformers, sports games like Tony Hawk, it didn't matter. Everyone was trying to copy Grand Theft Auto's success, whether it made sense or not. This led to a lot of boring, forgettable open world games -- like Total Overdose, or State of Emergency. Whenever the community would bring up the possibility of an open world Sonic game, it felt more like cashing in on that fad rather than a desire to have a good game.

But as the dust settled on the open world gold rush and developers figured out what worked and what didn't, I began to have a change of heart. Sonic games generally have problems with repetition. Usually, there's a resource or some other collectable that must be gathered before you can unlock the next level, and that means replaying levels you've already finished multiple times. I've been developing a theory about this: in addition to padding the clock out in order to make the games longer, I think they're also trying to coax the player to replay levels for faster times or perfecting scores, because I'd argue that’s where most of the real fun is in Modern Sonic games. But not everybody is always into that, and depending on how it's presented, it can feel like tedious busy work.

Racing games eventually figured this out. Whereas before, racing games had discrete time trial modes that let you learn the layout of a track and practice to get faster times, the advent of an open world did away with that. By repeatedly traveling between locations on the map, players learn the layout of streets and roads naturally without it feeling so much like work. This could also be theoretically applied to Sonic games, where the grind of replaying stages over and over could be mitigated by incorporating it into the natural traversal of an open world.

The problem is, that's not exactly what the Sonic Rangers leak claims. It's an open world game, sure, but from the way it sounds, it also includes traditional linear Sonic levels in their own separate little sub-world. The problem is still there, just buried under another layer of abstraction.

But it's important to remember that Sonic Rangers is probably a year and a half away. For a professional game development studio with hundreds of employees, even a few months can lead to dramatic, sweeping changes. The people who were part of the focus test also say as much -- if Sega was getting feedback on Sonic Rangers all the way back in August (or as some posts claim, even March) of last year, there is plenty of time for them to course-correct and get things right before its release next year.

Now, I'm not dumb. This is Sonic the Hedgehog we're talking about. Statistically speaking, there are more bad Sonic games than good ones, and I say that as someone who was around and can remember the kind of impact Sonic had back when he first debuted. I know some of you out there will say things like, "Sonic Heroes was a good game!" -- but consider that by 1990's standards, Sonic the Hedgehog was as big as today's Call of Duty, or Fortnite. Sonic wasn't just a big deal, he was one of the biggest deals in all of gaming, and his games were golden. That was 30 years ago, and games like Sonic Heroes are a big step down in quality. Heck, even Sonic Heroes is going on 20 years ago. Getting something like Sonic Mania nowadays feels more like a happy accident than setting up any kind of precedent or return to form. There is a bare minimum skepticism that must be maintained with these games, otherwise you're setting yourself up for more heartbreak.

And I've always maintained that a lot of the bad Sonic games at least started with a good core idea. You can always see the potential in what they were attempting, but because of either time constraints, budget limitations, or some other weak link in their development pipeline, they never reach that potential once they end up on store shelves. Which, really, makes things even more heartbreaking. There are only so many times you can watch someone drop the ball before it starts to affect you.

There's still a long road ahead of Sonic Rangers. Let's see what E3 brings.