Just a heads-up - the Defendor review is
pretty unfinished, it's mostly just my notes cobbled together into a very clumsy
whole.
It's an intriguing film and it really got me thinking of a lot of things to
discuss, but I left the review off for too long until I'd forgotten a lot of
what I wanted to ramble about.
In a nutshell it was basically how Defendor as a character is really intriguing,
the atmosphere and locale around him just isn't anywhere near as gripping, but
the two do need to be blended for it to work well.
Well, I've basically summarised my whole review anyway. You can skip it if you
want! There's two other reviews shoved at the bottom somewhere.
I watched Defendor last week. It came out two years ago, but I'd never even heard of it before; I'm not sure if that's just because of poor advertising or if it even got a cinema release over here, but it's an interesting little film. The city is being run down by the no-good goings-on of the mysterious and nefarious Captain Industry, the head of a gun, drug and prostitute smuggling ring. By day, Arthur Poppington works as an unassuming construction foreman, but by night, he dons his black sweater and VCR-backpack and becomes... Defendor!
In actuality, he's a well-meaning if literal-minded man with
mental difficulties. He dons the superhero guise as a means of escaping from his
embarrassing civilian identity, and his vendetta against Captain Industry is due
partly to his mother being a prostitute who died from drugs, and partly due to
misinterpreting something his grandfather said. The first two acts of the film
are actually told through flashback, as Arthur retells the events leading up to
him dunking a paedophile in a rubbish bin to a psychiatrist.
Yeah. It's advertised as a comedy, but it's a bit of an odd film.
There's probably a few hundred thousand essays floating around
the ether detailing in superb detail why peeps like superheroes so much. I think
part of it comes from the selfless actions they take to protect the general
public, and how it shows just one individual can make a difference
(granted they have superpowers and whatnot to start with),
even against an entire organisation. It's a romantic idea, but there's a lot
going against it, you'd have to be crazy to sit down and decide, "I'm going to
save this run-down inner-city community from its drug lord oppressors."
And,
well, Defendor is a few eggs short of a basket. He's a passionate, well-meaning
guy but has a head full of crazy ideas, and in a sense he only manages to
achieve his goal through happy coincidence. Had his teenage prostitute sidekick
not suggested that her boss were Captain Industry as a joke, very little would
have been achieved, quite possibly.
Yes, his sidekick is a teenage prostitute. She's not much of a sidekick, really,
but what else am I going to refer to her as?
It probably sounds sick, but I'm interested in media that
covers mental illness, and in that regard, Defendor is a really
intriguing piece of work. Woody Harrelson does a fantastic job playing the
character, displaying a lot of distinctive mannerisms and quirks; he always
means well, but he's a literal-minded, black-and-white morality kind of person
living in a shady, run-down part of town, and the two never truly gel well.
There's a rather cute yet bittersweet scene where the prostitute friend is
kidnapped and he's given a message saying, "talk and she dies." And he refuses
to speak a word to anyone at all, even after being given a home by his only
other close friend, until he works up the courage to save her.
(though admittedly from a story perspective this sequence doesn't actually mean
much since she saves herself anyway, but it's just an interesting way of showing
how the guy thinks)
The guy doesn't even have a proper home, having had rows with other people in
his previous homes and currently living in an abandoned workshop. The local
thugs recognise him in his superhero guise as "the retard," and he's a bit of an
outcast, having only one real friend (with family). Despite that, he still goes
out of his way to stand up for the little man and do his best to make the city a
better place.
The exploration of a mentally-handicapped guy who retreats into a superhero persona to escape from his anxieties and problems as an ordinary guy is certainly an oddball plot, but it's a really intriguing one. He's not the most mature of individuals, especially given his odd choice of weaponry (he totes bags of marbles and jars of angry wasps into battle) and how he takes himself seriously despite his miserable track record. But he's not just played for laughs as a bumbling doofus where the only joke is "haha, he's got a mental defect!" He's still a human being. he's not mature, he's not intelligent and he's hardly competent, but his sheer passion towards his goals is admirable.
In a way, it's kind of boring how the main theme is so intriguing (to me, at least) while the rest is such a misery. Guns, drugs, prostitutes and pimps. It's a big part of the theme contrasting Poppington's optimistic ideals about heroism in such a bleak, cynical atmosphere, and how even people from poor upbringings and in lousy situations/occupations can still better themselves. It works fantastically as a theme. It just comes across as boring and bleak in execution, though. I don't think it helps that Arthur Poppington is just an entertaining character to watch, and his different take to the world is much more appealing than the, well, unappealing nature of Prostitute With A Heart Of Gold #41076. It's like the opposite of Kickass - it's not about one guy becoming a superhero and then discovering everyone else is secretly doing it except a million times better - it's about a guy becoming a superhero, and the environment is so bleak and uninteresting than it doesn't deserve him.
Summary. I wasn't sure what to expect from Defendor, and admittedly at parts it is a bit ropey, but all in all I thought it was an intriguing watch. It's probably not easy to categorise, though - it's not really in the same league as other superhero spoofs, and trying to slot it in with drama films might be a bit of a stretch due to the odd premise and occasional bouts of absurdity. I waffle about the mental health side of things when it probably constituted a sub-factor of the film, but it's what I'm interested in! It's hard to recommend, really (and in a way I've enjoyed examining it, but I'm in no rush to re-watch it). If you're up for something offbeat, it might be worth a watch, though it's all up to personal taste, of course.
On Friday my dad made the great suggestion of watching Theodore Rex. I've no idea where he got it or what put the notion in his head, but I joined him.
We barely survived one hour of it.
I don't know how much was left, but my god, it's not an
hour of my life I'll look back on fondly. In some sick, twisted way, it reminded
me of the Super Mario Bros. movie... in all the worst ways. While that
movie had some poorly-pinpointed charm and the fact it was based off a video
game to give it some merit (not to mention a
turbulent yet highly interesting development
history, plug plug!), Theodore Rex is just... something
else.
It's like the set designers, costume designers and special effects crew had more
sway over the film than the director or screenwriters. I still can't imagine any
reason why we'd have to see a female tyrannosaurus rex do a song and dance
number in a burlesque house, or waste precious minutes seeing the titular
saurian put in random outfits because his friend decided to tamper with a magic
costume device. It's like they got a five year old to outline a bunch of wacky
stuff he'd like to see in a movie, and the crew realised "well, shit, we spent
all our money on all these sets, costumes and animatronics. There's no backing
out now!" (On the flipside, I have no problem with five year
olds being in charge of comic books)
In a way, that was the worst part. There was talent on board.
The sets are very nice and stylish looking, and there's some really nifty
looking costumes and makeup on some of the wackier characters. The dinosaur
costumes aren't fantastic, but they're not completely dreadful, although a bit
ropey looking at times. Heck, even some of the basic setting for the film is
intriguing, if just for the cynical cyberpunk futuristic landscape they've got
going on.
... it's just a pity that the film offers no interesting characters, a
nonsensical plot, and reams and reams of dialogue, sound effects and
disgustingly-cute music that will never shut up. My god! It just never
shut up! Teddy Rex is constantly flapping his lips (even when his mouth isn't
moving) and the scaly bastard has nothing worth saying. If he's not constantly
ad-libbing "golly gee, this is my first detective case, how gosh-darned
exciting!" then he's humming to himself or singing to himself or just
yak-yak-yakking. Makes you wish someone would've just strapped a muzzle on him.
Even the music feels the need to pipe in when it isn't needed - there are
mildly-serious, story-progressing scenes that aren't about madcap animatronic
antics, just characters talking and furthering the story, and they still have
that cringe-worthy cookie-cutter kids' movie music jingling in the background. It's as if
they thought grown-ups talking would just bore the kids too much, so they kept
the soundtrack running as if to give the illusion that wacky things are goin'
on!
My heart wept for poor Whoopi Goldberg, though. She looked just about ready to shoot herself
every time she was on-screen.
It... it was interesting to finally see it, though, uh, jeez. I probably shouldn't have been watching a movie meant for five year olds in the first place, but I think even they would've been insulted by it.
I caught Conan the Barbarian recently. No real
expectations, just wanted to see a shirtless dude slice up some guys. Got
precisely that. It very nicely captures the very rough-and-tumble, hurly-burly
camaraderie that was so prominent in Robert E. Howard's stories, and it's got a
much more brutal and dark visage going on in contrast to the old Arnie movies.
That's about all I have to say, really. Entertaining action flick. Some great
visuals. A good Conan.
I've been playing a lot of 24: The Game lately. I never really followed the show nor did I see it as the best damn thing to grace television since sliced bread (it is a little known fact that in 1964 sliced bread staged a takeover of all known television stations in Ukraine, and people hailed it as the best television ever), but I quite enjoyed what I watched of season 3. My brother, being a big fan back then, bought this game before I even had a PS2, and it's actually not a bad little package. The gameplay offers no unique surprises, but it captures the atmosphere of the TV show frighteningly well - the movie scenes genuinely look like scenes from the actual show, recreated with PS2-quality 3D models! If that's not a selling point, I don't know what is.
But I'm not here to waffle about the game, though (I'll probably review it the next time I update Games I Own, Like & Hate) - I'm here to talk about a glitch.
In Mission 23, Madsen Attacked, you've got to protect a
terrorist leader from being killed by other terrorists. In the first half, you
snipe them from afar until an armoured truck ploughs through the base. In the
second half, enemies pour into the base and you have to take them on in
close-quarters combat.
The problem is that, if things mess up, there's only one enemy in the base. Once
that goon is dead, nothing else happens. You can only wander around the
warehouse with no threat occurring. If any enemies are left alive outside, they
stand idly in place, refusing to move anywhere. Sniping all the enemies
accomplishes nothing either. Your only option is to restart the mission.
... and then the same problem will happen again!
As far as I'm aware, this happens in all versions of the game,
NTSC, PAL or otherwise. There's a few questions about it online in a variety of
forums and answer sites, though nobody ever personally guarantees that someone
else's answer worked for them.
I figure I might as well write down what I did to circumvent the glitch, and if
it works for anyone else, that's super.
|
|
It's a dumb glitch with a dumb solution, and I've no idea what causes the problem, or what solves it, for that matter! I wonder if the game expects a certain number of villains to be alive by the time the truck arrives - it clearly keeps track of who's alive, as if you fail during the second half with the glitch in place, there'll still be only one enemy when you retry (and failing after avoiding the glitch will have everyone alive if you didn't kill anyone). Does killing too many people confuse the enemy AI, hence why the survivors outside do nothing and no new enemies spawn? Who knows.
Definitely one of my more niche blog entries, isn't it?
I rented Shadows of the Damned and finished it on Wednesday. I kinda knew nothing about the game - all I'd watched was the Two Best Friends Play video of it, and didn't think much about it. Saw it for rental and thought "why not." It's the perfect game for a five day rental!
Garcia F. Hotspur is a demon hunter. The demon overlord
Fleming kidnaps his nondescript love interest, so with the help of Johnson, his
talking British skull / gun / torch / motorbike / snarky sidekick, he sets out
to Fleming's castle to get her back.
Am I actually talking about a video game's story in my review? Heavens
above! Not that you can really call it much of a story. When I say "he sets
out to Fleming's castle," I mean the characters basically romp through a series
of increasingly disjointed locations with no bearing on geography or sense.
There's a lot of dialogue and a fair amount of movie scenes, but there's not a
lot of actual story going on.
Not that I'm complaining.
The gameplay can be lazily summarised as a cross between the over-the-shoulder shooting-dudes gameplay of Resident Evil 4 with the free-movement controls and weapon-swapping gimmick of Devil May Cry. You've got three guns and a Light Shot which freezes enemies, as well as interacts with certain environmental objects, and along the way you gain new techniques for your various guns, from explosive sticky bombs to explosive bowling balls. You also collect red gems to upgrade the strength and capacity of your various weapons, collect white gems to buy stuff, and other such activities expected of a modern video game. The core gameplay is entertaining, though it's not going to turn any heads.
The atmosphere is where the heart and soul of the game lies. It's
outlandish, it's crude, it's absurd and it's grotesque, and the whole thing is
played for dumb laughs. The interplay between Garcia and Johnson is very
entertaining and gives the game a lot of character. I'd dare say it's the one
game where I wish there was more dialogue during gameplay.
Garcia getting to explore the topsy-turvy realm of the demons and having all its
quirks and oddities explained is fun to listen to. You can interact with
signposts and billboards to have the characters converse about the subject,
which not only serves as a nice way of expositing some world-building, but always
pays off with some crass joke. The simple fact that Shadows of the Damned
laces its information with some lowbrow humour on the side makes me more keen to
pay attention to the gameplay-relevant information being spewed at me, but also
to seek out the optional signboards that provide flavour about the surroundings.
Heck, playing the game just to see what ridiculous shit they'll throw at you
next is an amusing incentive to keep playing. Act 4 drops you in a 2D
side-scrolling shmup with paper cut-out style graphics for a few levels, for no
reason whatsoever. Act 3 has a level that contains a hilariously obvious homage
to The Evil Dead, and a later level has you sniping down giant monsters
with a... "Big Boner." I can't remember for the life of me why the
characters go there or do that in the first place, but it got a giggle out of
me, at least.
The game is kinda rough around the edges, though. Most of it
is just minor faults such as sloppy animation and poor collision detection. Act
3 has a level where Paula (the love interest) is constantly drowned, but in one
scene of her thrashing in the water, you can actually see a spare model of her
floating in the distance in a 'T' position, which then snaps into the drowning
animation once the first one has served its purpose. It can be kind of amusing in a B-movie manner at times, but
sometimes it's just a little embarrassing. The overall style of the game is just
really neato, so it just blemishes the package a little when you see things like
that.
There's minor errors, and then there are
glitches that force you to exit to the title screen and reload your save. I
encountered a glitch in the As Evil As Dead chapter where in the midst of
fighting a monster, I lost all control outside of moving and rotating the
camera. Garcia's animations played is slow-motion, and the sole remaining
monster would constantly follow me, but never attack - it would approach, and
then begin strafing when within attack range. I thought it was a crummy attempt
at a psychological scare ala Eternal Darkness, but no, I had to restart
from the last checkpoint.
Another problem occurs towards the end of the game - you have a giant demon
attacking you, and you need to release a smaller one so it'll spawn some
darkness, killing the large one. If you kill the small one, it never respawns,
and your only option is to get yourself killed or reload the checkpoint. A minor
problem, but it's a dumb little thing that should've been detected in testing,
surely.
The endgame gets a bit tiresome due to some obnoxious enemies,
monotonous boss fights and a dire lack of amusing interplay, mind you. I'll be
quite honest - the personality is what makes the game. If the game was played
totally dry and serious with none of the highlighted absurdities, it wouldn't be
anything special. So when the final stretch of the game has a disappointing lack
of banter between Johnson and Garcia, it's a bit of a drag, y'know? I could
listen to the two yammer all day. The ending is a bit of a change from the
rather grimly comedic nature of the game, but it's reasonably satisfying.
Sadly, despite being neatly organized into acts and chapters, the game has no
level select feature. What the hell? I wondered if the upgrades made it awkward
for them to implement a level select, as you could hop into a late level with
the strength of your weapons at the lowest possible level, but even Bionic
Commando had a level select and it just said "upgrades? Screw 'em! Have
fun having barely any ammo, assholes!" A level select would allow you to forego
the monotony of playing all the levels again just to reach a certain segment,
but also so you can easily show off the best parts of the game to people. That's
practically the only reason my brother held onto Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Gather your friends, have a few laughs, and then show them The Great Mighty Poo
as a conversation piece.
It got me wondering. given the gaming industry taking a lot of inspiration from films these days what with their long story scenes and cinematic looks and all, it kinda feels like some games tell the gamer "you're going to enjoy this the way I tell you to!" It feels like Shadows of the Damned wants you to experience it as a movie, watching it from beginning to end, no fast-forwarding. You can't skip any of the movie scenes, and there's no level select. It feels like the kind of person who, when you're watching The Matrix, shouts "no, we can't fast forward to the fight scenes! We are going to soak in this totally layered and symbolism-filled storyline and you are going to like it."
The game does have three difficulty settings and one secret difficulty, so there's some degree of replay value, albeit a limited one. Admittedly it's the lack of proper replay value that dampened my enthusiasm for the game a little. The actual core game is decent enough, if nothing remarkable, but the totally outlandish environments, the over-the-top brutality and the lowbrow humour is what really grabbed my fancy. Despite being crass for the sake of being crass (not that that's a bad thing! ... most of the time), it's actually got a nicely intriguing little world going on. If I were to revisit the game, I'd be more interested in replaying the memorable moments throughout the game rather than wade through it from the start. I totally enjoyed the game (despite some obnoxious boss battles), but even when starting a second file it was a bit of a grind just getting to the Evil Dead chapter again.
Fun, intriguing game, though I'd suggest renting it first. I like short games, but plonking down £40 for a 7-hour game with limited replay value isn't great.
I watched Cast Away on Thursday. For the life of me, I can't remember what made me pick up the movie. I think I'd just heard an offhand comment about how for the entire time the character is stranded, there's no music whatsoever, and that stylistic choice must've intrigued me, I guess. Either that, or I'd just finished reading The Island of Dr. Moreau and thus wanted to watch something about dudes getting stranded on islands. Who knows. Point is, I was very surprised at how engaging the movie was!
So, Tom Hanks crashes on an island for four years and has to
survive. He talks to a volleyball. It's a difficult movie to proper summarise
without it sounding like some farcical comedy (though that would be pretty
funny), but it's surprisingly engaging, and I found it positively heart
wrenching at times. The very minimalist vibe of the film really makes it stand
out - there's absolutely no music for the entire time the protagonist is on the
island, and very little dialogue outside of Tom Hanks cursing loudly or shouting
at his volleyball, and it works remarkably well.
It kinda made me realise how a lot of movies let the music do the talking
instead (if that makes any sense), and sometimes it can
kind of limit your imagination a little. Like, you see a character looking sad,
and there's sad music welling up, and you're like, "oh, he's this sad."
It's like an audio measuring scale of just how sad a dude can be. But Cast Away,
once he's on the island, there's absolutely no music, and it really assists in
getting you engaged in the story. You really envision yourself on that island
and just how soul-crushingly lonely the whole experience must be. It kinda takes
you out of the experience a little when the soaring sad strings return when his
volleyball friend is lost at sea, though given how he's crying his eyes out over
a face on an inanimate object, it probably helped cast a better tone. Tom Hanks
sounds hilarious when he cries.
Today's observation: For the past three days, I've consistently found a spider in my trousers each morning. Not when I'm wearing them, mercifully.
I'm like half a month too late to offer a punctual response, but the blog's up and running again. Flying Omelette tells me Dreamhost had been upgrading their servers, and that must've prompted some crummy coding in the WordPress database to screw up... we think. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but it's up again, so that's as far as I'm concerned.
Just gonna play catch-up on stuff I watched.
Jeepers Creepers: I've caught the climax of the
sequel about four times over the years, but I've never seen it in full, nor have
I seen the first movie, so why not rectify that? It's an okay horror flick.
There are some creepy sequences and setpieces, but looking back at it, it seems
like it kinda streamrolls through a whole bunch of horror features but didn't
want to spread them out over multiple movies.
"Okay, we've got a creepy
truck! It's got a creepy driver who dumps bodies down a pipe! The pipe leads to
a cave where the walls are lined with human corpses! Oh, and the driver eats people's
tongues! And he's got bat wings, too! And he can tell where you live by
smelling your laundry! Great, now is there any space where we can throw in a fat
psychic chick as well?"
Great song, though.
Daybreakers: A virus of some sort has turned a majority of the world's population into vampires, and humans are farmed for blood, but things are turning bad - they're running out of humans, and instead of just getting a bit grumbly (what is the official explanation for what happens if vampires don't get blood anyway?), they turn into freaky bat-zombie monsters if they run out of blood. So you've got people trying to make a blood substitute, the blood industry trying to find more humans to farm, and the humans trying to find a cure for vampirism.
It's an intriguing watch! The visuals and atmosphere are very nice and noir-esque, and I just love the lighting. The concept is pretty neato too, and the premise that vampires are running out of humans wasn't something I'd seen before. After all, how well can a civilisation sustain itself if everyone's immortal? (I was also wondering if that would mean an infinitely expanding population if women are still bearing children but nobody's dying, though it never mentioned if kids are still born or not - there's only two brief scenes of vampire children, and one of them commits suicide. Looks like fanfiction is where I'll have to find answers!) It was a bit goofy at times (the fact they violently explode the moment they get a stake through a chest was a bit unexpected, especially when the rest of the setting at least attempted to stay closer to earth - if you ignore the bat-zombie monsters and the whole inherent concept of fuckin' vampires), but it was a pretty good watch.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Caught this one
today. I haven't seen the original Planet of the Apes, nor read the book,
or even seen the Tim Burton remake,
but I do know the ending. And I also watched Spaceballs. That counts,
right?
A medical organisation are trying to make a cure for Alzheimers that will repair
'damaged' parts of the brain, and it's tested on apes first to astounding
success, though a violent mishap gets the research shut down. The ape's child
survives and is adopted by the project leader, and observes that over the years,
the ape's intelligence grows substantially. However, the ape struggles to find
its place in the world, and tries to determine who it belongs with and where it
calls home. Meanwhile, the humans realise they probably shouldn't fuck about
with everything. Just a thought, y'know.
It seems a lot of folks were dubious about the film, especially with so many remakes or films based off pre-existing licenses these days (was the world really desperate for a CGI Smurfs film? Did the world even want Smurfs to begin with?), but what helps Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that it's telling something different. We see the how the apes first gain their super intelligence, their desire to find their own home, and also how humanity's going to eventually snuff it. As such, it feels a lot more closer to home. The drama lies more in the main character's desire to create a cure for mental illness, but to also maintain the well-being of the apes and the general public in the process, versus the brash boss man who just wants fat stacks of cash. It's not about space dudes asking "where the simian women at?"
The CGI is really remarkable, and the apes are just a wonder to watch. I was really blown away by how well their story, personalities and attitudes are expressed solely through their expressions and movements. It sounds kinda dumb to say it when such a thing is already achieved without multi-million dollar special effects (protip: it's called body language!), but really, it's just incredibly impressive. All the important critters are visually distinct, and you can spot Caesar out of a crowd with relative ease thanks to his bushy facial hair. The orang-utan stole the show, personally. I get the impression there wasn't a single real ape used in the film, every single shot of them was CGI, though I might be wrong. It makes me interested to see if anyone will ever try telling a story entirely through CGI animation, without voices or text. Those monkeys could pull it off, I'm sure.
I could also waffle another paragraph about the whole cure for mental illness storyline, which I found pretty intriguing because I'm fascinated by that sort of stuff, but I'll spare you the essay. Perhaps another time. I've kinda forgotten most of the movie now because I spent so long being wowed by the CGI apes, but I'd probably recommend it. It was a very nicely done film that had heart, and let's face it, there's not much on in cinemas worth going to. When's Cowboys Vs. Aliens coming out anyway?