Bloop. Some updates! There's some Games I Own reviews, some music, a couple of sprites, and a Bomberman update that could've been a lot more substantial if I had the patience to work on it. Recapping a game's content in a blank, encyclopaedic manner only has its kicks for so long. Sometime!
Earlier in the month I watched all of the Sonic the
Hedgehog cartoon on Netflix - the one with Sally and Rotor and all those
fellas. I was surprised to discover that I'd only ever seen three episodes when
I was a young 'un; I was almost sure I'd seen more, but I guess when those three
episodes were rewatched repeatedly on tape, it feels like I saw more.
Probably the same situation with Dino Babies - I'm sure I saw a bunch of
those, but it was probably only three or four episodes over and over again on
tape.
(speaking of Dino Babies, I'd love to cover some of it on
Random Action Hour - especially the episode where everyone rides on a big boat
and there's two characters called Dick and Butt. No, seriously, they show up
just for that episode and I can't even remember what they do, but they introduce
themselves by saying, "Hi, my name's Dick. This is Butt." Keep it classy,
1990s!)
I might give it a more in-depth ramble another time, but my basic thoughts after watching it were that I was more interested in the basic premise and concept of the series than the actual content. You've got a planet of animals conquered by a human and his robot army, who's roboticised a good chunk of the landscape and population, and in all manner of places exist small pockets of freedom fighters. There's weird, unearthly environments inhabited by strange creatures, and there's a nature vs. technology theme going on, but not for one of the two to win, but for a peaceful balance of the two. I just think it's a pretty great concept.
I just wasn't dying about the actual content. The first series had some decent drama and ambiance, and the second series had more emphasis on fun (and the pilot really emphasised the goofy whimsical nature, though it kinda diluted any of the sinister atmosphere of the setting), but I just never really got into any of the characters or stories. Robotnik was cool, but in an unfortunate Boba Fett way - he looked and sounded cool, but what did he actually do that was villainous or worthy of coolness? On-screen, I mean. The heroes were okay, but weren't really developed to the extent that I really liked any of them - some were underused, and some were just plain bad to begin with (Antoine's comic relief was pretty wretched, sorry).
I guess what finally sunk my feelings on the series is the
rather lacklustre finale. Robotnik has unleashed a type of robot that will
either destroy the remainder of the world or roboticise it or something nasty!
The various freedom fighter groups from across the planet band together to take
him down! What seems like a suitably dramatic finale is then turned into yet
another "it's up to Sonic and Sally!" scenario we've seen a million times.
They do take down Robotnik, but not through something fulfilling like character
development or their own ingenuity and cunning - they use the power of some
magic MacGuffins they'd found in an earlier episode that gives them the power to
literally wipe out Robotropolis in one fell swoop. Not only is it astoundingly
unrewarding, but it gives the impression that the whole time their battle
strategy was just to maintain the status quo until they found a plot device. I
could rant on the final episode alone for several more paragraphs if I could be
bothered.
It was neat to see the episodes I'd first seen so many years ago, and I do love soaking in the series' atmosphere and world-building, but I didn't get much else out of it. At this rate, will there be anything left in the Sonic franchise that I still like? Only time will tell!
Went to see John Carter last night. Had no expectations, but definitely enjoyed myself - it's not the far-out, totally alien sci-fi experience I've been interested in seeing on the big screen, but it's a fun ol' romp with some fantastic eye candy.
I'd be lying if I said I completely understood the story,
though. At the core there's a basic seen-it-a-million-times "white guy goes to
another planet, has a unique power (jumping really high!) the locals don't have and unites all the
warring races against one bad dude, and probably gets the girl too if that's the
way he swings, and there's some drama about whether or not he wants to go home
that depends on how cool the new planet is." And there's also immortal dudes who
can shape shift and dictate the course of the solar system, and they plot evil
shit.
Okay, that probably wasn't as basic as I thought it was, but you get my drift,
surely.
Problem is, because of all the alien terminology, I kept thinking there
was some part of the story I was missing out on. I don't think there was; it is
a fairly simple story besides all the sci-fi space-and-time-travel guffins. Mind
you, when the main character is given about three to four different names by the
aliens, I think I'm entitled to just a little bit of confusion.
One of my only real beefs with the story (one that
Doug Walker also remarked on) is that it takes its time getting to Mars -
not a laborious length of time like in Peter J.'s King Kong, but the
movie 'starts' like four to five times. The movie begins on Mars where the bad
dude is given the bad weapon by bad Mark Strong (who's bad). Then it cuts to Earth
where John Carter is dead, and his attorney begins reading his journal. Then
it cuts to twenty years earlier where John is in frontier times or some such,
and after some hoo-ing and haw-ing in a mystical cave, finally gets
blasted to Mars.
Even then, things don't start rolling until he's brought among the green guys'
tribe (I think they're called the Thark, but like I said, there's
so much alien terminology I just referred to everyone and everything as "[adjective] dudes").
Once the movie starts it gets good, but the whole intro part was just a pain,
and it meant that it took a long time for John Carter to actually become
likeable. These intro parts do exposit vital bits of info, and the scene
with the attorney is integral to the sequel hook. Which, uh, I doubt we'll be
seeing anytime soon. I've heard the movie's bombed a bit.
What really sells the movie is the eye candy. The environments
aren't quite as alien as I would've liked them to be (how
hard can it be to make parts of the landscape float?), but the
landscapes, the aliens, the technology, it's all truly fascinating to watch. The
aliens are in the same vein of Avatar - alien enough to look different
(six limbs ahoy!), but familiar enough to relate to; the
green dudes have particularly awesome facial tusks that add great character to
them, and John befriends a big dumb dog thing that's super-fast. Very Disney.
Given the alien cultures and the dry, rugged nature of the lands, I couldn't
help but get a Prince of Persia vibe about everything, which I guess is
apt - that was another Disney production, wasn't it?
... I feel dreadful for wowing so much over the movie's looks, and now barely
scraping together a paragraph about them. They're pretty rockin', I can say that
much.
It's not a masterpiece (how many times have I
said that?), but it's a good fun romp with some nice humour, great action
sequences, beautiful visuals, and a satisfactory amount of whimsy. However, I
get the impression it's a hard sell for movie audiences - it might be too sci-fi
for most folks, and major sci-fi buffs probably won't get behind the
light-heartedness. Or I could just be talking out of my ass.
The movie's just dying for a video game adaptation, though. John Carter and his
amazing jumping powers would be loads of fun to play around with - a sandbox
game with superpowers and alien environments, basically. See, that's the joy of
Bionic Commando - you get these huge locations that a regular joe
(or a Super Joe, har har) would take forever to get
through, but swinging around the architecture on your Bionic Arm like nobody's
business just has a certain primal joy about it. John Carter would cut
out the middle man and just lets you leap everywhere.
Totally off-beat question for the audience (all four of you): Have movie romances actually meant anything to anyone?
I ask because movie romances just seem like one of those
formalities we've come to accept in adventure stories. The heroes win, the bad
guys lose, and the male and female protagonists get hooked up because, well,
what else is there for them to do?
Unless the movie is a all romance all the time, very rarely does a feature film
have the time for the characters to actually feel like they love each other; to
me, at least. Heck, to the best of my memory the movie with the faintest
romantic theme I've seen where the characters appear to genuinely love each
other is The Woman In Red, and that's only because Gene Wilder's
character is already married - it's the love of a warm and caring family more
than a "hot damn, I'd give up being single to be with this person forever!" kind
of 'love'. And even my example is pretty bad because the entire movie is Gene
running after a dame with gams that'd give you the vapours.
I read a discussion somewhere on Tumblr about LGBT characters
in childrens' shows (can't find where it was, but
this page talks about it as well); one argument against it was that romance
or sexuality shouldn't be a part of kids' media - someone shot that down by
pointing out how pretty much every Disney movie ever has romance, among other
examples. I don't think they ever outright say "I want to spend the rest of my
life bonded to you via some sort of legal ceremony", or even "I want to tap that
so hard"; if they do, it's hidden behind all that singing prancing bollocks that
I still can't get behind.
From a young age, kids' media plays up that romance is great to an audience that
generally thinks the opposite sex is icky, and let's face it, do any of these
Disney hook-ups have anything in common, or characterisation for that matter?
The only one I can think of is Aladdin and Jasmine, but they had three movies
and a TV series to exchange witty banter over. I can't even remember what their
characters were like.
I'm not even sure where I was going with those paragraphs!
For the record, the first and so far only time I've ever got
invested in a fictional romance was last year when I was watching Spaced.
I admit the show really stunk in the first couple of episodes, but I began to
really enjoy it and love the characters, and Tim and Daisy just made a cute
couple. Mind you, that was a fourteen episode series totalling to about six
hours of content, so you had a fair amount of time to really know and like the
characters. I often feel like after a movie, I'm only just beginning to
know a character, if that much.
Also, I suppose the romance in the
Hominids
trilogy of books did have me engaged because the characters worked well
together, and seemed 'right' for each other even if both still has issues of
their own - one having a family back home and the other recovering from sexual
assault. The book did kinda soil it when it gave us a graphical detail of sexual
intercourse between a homo sapiens and a Neanderthal, and I was a bit, whoa,
okay, I didn't need to know the ins and outs of what his giant caveman penis
looked like. There are a few things in life I'll be happy to live my life
without knowing - one is what my own anus looks like, and another is what it
feels like to have sex with a Neanderthal. Just sayin'.
Welp. Going from silly sci-fi movie to talking about love and romance, then to bums and dicks. That's Random Hoo Haas, folks!