Fox has pretty much been keeping their primetime schedule afloat with reality programming. and I have always had a dubious relationship with them ever since they cancelled Firefly. Fox has put out some great shows, but they are very quick to drop the axe on shows that are not performing in the ratings game. Specifically I have not felt that Fox has done a good job putting out genre shows. and I felt that the short-lived Terminator and Dollhouse both could have been handled better. However, they seem to be trying to fix that with Terra Nova, the new sci-fi show with Spielberg’s name attached. The show has been referred to as a mix of Lost, Jurassic Park, and Avatar and I feel that this is an accurate albeit overblown description.
In the not too distant future, the earth is plagued with environmental devastation and overpopulation. The inconvenient truth is that the planet we know and love is beyond saving and even stopgaps such as gas masks for outdoor use and population limits (a family is four) are just delaying the inevitable. Just when all hope is lost, scientists discover a portal to a long-forgotten past. The government immediately begins to send people through the portal to establish a new colony in the past where mankind can get a second chance: Terra Nova.
The exact rules behind this sci-fi phenomenon are handled beautifully. The rules are covered in a just a couple of lines of dialogue and left largely unexplained. The writers clearly understand that the exact workings of the time travel are not the focus of the show. The portal opens one way regularly and intermittently; communication with the past is still possible; and when people came into the past they altered the time stream creating a new universe (Back to the Future style). That’s it. That is all that is necessary because the point of the show is not getting to Terra Nova, it’s living in Terra Nova.
My major complaint about the show is the characters. We follow a family made up of stereotypes and easily forgettable characters. We have cop father, doctor mother, rebellious eldest son, super smart middle daughter, and toddler youngest daughter. The only important factor about the youngest daughter is simply her existence.
The week to week troubles have come from three different sources:
The first are the various dinosaurs native to this new time/place. The camp has great fortifications and everyone inside the settlement is safe, but when situations bring the characters out of the safety of camp, dinosaurs are a constant danger. My favorite part about these dinosaurs is that the writers have opted not to use the popular dinosaurs that everyone knows and loves. There are no stegosaurs, triceratops, or even T-rexes. Of the two different species that have we have seen a lot of one is some version of a pterodactyl that is the size of a bat, which may or may not be real, and a weird twist on a velociraptor, that the internet has assured me could not exist.
The second threat comes from a group of other humans referred to as the Sixers, named because most of them came in on the sixth pilgrimage (For an unstated reason the portal does not work constantly and so people must come in groups referred to as pilgrimages). The Sixers decided they wanted to break away from Terra Nova and form their own colony and are more then a little hostile towards the citizens of Terra Nova. The Sixers are what makes me compare the show to Lost. The Sixers feel like the early “others” back when the passengers of flight 815 knew there were other people on the island, but had no idea who they were or what they wanted, which is to say back when the show was fun. The writers have kept the Sixers shrouded in mystery and for now I like it that way. The show is not bogging itself down with mythology yet, but they are putting out some interesting teasers and questions that will keep fans coming back.
The last source of conflict is by far my favorite. I assumed that when our family traveled back to the past that they would have to leave all the comforts of technology behind for some stupid but logical reason. However, the writers chose to make Terra Nova a sci-fi haven with computers and all the advanced technology the future had to offer. The writers have also taken a note from the Eureka playbook and have shown that this future technology and past environment don’t always coexist nicely. In one of the early episodes a genetically modified virus gets free and infects several characters causing them to slowly lose their memories. The cop father must find a way to reverse the problem while also dodging the slashers trying to turn him into lunch so that he can get his wife (and the other characters, but mostly just the wife) back to where she remembers who he is. It’s a plotline that I am pretty certain is literally taken from Eureka, but it works and I like the fact that elements of the future are all their new land of the lost home.
Overall Terra Nova suffers from two-dimensional characters that have not yet developed very far, but there is substantial room for growth. The children still blame dad for getting put in jail and leaving them. Rebellious son has a girlfriend he left and desperately wants to get brought to Terra Nova. You’ll notice I don’t use any of the family members names. That’s because I don’t know them and while I could look them up I think it serves to show my point that at this time the characters have yet to leave the realm of stereotypes. The other facets of the show are great. The writing is fairly solid and the conflicts have been intriguing and kept me coming back for more. The special effects have been very impressive for a TV show, especially the dinosaurs. It is clear that Fox is putting a good deal of capital into making this show a success. If they use the rest of the season to really make me care about the characters and do not overuse the mysteries like Lost did then I think that Terra Nova could be a hit and bring Fox back into the fight for scripted drama supremacy.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
ScreenFix Hiatus, or How We Slacked Off and Nearly Killed Our Blog
The ScreenFix readers are a mythical creature, one that we hope exists but of which we have no concrete proof. These creatures may, in the past two or three months, have taken note of a certain lack of content on ScreenFix. This is because there hasn't been any.
If our readers truly to do exist, we here at ScreenFix owe them an apology. It starts with, "We've been restructuring and refocusing," but that's as far as we got.
Because that would be a little too mature and professional, we've instead developed a list of excuses. We hope you like them.
All of that being said, we hope we haven't lost you, O Mythical Readers. We promise you new content, and you will have it. Look forward to the first post of the new generation in one week!
Love,
The ScreenFix Writers
If our readers truly to do exist, we here at ScreenFix owe them an apology. It starts with, "We've been restructuring and refocusing," but that's as far as we got.
Because that would be a little too mature and professional, we've instead developed a list of excuses. We hope you like them.
- Zoe: Less of a vacation, more of an excuse to get out of seeing Conan.
- James: Finding myself with a lack of things to write about I decided to keep actually trying to do my job and make some television. I’ve been working on a series of projects the most prominent of which is a television show. I’ll promise that I’ll post more about that in the future. We’re almost at a point where I can talk about it publicly.
- Brian: There are no excuses. There are only pimp hats.
- Kyle: Time is an illusion. Where one may spend an evening in Paris drinking wine beneath the gaze of Notre Dame, one may spend that same in another plane of existence where a single day there is discovered to be a hundred years by our measure of things. Luckily, I despise the taste of wine, and spent but an hour to be polite.
- Ryan: When in the course of human events a person finds themselves watching The West Wing for the fourth time in a row it becomes necessary for that person to reexamine the monumental amount of time he is wasting. I hold this truth to be self evident, that I will stop watching politically themed scripted dramas until my sanity returns and shall renew my efforts toward bringing our readers (assuming we actually have any) a regular schedule of commentary on the latest pop culture has to offer.
- Amanda: Well I stopped having a life for a while. There was only work. But I think someday soon i might find the elusive “work- life balance”. Maybe.
- Scotty: I has a job.
All of that being said, we hope we haven't lost you, O Mythical Readers. We promise you new content, and you will have it. Look forward to the first post of the new generation in one week!
Love,
The ScreenFix Writers
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Brian's Summer Picks: Four Hours Worth Watching
Since I have no papers to grade when the children aren't in school, I instead must grade television. This post consists of four mini-reviews, three ongoing seasons and one new premiere, on the USA and TNT networks. These four shows have primarily composed my TV docket for the summer, and I had a fair amount of loyalty going into each one. It’s worth noting that while I will attempt to control myself, it is almost impossible to discuss shows in their third, fourth, and fifth seasons without a few spoilers, so if you aren’t up to speed with Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, or Leverage and intend to get caught up, you may want to skip the appropriate sections. However you choose to read this text, enjoy and then share your thoughts in the comments.
Falling Skies
Network: TNT
Airs: Sundays, 9:00PM (Premiere Season)
Stars: Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Drew Roy, Will Patton, Colin Cunningham
In what I had hoped was going to be the highlight of my summer TV viewing, TNT premiered its sci-fi action/drama series Falling Skies in a ten episode summer season, amounting to eight weeks of viewing with double features for the pilot and finale. As I write this review, the season has been concluded but I have not yet watched the finale, which is probably just as well.
Unfortunately, I must begin by giving Falling Skies a resounding “meh” on the one-word reaction scale. It was and is a series that had significant potential, with audiences becoming increasingly more accepting of science fiction as a background, but through a variety of missteps and poor decision-making by people I’m sure I could never identify, the show felt like it went off half-cocked and hit the ground stumbling.
The plot of Falling Skies is only just over the border of originality; you can still look over your shoulder and see cliché, standing there in his drab suit. It departs somewhat from traditional alien invasion stories by bypassing the days leading up to and immediately following the invasion, saving us from the exciting scenes in the White House situation room, the failed attempts to assault the aliens with nuclear weapons, and the frantically constructed theories about vulnerability to disease. Falling Skies tells the story of the human resistance, or rather a small part of it, weeks and months into Earth’s occupation by extraterrestrial forces. We do a little bit of running from aliens, a little bit of fighting aliens, but in keeping with most science fiction, mostly we bicker amongst ourselves.
I don’t have a problem with using a science fiction background to explore the human condition—that is one of sci fi’s primary purposes (Star Trek comes to mind)—but Falling Skies fails to deliver any engaging characters to make those explorations interesting. We are handed a protagonist who could be interesting with his academic vs. battlefield conceptions of war and fanatical devotion to his three sons, but Tom Mason (Wyle) fails to stir sympathy even with the tried-and-true “concerned parent” model. He is bland and unlikable, framed obviously as “the good guy,” and doesn’t behave with the intelligence he supposedly possesses. He doesn’t demonstrate particularly successful parenting, and doesn’t even fail in an interesting way: his wife was killed in the early days of the invasion, and that conflict clearly causes tension between Mason and his sons. But the tension doesn’t really get explored, and we are left with a vague sense of awkwardness where there could be interesting drama.
De facto civilian representatives Dr. Glass and “Uncle” Scott are similarly two-dimensional, despite half-hearted attempts to create depth by exploring their pasts. Glass (Bloodgood), a pediatrician and the group’s medic / scientist, was clearly not designed as a love interest for Mason, but was forced into the role in an effort to show a more interesting side of him (it didn’t work). Mason’s sons are also fairly robotic, with the notable and ironic exception of middle child Ben (Connor Jessup), who is a “harnessed” slave of the invaders when the series begins and one of the only characters under the age of twenty who feels believable. I would be remiss if I did not mention the brilliant John Pope (Colin Cunningham), a complex and esoteric character whose motivations are simultaneously blatant and veiled. He also has a relatively high “awesome quotient,” which we always consider to be a bonus.
Falling Skies was not the trainwreck it could have been. It does not suffer from comically poor acting, as much science fiction is known to, and its plot is passable, if somewhat unsure of itself and slow to develop. TNT has renewed the series for a second season in the summer of 2012, in which hopefully the creative team will sit down and correct some of the narrative and characteristic mishaps that kept the first season from reaching its potential. Falling Skies is worth the watch for science fiction and post-apocalypse fans, but there’s nothing special here. Yet.
Grade: C+
Burn Notice
Network: USA
Airs: Thursdays, 9:00PM (Season 5)
Stars: Jeffery Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless
I still remember when I saw the first promos for Burn Notice, advertising a new action-drama about a spy who gets “fired” and forced into early retirement in Miami. A few months later, I had already purchased the first season on DVD and was showing it to all my friends, advertising it as a cross between Grand Theft Auto and… well, every spy movie ever made. I always felt that the show’s creators shot themselves in the foot a little bit by making the title a prominent plot feature in the first season: protagonist Michael Weston (Donovan) is determined to get rehired as a spy, and it feels to me like if he’s ever to achieve his goal, which is something audiences like to see, the show would then end (or need to be renamed), which is something that audiences don’t want to see.
Burn Notice is still very much alive and kicking, and its individual micro-plots remain strong and engaging, but it feels as though the overarching story has stalled somewhat. We are trapped, along with the main characters, in a sort of limbo place where we aren’t sure if Michael is “unburned” or not, whether his enemies are still out there or not, and whether the show is going to risk leaving Miami to continue following its protagonist. For now, I believe season five has done a passable job of making that dilemma the plot focus for the season. But with season six already bought and paid for, where can we go from here?
Grade: A-
Leverage
Network: TNT
Airs: Sundays, 10:00PM (Season 4)
Stars: Timothy Hutton, Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Aldis Hodge, Beth Riesgraf
Leverage is a show that I follow vigilantly and passionately, and then completely forget about when the season ends. Like my other summer stock entries, I followed Leverage from the beginning, lured in by the network’s advertisements, which advertised a team of quirky criminals who unite to become “good guys.” The show has always had a somewhat goofy, pseudo-realistic charm (particularly with regard to its treatment of computers and hacking) that makes it feel more like a piece of USA programming than the traditionally more staid TNT network.
Leverage had lots of places to go coming out of its third season. The show, which debuted and thrived with an emphasis on its ensemble, finally clearly identified its protagonist as former insurance claims investigator Nathan Ford (Hutton), who has developed significantly more depth than his comrades. This is not to say that there are not complexities associated with Parker (Riesgraf), Hardison (Hodge), and Elliot (Kane), but what was once a show about five thieves has essentially become a show about one man who works with four other thieves (as you may have noticed, I’m undecided on whether Sophie (Bellman) counts as a main protagonist). My only real concern about this show is that the depths of Nate’s psyche have perhaps been plumbed. Other than his alcoholism and dubious relationship with Sophie, I’m just not sure how much more there is to keep the character development relevant, which has always been what lifts Leverage above other action dramas.
Grade: B
In Plain Sight
Network: USA
Airs: Sundays, 10:00PM (Season 4)
Stars: Mary McCormack, Frederick Weller, Paul Ben-Victor
A handful of new television upstarts have promised to show me the “Dr. House of the _______ world,” but none have delivered quite like In Plain Sight’s Marshal Mary Shannon (McCormack), U.S. Marshal of the Witness Protection Program (or Witsec, as the cool kids apparently call it). Few characters on television today, even within USA’s “Characters Welcome” programming, have enthralled me like Mary Shannon. She’s a chick with a gun, which is always an excellent starting point, but she also combines bone-dry humor, a conflicted attitude towards authority, and the occasional softer moment to create a dynamic, interesting, and entertaining character.
In its fourth season, In Plain Sight finally embraces the inevitable plot device for a female protagonist- pregnancy. While Mary has never demonstrated any rampant promiscuity, neither has she been particularly monogamous (since the departure of boyfriend/fiancé Raphael), so it is not entirely unfeasible for her to experience an unplanned pregnancy. In that sense, this turn of events was very much in character for the show: In Plain Sight’s characters have always faced very real consequences for the events in their lives (for example, Mary’s mental breakdown in season two following her capture and near-rape).
While I was leery about such a cliché turn of events (just because she’s a woman we have to do a pregnancy season?), I’ve been pleased with the way the characters handle the issue. Without giving anything away, Mary is still Mary, and the unborn child, like everything else in her life, is a source both of comedy and reflection. The pregnancy plot also invigorates a latent question that has been asked since season one, which is “what makes a good parent?” The show is rife with examples of parenthood that lie across the spectrum, from witnesses who sacrifice everything for the safety and wellbeing of their children, to Mary’s sometimes-alcoholic mother Jinx and absent, romanticized, but probably criminal father. Would Mary be a good mother because she is fiercely protective, streetwise, and well-connected, or would she be a bad mother because of her borderline-obsessive dedication to her work (which is dangerous, I might add), responsibility for the protection of others, and general cynicism and caustic personality?
As always, In Plain Sight does not fail to entertain with wittiness, action, and intrigue, while keeping our minds abuzz with more poignant questions of life and philosophy.
Grade: A
Falling Skies
Network: TNT
Airs: Sundays, 9:00PM (Premiere Season)
Stars: Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Drew Roy, Will Patton, Colin Cunningham
In what I had hoped was going to be the highlight of my summer TV viewing, TNT premiered its sci-fi action/drama series Falling Skies in a ten episode summer season, amounting to eight weeks of viewing with double features for the pilot and finale. As I write this review, the season has been concluded but I have not yet watched the finale, which is probably just as well.
Unfortunately, I must begin by giving Falling Skies a resounding “meh” on the one-word reaction scale. It was and is a series that had significant potential, with audiences becoming increasingly more accepting of science fiction as a background, but through a variety of missteps and poor decision-making by people I’m sure I could never identify, the show felt like it went off half-cocked and hit the ground stumbling.
The plot of Falling Skies is only just over the border of originality; you can still look over your shoulder and see cliché, standing there in his drab suit. It departs somewhat from traditional alien invasion stories by bypassing the days leading up to and immediately following the invasion, saving us from the exciting scenes in the White House situation room, the failed attempts to assault the aliens with nuclear weapons, and the frantically constructed theories about vulnerability to disease. Falling Skies tells the story of the human resistance, or rather a small part of it, weeks and months into Earth’s occupation by extraterrestrial forces. We do a little bit of running from aliens, a little bit of fighting aliens, but in keeping with most science fiction, mostly we bicker amongst ourselves.
I don’t have a problem with using a science fiction background to explore the human condition—that is one of sci fi’s primary purposes (Star Trek comes to mind)—but Falling Skies fails to deliver any engaging characters to make those explorations interesting. We are handed a protagonist who could be interesting with his academic vs. battlefield conceptions of war and fanatical devotion to his three sons, but Tom Mason (Wyle) fails to stir sympathy even with the tried-and-true “concerned parent” model. He is bland and unlikable, framed obviously as “the good guy,” and doesn’t behave with the intelligence he supposedly possesses. He doesn’t demonstrate particularly successful parenting, and doesn’t even fail in an interesting way: his wife was killed in the early days of the invasion, and that conflict clearly causes tension between Mason and his sons. But the tension doesn’t really get explored, and we are left with a vague sense of awkwardness where there could be interesting drama.
De facto civilian representatives Dr. Glass and “Uncle” Scott are similarly two-dimensional, despite half-hearted attempts to create depth by exploring their pasts. Glass (Bloodgood), a pediatrician and the group’s medic / scientist, was clearly not designed as a love interest for Mason, but was forced into the role in an effort to show a more interesting side of him (it didn’t work). Mason’s sons are also fairly robotic, with the notable and ironic exception of middle child Ben (Connor Jessup), who is a “harnessed” slave of the invaders when the series begins and one of the only characters under the age of twenty who feels believable. I would be remiss if I did not mention the brilliant John Pope (Colin Cunningham), a complex and esoteric character whose motivations are simultaneously blatant and veiled. He also has a relatively high “awesome quotient,” which we always consider to be a bonus.
Falling Skies was not the trainwreck it could have been. It does not suffer from comically poor acting, as much science fiction is known to, and its plot is passable, if somewhat unsure of itself and slow to develop. TNT has renewed the series for a second season in the summer of 2012, in which hopefully the creative team will sit down and correct some of the narrative and characteristic mishaps that kept the first season from reaching its potential. Falling Skies is worth the watch for science fiction and post-apocalypse fans, but there’s nothing special here. Yet.
Grade: C+
Burn Notice
Network: USA
Airs: Thursdays, 9:00PM (Season 5)
Stars: Jeffery Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless
I still remember when I saw the first promos for Burn Notice, advertising a new action-drama about a spy who gets “fired” and forced into early retirement in Miami. A few months later, I had already purchased the first season on DVD and was showing it to all my friends, advertising it as a cross between Grand Theft Auto and… well, every spy movie ever made. I always felt that the show’s creators shot themselves in the foot a little bit by making the title a prominent plot feature in the first season: protagonist Michael Weston (Donovan) is determined to get rehired as a spy, and it feels to me like if he’s ever to achieve his goal, which is something audiences like to see, the show would then end (or need to be renamed), which is something that audiences don’t want to see.
Burn Notice is still very much alive and kicking, and its individual micro-plots remain strong and engaging, but it feels as though the overarching story has stalled somewhat. We are trapped, along with the main characters, in a sort of limbo place where we aren’t sure if Michael is “unburned” or not, whether his enemies are still out there or not, and whether the show is going to risk leaving Miami to continue following its protagonist. For now, I believe season five has done a passable job of making that dilemma the plot focus for the season. But with season six already bought and paid for, where can we go from here?
Grade: A-
Leverage
Network: TNT
Airs: Sundays, 10:00PM (Season 4)
Stars: Timothy Hutton, Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Aldis Hodge, Beth Riesgraf
Leverage is a show that I follow vigilantly and passionately, and then completely forget about when the season ends. Like my other summer stock entries, I followed Leverage from the beginning, lured in by the network’s advertisements, which advertised a team of quirky criminals who unite to become “good guys.” The show has always had a somewhat goofy, pseudo-realistic charm (particularly with regard to its treatment of computers and hacking) that makes it feel more like a piece of USA programming than the traditionally more staid TNT network.
Leverage had lots of places to go coming out of its third season. The show, which debuted and thrived with an emphasis on its ensemble, finally clearly identified its protagonist as former insurance claims investigator Nathan Ford (Hutton), who has developed significantly more depth than his comrades. This is not to say that there are not complexities associated with Parker (Riesgraf), Hardison (Hodge), and Elliot (Kane), but what was once a show about five thieves has essentially become a show about one man who works with four other thieves (as you may have noticed, I’m undecided on whether Sophie (Bellman) counts as a main protagonist). My only real concern about this show is that the depths of Nate’s psyche have perhaps been plumbed. Other than his alcoholism and dubious relationship with Sophie, I’m just not sure how much more there is to keep the character development relevant, which has always been what lifts Leverage above other action dramas.
Grade: B
In Plain Sight
Network: USA
Airs: Sundays, 10:00PM (Season 4)
Stars: Mary McCormack, Frederick Weller, Paul Ben-Victor
A handful of new television upstarts have promised to show me the “Dr. House of the _______ world,” but none have delivered quite like In Plain Sight’s Marshal Mary Shannon (McCormack), U.S. Marshal of the Witness Protection Program (or Witsec, as the cool kids apparently call it). Few characters on television today, even within USA’s “Characters Welcome” programming, have enthralled me like Mary Shannon. She’s a chick with a gun, which is always an excellent starting point, but she also combines bone-dry humor, a conflicted attitude towards authority, and the occasional softer moment to create a dynamic, interesting, and entertaining character.
In its fourth season, In Plain Sight finally embraces the inevitable plot device for a female protagonist- pregnancy. While Mary has never demonstrated any rampant promiscuity, neither has she been particularly monogamous (since the departure of boyfriend/fiancé Raphael), so it is not entirely unfeasible for her to experience an unplanned pregnancy. In that sense, this turn of events was very much in character for the show: In Plain Sight’s characters have always faced very real consequences for the events in their lives (for example, Mary’s mental breakdown in season two following her capture and near-rape).
While I was leery about such a cliché turn of events (just because she’s a woman we have to do a pregnancy season?), I’ve been pleased with the way the characters handle the issue. Without giving anything away, Mary is still Mary, and the unborn child, like everything else in her life, is a source both of comedy and reflection. The pregnancy plot also invigorates a latent question that has been asked since season one, which is “what makes a good parent?” The show is rife with examples of parenthood that lie across the spectrum, from witnesses who sacrifice everything for the safety and wellbeing of their children, to Mary’s sometimes-alcoholic mother Jinx and absent, romanticized, but probably criminal father. Would Mary be a good mother because she is fiercely protective, streetwise, and well-connected, or would she be a bad mother because of her borderline-obsessive dedication to her work (which is dangerous, I might add), responsibility for the protection of others, and general cynicism and caustic personality?
As always, In Plain Sight does not fail to entertain with wittiness, action, and intrigue, while keeping our minds abuzz with more poignant questions of life and philosophy.
Grade: A
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Mass Effect: Hair Salon Edition
If you’re at all in touch with the videogame world and haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard of RPG developer Bioware’s flagship Mass Effect franchise. If you don’t meet those criteria, I shall summarize (skip to the third paragraph if you know what’s going on): in the future (~22nd century), humanity discovers an ancient relic of alien technology buried on Mars. It turns out to be the key to faster-than-light travel, resulting in humanity’s entrance onto the stage of galactic politics, where it is immediately disregarded as a younger sibling by the elder alien races. So when humanity discovers evidence that even older aliens are coming back to essentially eat everyone and everything, the rest of the galaxy shrugs them off as paranoid conspiracy theorists. The Mass Effect series stars Commander Shepard, a covert operations officer from Earth’s elite “N7” branch of space military, and his friends as the fly around the galaxy in their super-secret spaceship and shoot bad guys. It’s a significantly more complex than that, but you get the gist.
Both Mass Effect games released so far have allowed the player to customize Commander Shepard pretty freely; the player chooses gender (and accompanying voice acting), appearance, and tactical specialty, and then as the game progresses, can lean towards Paragon (basically “good”) alignment or Renegade (basically “evil” or, perhaps more precisely, “jerk”) alignment. Shepard’s alignment affects the way he or she talks, solves problems, and interacts with other squad members and NPCs in the game world. However, despite all that, Bioware has maintained a “canon” Shepard who is the default character (for players who chose not to customize) and appears on most box art and promotional material. It would seem, however, that Bioware has finally realized an important truth about their game: no one plays as buzz-cut John Shepard.
There are probably a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is the abundance of “face codes” available online that allow you to create Keanu Reeves-Shepard, Jason Statham-Shepard, and Obama-Shepard, just to name a few. Many folks also cite the vastly superior voice acting of veteran videogame actress Jennifer Hale, who speaks the lines of female Shepard, compared to the deadpan, uninteresting delivery of Mark Meer (disclaimer: I’m sure Mr. Meer is a fine actor, but it takes a certain kind of talent to translate your acting without your facial expressions and gestures. There’s just a higher bar when a series employs talent like Martin Sheen, Jennifer Hale, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tricia Helfer, and Seth Green, just to name a few).
Whatever the reason, Bioware has finally conceded to developing a canon version of a female Commander Shepard, and recently held a vote on their Facebook page allowing fans to choose between possible versions by “liking” whichever picture they wanted.
Before I broach my ultimately cosmetic topic of hair color, I would like to take a moment to point out what an important step this is for Mass Effect, Bioware, videogames, and popular art and fiction in general. When we talk about action heroes, we increasingly mean both men and women, with such iconic female badasses as Lara Croft, The Bride from Kill Bill, and countless television detectives (SVU’s Olivia Benson and Castle’s Kate Beckett come to mind), coming to prominence in the last decade or two. However, most women in action roles are heavily sexualized in order to appeal to the genre’s target audience, which I admit I cannot quote but I would define as males between the ages of 14 and 40. Much of Bioware’s recent work has hinted at a willingness to challenge the primary “gamer” demographic, which is more or less the same. In its Dragon Age series, we’ve been seeing a similar open-mindedness about protagonist gender as well as significant diversions from heterosexuality in the protagonist as well as supporting characters. By creating an “official” female protagonist who walks around in powered body armor instead of a skintight catsuit and gets her way with leadership, courage, and guns (the bullet-shooting kind) instead of seduction, manipulation, and guns (the non-bullet-shooting kind), Bioware has taken an important step towards equalizing gender in this genre.
Now, back to the very serious business of Commander Shepard’s hairdo. Unsurprisingly, the only blonde candidate (evidently based on Uma Thurman in her Kill Bill days) won by a landslide (though I hasten to add that Bioware has not announced any official results at this time). Also unsurprisingly, this generated an uproar among Mass Effect fanatics. Some highlights from the comments on Bioware’s album (censored, since we purport to be a family-friendly, or at least safe-for-work, blog):
“Thirty thousand people are ****ing retarded. Shepard should have a proper practical god damn military haircut, anything else is... **** you people are dumb.” --Blaine
“Great now were going to have this dumb blond **** who doesnt know how to do anything anymore.” --Drew Olando
Also, to segue into my next point:
“If I recall correctly, from one of the novels they mentioned that natural blond hair had become extremely unusual at this point in the timeline. Speaking demographically, a dark-haired Shepard is the best representation of what humanity would be at that point.” --Eli Kaplan
I don’t know anything about the novels, but it seems reasonable to me that blonde hair is a minority trait that will be eventually selected out, though certainly not entirely in only another 200 years or so. And, in space / the future, I’m sure you can have whatever color hair you want. Still, Shepard is supposed to represent the best of humanity, and while hair color (and, for that matter, race, which was also a hot point in the debate) is ultimately irrelevant, one would like to see aesthetic as well as ideological representations of the human race in our champion.
Some have called for the model female Shepard to be based on the voice actress, Jennifer Hale. I don’t know what Jennifer Hale looks like, and even if I did, I don’t believe that videogame characters need to look like their actors; indeed, that is one of the strengths of the medium, allowing casting directors to select solely for voice quality, acting ability, and finesse of inflection. Of course, Mass Effect 2’s Miranda Lawson was based on actress Yvonne Strahovski and the recurring David Anderson character is a passable representation of the excellent Keith David, but in both cases I knew the actor after the character, and both deliver their lines excellently and within the bounds of their character.
To conclude, I personally am fairly indifferent to the chosen female Shepard, who still may or may not end up on the box. Mass Effect’s rich character import feature will ensure that I will be playing with the Shepards I took through the first two games, and while I will doubtlessly tinker with new ideas, I probably won’t take many of Bioware’s suggestions. I am pleased that the franchise has finally confessed that Commander Shepard is not “just as easily” female as male, but perhaps should have been that way all along. Having the choice is crucial, and I would never advocate the removal of the option, but as far as I’m concerned, Commander Shepard was, is, and will be a woman.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Scotty and Zoe's Movie Blitz
Zoe: Scotty got a job
Scotty: Yay!
We used to go see all our movies on Wednesday but now that she’s all employed and no one seems to have movie showings in the 8 o’clock hour, we’ve gotten a bit behind.
Boo!
But now we’ve settled on a new day, Friday so we can be extra timely.
*applause*
But that also leaves us going into this week behind on some movies we wanted to see so, tada! It’s movie blitz time. Three movies, one week, and one super review.
Movie #1 - The Green Lantern: Hal Jordon Learns the Power of Talking about his Feelings
This movie stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordon, a reckless test pilot who is granted a power ring that can project his “will” as anything he can think of, as long as it’s green.
The kind of omnipotent power you’d expect from the company that brought us Superman.
It also gives him the ability to fly and make instant green clothes. Unfortunately this green ring means that he is now part of group alien space cops charged with protecting the universe from evil, and the color yellow.
The two are related.
Mainly, yellow represents fear (Maybe because it’s the color your underwear turns when you wet yourself.) There’s a giant physical embodiment of fear/yellow that is consuming planets.
It’s basically a tentacled Galactus except actually threatening.
The problem, Hal is a giant commitment-phobe. Add in a creepy guy with a bulbous head (That reminds me of several boys I knew in high-school) and you get a superhero movie!
And Good Lord was it boring!
In parts.
A lot of parts.
But not all parts.
Seriously movie, alien space cops. How do you make alien space cops boring! The plot was pretty basic, but unlike Thor which had a similarly basic plot, there was just no life to Green Lantern, no spark. I mean, a girl can only oggle at Ryan Reynolds for so long.
But you can oogle at Chris Hemsworth forever...
That’s because he was in a better movie. And here’s the most annoying part of Green Lantern, deep down, it’s not bad. You can tell that a couple drafts ago, this was a genuinely fun movie. I like the character interactions, I like the actors, I liked the Green Lantern Corps and the main villain Parallax (the Galactus guy) even if his name does sound like an anti-depressant. The pacing and flow of this movie was just so BAD. The movie is only about an hour and forty-five minutes, it felt like two and a half hours.
True. I felt that this film’s greatest weakness was an over use of exposition. You know how in English class teachers would always say “don’t tell us, show us.” I think this film took it a little too close to heart. They decided to add scenes that explained things that were already explained.
They exposited about the Green Lantern Corp twice at the beginning and during the requisite training scene. There was no new information the second time, I guess they just thought we forgot.
They also had an obligatory parental death scene that was just way too cheesy. There was also a scene with Hal Jordan and his nephew that was cute and gave great character development but was just totally unnecessary plot wise. After that scene at the beginning, that kid was never mentioned or seen again.
I will give Green Lantern credit for the best line I’ve ever heard in a comic book movie...
I’m gonna cut you off to prevent spoilers. That line was too awesome to ruin.
Awww.
There are parts about this movie that I really did like. The standard female love interest was probably the most likable “comic book love interest” I have watched. And their romance was totally believable because they had “a history.” It’s not like they fell in love in three days like some other movies I’ve seen.
Starring Natalie Portman.
Other than that, the special effects were decent and the general mythos was really cool. It churned my imagination, which I find as a good mark of a watchable film.
It made me want to read the comics more than watch it.
It was bad. I knew it was a bad movie while watching it. I still liked it for some reason.
Ryan Reynolds in a speedo being examined by aliens. There’s your reason.
Super 8: Cloverfield and E.T. Make a Baby
Oh my God I love this movie. I think out of every movie we’ve seen so far this summer, this has been the only one I will put on my Christmas list.
It was very good and it would have stirred in me feeling of nostalgia if it weren’t for the fact that I have no memory of the 70’s or 80’s. Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters and Indiana Jones were “old-timey” movies for us.
We were like three. So we weren’t exactly the target audience for the giant Spielberg nostalgia-love fest that is Super 8.
Two for me, you old fogey. I feel like we should be filled with childhood whimsy when thinking of Steven Spielberg. However, the four biggest movies Spielberg directed when we were kids consisted of Jurassic Park, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List.
None of these movies we were allowed to see in theaters.
And one of which still gives me nightmare. (Here’s a hint: it involved Velociraptors.)
Also, you forgot Hook which I actually remember going to see but not anything of the movie itself.
I just remember being traumatized by Robin Williams in tights.
Let’s move away from that haunting image....
Right, so if we don’t have an ample amount of Spielberg-nostalgia, then why did we like the movie so much?
It’s just so atmospheric. It pulls you in and just lets you steep in the world they’ve created that’s still totally relatable even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Super 8 camera in person. On top of all that, there’re really cool explosives.
Scotty’s watching the trailer for Sherlock Holmes, so I guess I need to copy the summary from Wikipedia. Super 8 centers around a group of friends who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails. Engines, microwaves, and people begin to disappear and the army shows up and is being terribly mysterious in a Roswell kind of way. As the only witnesses to the accident, the kids of course have to investigate these new events all while trying to finish their movie.
The kids were funny and cute, and not really annoy like child characters tend to be. I also liked the lack of (Or so good I didn’t notice) CGI.
The kids acted like real kids. During the movie’s climax, one of them even decided not to go. He was like “fuck that shit, I’m staying here where I’m not going to die,” which I loved.
Kids are awesome, but that train explosion was cooler.
Oh man, that train explosion. But I have more to write about the kids.
Fine, talk about those suckers.
Also, as someone who has tried to make a movie with her friends, I totally related to Charles (Riley Griffiths), the kid director. The whole movie within the movie subplot is really what endeared me to this movie. Trying to coerce all your friends with no acting experience to convey what you believe to be your fantastic vision of a film and having to walk them all through it.
The train explosion had such a great use of pyrotechnics and flying stuff. I’ve become too used green screen scenes, which this might have been, but it definitely didn’t seem like that.
I honestly couldn’t tell what was real exploding train and what was computer exploding train and on that note, the monster or really lack thereof because you don’t really see the bugger until the last thirty minutes.
And, in my opinion, it was a bit of a letdown. Maybe because it was obviously CG or maybe because nothing was exploding.
They were totally going for a Jaws thing where we would only get a glimpse or blurry look at the monster before its big reveal. But just like Jaws, the monster is never as cool as what you’re imagining it is.
I think I would have liked it better if it was animatronic, like Jaws.
A walking animatronic shark....?
YES
Bad Teacher: More Like Bad Movie, Am I Right?
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Wasn’t that good, but not bad. Unremarkable.
Jason Segel as the gym teacher was funny, Cameron Diaz was funny but they didn’t have much to work with as far as the script was concerned. Also, so not worthy of the R.
The movie was not as crude as I was expecting. Also, Justin Timberlake.
It was like he was in an extended SNL sketch and he sure is wacky!
In case you care, it’s about a teacher who’s more interested in finding a rich husband than shaping the youth of America. Stuff happens and we’re all better people at the end of it. This movie definitely had the potential to be a good, edgy black comedy but the creative team that brought us Year One was just not up the job.
Eh, I don’t want to waste anymore time on this film.
Transformers
Lots of explosions and a pretty sexist stereotypical girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley).
Mind you, talking about Transformers is like grading on a curve. The big booms were pretty, the “story” was stupid and the movie opened with a shot of the new girl’s ass. However, I didn’t hate her nearly as much as Scotty did. She was actually relatively likable and while she did spend the movie running around in heels and not getting nearly as dirty as anyone else in that movie, you can’t really blame her for that.
Not just heels, jeggings. And when she wasn’t wearing notpants, she was wearing mini dresses. But it’s not just that, it was that she was a replacement with very little back story. But that doesn’t matter in the Transformers universe, because no one cares about women.
I say, for what she had to work with, she made a likeable character. I also remember there being racist robots...again...but don’t remember exactly what they were and that’s basically what Transformers is, a big dumb movie that’s fun to watch.
I will have nightmares about those jeggings for the rest of my life.
So, are we all caught up now?
Nope we still need to write about Harry Potter and Captain America, not to mention go see Cowboys and Aliens.
Crap...
Scotty: Yay!
We used to go see all our movies on Wednesday but now that she’s all employed and no one seems to have movie showings in the 8 o’clock hour, we’ve gotten a bit behind.
Boo!
But now we’ve settled on a new day, Friday so we can be extra timely.
*applause*
But that also leaves us going into this week behind on some movies we wanted to see so, tada! It’s movie blitz time. Three movies, one week, and one super review.
Movie #1 - The Green Lantern: Hal Jordon Learns the Power of Talking about his Feelings
This movie stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordon, a reckless test pilot who is granted a power ring that can project his “will” as anything he can think of, as long as it’s green.
The kind of omnipotent power you’d expect from the company that brought us Superman.
It also gives him the ability to fly and make instant green clothes. Unfortunately this green ring means that he is now part of group alien space cops charged with protecting the universe from evil, and the color yellow.
The two are related.
Mainly, yellow represents fear (Maybe because it’s the color your underwear turns when you wet yourself.) There’s a giant physical embodiment of fear/yellow that is consuming planets.
It’s basically a tentacled Galactus except actually threatening.
The problem, Hal is a giant commitment-phobe. Add in a creepy guy with a bulbous head (That reminds me of several boys I knew in high-school) and you get a superhero movie!
And Good Lord was it boring!
In parts.
A lot of parts.
But not all parts.
Seriously movie, alien space cops. How do you make alien space cops boring! The plot was pretty basic, but unlike Thor which had a similarly basic plot, there was just no life to Green Lantern, no spark. I mean, a girl can only oggle at Ryan Reynolds for so long.
But you can oogle at Chris Hemsworth forever...
That’s because he was in a better movie. And here’s the most annoying part of Green Lantern, deep down, it’s not bad. You can tell that a couple drafts ago, this was a genuinely fun movie. I like the character interactions, I like the actors, I liked the Green Lantern Corps and the main villain Parallax (the Galactus guy) even if his name does sound like an anti-depressant. The pacing and flow of this movie was just so BAD. The movie is only about an hour and forty-five minutes, it felt like two and a half hours.
They exposited about the Green Lantern Corp twice at the beginning and during the requisite training scene. There was no new information the second time, I guess they just thought we forgot.
They also had an obligatory parental death scene that was just way too cheesy. There was also a scene with Hal Jordan and his nephew that was cute and gave great character development but was just totally unnecessary plot wise. After that scene at the beginning, that kid was never mentioned or seen again.
I will give Green Lantern credit for the best line I’ve ever heard in a comic book movie...
I’m gonna cut you off to prevent spoilers. That line was too awesome to ruin.
Awww.
There are parts about this movie that I really did like. The standard female love interest was probably the most likable “comic book love interest” I have watched. And their romance was totally believable because they had “a history.” It’s not like they fell in love in three days like some other movies I’ve seen.
Starring Natalie Portman.
Other than that, the special effects were decent and the general mythos was really cool. It churned my imagination, which I find as a good mark of a watchable film.
It made me want to read the comics more than watch it.
It was bad. I knew it was a bad movie while watching it. I still liked it for some reason.
Ryan Reynolds in a speedo being examined by aliens. There’s your reason.
Super 8: Cloverfield and E.T. Make a Baby
Oh my God I love this movie. I think out of every movie we’ve seen so far this summer, this has been the only one I will put on my Christmas list.
It was very good and it would have stirred in me feeling of nostalgia if it weren’t for the fact that I have no memory of the 70’s or 80’s. Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters and Indiana Jones were “old-timey” movies for us.
We were like three. So we weren’t exactly the target audience for the giant Spielberg nostalgia-love fest that is Super 8.
Two for me, you old fogey. I feel like we should be filled with childhood whimsy when thinking of Steven Spielberg. However, the four biggest movies Spielberg directed when we were kids consisted of Jurassic Park, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List.
None of these movies we were allowed to see in theaters.
And one of which still gives me nightmare. (Here’s a hint: it involved Velociraptors.)
Also, you forgot Hook which I actually remember going to see but not anything of the movie itself.
Let’s move away from that haunting image....
Right, so if we don’t have an ample amount of Spielberg-nostalgia, then why did we like the movie so much?
It’s just so atmospheric. It pulls you in and just lets you steep in the world they’ve created that’s still totally relatable even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Super 8 camera in person. On top of all that, there’re really cool explosives.
Scotty’s watching the trailer for Sherlock Holmes, so I guess I need to copy the summary from Wikipedia. Super 8 centers around a group of friends who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails. Engines, microwaves, and people begin to disappear and the army shows up and is being terribly mysterious in a Roswell kind of way. As the only witnesses to the accident, the kids of course have to investigate these new events all while trying to finish their movie.
The kids were funny and cute, and not really annoy like child characters tend to be. I also liked the lack of (Or so good I didn’t notice) CGI.
The kids acted like real kids. During the movie’s climax, one of them even decided not to go. He was like “fuck that shit, I’m staying here where I’m not going to die,” which I loved.
Kids are awesome, but that train explosion was cooler.
Oh man, that train explosion. But I have more to write about the kids.
Fine, talk about those suckers.
Also, as someone who has tried to make a movie with her friends, I totally related to Charles (Riley Griffiths), the kid director. The whole movie within the movie subplot is really what endeared me to this movie. Trying to coerce all your friends with no acting experience to convey what you believe to be your fantastic vision of a film and having to walk them all through it.
The train explosion had such a great use of pyrotechnics and flying stuff. I’ve become too used green screen scenes, which this might have been, but it definitely didn’t seem like that.
I honestly couldn’t tell what was real exploding train and what was computer exploding train and on that note, the monster or really lack thereof because you don’t really see the bugger until the last thirty minutes.
And, in my opinion, it was a bit of a letdown. Maybe because it was obviously CG or maybe because nothing was exploding.
They were totally going for a Jaws thing where we would only get a glimpse or blurry look at the monster before its big reveal. But just like Jaws, the monster is never as cool as what you’re imagining it is.
I think I would have liked it better if it was animatronic, like Jaws.
A walking animatronic shark....?
YES
Bad Teacher: More Like Bad Movie, Am I Right?
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Wasn’t that good, but not bad. Unremarkable.
Jason Segel as the gym teacher was funny, Cameron Diaz was funny but they didn’t have much to work with as far as the script was concerned. Also, so not worthy of the R.
The movie was not as crude as I was expecting. Also, Justin Timberlake.
It was like he was in an extended SNL sketch and he sure is wacky!
In case you care, it’s about a teacher who’s more interested in finding a rich husband than shaping the youth of America. Stuff happens and we’re all better people at the end of it. This movie definitely had the potential to be a good, edgy black comedy but the creative team that brought us Year One was just not up the job.
Eh, I don’t want to waste anymore time on this film.
Transformers
Lots of explosions and a pretty sexist stereotypical girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley).
Mind you, talking about Transformers is like grading on a curve. The big booms were pretty, the “story” was stupid and the movie opened with a shot of the new girl’s ass. However, I didn’t hate her nearly as much as Scotty did. She was actually relatively likable and while she did spend the movie running around in heels and not getting nearly as dirty as anyone else in that movie, you can’t really blame her for that.
Not just heels, jeggings. And when she wasn’t wearing notpants, she was wearing mini dresses. But it’s not just that, it was that she was a replacement with very little back story. But that doesn’t matter in the Transformers universe, because no one cares about women.
I say, for what she had to work with, she made a likeable character. I also remember there being racist robots...again...but don’t remember exactly what they were and that’s basically what Transformers is, a big dumb movie that’s fun to watch.
I will have nightmares about those jeggings for the rest of my life.
So, are we all caught up now?
Nope we still need to write about Harry Potter and Captain America, not to mention go see Cowboys and Aliens.
Crap...
Monday, July 11, 2011
A Brief Treatise on the Pitfalls of Pirates
Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides is a movie that had more impostors than At World’s End had betrayal. Everyone wants to be Jack Sparrow. No one wants to be Will or Elizabeth, including Will and Elizabeth. This simple fact was the kick in the right direction that places On Stranger Tides alongside the stronger of the Pirates franchise films.
We realize that we’re closing in on two months since the movie came out but trust us, this review was lovingly crafted and is well worth the read. Also our local cineplex still has On Stranger Tides showing so quit your complaining. Join Brian and James on their critical review of Pirates of The Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. We may be a little off in our timing but the time taken is reflected in quality. Y’all know this to be true. Enjoy
James: On Stranger Tides starts us on familiar tides. The city of London. With a hanging of pirates. Or so we can all hope for.
Brian: As usual, Pirates does a lovely job with its crowds and bloodthirsty mobs. Even though the London streets teem with “respectable” citizens and finely-dressed children, the similarities between their behavior and that of a ship full of scallywags is humorously similar.
I’d like to get started right away by saying that I’m very interested in the Blackbeard character. Though the series constructs its pirates using bits and pieces from history (Barbossa is loosely based on Henry Morgan, Jack takes some elements from Calico Jack Rackham, and so on), this is the first time it directly lifted a (mortal) pirate personality from history (not without embellishment, of course).
J: In my mind there are two main questions about Blackbeard. There is the initial question of whether or not he was a good addition to the Pirates cast of characters. There is also the secondary question of whether or not he was wasted by being killed off after only one film.
B: I would answer yes to both of those questions. If you are going to have a franchise titled “Pirates of the Caribbean,” you’re tacitly promising your viewers (is this the correct term for movie-goers?) that someday, they will have a beard-burning, fire-ship driving, treasure-fleet-plundering pirate of the truly mythical proportions to which Blackbeard has risen. Before Johnny Depp started trying on dreadlocks and even before a little underground boat ride was built in Orlando, Blackbeard was a legend. But it is my opinion that On Stranger Tides failed to treat him thus.
I agree. To the second question though, I disagree slightly. I feel like Blackbeard was wasted as a character not because he was killed off so quickly, but because he was developed as a highly magical character. In a franchise so loose from reality in terms of magic and the like, I saw a character like Blackbeard, who was so mythological even in the real world, I thought that making him actually magic rather cheated him a little. I really would have liked to see a Blackbeard who was a straight pirate, fighting for his position of top pirate in a world filled with shamans, undead, and deathly octopus men.
Exactly. Blackbeard was impressive because of his behavior when he first appeared- all he has to do is walk through a doorway to cow his crew, no magic involved whatsoever (“I find myself... in a bewilderment.”). The voodoo I have no real problem with (insofar as pirates have a religion, it is generally identified as Voodooism or Vodoun ), but the character is less meaningful for the pervasive magic in which Disney wrapped him. He’s at least as magical as Tia Dalma, who, you might recall, turned into crabs and became the weather in At World’s End, after resurrecting a twice-dead Barbossa in Dead Man’s Chest and chaperoning an adventure to the afterlife.
I think looking back on the series that perhaps we can hope that this is not the last we will see of Blackbeard. Hopefully he’ll be back, without his magic, and pirating again.
Perhaps. There’s plenty of precedent in the franchise for temporary death. What there is very little, if any, precedent for is actual piracy. Aside from Barbossa’s sack of Port Royale in Curse of Black Pearl, Disney fastidiously avoids any actual piratical acts (probably because they’re all pretty filthy, immoral, violent, graphic, and completely inappropriate for their audience and canon).
Which only stressed more why I was looking forward to a Blackbeard, who might have been out doing some real pirating, while all of the others were out and about not doing the nitty gritty pirating.
Maybe the monkey will reinvigorate that aspect of the world.
We can’t possibly fully explore the addition to the series that Blackbeard represents without addressing the other new addition: his daughter.
Don’t you mean his “daughter?” I adored Angelica the first time I saw the film, and not just because she’s Penelope Cruz. The character hearkens back to the Jack Sparrow of Curse of the Black Pearl, when no one knew whose side he was on, whether he was a “good guy,” and whether anything he said was true or false. For me, On Stranger Tides didn’t point us to one particular “truth” for Angelica, except that she is a master con artist. Even when she attempts to sacrifice her life for Blackbeard, she could easily have anticipated Jack’s maneuver with the chalices, or even, as Jack suspects midway through the film, “fallen for her own con.”
I liked the character as well. While Elizabeth, the former token female character, certainly made a play to become a powerful, non-objectified, female character she really fell short since she was so motivated by her love interests with almost all of the main characters. Angelica on the other hand is motivated by a lot of things, the least of which is her feelings for Jack. Her feelings do tend to sway more to hatred for him then love never-the-less.
If Blackbeard’s future with the franchise is dubious at best, I think it’s safe to say that we haven’t seen the last of Angelica.
This is especially true due to her Spanish heritage. On the open seas where the pirates rule something like nationality isn’t too much of an issue. But now that we’ve seen the Spanish solidly enter the game alongside the English we will have to start thinking about nationality of the characters. She adds a character, on the pirate side of the playing field, who is not English like all of the others. I don’t think the couple Asian pirates that we’ve seen really count, since I’ve tried to forget as much of the third movie that I can.
And the multicultural crew of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge was so blatantly globally representative, it hardly counts.
So much of the tension between nations that allowed piracy to exist so extensively in the historical Caribbean was a result of the national hatred. It is nice to see the series finally getting into that.
Before this turns into a brilliant, reflective, but ultimately off-topic rumination on the Golden Age of Piracy, allow me to divert us to a character who can be loosely discussed in the same paragraph, or at least on the same page, as Angelica: the priest whose name everyone always forgets (Philip). If Penelope Cruz replaces Kiera Knightley as our token power-chick, then Sam Claflin replaces Orlando Bloom as our token moral compass.
I was unclear, was he really a priest, or simply a highly religious character? Furthermore was he Catholic or Church of England?
The characters, especially Blackbeard, often referred to him as ‘priest’ or ‘cleric,’ and I think at one point (during the exposition of his capture) it’s indicated that he’s a missionary. As for his denomination, I believe it’s Church of England, but I suppose in a world of Jesus and Not-Jesus, it’s a technicality.
I think the Spanish Inquisition might disagree with you.
No one expects it. He’s about as useful as Orlando Bloom, if perhaps slightly less annoying. Also, as far as I’m concerned, Sam Claflin is a no-name actor, which allows us to more easily accept him as a fairly attractive piece of eye candy (for those of the persuasion), and a relatively easily ignored piece of narrative furniture (for everyone else).
I think his first appearance in the film really stresses this. He’s just part of Blackbeard’s mast.
Speaking of Blackbeard’s mast, I simultaneously love and hate the role played by the infamous vessel Queen Anne’s Revenge. I love it because it, like Blackbeard, is one of the great pirate ships in history and myth, and the film absolutely treats it thus. QAR gets a much more reverent treatment than Blackbeard, who is paranoid and mentally fragmented from the prophecies of his zombies from the get-go (“THE ONE LEGGED MAAAAAN!”). The ship is huge, it’s dark; it’s barely controlled chaos. It represents Blackbeard’s reputation better than Blackbeard. It (literally) dwarfs the Black Pearl, which was previously held up as the most fearsome mortal ship on the sea. And, perhaps most interestingly, it is left in the hands of my favorite pirate, Hector Barbossa.
All said I did really enjoy PoTC 4. It marked a series return to a lot of what made the first movie great. It certainly had its pitfalls. If this makes any sense, it had good issues. They were the issues of a series being rejuvenated and not the issues of a series dying. I don’t know if they plan to make any further PoTC movies but they have certainly separated the wheat from the chaff. Stranger Tides is a movie that fans of the franchise will not be embarrassed to place on their shelves alongside the previous films. I know I might even push it up next to the first movie while accidentally knocking at least one of the other two completely off the shelf.
Given my immense bias towards the Pirates films, there was never a question of whether my review would be favorable. The question was: Will I be enthusiastically trumpeting its successes, or will I be savagely defending its wounded honor? For the most part, it has been the former. By my own admission, the movie has its faults, both in and out of the context of the other three, but as James said, those issues are simply indicative of the g-forces generated by turning the franchise in a new, brighter direction. It may not be the strongest entry in the series (which most people agree is Curse of the Black Pearl), but neither will it be the last we hear from the Pirates of the Caribbean.
We realize that we’re closing in on two months since the movie came out but trust us, this review was lovingly crafted and is well worth the read. Also our local cineplex still has On Stranger Tides showing so quit your complaining. Join Brian and James on their critical review of Pirates of The Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. We may be a little off in our timing but the time taken is reflected in quality. Y’all know this to be true. Enjoy
James: On Stranger Tides starts us on familiar tides. The city of London. With a hanging of pirates. Or so we can all hope for.
Brian: As usual, Pirates does a lovely job with its crowds and bloodthirsty mobs. Even though the London streets teem with “respectable” citizens and finely-dressed children, the similarities between their behavior and that of a ship full of scallywags is humorously similar.
I’d like to get started right away by saying that I’m very interested in the Blackbeard character. Though the series constructs its pirates using bits and pieces from history (Barbossa is loosely based on Henry Morgan, Jack takes some elements from Calico Jack Rackham, and so on), this is the first time it directly lifted a (mortal) pirate personality from history (not without embellishment, of course).
J: In my mind there are two main questions about Blackbeard. There is the initial question of whether or not he was a good addition to the Pirates cast of characters. There is also the secondary question of whether or not he was wasted by being killed off after only one film.
B: I would answer yes to both of those questions. If you are going to have a franchise titled “Pirates of the Caribbean,” you’re tacitly promising your viewers (is this the correct term for movie-goers?) that someday, they will have a beard-burning, fire-ship driving, treasure-fleet-plundering pirate of the truly mythical proportions to which Blackbeard has risen. Before Johnny Depp started trying on dreadlocks and even before a little underground boat ride was built in Orlando, Blackbeard was a legend. But it is my opinion that On Stranger Tides failed to treat him thus.
I agree. To the second question though, I disagree slightly. I feel like Blackbeard was wasted as a character not because he was killed off so quickly, but because he was developed as a highly magical character. In a franchise so loose from reality in terms of magic and the like, I saw a character like Blackbeard, who was so mythological even in the real world, I thought that making him actually magic rather cheated him a little. I really would have liked to see a Blackbeard who was a straight pirate, fighting for his position of top pirate in a world filled with shamans, undead, and deathly octopus men.
Exactly. Blackbeard was impressive because of his behavior when he first appeared- all he has to do is walk through a doorway to cow his crew, no magic involved whatsoever (“I find myself... in a bewilderment.”). The voodoo I have no real problem with (insofar as pirates have a religion, it is generally identified as Voodooism or Vodoun ), but the character is less meaningful for the pervasive magic in which Disney wrapped him. He’s at least as magical as Tia Dalma, who, you might recall, turned into crabs and became the weather in At World’s End, after resurrecting a twice-dead Barbossa in Dead Man’s Chest and chaperoning an adventure to the afterlife.
I think looking back on the series that perhaps we can hope that this is not the last we will see of Blackbeard. Hopefully he’ll be back, without his magic, and pirating again.
Perhaps. There’s plenty of precedent in the franchise for temporary death. What there is very little, if any, precedent for is actual piracy. Aside from Barbossa’s sack of Port Royale in Curse of Black Pearl, Disney fastidiously avoids any actual piratical acts (probably because they’re all pretty filthy, immoral, violent, graphic, and completely inappropriate for their audience and canon).
Which only stressed more why I was looking forward to a Blackbeard, who might have been out doing some real pirating, while all of the others were out and about not doing the nitty gritty pirating.
Maybe the monkey will reinvigorate that aspect of the world.
We can’t possibly fully explore the addition to the series that Blackbeard represents without addressing the other new addition: his daughter.
Don’t you mean his “daughter?” I adored Angelica the first time I saw the film, and not just because she’s Penelope Cruz. The character hearkens back to the Jack Sparrow of Curse of the Black Pearl, when no one knew whose side he was on, whether he was a “good guy,” and whether anything he said was true or false. For me, On Stranger Tides didn’t point us to one particular “truth” for Angelica, except that she is a master con artist. Even when she attempts to sacrifice her life for Blackbeard, she could easily have anticipated Jack’s maneuver with the chalices, or even, as Jack suspects midway through the film, “fallen for her own con.”
I liked the character as well. While Elizabeth, the former token female character, certainly made a play to become a powerful, non-objectified, female character she really fell short since she was so motivated by her love interests with almost all of the main characters. Angelica on the other hand is motivated by a lot of things, the least of which is her feelings for Jack. Her feelings do tend to sway more to hatred for him then love never-the-less.
If Blackbeard’s future with the franchise is dubious at best, I think it’s safe to say that we haven’t seen the last of Angelica.
This is especially true due to her Spanish heritage. On the open seas where the pirates rule something like nationality isn’t too much of an issue. But now that we’ve seen the Spanish solidly enter the game alongside the English we will have to start thinking about nationality of the characters. She adds a character, on the pirate side of the playing field, who is not English like all of the others. I don’t think the couple Asian pirates that we’ve seen really count, since I’ve tried to forget as much of the third movie that I can.
And the multicultural crew of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge was so blatantly globally representative, it hardly counts.
So much of the tension between nations that allowed piracy to exist so extensively in the historical Caribbean was a result of the national hatred. It is nice to see the series finally getting into that.
Before this turns into a brilliant, reflective, but ultimately off-topic rumination on the Golden Age of Piracy, allow me to divert us to a character who can be loosely discussed in the same paragraph, or at least on the same page, as Angelica: the priest whose name everyone always forgets (Philip). If Penelope Cruz replaces Kiera Knightley as our token power-chick, then Sam Claflin replaces Orlando Bloom as our token moral compass.
I was unclear, was he really a priest, or simply a highly religious character? Furthermore was he Catholic or Church of England?
The characters, especially Blackbeard, often referred to him as ‘priest’ or ‘cleric,’ and I think at one point (during the exposition of his capture) it’s indicated that he’s a missionary. As for his denomination, I believe it’s Church of England, but I suppose in a world of Jesus and Not-Jesus, it’s a technicality.
I think the Spanish Inquisition might disagree with you.
No one expects it. He’s about as useful as Orlando Bloom, if perhaps slightly less annoying. Also, as far as I’m concerned, Sam Claflin is a no-name actor, which allows us to more easily accept him as a fairly attractive piece of eye candy (for those of the persuasion), and a relatively easily ignored piece of narrative furniture (for everyone else).
I think his first appearance in the film really stresses this. He’s just part of Blackbeard’s mast.
Speaking of Blackbeard’s mast, I simultaneously love and hate the role played by the infamous vessel Queen Anne’s Revenge. I love it because it, like Blackbeard, is one of the great pirate ships in history and myth, and the film absolutely treats it thus. QAR gets a much more reverent treatment than Blackbeard, who is paranoid and mentally fragmented from the prophecies of his zombies from the get-go (“THE ONE LEGGED MAAAAAN!”). The ship is huge, it’s dark; it’s barely controlled chaos. It represents Blackbeard’s reputation better than Blackbeard. It (literally) dwarfs the Black Pearl, which was previously held up as the most fearsome mortal ship on the sea. And, perhaps most interestingly, it is left in the hands of my favorite pirate, Hector Barbossa.
All said I did really enjoy PoTC 4. It marked a series return to a lot of what made the first movie great. It certainly had its pitfalls. If this makes any sense, it had good issues. They were the issues of a series being rejuvenated and not the issues of a series dying. I don’t know if they plan to make any further PoTC movies but they have certainly separated the wheat from the chaff. Stranger Tides is a movie that fans of the franchise will not be embarrassed to place on their shelves alongside the previous films. I know I might even push it up next to the first movie while accidentally knocking at least one of the other two completely off the shelf.
Given my immense bias towards the Pirates films, there was never a question of whether my review would be favorable. The question was: Will I be enthusiastically trumpeting its successes, or will I be savagely defending its wounded honor? For the most part, it has been the former. By my own admission, the movie has its faults, both in and out of the context of the other three, but as James said, those issues are simply indicative of the g-forces generated by turning the franchise in a new, brighter direction. It may not be the strongest entry in the series (which most people agree is Curse of the Black Pearl), but neither will it be the last we hear from the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
This Time Without the Elf: Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides
Zoe: Did you really just say that? Also, I’m pretty sure they know what movie we’re doing if they read the title.
I promise, that will be my extent of pirate slang. Plus, we want to pretend that this is an actual transcript of what we’re saying and not us pretending that we’re actually this eloquent when we speak.
It was my turn to be late to the movie this week and I did what any normal person would do. I queued up “He’s a Pirate” on my iPod, put it on repeat and sped towards Rio. It was as awesome as it sounds even if I was minus my gay pirate hat (it has rainbow trim) and it totally got me pumped for the movie.
Ah yes, Hans Zimmer tends to get into one’s blood.
On Stranger Tides is our mini-reboot of the Pirates franchise. Gone are the characters whose arcs were completed at the end f At World’s End.
Or we were just really tired of.
Are you saying you’re tired of the monkey?!
The monkey was in On Stranger Tides. Just in a really small amount, which it should be.
Enough to utilize the 3-D, but I wanted more monkey!
You would. I tend to find comical animal side characters to be annoying, unless it’s a dog. Preferably a pug
He didn’t talk, so I was okay with it. Anyways, our latest installment finds everyone’s favorite pirate, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) searching for the fountain of youth and the components of a ritual allowing one to take advantage of it. This time he’s joined by pirates Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and Angelica (Penélope Cruz), a level 20 cleric (Sam Claflin)...
We are not that nerdy. Or at least, I’m not that nerdy.
I am currently wearing a Doctor Who t-shirt, I am totally that nerdy. The character’s actually named Philip but I think they only refer to him by name once.
There're mermaids, Spaniards, Barbosa has a peg leg that holds rum and is now a privateer for King George III-ish, oh and Blackbeard’s a voodoo master. Why you ask? Just because, don’t ask stupid questions. There are lots of plot points I could go over, but this movie is about two and a half hours long and the general story structure isn’t all that different from the other movies. Betrayal!
I’m rather disappointed with Blackbeard’s character. There are actual historical accounts of Blackbeard lighting his beard on fire just to freak out enemies. Yes, they did that in the movie, for one scene, but it was two little embers at the end of puny chin-braids. They had something really awesome based in fact that could’ve been Bruckheimered up into pure epicness. But no, they had to do some weird voodoo shit.
His ship captains are zombies, he makes voodoo dolls, keeps captured ships in bottles and he controls the ship with his magic sword.
Remember in the first Pirates where there was only one thing that was crazy?
Can we go back to Curse of the Black Pearl? Before they embraced the crazy? There was no need to make Blackbeard voodoo-y. They got three interesting bits out of it; a scene with a Jack voodoo doll that was creepy, a scene with a Jack voodoo doll that was funny and a scene where the crew gets tied up by the magical rigging when they try to mutiny. Three scenes in a two and a half hour movie are not worth the crazy and the whole subplot could have been cut to make the movie shorter.
I really didn’t like those scenes. I just wanted Blackbeard to light his head on fire. Also, the craziness led the way to CGIness, which is ubiquitous today in the modern action/fantasy film. However, I still hate it. Scenes that are almost all CGI make a movie look corny and detract from the movie as a whole.
Especially if you’re switching from a real life person to a CGI person. Mermaids, I’m looking at you. Part of the ritual requires the capture of a mermaid and when they show up, it’s all well and good. They’re played by real people, have strategically placed hair and CGI tails that just flap around. One tries to lure a pirate down in the water with her and as she does, turns on her monster face which I’m going to guess the face is CGI. From there, everything goes CGI.
I find it funny that they turn into a combination of fish, vampire and Spiderman. I don’t get the Spiderman part. Maybe one day I will...
The first two made it cool, the third made it silly. I’m not even sure what they were “web slinging,” seaweed? They were so obviously fake too, especially compared to what we first saw.
Seaweed.
I don’t think seaweed works like that.
Hush, this is Pirates. A mermaid can secrete seaweed at high velocity if they want it to.
And use it to pull guys into the water. There’s also the end, which I can’t really talk about without spoiling so I won’t use details. I will just say that there is CGI involved that seems a bit out of place with the rest of the movie and the same outcome could have been down a lot simpler and cooler.
A much better use of CGI comes about a scene or two later when Barbosa’s ship and crew is torn apart off in the distance by what I assume are angry mermaids. All you see are indistinguishable things swarming the rigging and pulling the ship down. It’s creepy and I liked it.
To me it seemed like a great WTF? moment.
I loved it. You know what else I love?
Smooth jazz?
I love a segueway into talking about the characters!
Sigh, this means I need to stop playing flash games while Zoe types. Well, the plot had its craziness with boatload (ha ha) of myths mixed in. I prefer the simplicity of the first movie, but I guess after what happened in World’s End, there’s no going back. What’s nice is that Elizabeth Swan and Will “Legolas” Turner are missing from this story. That makes me very happy.
While I think I may be one of the only people to actually like Elizabeth’s character (most of the time), everyone who went to go see Curse of the Black Pearl left thinking how awesome Jack was and not really caring about our lovebirds at the center of the story. Disney apparently didn’t realize this and more or less centered the entire trilogy around them and their love story. Now with our reboot, they do what everyone wanted from Dead Man’s Chest and switched plot lines.
Well, there is still a romantic plot with the main characters, but it is more of a Jack Sparrow love affair with enjoyable backstabbing and a lack of kissy-face. The other love story (sappy alert!) involves a missionary and a mermaid. They talk about forgiveness and stuff and they’re generally redeemable people, like how Turner and Swan were. Thankfully, their plot was in the background.
Its good B-plot stuff and it works its way into the main plot in a very well-crafted way. On top of that, it was a pretty believable version of a fairy tale-type love story. Also, it gave Sam Claflin an excuse to take off his shirt and just like Orlando Bloom donning the bandanna at the end of At World’s End, showing off his sailor tan made Philip inexplicably hotter.
I thought it was kinda far-fetched and put there for plot reasons. I only overlooked it because the entertaining Jack Sparrow and Barbossa were on screen more.
I do think the romance was something they could have easily cut to make the movie shorter but since it was there, I liked it.
I also liked Penelope Cruz’s character, mostly. (Even though she did kinda fill an obligatory token chick role. This movie would not pass the Bechdel test by any stretch of the imagination.) She had a good chemistry with Jack while still being an antagonist.
While we’re talking about characters, Blackbeard was awesome. Lack of flaming beard aside, I appreciated Ian McShane’s choice to go subtle with his portrayal. We already have Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush flailing and running about all eccentric-like and he’s following in the steps of Davy Jones who was played similarly. By playing it much more subdued, he comes across a lot more threatening than any previous villain. His evil reputation seems very much deserved and that Angelica, who is Blackbeard’s daughter, is in real danger if she stays with him.
That and he had to live up to the previous villain, cthulhu-face.
We’re complaining a lot but I did think this was a fun movie. It seems like they kept hinting at some dark stuff like the mermaids, how Barbosa lost his leg, and Blackbeard but held back for whatever reason. I think if they had either toned that stuff down or gone all the way (and cut out that voodoo nonsense), this movie would have been awesome! But the way it is, it’s pretty much your standard Pirates movie, fun but not trying anything new.
I thought the film was fun too, but I don’t think I’d want to see it again or at least not soon.
Where do you think it ranks with the other Pirates movies?
#2 behind Pearl.
I think it ties with Dead Man’s Chest for #2.
I also liked Penelope Cruz’s character, mostly. (Even though she did kinda fill an obligatory token chick role. This movie would not pass the Bechdel test by any stretch of the imagination.) She had a good chemistry with Jack while still being an antagonist.
While we’re talking about characters, Blackbeard was awesome. Lack of flaming beard aside, I appreciated Ian McShane’s choice to go subtle with his portrayal. We already have Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush flailing and running about all eccentric-like and he’s following in the steps of Davy Jones who was played similarly. By playing it much more subdued, he comes across a lot more threatening than any previous villain. His evil reputation seems very much deserved and that Angelica, who is Blackbeard’s daughter, is in real danger if she stays with him.
That and he had to live up to the previous villain, cthulhu-face.
We’re complaining a lot but I did think this was a fun movie. It seems like they kept hinting at some dark stuff like the mermaids, how Barbosa lost his leg, and Blackbeard but held back for whatever reason. I think if they had either toned that stuff down or gone all the way (and cut out that voodoo nonsense), this movie would have been awesome! But the way it is, it’s pretty much your standard Pirates movie, fun but not trying anything new.
I thought the film was fun too, but I don’t think I’d want to see it again or at least not soon.
Where do you think it ranks with the other Pirates movies?
#2 behind Pearl.
I think it ties with Dead Man’s Chest for #2.
Dead Man’s Chest had that tiresome Turner/Turner plot that bogged down the movie. At least this one had pep.
It could have used a water wheel.
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