Against my better judgment, I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night, and I have to admit I didn't think it was nearly as bad as some have claimed. Is it good? No, of course not. Is it better than X-Men 3 and Spider Man 3? By a long shot.
What surprised me about this movie, in fact, was just how close it came to being good. You could tell that there was a pretty serious, Wolverine and Sabertooth story buried under too many characters and a terribly executed plot. I was expecting a movie with no redeeming values at all--literally, I said when I sat down to watch it that "I fully expect this to end up in my bottom ten of all time." And yet there was ALMOST a movie here. Liev Schreiber was a perfect choice for Sabertooth, and I've always thought Jackman was perfect for Wolverine. In a better story, these two could have been absolutely stunning together.
I even liked the inclusion of Gambit here, though it remains a crime against nature that Josh Holloway never played the character. (He was supposed to play Gambit in X3, but supposedly turned it down because it was too close to Sawyer. Which makes sense.) Taylor Kitsch does an okay job with the part, and other than the missing New Orleans accent I liked the take on the character, but I really wish he would have been in either the whole movie as Wolvie's sidekick or else just in a small cameo. As it is it feels like the filmmakers never really knew what to do with him, and his presense seems unjustified. Gambit makes a great sidekick to Wolverine, but they needed to set him up a lot better than they did.
The worst part is unfortunately the story. The original script was probably a simple revenge plot, which could have worked just fine. Instead we get unecessary plot twists, an overabundance of cameos, and general incoherence. A particular "shocking revelation" at the start of the 3rd act had most people in my theater rolling their eyes, and pretty much killed any motivation Wolverine may have had to begin with. There are great moments, particuarly the opening credits and almost any scene with Wolverine and Sabertooth, but on the whole there's nothing driving the movie forward, only a series of action sequences held together by a common theme: Wolverine fighting.
The X-Men have been my favorite superheroes (behind Batman, obviously) since I was in 5th grade, and so here's what the 11 year old kid in me got from the movie: Wolverine vs. Gambit, Wolverine vs. The Blob, Wolverine vs. Sabertooth, Wolverine vs. Deadpool, and Wolverine vs. a helicopter. All the rest is just window dressing. I'm not saying Wolverine doesn't deserve a good movie (as far as I'm concerned, there hasn't been a really good X-Men movie yet) but I had some fun with this movie despite its flaws. Nothing has ever come close to capturing the spirit of the X-Men the way the 90s cartoon series did, and most likely nothing ever will. It's just too big a universe for a 120 minute movie.
So let's be clear. Wolverine isn't very good. The story is a mess, the effects are rushed, and the characters have no motivation. It's just not nearly so bad as people have said. There are plenty of worse movies out there (right now I'm watching Van Helsing on TV). I think it's far better than something like the 2 hour nap that was Transformers, for example, and yet that garbage seems to have gotten a free pass, while this garbage is torn apart. Ah well, there's no justice in the world.
Wolverine would probably make a great video game. There's some great fights and a skeleton of a plot. They should just recut the movie as a series of cut scenes in some kind of excellent video game (actually, I hear the game based on the movie is suprisingly good). Otherwise we're just left with a very forgettable, but not terrible, movie.
Like many fans of the blockbuster film The Dark Knight, I was thrilled when I saw that Wendy's would be continuing the story of the popular Dark Knight character Thomas Schiff (David Dastmalchian) in their 3conomics commercials.
However, it's now been several months, and I've yet to see any noticeable advancement in Schiff's character from lovable, George Washington impersonating fast food bargain hunter to psychotic Joker-henchman. The scene has been well-set for sure, the characters are all established, and the spectre of economic downturn festers on the periphery of the spots like a cancer, threatening to spread at any moment, to turn the once joyful office breakroom into a place of fear and sorrow. However, there has not been one indicator, one single connecting thread to link the Schiff we see in the commercials to the desperate schizophrenic we meet in The Dark Knight.
I'm not sure how long Wendy's plans on running the spots, and while the whole Dark Knight prequel thing is a fantastic idea, fans need some character development in every commercial to keep them interested. By now we should at least have gotten some hints at Schiff's backstory, or the conditions in his life that would make him susceptible to recruitment by the Joker. But Wendy's hasn't even introduced the Joker yet!
You've done a great job so far Wendy's. You've taken a character that was portrayed only as a villian in the original movie and fleshed him out. I cannot watch that scene in the Dark Knight now without thinking, "Wow, Thomas Schiff used to be a regular guy just like me. He liked getting a good deal on fast food and joking around with his friends about said deal. I guess anyone could turn to evil if pushed far enough." And it makes a good scene even better. But, please, Wendy's, show us the next step. You've given us the dots. Now connect them.
It's not a big leap. $.99 for a Junion Bacon Cheeseburger? At that price, the question isn't "How does Thomas Schiff go crazy." It's "How has he managed to stay sane for so long?"
One of my goals for 2009 has been to ready more books. As a kid I was a voracious reader, often guzzling down a few books a week. That wasn’t so terribly long ago, but even in the 90s we didn’t have constant internet, Tivo, etc. to distract us at every turn. All the innovations, plus the added pressures that come with being an adult, make it more and more difficult to sit down and spend time with a good book. This is a shame, because unlike a lot of the stimuli we have available in the 21st century, reading is an entirely intellectual, interactive pastime. (Though they get a bad rap from many, video games may be the closet modern parallel. But that’s a topic for another day.) So far I’ve been doing pretty well with books this year, though I wish I had the time to read even more. One of my favorites so far is the poorly marketed and classified but ultimately enjoyable Drood by Dan Simmons.
Simmons has been a popular horror and science fiction writer for a long time, but I (along with many others) first became aware of his work with the phenomenal 2007 historical horror novel, The Terror. This book combined the real life story of the doomed Franklin Expedition which disappeared without a trace on a mission to explore the Arctic in the 1840s, with supernatural horror to fantastic effect. With their ships frozen in the ice, the crew’s struggle for survival gets increasingly desperate; all the while they are threatened by a terrible, polar-bear like monster that seeks to tear them limb from limb in the best horror tradition.
Simmon’s prose is so rich you can feel the sting of the -40 degree temperatures and see the blood of the monster’s victims as it streaks across the ice—all this set against a backdrop of beautiful and absolutely terrifying isolation at the top of the world. Even with the horrors of the climate and the monster to contend with, the real danger comes from within the crew itself, and as the struggle for survival becomes more and more desperate, the crew members begin to turn on one another. I’ve never read a book with a character more loathsome than Cornelius Hickey, who commits actions against his fellow men far more disgusting than anything perpetrated by the monster.
To watch this vile man ruin the crew’s hopes for survival time and time again is heartbreaking. In modern fiction it has become too much of a cliché that villains are the most sympathetic and wronged characters—in Cornelius Hickey, Simmons created a monster that was just that: a monster. All the worst instincts of humanity squished together in a horrible package. It is a testament to Simmon’s skill as a writer that this character was so utterly detestable, and The Terror is stuffed to the brim with similarly well drawn characters, moody descriptions, and a plot that makes it’s 700 plus pages fly by.
Drood is not that good.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved the book. But after an achievement like The Terror, it’s only natural that the follow up is somewhat disappointing. Most of the problem is in the way the book is marketed. On the cover we see a shadowy figure against the familiar backdrop of Victorian London, and from the description inside the jacket Drood seems to be another historical horror tale in the exact same vein as The Terror. It is even placed in the horror section of the bookstore, so the reader can be forgiven for coming to the book with a certain set of expectations. There are horror elements, for sure, and some of them are quite terrifying, but this book is far more history than horror. Instead it takes a cue from Simmon’s portrayal of Hickey and makes its monster not some external nightmare creature, but that most ugly and disgusting of human emotions: Jealousy.
I will go ahead and damage my English major credibility by admitting right of the bat that before I read Drood, I knew very little about the novel’s two main characters, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Of course I knew who Dickens was and had read a few of his books, heard the stories of the people waiting at the docks for the latest installment of his tales, and had used the adjective ‘Dickensian’ in multiple situations over the years. But I knew almost nothing about the man. As for Wilkie Collins, the book’s narrator and central protagonist? Sadly, this was the first I’d heard of him.
Like I said, I went into this book expecting a tale of Victorian horror; something along the lines of Dracula or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with perhaps a bit of A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist thrown in for good measure. I’ve always been a fan of the time period, and when I was in high school I even attempted a god-awful Victorian novel of my own, something about the true story of Jack the Ripper. (I think my brilliant original take on the idea was that Jack was actually the sympathetic hero of the story, and the world simply didn’t understand, i.e., the Anakin Skywalker explanation of evil).
In any event, the first few chapters of the book definitely met my expectations, both for a horror novel and for a successor to The Terror. Dickens explains to Collins in vivid detail the events of the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865—a horrific disaster in which Dickens’ train jumped the track and hurled into a ravine, killing many. Dickens and the book’s title character, the mysterious, corpse-like Drood, flit among the dead and dying, doing their best to help (?) the survivors. It is a scene of wrecked fuselage, shattered bodies, severed limbs, and the desperate moans of the wounded. Hovering above it all is the mysterious figure of Drood, who we later learn was traveling by coffin. Is he a man? A zombie? A vampire? These are the questions the first section of the book lays out for us.
And then they’re not answered. Or they are answered, but after the first hundred pages or so they hardly form the focus of the book. It becomes much more historical and biographical, and, some have argued, less interesting. But I disagree. If you can divorce yourself from expectations, what you will find in Drood is a story of two men, both of them writers, and their competition with one another. Wilkie Collins is Dickens’ friend, but, more importantly, he is jealous of the older, more famous writer, who he calls the Inimitable with no small amount of sarcasm.
This jealousy, combined with Collins’ growing addiction to opium, forms the basis for increasingly twisted ideas, visions, and actions. We never quite know which of Collins’ hallucinations are real and which are false. They all share one thing in common, though: The signs of a jealous, sometimes petty man who would believe in anything except his own inferiority. Whether this is a massive character assassination on the real life Wilkie Collins I will never know, but for me our narrator’s cruel cynicism and selfishness came off poorly against Dickens almost childlike joy at everyday life.
This is a book for writers. It gives physical manifestation to the all too common reality of professional jealousy, and both main characters have an intimate understanding of the writer’s life. In one of my favorite passages, Collins writes:
When the last autumn of Dickens’ life was over, he continued to work through this final winter into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all of those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?
There is no one who has lived the life of the writer who has not had these thoughts from time to time—some more than others, of course, but thoughtful passages like this keep the often reprehensible Wilkie from coming off as completely despicable. Writing can be a lonely profession, and often one that brings with it no clear signs of reward, at least not immediately. What I love about this passage and this book is that you can tell it was written by someone who takes writing seriously, who knows all to well the pain and setbacks and frustrations that come with failure, but also, in the person of Dickens, the beautiful joys that come with effort. Unlike Dickens and Collins, most writers are both Dickens and Collins—at one moment frustrated by loneliness or lack of recognition, and at others overcome by the overwhelming joy that comes with being creative, with creating characters and stories, with the simple use of words and language.
Another favorite moment is earlier in the book, when Collins takes an unfinished draft of his upcoming novel, which he plans to call “The Serpent’s Eye (Or, possibly The Eye of the Serpent).” Dickens loves the novel, he says, but then lays into poor Wilkie with a list of possible corrections and changes. This moment is very real and well done, and anyone who’s ever tried to do anything creative has been there. Listening to someone else easily rattle of possible changes and alterations to something you’ve been working on for months is difficult in any situation, but oftentimes, as is the case with Dickens, those suggestions are right on the money. It’s a wonderful little moment, us alone together with these two great writers, watching them work, watching as Wilkie’s resentment of Dickens builds and builds despite the obvious wisdom in his suggestions. In the end, Wilkie takes the advice, and the result is a better, more popular novel.
Eventually, and by slow degrees, Wilkie’s jealousy descends into madness. As I’ve said, we are never sure which of his delusions are real. I would have liked some more explanations and follow up to certain things, certainly (Just what was in the servant’s stairs at Wilkie’s house? Some type of Lovecraftian horror? Or another delusion?). But in the end, that’s not what the book is about. Drood has far more in common with the movie Amadeus than with a horror novel. There were many moments in the book, such as the revision scene above, when I was reminded of the final moments of Amadeus: Mozart on his deathbed, composing another masterwork with baffling ease, while Salieri can only look on in awe and wonder. If you go into this book expecting The Terror II you’re bound to be disappointed. If you go in expecting Amadeus with writers instead of musicians—well, that’s exactly what it is.
Writing, like music, like all art, is mostly subjective. You can learn various rules, sure, but what makes people fall in love with a movie or a poem or a story or a painting? That is unknowable. Sometimes it can seem unfair. In the final pages of the novel comes what I consider the book’s most powerful scene. After Dickens has died, Wilkie rummages through some of Dickens old books, trying to prove to himself Dickens’ inferiority. He finds problems with characterization, plot, and more, but finally, in a passage in Bleak House, he comes face to face with the Charles Dickens the world saw and loved:
Dickens had gone on by having the fog in the harbor lift over Esther’s shoulder by writing, “these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed…,” and I knew in that instant…merely passing over these few words in these short sentences, that I would never—not ever, should I live to be a hundred years of age and retain my faculties until the last moment of that life and career—that I would never be able to think and write like that.
The book was the style and the style was the man. And the man was—had been—Charles Dickens.
Simmons is a master at portraying the ugly side of human nature, and this ability is on full display in Drood. There is perhaps no human emotion worse than jealousy and the book is an excellent look at the hideous manifestations of that at once understandable and reprehensible feeling. In many friendships and professional relationships there's a very fine line between love and hate, and this is a book that explores that line wonderfully. Don’t go in expecting a horror story, and you just might find a lot to like.
I got around to seeing I Love You, Man this weekend, and am very glad I did. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are probably my favorite actors in the whole “Apatow crew,” and their easy everyman likability elevates the simple premise.
Watching the movie, you really get the feeling that Jason Segel’s character Sydney is the kind of friend everyone needs once in a while—the guy that’s discovered the secret for gathering up the wisdom and perspective that come with adulthood without sacrificing the lifestyle of an adolescent. He’s even got a Rush poster on his wall. You really feel these guys’s friendship, and it helps to show that some of the greatest moments in life are the ones where you’re not doing much but laughing with your friends. Most of the movie is just Paul Rudd and Jason Segel onscreen together having fun, and most of the time that’s all you need. If just watching these two jam out together to Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” doesn’t bring a big stupid grin to your face—well, I don’t know what else I have to say to you.
I’ve been somewhat critical of the recent comedies from Apatow and others for focusing a bit too much on upholding traditional family values and social roles (I went to a self-righteous liberal arts college, so it’s okay for me to think of things like this). There’s 40 Year Old Virgin’s implication that the world breaks down into people who postpone sex until marriage, and crass, selfish hedonists; Knocked Up and Juno’s strong anti-abortion undertones (I’m okay with Juno’s treatment of adoption, less okay with Knocked Up’s premise that two people who have a baby together should be together); even Superbad descends into a saccharine paean to the value of male-friendship.
That’s not to say I Love You, Man doesn’t suffer from some of these issues, notably in the suggestion that Paul Rudd’s character is somehow missing out on life without male friends. But it’s always bad to let a general impression get in the way of a specific story. Paul Rudd didn’t need male friends in his life, but he did need Jason Segel. He needed someone to go out and have a beer with, to talk Rush with, just to do the things he couldn’t do with his wife. And that’s fine. The film deals with the sometimes awkward world of male friendship without falling prey to the bizarre and overly sentimental version of the same thing in Superbad. These are two real characters in a real world that happens to be, embellishment aside, pretty damn funny.
And that’s the main contribution of the new wave of comedies. Only a few years ago we were dealing with Austin Powers III and Scary Movie—Now we’ve got movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man that for the most part deal with real people suffering through real situations. Things don’t always go well, and there’s a lot of pain and other nonsense to deal with, but the end result is something decidedly hilarious. The Ancient Greeks had it pretty well right on this: Tragedy generally deals with the god’s relationship with people, comedy with people’s relationship with people. I’d take 40 Year Old Virgin, Juno, Knocked Up, and especially Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man, over the manufactured over-the top crap that so often passes for comedy any day of the week.
Anyway, that was a long pretentious rant. But the short version is I Love You, Man is a hilarious and very real movie that has a lot of fun with the sometimes difficult world of male friendship in a society where gender roles have become more confusing (ACK!! There I go stumbling into liberal-arts talk again. I am sincerely sorry. Once you’ve spent a couple semesters in Gender Studies or Feminist Theory classes, it’s harder to control than Dr. Strangelove’s Nazi sympathies) I loved I Love You, Man for showing that adult male friendships don’t have to be the poker playing chug fests so hilariously illustrated by Jon Favreau’s character and his friends. Being a perpetual teenager and a responsible adult isn’t mutually exclusive, and there’s a lot of fun in life (at any age) if you just get out there and find it.
Shorter version: Great comdey. Loved it. Now bring on Jason Segel's Muppet movie!
...until I get the chance to sit down and watch Barry Lyndon.
I can’t help it. I mentioned Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon last time I wrote, and I’ve been thinking about the movie ever since. There’s just no talking about the 18th century without talking about this fantastic movie. This is a controversial opinion, even among former film students, but Barry Lyndon has always and easily been my favorite Kubrick movie.
Even for 1975, this was a slow-paced movie, and time has done no favors in that area. What’s more, it’s set during the reign of George III, but never uses any major historical figures or events from the period that might make it more familiar to the casual viewer. (Most people are probably at least roughly aware of the events of the Seven Years War in North America, but who knows the details of the struggle on mainland Europe between Britain and Prussia?) There are no major stars that are recognizable today (Ryan O’Neal included), the story meanders from event to event, and the movie clocks in at over three hours. No wonder, then, that it doesn’t have quite the modern following as The Shining or Dr. Strangelove. It’s not a movie for everyone, but those of us that love it, love it.
First of all, it’s set during the reign of George III! From costumes and set design to accents and mannerisms, the movie brings the time period alive like few movies do. Where a movie like Gladiator makes a big show of its setting, immersing itself in Hollywood clichés about ancient Rome without giving us a single real glimpse of the culture of the era, Barry Lyndon lets the little things do all the talking. The music of the army, the ribbon game Barry plays with his cousin, the lusty-eyed loneliness of the German housewife, the slow pace and deadly seriousness of the card games—these are all tiny touches that make this movie a true period piece, not just a generic story stuffed into a specific time frame. The period is the story, and the two could not exist separate from one another.
But what makes Barry Lyndon Barry Lydon, above all else, are the visuals. Even if you can’t stomach the story, even if you get too bored to flip the DVD over for part II, there is no getting around the fact that this movie is gorgeous. Every frame of every shot is like a Romantic painting come to life. The very first long shot of Redmond Barry’s father’s death in a duel sets the tone, and there is not a single moment in this film that is not exciting to look at. It is probably most notable for the interior shots that were supposedly lit entirely using candles and period lighting, and this creates a kind of moody darkness and uneven lighting that immediately stands out, even to visually impaired sorts like myself, who understand the complexities of movie lighting about as well as we understand quantum mechanics.
Take any of the aforementioned card game scenes as an example. The characters are huddled close to the lights, which illuminate only the parts of the room nearest to them. Beyond the gaming table is a thick darkness, pierced perhaps by a wall sconce, but generally black. I’m sure someone better qualified than myself could spend hours talking about the technical know-how necessary to pull something like this off, and I’m sure with Kubrick no shortcuts were tolerated. Even in daylight scenes, the light comes in through windows only, creating environments that are never fully lit. This all combines to make the movie a visual experience unlike any other. People in the early 1800s would have had no concept of electric lighting, and this would affect behaviors, movement, even conversations. Kubrick accounted for this, and as a result Barry Lyndon looks more like contemporary paintings than a modern motion picture. No matter what you think of the plot or the characters, there is no getting around the visual achievement.
Personally, though, I love the characters. Not a single one of them are likable, heroic human beings, but they are all memorable, and every performance, even from the many, many small characters that come in and out of Redmond Barry’s life, is wonderful. Special mention, of course, goes to the foppish stepson of the title character, Lord Bullingdon, played by longtime Kubrick collaborator Leon Vitali. Despite the fact that he has been so clearly wronged by Barry Lyndon, and in a lesser movie would command the audience’s sympathy, as played by Vitali he remains a whiny, spoiled coward. During the final duel in the barn (the film’s best scene) Bullingdon shows no admirable characteristics—he is scared to the point of vomiting, and refuses to show an ounce of mercy to his broken stepfather.
Even if Bullingdon fails to arouse our sympathies, there are no characters in the film as reprehensible as the star himself, Redmond Barry (later Barry Lyndon.) If the film has a central plot, it is the story of Barry’s rise from an innocent farm boy to a self-indulgent, abusive, and soulless aristocrat. Kubrick doesn’t sugar coat this. This is no modern “He did evil for all the right reasons” kind of story. Barry is an opportunist who uses everyone around him to claw his way to the top, without a single (as far as I can tell) noble intention. That said, Barry is not evil. He starts out as a generally good man, and he is genuinely devoted to his young son. Characters in this world do not act in the usual roles of good and evil, they simply exist. Good intentions are marred by cowardice, in the case of Lord Bullingdon, and integrity is corroded by wealth, in the case of Barry. There are no heroes here. If I could explain why this works, I would love to do a movie with the same moral ambiguity, but generally movies with such unlikable characters are a recipe for disaster. Perhaps because Kubrick so unflinchingly portrays these people with all their human failings, an audience can, if not relate, at least understand.
As I’ve said, for my money the best scene is the final duel between Lord Bullingdon and Barry Lyndon. Dueling is a major part of the movie, and if you’re someone who can’t say “I demand satisfaction” without breaking into gleeful giggles of joy, than this movie is right for you. In this final scene, the two combatants face off with pistols in an old barn, birds flapping through the rafters, and only a thin layer of sunlight piercing through the decaying roof. God knows how long they stand there, pistols ready, waiting to take their shots. The suspense is so intense that it has driven more than one Kubrick fan mad. As many times as I’ve seen the movie, I still can’t get through that last scene without a great deal of hand-wringing.
It all leads up to the final punch-line: “It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.” This last title card gives me chills at the same time it brings a smile. I’ve never read the 19th century novel on which the movie is based, but I hear this line appears there as well. Whatever its origin, it is the perfect note to go out on. After over three hours of watching these deplorable people struggle for title and property, we are slammed with this simplistic, sobering reminder of just how entirely pointless it all was—and is. Abandoning your principles, sticking to them, chasing after wealth and privilege or living a life of self-sacrifice—none of that will make you any less dead. Classic Kubrick.
I could go on forever about this movie—there’s so much of the plot, themes, and events that I’ve yet to touch on. I never even got into the soundtrack (though I made reference to it in my last entry) or the brilliant funeral scene it famously accompanies. Really, though, it’s just something that has to be experienced. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably either love it, respect it, or were bored to tears by it, and if you haven’t, there’s no time like the present. This is one of those movies that remind me why I love movies, and it’s also great reminder of why Kubrick deserves his reputation. As the trailer would have no doubt said, had I been in charge: “If you demand cinematic satisfaction, look no further than Barry Lyndon.”
NOTE: If that last joke isn’t funny, odds are Barry Lyndon is not the movie for you.
I’ve never been a particularly violent person. I’m anti-war, anti-Imperialism, and generally anti-confrontation. Yet for some reason I can’t get enough of strategy games where I get to take over the world. There’s some innate satisfaction for me in organizing armies, marching them across Europe, and slowly uniting the world under my benevolent rule. But it’s not all about the conquest. Not at all. Great games like the Civilization series let you “win” by becoming president of the UN, for example, or having cultural achievements so impressive that you simply awe the other civilizations into submission. Good strategy games effectively combine my love of history, maps, organizing things, city management, and being in charge. 
My latest foray into this strange and wonderful world has been Empire: Total War, another entry in the Total War series. The second game in the series, Medieval: Total War, remains one of my favorite games of all time, combining Risk-like strategy gaming with real time battles featuring thousands and thousands of troops. And you just can’t go wrong with the Middle Ages. (That game definitely deserves a whole entry unto itself. Hopefully I’ll get around to that one of these days.) After Medieval, I had insanely high expectations for Rome: Total War—it was an equally exciting period, the graphics looked amazing, and the scale was even more epic. Unfortunately, the final game left me underwhelmed. It was fun, sure, but after a while it just got boring and repetitive, and before long it felt more like busy-work. The same is true with Medieval 2: Total War—a lot of the color and atmosphere of the first game was gone—essentially it was Rome with a different coat of paint.That’s why my first impressions of Empire are fairly positive. For the first time since Rome, this one actually feels like a different game, and in a good way. I wasn’t big on the 18th Century before, but it’s an incredibly rich period, and real time battles where everyone has guns are decidedly different the typical swords and spears. This was the era that brought us Louis XIV, Maria Theresa, George III, and Napoleon, The Seven Years War, various succession wars, the American and French Revolutions, epic battles at sea, and the colonization of North and South America and India. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to a video game adaptation of Barry Lyndon—you can even fight duels! The story based Road to Independence campaign is a lot of fun, and I hope some more mission based gameplay is in the series’ future. There is more empire management, more towns, more strategic options, more battles (this time you can fight at sea), more territories, more diplomatic possibilities—generally more of everything.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t, to put it simply, work. Crashes are constant. There are plenty of bugs. I can’t even check on my empire’s trade status without a giant error that forces me to restart my whole computer. Most disappointing, though, is the difficulty. The other nations are incredibly stupid. Civilization games can be brutally challenging at the highest difficulty levels—not so Total War. Like I said, even in the context of a game called “Total War” I’m not all about world domination. In the real 18th century, wars were fought for years over tiny bits of territory. I want to be able to fight a prolonged struggle in Sweden over a small strip of territory in South America, damn it! Instead what we get are suicidal nations that attack for no reason, and refuse to surrender until they’ve lost every bit of territory. If I conquer Berlin and decisively crush the Prussian army, that should be the end of the war. The more time I spend conquering regions the less time I have to build schools and research philosophy. The battles are awesome, but they should mean something—if I win, the world should take note. 
For real 18th Century strategy gaming, then, there’s still nothing better than Risk. Now I know it’s not really set in the 18th Century. The game pieces look sort of like Napoleonic soldiers, and the territories all have archaic names and borders that exist only in the world of Risk. Otherwise, it could be in any time (that’s why the game is so adaptable to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings settings). But I say it’s in the 18th Century, and I have yet to see any reasonable counter arguments to that claim. (I will also accept the early 19th Century, but now we’re just nitpicking.)
The point is, through the years of Warcraft and Starcraft, Civilization and Total War, there’s really no strategic rival for a good game of Risk. Sure, you can’t build infrastructure or fight epic battles, but the pain of human interaction makes up for any deficiencies. A bunch of friends sitting around a Risk game is not unlike a bunch of 19th Century British imperialists sitting around a map of China discussing the opium trade with their thick cigars and monocles. Deals are brokered, alliances formed, friendships challenged, hypocrisies exposed, and snacks consumed. Of course deals and alliances can only go so far, and at the end one player must inevitably toss friendship aside and make a final bid for personal glory, like Napoleon or Alexander before him.
Nothing tests a friendship like a good game of Risk. Everything that happens is random, governed by the roll of the dice. After your brilliant strategy to conquer Iceland with a huge army has been thwarted by an opponent with a single army and a string of unfathomably lucky rolls, you may be tempted to rip the board from the table and use it to wipe that smug grin right off his face. This is normal, and part of what makes Risk such an exhilarating experience. You have no idea what’s going to happen. Ever. No doubt Risk is where the well known phrase “Everyone’s your friend until somebody invades Kamchatka,” originates.
Once Empire gets some of its bugs worked out, it will no doubt be a fantastic strategy game. If multi-player ends up working, it could be a very Risk-like experience indeed. Right now I’m conquering the world as Austria, and I’m certainly having a good time of it. But for pure Enlightenment era bellicosity, there’s no replacement for cranking up Handel’s Sarabande, getting a bunch of Tostitos and up to five of your friends, and proceeding to crush their pathetic dreams of empire under the weight of your own imperial majesty.
Watchmen is a decent movie. It has an intriguing world, a great concept, interesting characters, and a good story. I saw it, and were I not impoverished would certainly see it again. I loved the Rorschach character, loved the opening credits, I even liked the sometimes out of place soundtrack (good music is good music). But my geek credentials are pretty thin in the comic book realm, and I have never read the graphic novel. Had I read it, I may have learned how the movie fails in every possible respect, as is apparently the case. What was for me an enjoyable movie about superheroes and the issues that would drive them in a gritty, real world setting, is actually an abomination of the greatest literary work since, well, ever, I guess.
A lot of this fan complaining is legitimate: There’s not a lot of emotion in the movie, the story seems rushed and some of the bigger moments don't land like they should, and it’s clear that the characters would all resonate much more in the denser setting of a graphic novel. What leads to such zealous fan reaction, though, is not the quality of the movie itself, but the level of deification that certain comic book writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller have undergone in Hollywood in recent years. It has become a bit ridiculous. When Shakespeare is redone in the form of She’s the Man, nobody bats an eyebrow, but when one frame of one shot of one scene in Sin City diverges from the comic, a cinematic holocaust has been committed.
In response to this, a director like Zack Snyder (sorry bro) decides to stick as closely to the comic as possible. I will say again that I’ve not read Watchmen, but I have read and seen 300, and generally Snyder sticks to doing a shot for shot recreation of the comic. From all I’ve read, the same phenomenon is present in Watchmen, and the film certainly looks like it went to great lengths to recreate exact frames from the book. It’s like when you hear a cover of a song that’s just, well, the song again, but robbed of the creative spark that made the original something special.
It’s an endless cycle. Joe Moviegoer (in this case, me) likes the movie, but goes home without being hugely impacted by it. But Joe Moviegoer’s roommate, Jerry Fanboy (or Matilda Fangirl, as the case may be) sees the movie, finds it to be an aseptic approximation of what they love, and cover the internet with complaints. Hollywood, looking for a reason why the movie doesn’t do as well as say, The Dark Knight, sees the fanboy complaints, and in turn makes a movie that is more slavishly faithful to the original. And it goes back to Joe Moviegoer, and back down the line forever.
Watchmen, Sin City, 300—these are all great stories. Hell, if the Watchmen novel is 1/100th as good as I’ve been told, it would still earn a place among my favorite books. But a good movie can take that great source material and make a great, separate work of art from it. Look at The Godfather, for the love of Christmas! Satisfying a rabid fanbase like Watchmen’s will never be possible, so directors shouldn’t let that scare them into making inferior products. With all the mindless faithfulness to the Watchmen novel, fans are still furious that the production created a new climax, eschewing some sort of Lovecraftian monster in the finale. (Okay, honestly? That sounds fantastic.) You just can’t please everybody, no matter what you do.
Watchmen does a lot right. But you can tell just by watching that, not unlike the first Harry Potter movies, it shoots itself in the foot by being too faithful to the letter of the source material and rather ignorant to the spirit. In the hands of a director that wasn’t afraid to make the sacred cow of the novel their own (I would have loved a David Fincher take, for example), this had all the makings of a masterpiece. As it is, the movie fails in greatness, and fails in satisfying the passionate fanbase.
Hollywood has never been known for taking works of literature seriously. And, in this new trend of slavishly adapting the source material, they miss the point once again. Like I said, I enjoyed this movie for 99% of the time I was in the theater. I was blissfully unaware of the crimes that were being perpetrated to the holy tome, and so I had a good ride. If you like superheroes and enjoy the movie for what it is, you’ll have a good time at Watchmen, though you might leave feeling a bit like just drove past the Pyramids doing 90 and didn’t get out to take a picture.
Watchmen is a good movie on its own merits, but as an adaptation it comes up short. Unfortunately, this as is as much the fault of fanboy internet culture as anything else. These movies are monitored by fans during their entire production, and at the end of the day Zack Snyder did the best he could under those conditions. It’s not what it could have been, but given the circumstances, it’s a pretty decent movie, squid or no squid. It’s no Watchmen Babies, but I’ll take it.
