#Small Soldiers 1998

[thecaptainoutoftime]

"Soldiers, no poor sap ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by being all that he can be. Damn the torpedoes, or give me death! Eternal vigilance is the price of duty. And, to the victors go the spoils. So remember: you are the best of the best of the few and the proud. So ask not what your country can do for you, only regret that you have but one life to live! The war against the Gorgonites will be won! Commando Elite, let the first shot be fired! Search out the Gorgonites and frag 'em all!"

Happy 25th Anniversary to Small Soldiers

July 10th 1998-July 10th 2023

[90s-2000s-barbie]

Small Soldiers (1998)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Small Soldiers (1998) directed by Joe Dante.

[jasonsutekh]

Small Soldiers (1998)

A new group of toys are imbued with artificial intelligence chips. The commando elite are sworn to destroy the defenceless Gorgonites no matter what the collateral.

 The concept is fairly simple but effective and well executed in well paced stages that don’t appear forced. The puppetry blends very well with the computer generated effects, even if it is clear which side of the line we’re seeing at times. The child actors are also reasonable and are able to hold the action competently. The subtext is also engaging since the good guys are essentially persecuted refugees and the baddies are the US military.

 Occasionally the comedy strays a little into the ridiculous, but that’s mainly on the part of the adult actors. A small issue is that each team of toys works well as a group but individually only a couple from each side are different enough to stand out and a few are a little closer to irritating than amusing.

 A gradual escalation for the scale and action works very well here since it starts with five enemies, then many unarmed ones, then an army and the increased threat seems natural. Most of the story is fun but is treated seriously so the audience can still invest. The humans and toys both join the fight in the end which is satisfying and the commandos have some inventive weapons.

 Some of the science is about as dubious as one would expect a kid’s science fiction film to get, with a liberal idea of EMPs and satellite dishes. The message works but is somewhat sentimental and vague. It’s nice that we have hope for the characters at the end but the culpable rich character isn’t punished and the gorgonites are off on a quest for a fictional place, they even met the guy who made it up.

 7/10 -Well above average, but no masterpiece-

 -The Gorgonite Scratch-It is supposed to be female, despite being voiced by a male actor.

-The Globotech CEO is named Gil Mars. Mars is notably the Roman god of War.

-Alan has a Piranha on his desk as well as a Gremlin skull, a reference to the director who also worked on those franchises.

[wizardlyghost]

hey look! it's dan archive81 from the podcast archive 81!

[hussyknee]

Unrolled twitter thread by Progressive International (@ProgIntl)

30 Sept 24 • 4 minute read • Read on X

On 30 September 1965, the Indonesian military, working closely with the US government, initiated a coup that would depose President Sukarno and install the brutal, 30-year dictatorship of General Suharto.

In the dark years that followed, the dictatorship massacred over a million Indonesian communists, with the CIA and US diplomats drawing up “kill lists” for the Indonesian military. The operation would become a template for the US’s regime change operations for decades to come.

Major-General Suharto with Indonesian Army in 1966

In 1945, President Sukarno led Indonesia to independence from Dutch colonial rule. He championed the Non-Aligned Movement and hosted the historic Bandung Conference, a meeting of Afro-Asian states, in 1955.

First President of Indonesia Sukarno making a speech circa 1945

Opening the conference and forecasting what was to come, Sukarno said: “We are often told ‘Colonialism is dead’. Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that… Colonialism also has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small, but alien community within a nation.”

Leaders attending the Bandung Conference 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. From left: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, President Sukarno, and Yugoslavian Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito.

By 1965, Indonesia possessed one of the world's largest communist parties, the PKI. The PKI had a mass membership and mobilized vast numbers of people in the battle against Indonesia’s ruling class.

Campaign of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in September 1955.

Terrified by the strength and organization of Indonesia’s people, the Indonesian military’s 30th September Movement began to purge the PKI.

Men suspected of being IPK members being transported under guard by an armed Indonesian soldier

In the early hours of 1 October, a group of military conscripts murdered six high-ranking generals. Blaming the deaths on the PKI, Suharto used the attacks as a pretext to seize power. CIA communications equipment allowed him to spread false reports around the country and begin a long campaign of anti-communist propaganda.

The US had tried to overthrow Sukarno for years; in 1958, the CIA backed armed regional rebellions against the central government. In 1965, they did all they could to aid Suharto’s murderous power grab.

The campaign soon became genocidal. On islands like Bali, up to 10% of the population was massacred — and luxury hotels soon began to appear over the killing fields.

One US embassy staffer told the US press that Suharto’s military “probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.”

Time Magazine referred to the killings as “the West’s best news for years in Asia”.

A cable from the US embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the State Department referred to events in Indonesia as a “fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks”. It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered.

Cementing his power, Suharto became president in 1967. His ‘New Order’ policy allowed Western capitalism to exploit Indonesia’s cheap labour and plunder its natural resources. Civil rights and dissent were suppressed.

In one of the world’s most populous countries, any possibility for the emergence of a new, democratic political project was eliminated. Richard Nixon described Indonesia as “the greatest prize in Southeast Asia”. Suharto would not leave office until 1998.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan stands with Indonesian President Suharto in the White House South Lawn at the arrival ceremony for Suharto's State Visit. Oct 12, 1982

CIA officers described Suharto’s rise to power and anti-communist purge as the “model operation” and “Jakarta” soon became the codeword for anti-communist extermination programs in Latin America, where hundreds of thousands were massacred in regime change efforts engineered by Washington.

[bitchface24-7]

Leon S. Kennedy - Character Analysis

I know that the whole training to become a government agent for the DSO via blackmail was horrendous. Nightmarish. Abusive.

But can I add that Leon being an attractive, 21 year old probably made it so much worse.

Imagine being Leon S. Kennedy, freshly surviving an apocalypse as your first day on the RCPD. You’ve seen horrors and dealt with things only seen in fiction, you’ve made a friend out of a worried young college student and the daughter of the scientists responsible for the destruction of Racoon City.

You’re taken into an interrogation room, still in your filthy police uniform and the bullet in your shoulder hasn’t been checked yet. You’re given one option. Work with us as a BOW killing machine or we send your friend to jail and experiment on the 12 year old. And if we don’t get the results we want… we may have to dispose of her.

You became a police officer to protect the public, the innocent. So you do just that.

You sign your life away.

Now in training you’re abused mentally, physically, and emotionally. People don’t take you seriously at all. Constantly being looked at with sneers, or unwanted appreciation.

You have to chip away at the last little bit of your innate goodness to survive here. You can no longer be that bright eyed, excited kid that finished top of his class at the police academy. You have to become, you have to be the soldier you slowly invented as the night in Racoon City progressed.

You’re not given any time off to properly rest. You’re the DSO’s top agent; you don’t have a choice.

Mission after mission, it seems never ending. The horrors you’ve faced keep piling up to the point you can’t even remember the good memories; the normal memories you experienced before September 30th, 1998.

People expect you to be perfect. The DSO’s Golden Boy. You can’t even have a small vacation in peace before colleagues bug you. Your FOS Hunnigan, the BSAA, TerraSave.

And people wonder why you’re best friend is the bottom of a bottle. It’s the only friend you actually have (at least in your mind it is)

[mogwai-movie-house]

The 50 Best War Films of All Time

This is a tricky genre to try summarize, because of what each individual will choose to classify as a "war film", but I've done my best and tried to focus for the most part on stories set within the thick of actual warfare, rather than dramas taking place afterwards or behind the scenes, and except for a small number of impossible-to-ignore exceptions, very few comedies. Ranked and rated in loose order of quality, high-to-low:

Apocalypse Now (1979) ★★★★★★★★★★

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) ★★★★★★★★★½

The Great Escape (1963) ★★★★★★★★★½

Ballad of a Soldier (1959) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Schindler's List (1993) ★★★★★★★★★☆

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) ★★★★★★★★★☆

The Boat (1981) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Saving Private Ryan (1998) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Catch-22 (1970) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Last Bridge (1954) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Deer Hunter (1978) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Thin Red Line (1998) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Killing Fields (1984) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Ice Cold in Alex (1958) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Wings (1927) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Grand Illusion (1937) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Enemy at the Gates (2001) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Three Kings (1999) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Big Parade (1925) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Destiny of a Man (1959) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Bridge (1959) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Army of Shadows (1969) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Dr. Strangelove (1964) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Full Metal Jacket (1987) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Burmese Harp (1956) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Five Graves to Cairo (1943) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Patton (1970) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Napoleon (1927) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Wooden Horse (1950) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Zulu (1964) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

Birdy (1984) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

1917 (2019) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

The Tin Drum (1979) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

Valkyrie (2008) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

M*A*S*H* (1970) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

Land of Mine (2015) ★★★★★★★½☆☆

The Hurt Locker (2008) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Gallipoli (1981) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Empire of the Sun (1987) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

'71 (2014) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Paths of Glory (1957) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Breaker Morant (1980) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Inglourious Basterds (2009) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Platoon (1986) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

[brian4rmthe6]

Small Soldiers (1998)

[mortal-kombattore-115]

Modern Warfare/ Shadow Company OC: Irina Makarova

General Information:

Name: Irina Makarova (Ирина Макарова)

Code name: Nomad

Alias(es): Natalya Ivanova, Vampira (by Valeria), Vamp (by Graves)

Nationality: Russian

Place of Birth: Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union

Birthday: May 22, 1986 (aged 38) 

Gender: Female

Sexual Orientation: Lesbian

Affiliations: Russian Ground Forces (formerly), Gruzdev Bratva (formerly), Shadow Company (currently) 

Eyes: Brown/Blue

Hair: Blonde (was naturally black)

Build: Lean athletic

Height: 5’6

Languages: Russian, English, Spanish, German, and Mandarin Chinese.

Relationships: Valeria Garza (one night stand)

Marks: Scar on neck

_______________________________________________________

Biography:

Irina was born just before the fall of the Soviet Union in the suburbs of Moscow, alongside her older brother, Vladimir Makarov. As the daughter of a high-ranking politician within the Russian government, Irina watched the Soviet Union crumble, taking her father with it at the age of 4. After her father’s death, Irina grew up with a brother who didn't consider her a sister, but rather a mistake who would often blame her for their father’s death and the failures of the Soviet Union. Irina cut ties with her brother when he enlisted in the Russian military in 1998. Irina would later enlist in 2004.

During her service, Irina was an extraordinary soldier with her fast reflexes and marksmanship skills as she quickly moved up the ranks.

After six years of service, Irina was discharged from the military and soon befriended a former soldier. Impressed with her combat skills, Irina was recruited into the Gruzdev Bratva as an enforcer. Over the years, Irina found a sense of belonging in the bratva, her ruthless methods and loyalty moved her up in the hierarchy.

Sometime in 2021, two members of the crime family broke into Irina’s home one night in an attempt to assassinate her, which resulted in two casualties and an almost slit throat. Discovering Makarov’s involvement in the assassination, she knew from then on that his torment was just beginning. After the failed assassination attempt by Konni, Irina fled the country altered her appearance changed her identity, and traveled to various locations in Europe and Asia.

In early 2022, Irina resided in Las Almas, Mexico, where she would meet Valeria Garza at a small cafe, unaware of the work she does. The two would occasionally meet at the same spot almost every afternoon, which brought them closer together. After the chaos happening in Las Almas between Task Force 141 and Shadow Company, Irina left Mexico and vanished. 

Several months later, Irina met Phillip Graves at a bar during one of her travels. Going over her dossier and being impressed by her military service history, as well as having the same hatred for Konni, Graves recruited her to Shadow Company.

______________________________________________________

Headcanons:

To celebrate one month of friendship, Valeria once gifted Irina a fruit bat.

Best friends with Velikan. Irina reminds him of an old friend she used to have during her bratva days. The two would often share stories about their pasts and often train together.

Her favorite comfort food is Blini (Russian pancake) because of how versatile they are. She loves to put some blueberry jam for when craving something sweet or smoked salmon with caviar for something savory.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Small Soldiers (1998) directed by Joe Dante.

[scavengerssuccotash]

Of the two, who is more likely to be legit spooked by unexplained weird shit? Clint or Natasha?

Ohh good one. Now I get to expose you to my more weird headcanons!! (That may or may not be inspired by real events.)

Clint’s a firm believer in aliens and UFOS. He saw one in the summer of 1998 on base out west. He was driving home with his unit after a night of drinking off base and the truck he was driving just stopped. RIGHT THERE!! In the middle of the road! Like completely shut off, no headlights, nothing. It was like someone detonated a small EMP above his beat up truck. Of course his buddies thought he was fucking with them. Their laughter however quickly turned into frantic yelling when the engine wouldn’t turn over. (“Fucking Barton! If we get our asses caught again I’m going to personally shoot your ass!” “I’m fucking trying Ramirez!”)

And then!

A ball of light slowly descended in front of the windshield, completely silent. No one breathed. And then just as fast as it appeared the mysterious light disappeared, zipping vertically and disappearing into the black night sky!

Clint still talks about it to this day! He swears on his life that he saw a UFO that day. Natasha however thinks he was just drunk of his ass, which he was. BUT STILL HE SAW IT!

(Clint gets vindicated though after Loki, Thor and the other galatic hullabaloo that happens later.)

Natasha’s pretty straightforward. She’s the seeing is believing kind. Her experience with the weird and unexplained shit was always rooted in something scientific, her brainwashing (at least for my iteration of it for my fic), the super soldier serum, and Tony Stark’s eventual tech all have an air of plausibility to them.

This worldview however is completely shattered when she fights Clint while he is under Loki’s influence. It scares her to the core, simply because she couldn’t explain it. (It had happened so fast! And by a rock? No days months and years of conditioning?!)

It’s after Loki that she starts to believe Clint when he said he saw a UFO in 1998.

Both of them get a bit shaken up by the unexplained. Natasha I think more so than Clint because of her overly analytical mind.

That was such a fun ask! Thank you dear! I might definitely have to write a cute little one shot about Clint’s UFO experience. It’s partly based on my own mom’s story. (She was out west in Arizona and had one chase her in her car! I haven’t ever seen one tho!)

Oh! Your cookie?! I hope you like generic Chocolate chip! 🍪🍪

[kuueater]

NEXT WEEK ON MOVIE NIGHT

SMALL SOLDIERS (1998)

[justforbooks]

The career of the actor Andre Braugher, who has died of lung cancer aged 61, was benchmarked by two performances in police dramas a generation apart. In the groundbreaking drama Homicide: Life on the Street, from 1993 until 1999, he played Detective Frank Pembleton, whose drive immediately made him the anchor of an impressive ensemble cast led by Yaphet Kotto and Ned Beatty. He drew a younger audience with the comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-21) as Captain Ray Holt, who takes over a chaotic homicide squad and whose intensity again makes him the heart of the show.

Braugher’s deep, resonant voice and seemingly effortless control drew the respect of all he worked with. David Simon, creator of Homicide and The Wire, said: “I’ve worked with a lot of wonderful actors. I’ll never work with one better.” His classical training, at the Juilliard School in New York, made him a regular at the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, and indeed his portrayal of Henry V in 1996 won him an Obie (the off-Broadway equivalent of the Tony awards).

He brought the projection of the stage to the small screen. Pembleton was the master of “the Box”, or the interrogation room. He explained to his rookie partner in Homicide (played by Kyle Secor), it was “salesmanship … as silver tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, Florida swamp land or Bibles. But what I am selling is a long prison sentence.” He dominated those small scenes, but the episode Subway, with Vincent D’Onofrio as a character pushed between subway trains, who will die once the trains are separated, was a two-hander whose intensity might have come from the stage of Beckett, Pinter or Mamet.

In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as Holt, he played it straight in two senses. The adage of comedy being funniest when played straight gained resonance from Braugher’s ability to show the audience with a gesture or line-reading that he, like you, got the joke. But Holt is also gay. His gayness is never an issue, except as motivation for his progress within the police. It was as if Pembleton were stepping into Kotto’s “Gee” Giardello, a black man with an Italian father who was determined to rise in a white-dominated department.

This drive reflected Braugher’s own background. In the tough neighbourhood of Austin, on Chicago’s West Side, both his parents worked for the government; his father, Floyd, was a heavy equipment operator for the state of Illinois, and his mother, Sally, worked for the US Postal Service. He recalled he might have “pretended I was hard and tough and not square”, but he won scholarships to the Jesuit St Ignatius College prep and then to study mathematics at Stanford University, California. After walking into a student production of Hamlet, and playing Claudius, he decided he wanted to act.

Another scholarship took him to Juilliard. He graduated in 1988 and almost immediately was cast in a TV revival of Kojak, as his assistant. His first film role came in Glory (1989); he was so impressive as the educated Thomas Searles, forced to serve as a private soldier in the all-black regiment commanded by his white friend, that Hollywood came calling, but the parts were standard stereotyical roles. His father had questioned how a black actor would make a living, and Braugher later explained: “I’d rather not work than do a part I’m ashamed of.”

He played the lead in a TV movie, The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990), playing Robinson, the first African-American player in major league baseball, who earlier in the 1940s, as a US army lieutenant, had refused to ride in the back of a segregated bus; and appeared in another TV film, The Tuskegee Airmen (1995). He was an egotistical actor in Spike Lee’s Get On the Bus (1996), about the Million Man March on Washington DC the year before. In 1998 he won his first Emmy award for playing Pembleton; he was nominated 11 times, and won his second in 2006 for his role in the miniseries Thief.

After Homicide, he starred as a doctor in Gideon’s Crossing (2000-01), as a cop in Hack (2002-04), as a car dealer in the comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age (2009-11) and as the captain of a submarine which goes on the run after he refuses to obey orders to fire nuclear missiles in Last Resort (2012-13). He had another series of remarkable two-handers in a recurring role as Hugh Laurie’s psychiatrist in House, was a defense attorney in episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and voiced Governor Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz in the animated comedy BoJack Horseman.

He made the most of supporting roles in films such as Primal Fear (as Richard Gere’s investigator), Poseidon (captain of the sinking liner), Salt (as the US secretary of defense) and most notably as a New York Times editor in She Said (2022), covering the Harvey Weinstein scandal. He also starred in 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002), the story of the unionisation of Pullman railway porters, who were always called “George” by passengers.

Braugher admitted that his career “could have been larger, but it would have been at the expense of my own life”. He lived in suburban New Jersey with his wife, the actor Ami Brabson (who played Pembleton’s wife in Homicide). He said he wanted his three sons, Michael, Isaiah and John Wesley, raised in a “true context”, away from being a movie star’s offspring in Hollywood.

He is survived by his wife and sons, his brother, Charles, and his mother.

🔔 Andre Keith Braugher, actor, born 1 July 1962; died 11 December 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[stargazing-sapphire2]

Helena Rorke

Full Name: Helena Annabelle Rorke

Date of Birth: August 19th, 1976. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Date of Death: May 4th, 2011. Unknown location, South America

Nationality: American

Occupation: United States Air Force / Task Force STALKER

Rank: First Lieutenant

Age: 35 years old (At time of death)

Family / Relatives:

-Samuel Rorke - Father (Deceased)

-Marie Henrikson - Mother (Deceased)

-Gabriel Rorke - Older brother (Alive)

-Henry Ashford - Husband (Alive)

-Elizabeth and Evangeline Ashford - Daughters (Alive)

-Elias Walker II - Grandson (Alive)

Appearance:

*Hair color: Blonde

*Eye color: Blue

*Height: 5'3 / 160 cm

*Scars / Beauty marks / Blemishes: Helena's nose is slightly crooked due to an injury that never healed properly; a small gap in her front teeth

*Faceclaim: Blake Lively

Personality:

On a personal level, Helena is a lighthearted and jokester, as a way to keep spirits and morale up in tough times. Although she can be quite stubborn and rather prideful about her skills (a quality Beth would inherit from her), she seldom ever brags unless she has a reason to, and is content to simply just do her job.

On a professional level, Helena is every bit stoic and harsh, completely locking in whenever the situation calls for it. She prioritizes completing the mission, while minimizing casualties as much as she can.

Due to this aspect of her, Helena was nicknamed "Helly" as a silly little play-on version of the shortened word "heli" from helicopter, although this was an endearing nickname from Henry.

Background:

Helena was born on August 19th, 1976, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Samuel Rorke and Marie Henrikson; she was their second child, two years after their son Gabriel. Marie worked as a schoolteacher, while Samuel was a retired Army veteran.

Helena and Gabriel's childhood was not glamorous; the family struggled financially, and Samuel, having fought in the Vietnam War some years earlier, was a raging alcoholic who frequently abused his wife and children, with Marie doing everything she could to shield her children from his violence. When Helena was ten years old, Marie was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and died within a few months of receiving the news. This led to the two siblings to have take odd jobs in their teenage years in order to support themselves and get by, as Samuel continued to drink and gamble away their money.

At the age of 18, Gabriel would eventually leave the house and enlist in the Marine Corps straight out of high school. Two years later, Helena would follow after him, although she signed onto the Air Force.

Helena would eventually meet a friend of Gabriel and Elias's, Henry Ashford. The two gradually formed a bond over time and fell in love; they got married in 1998, and a year later, they had twin girls, Elizabeth and Evangeline, in 1999.

In 2005, Helena would participate in Operation: Sand Viper in the ongoing Tel Aviv War. Due to her skills in managing aircraft, she assisted in saving lives by airlifting wounded soldiers and civilians out of the hospital. When all came to a standstill, this would mark the formation of the Ghosts, and due to her role, Helena would be the designated pilot of the task force, something she carried with pride.

In 2011, sometime after the formation of the Federation, while pursuing high ranking officials, Helena and a small squadron were ambushed, their helicopter being shot out of the sky and crashing in the Amazon Rainforest. The crash was fatal, and all those in the helicopter perished on impact. Helena's body would never be recovered, nor given a proper burial of a Ghost.

With her passing left her family and comrades in devastation. Henry would never remarry and remained a widower, and shifted his focus to raising their daughters. Her death would haunt the small family in the years to come, with Beth and Eva enlisting after the ODIN strikes to honor their mother's memory.

[callmearcturus]

I agree with most of your rant but doesn't everything you said also apply to metal gear solid (hyperrealism, film influence, and especially violence)

anon, i don't know if this was a purposeful act of goading, but it worked, you just activated my trap card.

this is going to be long.

I am one of The Kojima Stans. I am a person who is deeply aware of how flawed the man is and I also know that he is the closest thing we have to a gaming auteur.

(Which, actually, is a complicated topic all of its own. Auteurs are much easier to find in video games because there are many many games that are the vision of a small team or even singular people. When we refer to Kojima as an auteur, we should take time to notice that he has frequent collaborators who also form the 'vision' that is associated with him. And while Kojima is a good game director, he is an even better production manager. His games could not be 'his' if he were not incredibly skilled at leading a team. SO ANYWAY the point is, when I refer to Kojima, please know I also mean the people who enable his vision.)

As previously stated, my problem with The Prestige Genre is that it's photorealism for the sake of realism. It's film influence because it wants to emulate film. It's violent because it thinks violence is shocking to us, the Video Gamers.

Metal Gear is nothing but a refutation of all of that, and the idea that you've been led to believe otherwise makes me curious. Have you… played a Metal Gear game?

Because you can't make a Metal Gear movie. Kojima's entire MO is to be in constant opposition and conversation with the player. Without the interaction, he could not tell these stories.

Like, okay, just Metal Gear Solid. Lets set aside that MGS is actually a remake of Metal Gear 2 and one of the core tenets of the entire series is a conversation with the idea of history and legacy. Lets not get into that, that's a more advanced class.

When Naughty Dog has Ellie pulls a knife on someone to shock us and make us feel uncomfortable about the violence we commit as gamers, MGS was talking about that shit in NINETEEN NINETY-FUCKING-EIGHT. MGS didn't have real-ass voice acting to be like a movie, it brought that in so it could tell a genuinely complicated story about a rebel group rising up against the US defense department, to talk about the shifting landscape of nuclear proliferation, and about what it means to be in a war, to accept your (sometimes GENETIC) fate to be a soldier, and how fucking hard it is to crack the shell of the military industrial complex.

Like, do you know what a Metal Gear is? There's a lot of definitions but the one I like (which actually fits through the series) is a device or apparatus that by its introduction automatically changes the global defense situation. It's textually usually a walking tank that can 'silently' launch nukes from anywhere.

Solid Snake is also a metal gear. His presence in the combat arena immediately changes the game. He's the Metal Gear Solid. He is a cool dude who gets the job done. Except he's traumatized from the first two games and doesn't want to fight anymore. Except he struggles with the guilt that he enjoys his job, the killing. Except he fights against that constantly, trying to bend his talents to good.

When you're a man who gets fucking left and forgotten in goddamn rural Alaska until people need you to hold a gun, how do you make something good out of yourself? If your only skills-- your only VERBS-- are shooting and strangling and drinking, then how do you do good? If your hands only destroy, how the fuck do you make the world better? Is it better to unmake yourself? Is there hope?

That's a hard fucking question at the core of Solid Snake! And it's a question to the player! You, holding the controller, you "enjoy the killing" says Liquid Snake. How are you the hero if all you're here for is the perfect little headshots? How do you become someone who puts good into the world?

1998! 1998!!!!! and like, I have not even gotten DEEP into what MGS1 is about! This is just surface stuff and a little bit deeper!

MGS2. MGS2 was when Kojima fucking nailed it, and it's still a masterpiece. I'm gonna try not to go on for literal paragraphs but the point is MGS1 was a watershed moment that literally changed the entire industry. And fans wanted a sequel. Demanded one!

MGS2 is a game that is cinematic and… well its not realistic and its not the most violent of the games even remotely. But it's also a story that could only exist as a game. It being a game that exists is in fact an existential question posed by Kojima to the player in one of the most antagonistic relationships you'll ever see between artist and audience.

MGS2 is the funhouse mirror of MGS1. It mimics the structure of MGS1. It constructs boss fights in similar ways. It has similar story beats and reveals. Except at every turn, Kojima tilts the mirror more and makes everything worse. All the power fantasies that did exist in MGS1 are turned into jokes. You're not Snake this time, you're Raiden. You don't get a fair fight with Ocelot this time, you get Fortune's bullet-repelling forcefield, lmao forget the cool ricochet shit. There's even the fun trick where MGS2 sets up things so it implies heavily that the 'canon' ending is the 'bad' ending of MGS1 so the player didn't even get the girl! (Spoiler: you did get the girl and she dumped you, bro. Now you have an emotional romantic relationship with the cute nerd guy, surprise!) (There is a whole OTHER fucking conversation re: queerness in Metal Gear and how its used, I love it.)

God I just want to reach in and shake everyone and make them understand that MGS2 was incredibly cool and basically a showcase of the PS2 hardware that ushered in a lot of other titles. It ALSO was an exploration of the concept of sequels and a blistering retort to fanboy demands. It was also really gay and post-modern and fucking weird and heartfelt! AND EVEN THROUGH ALL THAT. It loops back to the question at the core of MGS1, and it comes back to Snake years later, and he gives an answer. He's figured out what to do with himself other than drinking himself to death, and its genuinely emotional and powerful! It's hopeful!

Also I cannot overstate this enough: Kojima predicted so fucking much about our modern society! About fucking algorithms and Cambridge Analytica and information control. We mocked him! MGS2 was right!

I'm putting myself in a chokehold to stop. To make myself stop. But like. please understand i can do this for every game. ALL OF THEM.

My point is that Metal Gear is not trying to be a movie, no matter what the jokes say. They are games. They are stories that literally cannot function if they aren't games. They are games that are often actively having a conversation about the nature of games with the player while you're playing them. Sometimes it's brilliant like with MGS2! Sometimes, Kojima is throwing a temper tantrum like with MGS4! But you… can't just cut the interactivity of the series and make them into movies. There would be nothing there.

/THROWS HEAD BACK AND YELLS. KOJIMA!!!!!!!!!