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cosmic-navel-gazin · 4 years

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This is something a bit different from me, but in light of the recent announcement from Ubisoft that there’s going to be a remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time coming out in January 2021, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

(This started out small but got outta hand so super long post incoming, no spoilers for the games)

So first off, a bit of my history with the original game.

I’m a big fan of the Prince of Persia (PoP) franchise, and I’ll fully admit that nostalgia plays a big part in it. You see, in many ways this 2003 classic was my real entryway drug into the world of videogames.

It wasn’t the first videogame I had ever played. My friends had consoles, there were some games on the school computers, but I didn’t own games as a kid. As far as my parents were concerned, these were all the spoils and soul damning devices of Lucifer himself. You know how it is, every generation goes through this thing of blaming all the world’s problems on a new artform: rock and roll, comic books and then videogames.

So yeah, a gaming console or buying games for the home computer was a BIG NO-NO!

But of course, the more an authority figure says you can’t have something, the more you want and crave it. It was only a matter of time until the opportunity presented itself to me.

And then the day finally came.

It was just me and a couple of friends, going to this new magazine store near the school. And there it was: the dvd case that came with a gaming mag for like 5 euros if I remember correctly, stupid cheap for such a great game.

There was doubt, there was fear, there was anxiety. I didn’t know much about the game, only the old 1989 DOS Prince of Persia:

This had the same name but looked different. I was seduced immediately.

The case stared longingly at me:

It’s not my fault, I was bewitched and I bought it.

My symbol of rebellion, my first big transgression, and my first real treasured posession that I bought with hard earned money.

PoP:The Sands of Time was my original sin so to say:

Accurate representation of what happened that day

I furiously installed the game as soon as my parents left the house. Played it for a couple of hours and stood in awe at the thing - the cinematics, the cool parkour moves, the arabian nights setting, the time manipulation to undo mistakes when platforming or in combat, the Prince breaking the fourth wall saying:”no no no, that’s not what happened, let me start over” whenever I died and got a game over…

You have not experienced true fear if at some point in your life you didn’t feel the cold sweat running down your back as you hear the very distinct sound of your parents’ car arriving when you’re doing something “prohibited”.

As soon as I heard that sound, I quickly quit the game, uninstaled it (I could not run the risk of them finding out I had tainted their machine with a videogame *gasp!*), and ran to my room to hide the game before opening the door for them.

Neetheless to say, I never made much progress since I had to start over every time after quitting and uninstalling the thing. I would just play those first couple of hours over and over, never knowing how the story progressed, but I was happy all the same. At one point I knew every line of dialogue, every music cue, every sound effect of that beginning part. It would be some years before I got my first laptop and finally managed to complete it.

All of this to say that the game means a lot to me. Not just as a product or piece of entertainment. This wasn’t casually playing on someone’s gameboy advance or PS2 to have a bit of fun and pass the time.

This was more intimate.

It was just me; the game; a dark room and a blanket; and a sincere and charming, simple but compelling story told seamlessly through mechanics that only enhanced it. This was me witnessing gameplay and storytelling going hand in hand in a way that even many of my other favourite games don’t do, or don’t do as well (there’s usually some disconnect where a game only manages to really excel at one but not the other).

Ok, so on the announcement and trailer:

youtube

As a big fan you might think I was super hyped for this.

But I gotta say…no, not really.

I’m not super angry, but I’m not really excited either honestly. And I don’t think it’s just the rough and uncanny character models and animation that people are pointing out all over (although that doesn’t help).

I guess to talk a bit on that, I should stress out that my problem isn’t that it doesn’t look realistic enough. To be honest, and this is going to sound rich from a big Witcher 3 fan, I think that the gaming industry overall, moreso big tripple A titles, seem to have this unhealthy obsession with photorealism. Like, I don’t need to see the characters’s pores to care about these polygon people. Strong art direction is what I feel is more valuable. I just don’t think this arms race to photorealism is sustainable. Games are taking longer to make and fund, and I’d rather have dev teams spend more time polishing and refining the games’ mechanics and/or story if the trade-off is less “realistic” graphics.

It might just be personal preference, but I wish we were getting more stylized character and world design. Go look at some screenshots for Pathologic 2, a game that came out last year that hits that sweet spot between full-blown cartoony/caricature and realistic by today’s standards:

And I think that is somewhat what they were going for with this remake’s character models (or I hope it was). But it’s still not quite there, hopefully they’ll work on improving those so they can hit that sweet spot also.

(in defense of my hipocrisy and love of The Witcher 3, I think the more realistic look was appropriate for the world they were portraying, it benefits from it. However I don’t think I would love it any less if it had less detailed models and environments)

One last thing on the graphics.

I will say this though, at least from the footage we see in the new trailer the team seems to be capitalizing on colour. Big vibrant reds, blues, whites and yellows in the environment look great, and really captures the 1.001 nights/arabian nights feel that I absolutely love. I appreciate that since there’s always this tendency for remakes to suck all the colour and life from the original (in both games and movies), regardless if it fits the setting and tone or not.

Anyway, I think the reason I’m very much without a big reaction is that I believe the 2003 original is a true classic, a masterpiece even - I guess I should stress out that when I say masterpiece, I don’t mean it’s perfect. Just that the whole is bigger and better than the sum of its parts, that the things it does right, it does so right, that it completely overshadows the flaws.

The story, the art direction, the gameplay (the holy trinity of platforming, combat and puzzle solving), the brilliant introduction of the dagger of time as a gameplay and story mechanic (one of my favourite mechanics in all of gaming), the music, the charming duo that is the Prince and Farah, the tight pacing with the game being just the right length and not overstaying its welcome, the outstanding level design where you’re never stuck doing one thing for too long (the game is always juggling between combat, story, platforming and puzzles, mixing and matching)…

Looking at all these things, I just really don’t think we need a remake because I don’t think there’s that many glaring terrible flaws that could justify it.

Adding more scenes and content could be good, or it might backfire: bloat and ruin the game’s already excelent pacing and fluidity (which I think is the main keyword that better describes the original, everything flows superbly). The original was only 6-8 hours long and it is better for it. I’m not confident that adding dozens of hours of gameplay like the big tittles today would help at all.

The only real improvements I can see are:

tweeking and perfecting the combat (I’ve seen it mentioned that they’re implementing a targeting system which sounds good);

perhaps also better Farah’s A.I during combat when you have to help protect her from swarms of enemies;

Maybe throw in a couple more enemy types? The cut sand tigers for example?

usual things like adding the option of subtitles, add the ability to skip cutescenes;

But other than that…

I don’t even think the graphics of the original look bad. They’ve aged of course, with the game being 17 years old, but still. I installed it last night and played through the first hour to take some screenshots and I think they’re still good:

I can understand the MediEvil remaster, the Spyro remaster or the more recent FFVII remake in terms of wanting to update the graphics. I can understand that not everyone can easily go back to these low poly lads:

But this game? I know I’m influenced by nostalgia and all, but I don’t think it needs that makeover that badly, especially when compared to these other remakes and remasters. Funnily enough, I just noticed that these examples I just listed were all PS1 games. PoP: SoT was a PS2 , PC and Xbox game. PS2 era games have aged far better visually and don’t need that big a makeover in my most humble opinion.

It would be one thing if the original was out of print like a Rule of Rose scenario ,where you can’t find the game unless you go to ebay or something and it’s stupid expensive. Or if it was a pain to get running on modern systems like it was with Grim Fandango, until it got a remaster.

But no, you can find the Sands of Time trilogy and the PoP (2008) reboot on GOG and Steam (on Steam only there’s also the PoP:The Forgotten Sands midquel). So there isn’t the usual problem of the game no longer being accessible to people who want to play it, which helps justify the need for a remake.

The original still plays nice, sounds nice and looks nice, so I guess this all goes to show that at the end of the day, this remake just feels a bit unnecessary to me, at least from what little the trailer showed (I would love to have my bitter cynical ass proved wrong though!).

Maybe I just have a superhuman tolerance for older games and how they look, I really don’t have that big a problem if the game itself is good or interesting, so I don’t always think older games need remakes.

Maybe my falling out of love with Ubisoft in this last decade has curbed forever any hype I might have for their announcements, even when they pull out my son, my baby boy Prince of Persia out again.

Maybe I’m just burnt out and too pessimistic about remakes, remasters and adaptations (although game remakes usually do better than film ones).

And this makes me a bit sad because I don’t want to sh*t all over the first piece of “new” Prince of Persia content we’ve had since 2010??? Oof, it’s been a while.

Especially knowing that Yuri Lowenthal is coming back and excited to voice the Prince again. And I also don’t want to be too harsh since we’re looking at an alpha of the game. But so far I’m just very numb to this, I do seriously hope it turns out good and that they don’t rush it out the door. But I’m not convinced we need a remake in the first place. The original is a milestone, a game changer. I’d rather see a game that had great ideas and poor execution being remade than something people already love and consider a masterpiece.

Guess we’ll see how I feel once more news and footage come out.

Oh and feel free to share your own thoughts on this remake. I’m curious to know what both fans and newcomers alike think.

small edit: I can’t believe I was just watching this Sands of Time playthrough on youtube and at one point it is said: “Another game that is designed similarly to this is Soul Reaver actually.”

Of course! I didn’t even see it! All of my favourite things are connected!!! Maybe that detail was another thing that helped me getting really into Soul Reaver as I was first playing it.

#prince of persia #prince of persia: the sands of time #prince of persia remake #ubisoft #videogames #my ramblings #I can't seem to write a short post to save my life!

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cookiedoughmeagain · 3 years

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Haven DVD commentaries: 5.15 - Power

5.15 Commentary with Adam Higgs and Speed Weed (writers for this episode and the next episode)

SW: By the time anyone’s listening to this, we’ll both be writing on different shows. But we can’t tell you which ones yet. Not the same show as each other sadly. AH: Yeah that was a shame. But we will one day in the future, I have a good feeling about that. However for Haven stuff, I think the thing here was, we were trying to reboot the show in a way. SW: That’s right. AH: 514 is the start of the season, or of season 5 part B, but these two episodes [515 and 516] really encompass the new world order. SE: That’s right, they define the world after the shroud is down. Did we call it the shroud in the show? AH: The shroud, yeah. That’s actually a good point because we spent a lot of time talking about what the shroud was going to be called. I can’t remember the other names we thought about, but we went back and forth for a long time. SW: And we talked about what we called it - because often there’s a handle that you use in the room for what you’re talking about, and then you have to remember, did you actually put the same term in an actor’s mouth so that the world inside the show knows what it’s called? AH: My favourite is when you don’t realise that. On another show I did that, it was in the edit that I was like; Oh have we ever mentioned that that’s what that’s called? And going through scripts we realised that no; no we did not - OK, let’s ADR some stuff in.

AH: So this was fun. We’re both fans of The Walking Dead, and we got to do a Haven kind of version of The Walking Dead, or of them just trying to survive. It’s not the Trouble of the Week things so much, it’s … SW: It’s Haven’s version of a post-apocalyptic world, it’s true. These episodes were directed by Rick Bota who also direct 9 and 10 that Adam and I also wrote, so it was good to work with him again.

[Dwight and Nathan talk outside the school] AH: So here we get to see that time has passed since we last saw everyone in 514 and we spent a lot of time making sure that everyone had their own intro so we could showcase how things have changed. And a lot of this episode is about putting strain on these episodes and just seeing how everyone reacts to this post-apocalyptic kind of situation they’re in

SW: There’s Tony, he becomes a bigger character in the next episode. AH: Yeah we spent a lot of time seeding a lot of things. And we shot these episodes in between our set move. So, for other other seasons we shot up until October, or earlier than that even? And everything was shot on our sound stages in Chester. And then this year, half way through the season everything got moved up to Halifax, because of hockey. SW: That’s right. We shot on a hockey rink in Chester. Really anything that has a lot of space and a tall ceiling can be a sound stage for a television show - if it’s quiet outside, if there’s no noise from the street coming in. *pause for the break*

[Duke driving to work in Halifax] AH: This is actually Halifax, this bridge here. SW: That’s right, and I think this is actually one of the first scenes we shot in Halifax. Oh no, we shot that later. AH: Yeah this was shot quite a bit after. And here we’ve got our wonderful mechanic here played by William MacDonald. I worked with William on an episode of Republic of Doyle, so I was happy when I saw him in the auditions for this, and he did a great job. He just has that look, that imposing feel.

SW: So anyway, the people in Chester wanted their hockey rink back, so when we got a 26 epsiode order (seasons 5A and 5B) we had to move sets at this point as we were shooting. And the reason these episodes take place almost entirely in the school (this storyline [Duke in Halifax] excepted) is because all of our standing sets were being taken down in one place and being put up in another. So you’ll see in later episodes those sets coming back AH: We slowly start to see the sets getting put back up. But these scenes with Duke in Halifax were shot after - well after - because we had to shoot everything in the school for this whole block.

[As Duke is leaving his voicemail to Monty talking about the kind of job he’s looking for] SW: What do you do when you’re responsible for having given Troubles to thousands of people? AH: Go to disneyland. But no, that is exactly what we were trying to figure out here - what happens to Duke? After the explosion how does everyone pick up the pieces and move on?

AH: And another goal for these episodes was trying to get the characters to an interesting place, or a place we can build off of. And the relationship between Audrey and Charlotte was an important one to build (over this and the next couple of episodes) to see if we could get them to a place where they can trust each other. Because it’s like Speed said, what do you do after you gave everyone Troubles? What do you do when you find out that this woman that you’ve been missing your whole life [your mother] has been an obstacle for you for the last couple episodes? How do you respond to that? And we do try really hard on this show to create some level of reality, maybe not in terms of the supernatural, but at least in the emotions characters have.

SW: The other thing that was a challeng early in the design of these episodes, and it was really cool talking through with Adam in the room, was how we got a super deadly - oh I should pause, people are psyched about this kiss [Nathan’s and Audrey’s ‘I like the view’ moment], enjoy the kiss. AH: This hasn’t aired yet, I just realised. And I’ve been waiting to see the Twitter response to these kisses, because we ramp up that lovefest, in these two episodses especially. And there’s some really powerful scenes in 516. SW: It’s true. Or I should say, I believe you. I’ve actually forgotten what happens in 516. You know we do have a portion of fans who are not on Team Naudrey. We have a portion of fans who are rapid Duke/Audrey lovers.

SW: So, we really worked hard to design a Trouble that was super-deadly, and really scary, and didn’t require any production budget. So we talked a long time about the darkness, like - when you were in the dark a monster would come and eat you, but then we thought you’d have to produce something for that. So it became just the darkness itself. AH: And we even talked later about whether there would be a sound cue or not a sound cue. SW: Sound is cheap. AH: Yes, but this was a good one. We went back and forth on what to make this look like. And you’ll see some of that production-friendly magic throughout these two episodes. But the darkness I think worked well in just keeping everyone scared. Because it’s kind of human nature to be afraid of the dark.

[Dwight giving his banishment speech to the assembled crowd in the school hall] AH: We got to give Adam Copeland some cool stuff to do, and just showing where Dwight would go if you pushed him to the edge. And I’ll admit, we went further with Dwight in the early drafts. Dwight was Ned Stark in the early drafts, and he was a little bit more complicit in some executions. But we looked at the character and had to pull back a bit on that, I was a little zealous there, I think it was good to pull back. SW: Well you had The Walking Dead in mind, you know. But the truth is ultimately, we’re not that show. We are more heartfelt and lighter, and we protect our characters.

[Nathan discussing his trip down Trouble Alley, and Audrey pointing out cell phones don’t work.] AH: Cell phones. SW: We talked a lot about cell phones. AH: We did, we talked about whether or not we wanted them to be able to use cell phones, or not to use cell phones, could cell phones work that way? SW: Could they get through the shroud? Well, we knew they couldn’t get through the shroud AH: How did the shroud work when it came to people outside? There were a lot of rules that we inside the room spent a lot of time discussing how things would work.

[As Nathan is telling Audrey who he’s taking with him to the power plant, and the camera cuts away to show those people, and Vince and Dave’s argument] AH: Speed, I have to give you big props for pushing with the intercut here, because it’s not something we usually do on this show. And you really encouraged me to push it further and I think it ended up working really well. SW: Well you did have the instincts to do that, and TV now can really jump all over the place and audiences follow it. Haven has typically followed a pretty standard way of story telling. But, for film students out there, this started (and we’re now back to) a conversation between Nathan and Audrey, that cuts forwards to a walking shot [of the group coming up to Trouble Alley], that cuts back to a flashback of Dave and Vince, and then comes back to the overarching narrative [Nathan and Audrey’s conversation]. You’re following that as you watch it, but it is - at least to the tastes of this show - a risky re-arrangement of time. AH: It looks good though. SW: And it’s very efficient story telling. You can get more story in in less time. AH: We did get very efficient on this show, I have to say.

[Vince and Dwight’s conversation in the office about the batteries] AH: This relationship was a lot of fun. And it was great to build it, and talking to Adam Copeland about it, he really thinks of the character, of Dwight, that Vince is his dad so to speak. When he’s thinking about how to play a scene really works in that kind of structure.

SW: To be clear, in case we got confusing before, Trouble Alley has no cell phones working. Cell phones work within the school, and around town inside the shroud, except for Trouble Alley where - did we explain it, I can’t remember, but there’s some kind of electromagnetic Trouble there. AH: Yeah and EMP kind of Trouble that’s knocking out a lot of the power.

AH: This episode moves a quite a clip. And again we’re back here in Halifax. SW: Actual Halifax. And here is Hailie. AH: Hailie, played by Tamara Duarte. SW: She just had a spot on audition. I think Shawn Pillar, our executive producer director, knew her, and she delivered a tape that was just perfect. We needed somebody who was broken and hard, and yet also vulnerable which is not easy to do. And she’s a young actress. AH: And she can sell stuff so well with expression, that’s one of the things she brought to this. And this character ends up growing. We originally only had her in these two episodes [515 and 516] but then she becomes integral to the story. And that was interesting because we hadn’t actually shot these scenes yet - as we were talking about earlier, the Duke scenes were shot much later than the rest of the episode - so we had to go back and change things a little bit to make sure it lined up with the mythology that we were putting in to the show to pay off in epsiodes like 21, 22, 23. It was interesting. SW: And we designed her Trouble before we thought how we were going to use her later (to phase through the shroud). But it was kind of cool, we essentially took a tool that we’d built off the shelf, instead of designing it specifically. SW: I love the story Matt McGuinness tells about when he was in Vegas with some of his friends from Franklin & Bash on a retreat there. And they were getting into a hotel van to go down town for dinner or something like that. So they’re this goupr of 50 year old men, and in climbs a group of good looking 50 year old women who were there for some sort of party. And they get to talking and flirting. So it’s like; What do you do? Oh we write for TV, Franklin & Bash. And that drops like a lead balloon; nobody cares. So Matt says; Well actually I write for Haven - and they all light up. And one woman says to Matt; You know what I love about Haven - it’s so complicated, but I know that you guys have everything absolutely planned out right from the beginning, so even though it feels confusing at times, I feel safe in your hands. AH: *laughing* What did Matt say to that? SW: He nodded and said; You’re right. And then he came back and told us that story. And, it’s just not true folks, I’m sorry. We are scrambling at every moment to figure it out. I think we do. AH: I think we do. That’s the thing, we make it work. Unlike other shows (nothing against them) we do take pains to make sure that if we set it up, we fix it, we make sure it works. We sometimes spend long days on getting that stuff to work.

[As Nathan is about to take the group into Trouble Alley] AH: I do enjoy this bunch of ragtag misfits working together. SW: Notice, another invisible Trouble. That’s a crew member with a wire in their hand; that’s cheap. AH: But if you’re wondering what I think it looks like, I’ve always thought of it as like Godzilla, a smaller version of Godzilla. SW: Cool! AH: Just invisible.

[As Charlotte gets her foot caught] AH: Oh, and again, talking about The Walking Dead transitions, Nathan in the original draft was super dark here where instead of saving Charlotte, Nathan basically blackmails her freedom in exchange for information. SW: Right, it was jumping up a wall originally, and he was only going to pull her up if she gave up the information about the aether. Whereas here now she offers it because she’s in trouble. AH: So I think it was a good note to pull back on that, but again it was just getting into that head space of Game of Thrones, Walking Dead.

[Duke on the phone to the bank who refuse to recognise the existence of Haven.] AH: And again here we are putting in some rules of the shroud, how does it work with memory, what do people of think of Haven, that are outside of the shroud. SW: Yeah, important for the rest of the season. AH: And are these - yes they are, the first episodes to really start Duke on this journey of him walking the earth. SW: Oh yeah for sure. Last episode he was in Haven. AH: And that plays out for quite a while. SW: Yeah he’s out of town for a while.

[Nathan and the others arriving at the smashed up Herald] AH: This scene I felt was important, just to show how the world has changed so much for everyone. You know, no one is safe. And it’s not just Troubles, there’s looters and stuff where the Troubles have set off a fuse, but at the end of it is just crime and everything. SW: And very poignant that it’s Dave here in the Teagues home, because for most of the series they were the keeper of the secrets. If everyone else was confused, they knew what was going on. And then a little bit in season 4 it started getting out of their hands , and then certainly in season give they are way out of their depth. And this their vault of secrets has been affected.

[As Charlotte is telling Nathan that aether might help her solve the Troubles AH: Here we had to be very specific about this receipe for success and how it would work.

[Dwight to Audrey; It’s easy making choices from the side lines] AH: This is the ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’ aspect

[As we see the power plant] AH: This was actually a power plant SW: Yeah it’s so cool. Very unusual looking place. AH: So that was neat that we were able to get an actual power plant with the turbines and everything. I will say for myself, that I am not mechanically inclined at all. So there was a lot of help from the room in figuring out how electricity works. And this is Kira Fletcher, this is our third Fletcher that we’ve used on this show.

AH: It was nice to get everybody in the dirty clothes and everything too. And they wore it all well.

[As Nathan takes the wires from Kira] AH: That’s the other thing, in these episodes I really wanted to make Nathan as active as possible. He’s trying his best to put this genie back in the bottle. And just every time he tries to do something good it seems to backfire. SW: Well, it’s sort of the theme of the show; No good deed goes unpunished. AH: And we’re going to see that with Duke right here.

[As Hailie is asking Duke about her mom’s ‘superpower’ AH: And again, a lot of this story we had put in here, and we didn’t have to alter it when we came up with the fix or the solution or the mythology for 21, 22, 23. SW: Well and episode 20 as well. AH: Yeah, her mom is seeded in right there. SW: If you haven’t seen it yet, epsiode 20, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn wrote a retro Haven episode that features Hailie’s mom. AH: And I remember there was talk about using Tamara to play Hailie’s mom. But I don’t think we did that in the end.

[As Duke and Hailie finish their conversation outside the garage] AH: Oh, somebody listening in. SW: 26B, is that what Matt calls it? AH: Yeah, 26B SW: Matt’s code for someone overhearing.

AH: This was fun with Charlotte as a character where she comes from another world that’s much more advanced, so she’s not a mechanic, she’s not an engineer by trade, but our technology is so simple to her. SW: It’s like playing with a paperclip to her. There’s a word that we use all the time in the room that isn’t actually in the show; Arcadians. Just to ourselves, Charlotte and Mara and her father are Arcadians. And William.

[As Audrey finds Vince with Rolf’s body, the latest victim of the No Marks Killer] AH: And this was some heavy mythology to drop as well. There is a lot going on in this episode! SW: Yeah it’s really the season premiere AH: It was nice to bring the Teagues back into the main cast. They’ve been out on an island almost, having their own plot and learning a lot of stuff that was very important. But it was nice to bring them back so that they’re interacting again with Audrey and Nathan, and Dwight. SW: And they do well when they’re holding secrets. They’re built for that.

AH: Eric Cayla, our Director of Photography, did some great work with darkness and shadows in this episode. [Audrey; Did they force you to do this? Because I can get you out.] AH: And there’s that Audrey compassion that’s going to play a big role in 17 SW: We like to, on this show to set up things, especially as it’s become more serialised. And with that litle line there, Audrey just sealed her fate for episode 17, or the end of 16. AH: Yeah, that was another one, like we talked about with 9 and 10, where the ending moved back and forth.

[Dave to Charlotte; Is there anything I can do to help? Back rub? Water?] SW: *laughing: Oh Adam. You have a way of getting humour in. That’s just terrific AH: *also laughing* I remember there was some debate though about that ‘back rub’ if he was coming on to her. And I was just like: No, no - he’s just in an awkward situation and doesn’t know what to do. Being an awkward person myself, that’s coming from real experience.

AH: And this was great work by the art department on these power schematics. It really helped tell the story.

[people in the school fighting over a flashlight] AH: Chaos! And this is again that post-apocalyptic landscape [Dwight; Alright everyone take a deep breath SW: That’s what I say to my kids when they throw tantrums AH: But not the rest of the speech. And this just shows how Dwight has elevated in the eyes of the town.He really is the leader. So interesting where you started with this character and where he ends.

[As Nathan and Kira find the mine shaft where the aether seems to be] AH: So we were talking this through, if this is where William’s stash of aether is held, our idea behind it is that he stashed it in a natural cave or underground area, geological formation of some kind SW: Like 500 years ago AH: And then things were built over it. It’s not that William went there when that building was built and buried it there. SW: Right, just to line up with the backstory that William and Mara were trapsing round New Engliand in the 1500s.

[Mechanic on screen; I looked you up Hailie Colton] AH: Oh I remember we didn’t have a last name for her initially. We had to go back and add that in.

[Duke runs the mechanic over and drives through Hailie] AH: Yes, Duke knew that was going to happen. He was not trying to kill Hailie. And props to Shawn and Rick for blocking this, it was not the easiest scene to block - a lot of moving pieces.

[As Audrey is packing a bag to go look for Nathan] AH: And here we were trying to have a nice mother/daughter moment SW: Yeah you did a great job. The slow arc of getting them together. AH: I think that’s the other thing we tried to do with these episodes is re-establish that anything could happen. That this is a new world order, bad stuff, people are dying. And it could be one of our characters. SW: Yeah we talked about where to end this episode and start the next one [The implication being they considered ending the episode before Nathan gets back, and so with the suggestion that he is actually dead] AH: I think a lot of these background extras here [as Nathan arrives in the hall full of people] were comped in. SW: They had 300 extras on the day AH: Was it 300? Maybe they weren’t then, maybe it was all practical.

AH: Thank you for listening SW: We’ll see you on 16

#haven syfy #havensyfy #syfyhaven #haven maine #haven 5 #haven dvd commentaries #5.15 - power

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duhragonball · 5 years

Text

Dragon Ball GT Retrospective (4/7)

[Note: This was originally written on January 13,2013. I embedded YouTube videos on each part, including several Evanescence AMVs, but Tumblr won’t cooperate with that for some reason. Just look them up yourself.]

Today I'd like to talk about the Super 17 Saga. It sucks, but it's short. Man, there's an Evanescence AMV for this too? I'm starting to see why that Daredevil movie was so poorly received. Starring Ben Affleck! Soundtrack by Every Fifteen-Year-Old on YouTube!

From what I've read, Episode 41 was supposed to have been the finale of Dragon Ball GT, but the show got renewed and so it chugged along for another 23 installments. I don't know if the post-Baby storylines were rushed, per se, but it does sort of feel like Toei was caught flat-footed. For one thing, the opening credits still kept using the same animations of Goku, Pan, and Trunks flying around in space, looking for Black Star Dragon Balls, and fighting Baby. Well, the outer space adventures are over, the Black Star Dragon Balls are gone, and Baby's friggin' dead. Hell, Trunks even gets kicked out of the main cast. From here on out It's all Goku and Pan with a little Vegeta now and then. Also, I think the Super 17 Saga feels like a kneejerk reaction. "They ordered more shows, what do we do? Shit... uh, let's just bring back all the bad guys from the old series!" For a Dragon Ball Z fan, watching GT for the first time is like getting whiplash because they kept switching the premise around. The whole point of the first two dozen episodes was that they were abandoning the DBZ formula and trying to do old school Kid Goku stories in outer space. Then they spend another dozen episodes setting up a Goku vs. Vegeta fight with new power-ups. By Episode 42, the series has given up any ambition of offering a distinct flavor or vision. It's settled into a rut of doing lame comedy and watered-down superhero fights. So first off, Episode 41 is about the latest World Martial Arts Tournament. Goku used to compete in these things, but after he won the tournament he let everything that happened in DBZ distract him from the event, and during that time Mr. Satan became the multi-time World Champion. The gag with Mr. Satan is that he has no super powers whatsoever, and while he's a brilliant martial artist, he only dominates the competition because all the super-fighters lost interest in the event. By the end of DBZ, Goku and Mr. Satan's kids got married, so now they rig the tournament like some kind of kung fu mafia: Whoever wins the tournament has to fight Mr. Satan to actually claim the championship, and that person always agrees to take a dive. By the end of DBZ, the Z-fighters are comfortable letting Mr. Satan serve as a figurehead hero to the people of Earth, while they do all the actual daysaving. By the GT-era, Satan is now in his mid-fifties, and feels comfortable retiring and passing the torch to someone new. He tries to rig the event so his grandaughter Pan can win, but she withdraws for fear that she'll be required to wear his ring gear and mustache if she wins. Goku wanted to compete, but Mr. Satan convinces him to fight in the junior division because he's too short. Ultimately, it's Uub who wins the tournament, but at the last moment he freezes and Mr. Satan actually eliminates him cleanly. The reasons for this are complicated, and so I gotta explain Majin Buu. The final bad guy of Dragon Ball Z was Majin Buu, a genie who could absorb the personalities and traits of his enemies. This ability eventually caused him to split into two Buus, a good fat Buu and an evil version who went on to be the main villain. The good Buu made friends with Mr. Satan, and was instrumental in preserving his stranglehold on the World Championship. The evil Buu was killed by Goku, who wished that he could be reincarnated as a good guy so they could fight again. Goku's wish came true, and the evil Buu was indeed reincarnated as a young human boy named "Uub" (get it?). Goku quickly took the boy as his student so he could train him for a rematch and groom him as his successor. You'd expect that Uub would have been a major player in Dragon Ball GT, but instead he barely ever shows up, and when he did finally make his big move to stop Baby he got his ass kicked. Fortunately for him, the good Majin Buu stepped in and recombined with Uub, transforming him into "Majuub". Majuub still got his ass kicked by Baby, but at least he made him work for it. The point of all this is that Majuub consciously wanted to beat Mr. Satan for the World title, but unconsciously, the part of him that was once Mr. Satan's BFF wanted to let his old pal have the glory one last time. This is sort of a problem with DBGT. I meant the show has tons and tons of problems, but this is one that I think deserves more attention. There's a certain fatalism to the series, because even if it isn't the final act for these characters, they're all older and half of them got 9-to-5 jobs and so forth, so it's clear that things are winding down. To that end, it makes sense that GT would see the deaths of some of the major characters, but they're all kind of cheap death scenes. Majin Buu doesn't die so much as he just merges with another iteration of himself. Mr. Satan misses him, but only because he doesn't understand what's happened. Piccolo dies, but it was a stupid and pointless sacrifice as I explained last time. In any event, he shows up later on in the afterlife, so it's not like he's actually gone. Then there's Krillin, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Mr. Satan retaining his title is a variation on the theme. He talks about retiring, but when the moment arrives, he can't bring himself to step out of the limelight. In a similar vein, one could argue that Dragon Ball GT should have been mainly about Uub and Pan as the successors to Goku and Gohan, but Goku just couldn't walk away from the action. Anyway, with that business resolved, the Super 17 Saga can get started. Basically, it's like the Batman stories where a bunch of villains break out of Arkham Asylum, except all the worst offenders in Dragon Ball are dead, so they have to literally escape from hell. The plan begins when Dr. Myuu is recruited by Dr. Gero. Again, it really feels like Toei was just trying to come up with something on the fly, and they decided Gero and Myuu's resemblance was a feature instead of a bug. Myuu designed the Machine Mutants in the early episodes of GT, and Dr. Gero created the android villains in DBZ. They're both doctors and they both wear silly hats and long, bushy mustaches. Also, both of them were betrayed. Gero was killed when Android 17 turned on him, while Myuu was killed by his creator Baby. Gero's plan is to work together with Myuu to correct that whole "betrayal" thing that made Android 17 backfire. Android 17 is still alive on Earth, but if the two doctors build another Android 17 in hell, they can.... harmonize their subspace... tachyons.... resonance. Something. All I know is they somehow managed to build an exact duplicate of 17 in hell, so apparently they have hardware stores in hell. Dragon Ball has never been very consistent about how hell works. In theory, a dead bad guy is stripped of his corporeal form and he languishes in hell as a disembodied spirit until he's finally allowed to be reincarnated in a new identity. That's why Frieza can't just beat everyone up and conquer the afterlife. But Toei always liked the idea of dead bad guys stirring up trouble, so they kept depicting them with their bodies in hell, complete with their full powers. Dr. Gero was a cyborg, and I think they let him keep his robot body in hell, even though Frieza didn't get to keep his own cyborg implants. Go figure. For that matter, I'm pretty sure Dr. Myuu is purely mechanical, so I'm not convinced he'd even be in hell to begin with. But somehow he and General Rildo are there. So if Machine Mutants have souls, why isn't Baby there with the other villains? He's the strongest one, so wouldn't it make more sense to rebuild a stronger version of Baby and use him in the big revenge plan? Realistically, Toei probably left Baby out deliberately because they just killed him off, but that's why you don't do a story like this right after killing off a major villain. The point of all of this is that "Hell Fighter 17" and "Not Dead Yet 17" are mentally linked because they're basically the same unit in two bodies. They both fire some sort of energy beam in unison, and this allows them to open a portal connecting Hell and Earth. It's just sort of implied that the original Android 17 was mind-controlled for all of this, because he's the guy who sent Dr. Gero to hell in the first place, so I doubt he'd willingly endorse a plan to help him get out. Gero and Myuu send a bunch of dead villains to invade Earth, and they issue a challenge to Goku: Come fight Cell and Frieza in Hell, or we'll send them to Earth too to make the situation even worse. Goku is eager for a rematch with his old archenemies, even though he's gotten far, far stronger while they've been puttering around the afterlife all this time. He stupidly flies through the portal, only for Gero and Myuu to close it from the outside. So now Goku's trapped in Hell and most of his enemies are causing trouble on Earth. One of the first episodes of GT I ever saw was #43, because it came on a bonus DVD packaged with a strategy guide for a DBZ videogame. This was the episode where Goku fights Cell and Frieza in Hell, and I guess they put it on the DVD because it seemed like the best possible choice to promote the new show to DBZ fans. Cell's my favorite character in the show, so this has gotta be good, right? Well I watched the episode and quickly realized that GT sucks ass. First of all, it's been 43 episodes and Goku's still stuck as a child. He can turn into a Super Saiyan 4 and blow Cell and Frieza away in one hit, but he never does this. Hell, he could annihilate them in one of the lower Super Saiyan forms. But this is GT, and GT-logic demands that any preliminary fight be fought in base-form. Never mind that Goku had to go Super Saiyan the first time he fought these guys. Now he's fighting them at the same time, with a smaller body, and he wants to do it in normal form. Frieza and Cell act like they're gonna curbstomp Goku because they have scary new ghost powers, and they can't be killed themselves because they're already dead. But the reality is that Goku makes them look like idiots because he won't even bother powering up to fight them. Up your ass, Dragon Ball GT. At one point, Cell tries to absorb Goku with his scorpion tail, which doesn't even make sense because Cell only absorbs Androids whole, and he doesn't need to absorb anything anymore because he's in his final form. Goku simply forces his way out of Cell's ass. Later, Goku defeats Cell and Frieza using a snowblower. I wish I was kidding. It's some kind of magic snow blower, designed to freeze dead people, but it's still stupid. Cell deserved better. Meanwhile on Earth, the other bad guys get their asses destroyed because they're all incredibly outclassed by the good guys. Seriously, most of the villains from Dragon Ball were just mercenaries in helicopters and shit. They were fine at the time, but now all the good guys can throw mountains and shoot lasers from their hands. They're treated like cannon fodder, and rightfully so, but it kind of makes you wonder what the point of all this was. I always appreciated the fact that DBZ villains have to die because they're obsolete after their first loss. The good guys always train and get stronger, so if they were to come back for revenge they'd just be at an even bigger disadvantage. It's kind of neat to see Nappa come back and confront Vegeta for killing him, except Vegeta's like a thousand times stronger than he was the first time he killed him. The lame thing is that a handful of the villains might have had a chance, but Toei screwed them over. Trunks and Goten shoot down Android 19 with hand energy. Well, fine, they're probably strong enough to do that, except #19 was built with the power to absorb energy blasts. If a good guy kicked his head off or something I'd be fine with it, but they went for the one quick-kill scenario that made the least amount of sense. Captain Ginyu can switch bodies, so if he played his cards right he could trade up and be a contender again. I don't think they even used him in the story, though. A lot of these guys would have been better off running away from the battle and hiding out somewhere. I mean, if you're a human bad guy, you could just slip away in the confusion and if you can stay out of trouble for a few days, you're home free. You'd think most of these rank and file guys would rather have a new lease on life than revenge on some goofy kid they only met once. Once the villain army is wrapped up, Gero and Myuu sic Hell Fighter 17 on Vegeta, while the original #17 wanders off and tries to seduce his twin sister, Android #18. I'm not really sure what his motives are exactly, but he does some sort of hypnotic thing to her, but when Krillin snaps her out of it, he kills him, then attacks 18 when she objects. Maybe Gero wanted to use 18 in his plan, or this was 17's personality trying to fight his programming, but whatever. Guess how Vegeta fights Hell Fighter 17. If you said "base form", congratulations, you understand GT-Logic. Gero and Myuu summon the other Android 17 to the battle, and they combine them together to make "Super Android 17", a taller, more eyebrow-deficient version. Super 17 basically no-sells everything, and his secret weapon is that he can absorb energy from his opponents, just like #19 could do, except it actually works. Vegeta, Trunks, Goten, Gohan, and Majuub all take turns getting their asses kicked, then they finally power up and do it all over again. I should point out that the original, non-super, one-at-a-time 17 was more than a match for a Super Saiyan back in the day, and yet they all had to try fighting him in base form, just in case it suddenly works this time. The whole thing is a pointless debacle, because we all know Super 17 is too strong for anyone but Goku to fight, so we're just marking time until he can show up to save the day. Fortunately, Piccolo has an idea to free Goku, but he's stuck in heaven because he's a good guy. The guy in charge of that sort of thing refuses to send Piccolo to hell, so Piccolo starts blowing shit up to deserve the punishment. Once he arrives in hell, Piccolo starts duplicating the Android 17 thing. He and Dende time their energy beams just right, and that creates a polaron inversion that realigns the warp field coils, allowing Goku to jump back to Earth. Piccolo is unfortunately stuck in Hell now, but he gets to spend all his free time beating up bad guys, so he's probably happier that way. Goku finally comes to the rescue and shockingly transforms to fight Super 17. The only beef here is that he starts out in Super Saiyan.........1, the same form Vegeta used when he got his ass kicked. After a short warmup, he finally gets down to business and whips out SSJ4. The weird thing is that Super Saiyan 4 was GT's signature thing, and yet they barely ever let Goku use it. It's like they were embarrassed or something. It doesn't really matter anyway, because Super 17 can just absorb Goku's energy no matter how strong he is, so Goku gets beaten just as easily as his weaker allies. I should point out that, along the way, Super 17 turned on both Dr. Gero and Dr. Myuu. In Gero's case, Myuu secretly programmed Super 17 to only follow his own orders, but then he later blows up Dr. Myuu in an act of defiance, so it probably would have come to that no matter what. The only thing that stops Super 17 is his sister. 18 shows up at the critical moment and demands revenge in spite of the odds. Her rejection of what 17 has become stirs his original personality, and he manages to sabotage himself just enough that Goku can use 18's attack as a diversion and defeat him with a Super Dragon Fist. For no obvious reason, 18 tears her blouse during this scene. GT. Logic. So the saga ends as it began, with a character taking a dive to let a weaker character win. Not that I was rooting for Super 17 or anything, but it doesn't really make Goku look special when he can't even fight his own battles. On the other hand, Android 17 is finally, definitively killed, after years of being in a sort of limbo where no one really knew what had happened to him. It's really the only death scene they let stick, so I guess I have to give some credit there. The interface of hell and Earth causes environmental problems, so Goku resolves to find the Dragon Balls and use them to restore the Earth and resurrect Krillin. Unfortunately, all seven Dragon Balls are cracked. These are the good old Red Star Dragon Balls, by the way, the ones that don't blow up the Earth when you use them. At least, they used to be reliable... NEXT: Breakin' my balls

#dragon ball gt #really sucks #2013gt

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confessionsofanoperaghost · 5 years

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🎭 for the PotO meme

1. Does the name “Erik” get your attention, no matter where or in what context you hear it? ,,,,,,,,,,actually yes.

2. Would you travel or have you traveled to certain places only because they were PotO-related? Which ones? I certainly would! And I have a long long list of places that are from my headcanon as well! But sadly they are in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Cost is a factor.

3. Would you see the musical by yourself because your friends or family weren’t in the mood to go with you? Have you done so already? I haven’t and I might. It really depends on how my relationship to the musical changes over the next 20-60 years. I’m not keen on most of ALW’s recent touch on the franchise and I’m worried about more and more or Maria Bjornson’s work getting dropped from the tour (and rumors say maybe from the Broadway and WE productions as well in time??). So, we’ll see. I will be happy to outlive ALW and bear witness to the various ways the The Really Useful Group shoots itself in the foot. But its so expensive to watch something that’s only going to break your heart--and not in the ways you want it to. So it REALLY depends.

4. How often have you seen the musical? I have seen it exactly once. It came to my hometown in 1999 (I was 15) and I spent every penny I could scrape together to get an orchestra-level ticket. And frankly I was unimpressed. I never went back. I feel bad for saying it. It might have been better for me if I had grown up with bootlegs, but I had only read the book and listened to the OLC. I literally didn’t know what to expect from the tour. I’m not sure.

5. How much PotO stuff do you own? I should just say “a lot of stuff I dunno, lol” but I suddenly want to think about this.

My original deMattos paperback

A David Coward paperback

A Wolfe paperback (its at a friend’s house at the moment)

The “milestone collection” two DVD disc set with all the extras of the 1925 Poto with Lon Chaney Sr (my babe!!!)

The Cherik miniseries (as a bootleg copy on DVD...i paid good money for it tho, lol)

the 2004 movie cuz it was cheap as hell

Original London Cast recording of the ALW musical on CD

This BRILLIANT book about the making of the 1925 silent film

An actual first run copy of The Phantom of Manhattan by Fredrick Forsythe (purchased for me on clearance as a joke.)

A cheap copy of Susan Kay’s book that a friend picked up for me. I’ve been asked to do a seething read-along. I figured I should probably own the book before I literally rip it a brand new shiny asshole on YouTube...

a weird, like, 14 pages long, full color, SUPER condensed version of the book with Greg Hildebrant’s drawings. This was the present our teacher purchased for the acting class that produced a weird 1970′s straight-play version of the story that no one seems to remember now (its not particularly good so don’t worry)

the “Barnes and Noble” deMattos hardcover edition that --because it started to fall apart right away--I have been using for art projects and pop-culture-based spells

A large locket with Lon Chaney’s Erik (and his Quasimodo)

one of Muirin007′s gorgeous prints

An adorable necklace made by MegLouiseGiry that’s got a slice from the book in it and a heart-shaped crystal (Poto Secret Santa 2017)

A Lon Chaney 1925 POTO T Shirt. And it glows in the dark! (I got his Quasi on a shirt too but sadly it does not glow in the dark)

a 17,000+ word Google document: a sticky rough draft of my Erik-life-story Phic that I may or may not have been working on for 2 decades.

similarly, a red and gold notebook stuffed with tangled notes and headcanons and bad phan poetry from the 1990s

A bunch of other books that look unrelated to the untrained eye (for research)

a 6 inch figure of Lon Chaney’s POTO dangling from a plastic chandelier that happens to be about to scale

a thousand other items that may not look like references to Poto to the untrained eye... like: a red scarf and round-framed spectacles and an antique violin case and a choking kink and a skull mask and a dramatic red and gold cape and daddy issues and a balcony overlooking the sea and a black mask that covers the whole face and an attraction to the most beautiful hands........

6. Have you had dreams about the Phantom or other characters? Do you remember any in particular? I’ve only had dreams about Erik. Usually I am myself or Christine or some slurry of the two. Here’s the best one:

Saturday, November 19, 2016. True Beauty.

There was the theatre. The wings and the lifts. Backstage lights. Curtains.

Joseph Bouquet spots the fiend in the catwalks and is--fast as lightning--slaughtered by the quickest of lassos. Other stagehands and security ascend to the tops, chasing a shadow they can barely see. Someone thinks they’ve captured his cloak only to find their fists full of nothing.They chase this shadow to the roof and find nothing but stars as the phantom killer slips away...down into the dark.

Carved structure. The dark is black and warm. He feels near. Yes, Erik has come for you. A lucid dream, I am both player and played.

I am playing you.

You feel a dance. You cannot find your way out of all that warm darkness. Though she cannot see, she feels her maestro all around. Unable to retreat, unable to find light; she turns but I am already there... darkness and a warm, red, deep glow. She twists in anxiety and frustration--away! away! away!-- breathing as though she is counting her final breaths. Twisting and trying to find some cool air or a bit of sunlight.

Erik shows her that there is no escape from Erik. He is is every corner of her.

She succumbs.

7. How many times have you read the book? Literally more than I can count. At 15 I had MOST of Chapter 13, Apollo’s Lyre, memorized (deMattos translation). Iv’e only read it in English and I have yet to read some of the less-recommended translations.

8. How many songs from the musical could you recite from memory? (Or just sing along to?) So I have almost the whole thing more-or-less memorized EXCEPT that its ONLY the version as sung in the Original London Cast recording. So every single line that has been changed since then (or god forbid an unedited soundtrack where all the choruses of Hannibal are included, lol) I get wrong. But yeah i listened to that nightly for like 2 years of my adolescence and I can hardly listen to any of it now. I burned places in my synapses.

9. Do you randomly quote lines from the book or musical in real life? Don’t you? Honestly, the most fun I have is calling up fun lines and needle them into my vocabulary throughout a regular day. Unless you do an obvious one your average person isn’t going to know.

10. Have you ever met up with another phan? Yes but by the time I’ve me up with them its definitely about something more relevant than the Phandom that brought us together.

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