#but like. Romero is late in the timeline

[tmae3114]

it is fifteen minutes past midnight on a Thursday (Friday? I guess it's Friday now) and I have been overcome with emotion thinking about how unfair it is that reality ended, like, less than a year after Artix and Helia reconciled

[theunicorncomic-blog]

That said, the seasons do pass on the show (if a bit inconsistently) meaning that they do seem to have a certain timeline in mind. You can usually tell what time of year it is by April’s outfits if not the weather itself. Winter appears at the end of the shredder strikes back arc and then again around later season 2 to early season 3, assuming that the Golden Puck takes place during an unseasonable early snowstorm in fall. The start of season 3 is Christmas. If season one started in late summer/early fall of season one, then it probably takes place over the course of 2-4 months. In the second episode, Leo explicitly states that they are 15 years old (though some promotional material contradicts that by saying that they are biologically equivalent to teenagers but are actually only a few years old, holy shit). That would mean that seasons 1, 2, and a portion of season 3 take place over the course of about a year and a half. The other portion of seasons 3, 4, and 5 take place over the course of six months. Leo is said to have been gone a little over two months with his therapist great grandpa.

And that seems pretty fast, but several of the multiparters do take place over the course of about a day (such as Return to New York and Rogue in the House, or exodus), happen outside of regular time (such as the real world/SAINW arc or the return of savanti Romero) or a combination (the whole of the turtles in space arc lasts about ten episodes. It’s explicitly stated that, due to time dilation, what was three weeks for them was eight hours on earth). In theory, (and without doing much math to weigh out the time skips and the episodes that happen outside of time/over the course of a short period) it’s possible that the first five seasons happen over the course of 2 to 2 1/2 years.

For Casey and April’s relationship, it’s not totally unreasonable. They started to like each other over the course of season 1 and 2, which would be about a year, and have their first real kiss near the beginning of season 2. They’re dating through 3, 4, and 5, but clearly taking it slow. In early season 4, Casey even asks Splinter for relationship advice. They don’t get engaged until Back to the Sewer and marry in the final episode. If memory serves, the turtles were gone for about six months in Casey and April’s time, meaning that they had been official for at least a year to a year and a half after knowing and dancing around each other from the beginning of the series.

So what I’m saying is that it is possible, I suppose, for all this to have happened over the course of two years or a little more, but man, there’s a lot of timeline fuckery

hey so are you telling me everything from season 1-5 happened in 2 YEARS?? ALL OF THAT IN 2 YEARS???? what the fuck actually

GYEAH I FOR SURE AM SAYING THAT. HELP

And y’know if I was lenient and not obsessed with stupid details and hurt/comfort potential, MAYBE I’d go “hm oh well maybe the turtles started their story earlier in life! Or maybe the show runners just wanted a good looking number and five looks best.”

But c’mon. A bit of a stretch to say that the 2k3 ninja turtles started all that bullshit at, say, thirteen years of age, no? Rise Mikey, sure, perhaps. But not these guys.

My theory is they didn’t wanna lose the ‘teenage’ in ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ which, if they were around fifteen in 2003, at least Leo would be an adult by 2006, meaning that if they wanted to anchor Fast Forward in a specific time (something you probably wanna do when fucking with time travel), they had to pick a year before 2006. Meaning that we now have another reason to consider Fast Forward somewhat disrespectful to the franchise because it was like “wow guys! Sure were two Busy Busy years huh!” And on one hand they constantly do shit and their life is full of danger and enemies so maybe all of that horrible horrible time could be shoved into two years and that would make for some pretty good angst potential, imagine!

“Mikey, hey, it’s okay! The Shredder’s defeated, we’re legendary across space and time, things will be better now!”

“TWO YEARS, LEO! WE’RE BARELY FUCKING ADULTS! SOMEONE ELSE WILL COME, IT’S HOW OUR LIVES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN! WHAT IF THEY’RE LIKE THIS FOREVER?! what if… what if we just never catch a break again?”

BUT on the other hand it feels, to me, personally, kinda unfair to shove all of it into two years? It feels like.. “let’s shrink all of this drama and trauma and character development into an impossibly short timeframe in the name of keeping the franchise alive.” Just Leo’s absence when he went to get therapy from the Ancient One was said to have lasted several months, and pretty early on we have a Christmas, meaning a year is ending soon, which cuts down our two years to one and maybe a week after Christmas Aliens.

Ah, I’ve pinpointed what frustrates me about this from the storytelling perspective — it makes the characters’ journeys feel too fast in retrospect. While we obviously can’t see every day of the rigorous training with the ninja tribunal, or of Leo’s stay with his crazy old man of a therapist, or the time spent healing at the Jones farm, we assume that it all happens gradually, slowly, that a significant amount of time passes. By shoving Fast Forward so close to all of this previous history, they basically took weight away from all the healing done overtime, from the lessons learned overtime, from the length, trust and weight of April and Casey’s relationship, all of the relationships in fact. And that kinda sucks ass!

A solution to this would’ve maybe been to shove Fast Forward somewhere earlier into the show. It did end up airing before the Ninja Tribunal season, but this wasn’t the original plan (NT season was made to be before this originally, and is now viewed as so, as intended) and they didn’t really try and edit it to happen before the Ninja Tribunal season either, obviously, as evidenced by the FF journal episode mentioning the Ninja Tribunal as though they were already an established and known part of canon. Also, yeeting the turtles into the future and then having them come back and do the Ninja Tribunal season would not have worked at all, it would be so jarring and sorta… a downgrade in danger I feel? Who’s gonna be scared of losing a fight if there’s already an established good future proving that they win, right?

Another solution would’ve been avoiding a set time altogether and just saying they got brought a hundred years into the future. What year is it? [shrug] How old are they? [another shrug] We’re just in the far future bitch. Don’t worry about it lol. That way anyone could bullshit around with the timeline as much as they wanted.

Thank god this show never did anyone’s birthdays as an episode. I think I would explode. [try not to think about how Splinter was never human and so he might not know what birthdays are or how they’re celebrated and so neither do the turtles. It’s not important rn haha]

Sorry for the ramble I am just so abnormal about this now. Because I am so happy for the FF season because we got the Dark Turtles, we got a happy ending for Stockman that I genuinely think he deserves at this point, we got Cody who I think is very fun, just overall so many fun concepts. But also. Fuck, dude! FF and BTTS were both a tad disregarding, a tad disrespectful to the history that came before them.

[aion-rsa]

How George C. Romero’s Heavy Metal Comics Keep Dad’s Zombie Legacy Alive

https://ift.tt/3t3XtXS

The name is Romero. George C. Romero. And in case you didn’t guess, George C. Romero is the son of the late, legendary George A. Romero, the pioneering filmmaker whose 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead changed the face of horror cinema forever. George A. Romero and his small independent film collective created the modern zombie mythology, which has occupied a vast swath of the horror genre from George A.’s own later masterpieces like Dawn of the Dead all the way to modern weekly nightmares in The Walking Dead.

Meanwhile George Cameron Romero — the elder George’s son from his first marriage — went into filmmaking himself out of college, then veered into advertising, commercials, and online brand marketing with his own agency, where he created more than 100 campaigns and commercials, launched a film production facility in his native Western Pennsylvania, and directed a handful of features. Now George C. has entered the realm of comic books (which his dad also dabbled in with titles like Empire of the Dead for Marvel) through a partnership with the long-running, legendary-in-its-own-right sci-fi and fantasy comics magazine, Heavy Metal.

Romero is writing two series at the moment: the first, Cold Dead War (see cover art above), is a standalone book about a World War II bomber crew who find themselves reanimated after a freak occurrence during the Battle of Midway. Meanwhile The Rise is being serialized in each issue of Heavy Metal and offers an intriguing and gripping alternate history of not just the 1960s, but the origins of the zombie apocalypse in Night of the Living Dead itself.

The first issue (of four) from Cold Dead War hit the stands late last month while the first chapter (of 13) of The Rise has premiered in the latest issue of Heavy Metal, which arrived this week. That gave us the opportunity to speak with George about working in comics, the inspiration for both stories, and keeping his father’s legacy alive.

Den of Geek: How did you get involved with Heavy Metal and end up writing these comics?

George C. Romero: I actually met Matt [Medney], the CEO of Heavy Metal, through the tech producer for some podcasts that I do. He reached out to a connection of his at Heavy Metal, and Matt reached back out to me. We started talking because we were actually in the middle of putting on something that we called Def-Con 1, which is actually the first online fan convention. We did it like last year. The day that they announced that they were taking down all the conventions, I went on my show, and like two hours later announced that I was going to do one. I had no idea what I was doing.

Anyway, Matt and I met through that process and actually started talking about The Rise. Then from talking about that, and I think me going into detail with Matt a little bit about how The Rise was set in an alternate history from the ’60s, we started talking Cold Dead War. I think he just really liked where my head was at when it came to the alternate history and where I was going with The Rise. So we just started talking and he said, “What kind of story would you tell for Cold Dead War?” And I told him. He said, “Well, would you be interested in doing that?” I said, “Absolutely. Are you kidding me?” That’s how it started.

You’ve worked in film, you’ve worked in video, and you’ve worked in advertising. What makes comics different from these other mediums that you’ve worked in?

It’s interesting to think about it in those terms because I think, for me, coming from being a comic fan my whole life, not as hardcore as some hardcore comic fans, but a comic fan nonetheless, I always thought it was this wonderful kind of storytelling medium. Like you said, I’ve worked in a bunch of different mediums and different variants of this industry over my life. Getting into comics was always something that was appealing to me.

Then, on day one, I realized how terrifying it was, because here I was thinking that it was so limiting because I’m used to running around with a camera in my hand, in one way or another. So now I’m thinking there’s all these structure rules. There’s so many panels on a page, and you can push it to this many panels. You got to think about your paging this way. It was honestly kind of intimidating. At first I thought it was going to be very limiting.

It turns out that it has been, and continues to be, one of the most freeing creative experiences of my entire life, because where you start out thinking, “Well, you’ve got this limited number of panels, a limited number of pages,” what you don’t realize is that each one of those panels is like the construct from The Matrix. As opposed to when you’ve got a camera in your hand, you’re limited to the fact that you can only shoot, basically, something that’s real.

In the comics, each panel is like this giant construct. If you can think it, it can be drawn. And if it can be drawn, then it can be in a comic. It was just so creatively freeing. To work with people like Matt, who really encourages you to just be the purest version of your own creative self that you can be. To work with [editor] Joe Illedge and [publisher] Dave Erwin on this process, I couldn’t have asked for better people to mentor me into it.

(see an exclusive preview of The Rise chapter 3 — with art by Diego Yapur — below)

Heavy Metal

Did that freedom allow you to change the initial concepts in terms of their scope?

A good question. I don’t think it fundamentally changed my approach to the story or any of the foundations of either story, Cold Dead War, from the original concept, I think what it did was it allowed me to go to a level that no other medium I’ve ever worked in would’ve allowed me to go. So it actually allowed me to sort of really expand and blow out my thinking, as opposed to having to say, “I want to write a scene for this movie, and this scene is going to take place in a gigantic Gothic prison. Well, now I need to go find a gigantic Gothic prison for that.”

So what you end up doing when you do a movie, is you end up saying, “Well, that’s not really a practical thing for my budget level, so let me change that giant Gothic prison to some sort of holding cell.” You start scaling back. Whereas with comics, instead of hitting the brakes, you get to hit the gas at every step of the way. It didn’t change fundamentally anything; it just allowed me to really kind of pay attention to that foundation and that groundwork, and get a very comprehensive story out.

They always say film is the most collaborative art form because you have the director, you have the writer, the actors, and so on. Are comics similar in a sense, because you’re the writer, but you also have the artist, the inker, the person who does the lettering, the editor, etc.?

Correct. It is extremely collaborative. Working with Joe and Dave Erwin and Matt, and Heavy Metal in general, and Diego and everybody who’s touched all of these projects, it’s been a tremendously collaborative experience. I think there’s a balance though. While it is collaborative among the architects, it’s less collaborative when it comes to your characters. In film, the actors play such a huge part, or your cinematographer plays such a huge part in helping those actors become a character, or something like that. When it comes to graphic novels and the comics, you get to kind of puppet master all of that without question. So while it is collaborative, it’s sort of collaborative in an architectural level. That makes it really fun.

Read more

Movies

George A. Romero and the Meaning of His Zombies

By Ryan Lambie

Culture

What Are NFTs and Why Are Comics Companies Selling Them?

By Jim Dandy

With both these series, you’re going back into the past. What made World War II the right setting for Cold Dead War? And is that book less directly related than The Rise to the mythology that your dad created?

I think with Cold Dead War, it’s no big secret that Heavy Metal has sort of undead zombie content in that era and in that period. From a writer’s point-of-view, I love exploring different periods of history. I love taking stories and putting them in those periods. I think for Cold Dead War it was so fun because there weren’t any rules that I’m used to, or any rules to really play by, with regard to a lot of the zombie stuff. It was just absolute pure fiction. Rooting that in a real period of time was an interesting challenge, but it was one that was a lot of fun to do.

The Rise is more directly related to Night of the Living Dead, and also presents an alternate version of a very turbulent era in our history.

The ’60s are such a key point in American history and world history. It makes it a joy. It’s a wonderful decade to work in. I’ve done some stuff in the ’60s time period a few times over my life. It really makes it a joy because anything that you would want to talk about, you’ve got a perfect timeline against which to talk about it.

Is this also an alternate history or origin for Night of the Living Dead? Because your dad always left the starting point for that story perhaps intentionally vague.

There’s a reason that I don’t call it a prequel, because it’s not a prequel. It’s very much my own personal sort of prologue. It’s my personal story. You know, being in this business, being George’s son, there’s certain things people have always wanted of me, or I think expected of me, and one of those things at the top of the list has always been a zombie movie. I’m very much the type, just like my father was sort of the outlaw filmmaker, I’m very much the type that if you tell me to make a zombie movie, I will dig my heels in and say, “I’m not making a zombie movie.” At least that’s how I was while I was growing up.

That kind of led me to have this interesting perspective on everything. Not to mention a lot of the conversations and things that I was lucky enough to be around. I think I’ve got a unique enough perspective on the genre, on what my father and those guys did, that I think it’s a really fun story in terms of him leaving things intentionally vague. I have no choice, as his son, but to continue that vagueness. Whether or not I personally believe that he left it that vague is another story. There are a lot of opportunities to expand some of the things that I believe that those guys wish they could have expanded on back then.

As George’s son, do you feel protective of the canon, and want to make sure that the stories, whether they’re done by you or anybody else, are of a certain level of quality?

Absolutely. I think, as any son would, I think there’s a level of protectiveness. There’s a protective coating around it. I think it comes from respect and love, and from kind of just being around it my whole life. Again, having the perspective I’ve had, I’m extremely protective of it. That’s why it took me over 10 years to find the right partner, like I found in Heavy Metal.

You originally wrote The Rise as a screenplay, right?

I originally wrote it as a screenplay because that was my world. I came up that way, so I wrote it. When I have an idea and I’m passionate about it and I want to get it done from front to back quickly, I write it as a script. Then I develop from there. But in my perfect worldview of it, I always envisioned it years ago starting as a comic and then moving into more live-action stuff. Then I got away from that, because over the years you have meeting after meeting where people say, “You should do it this way. You should do it that way.” You start thinking, “Well, maybe I should try doing it that way if it’s going to work, or if somebody is going to get behind it.”

To kind of go back to the roots of the whole thing with Heavy Metal and Matt and Joe, and David, it’s been really nice. These guys are as interested in protecting the brand and the legacy as I am. I think that that probably comes from being guardians of the Heavy Metal brand legacy, as well. They have a very unique understanding of what it means to respect and love and want to protect a brand that’s over 50 years old.

Heavy Metal

If you step outside your family legacy and look at it objectively as a creator, what makes this genre and this mythos so inspiring to work in, and why do you think it’s been embraced for decades?

What those guys did in 1968 with Night was groundbreaking on a lot of levels. Not only was it groundbreaking in horror, not only was it groundbreaking against the time period, it was also groundbreaking for independent film. Really, they did a lot of good.

Then when it ended up in the public domain, I mean, I can only imagine how it must have felt. But years later, and again, with a little bit different perspective, what I came to realize was that what those guys did was they created this open source creature. Up until then, we had this universe of monsters. It was the Wolf Man and Frankenstein and the Mummy. But they had rules and they had copyrights and they had all this stuff…These (zombies) weren’t protected by the traditional protections that monsters had back then, so there’s this sort of open source creature where now everybody out there with an eight millimeter camera in their backyard is running around making little zombie films.

Now you have all these artists out there learning and using this stuff as their creative primordial ooze almost. They’re allowed to play in the zombie world kind of legally. So you’ve got people out there making zombie makeups and pulling off all of these effects and making these little short films, which then, as these people are growing, they’re gravitating toward the industry, gravitating toward horror, becoming bigger and bigger horror fans, and merging in the horror world.

Now you’ve got these creatures that have inspired, literally… I don’t know if there’s any way to count how many people have been inspired by what my dad and those guys did in the ’60s. They created a playground where people could work to not only discover but refine and hone their craft in this world.

Have you seen The Amusement Park (the “lost” psychological horror movie directed by the elder Romero, which will premiere this summer on Shudder)?

I saw it when it was called something else, years and years ago. I saw a work print of it. I used to have a little print of it. There was all this buzz about it years ago. I think he always wanted it to get out. It’s a perfect example of the fact that, especially back then, the industry didn’t want that out of George Romero. They wanted what they wanted. They wanted zombies. Got to get that zombie.

Can you share a good piece of advice that your dad gave you along the way?

The best advice my dad ever gave me was to cut wide. It’s funny because I used to sit and watch him at this big Steenbeck editing flatbed, where you cut the film and splice it together. He used to explain to me, “Always cut wide,” in terms of filmmaking, but that became sort of life advice as well, because you know if you cut too much out of something, then you can put it back in. If you cut wide, you can always scale it back. It’s a good way to look at life, too. Kind of cast the widest net you can and then reel in what makes sense for your spirit and your heart.

Heavy Metal magazine (including The Rise) and Cold Dead War are available at comics retailers nationwide.

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[gdwessel]

NJPW Strong Episode 21 - 1/8/2021: Chris Dickinson Debuts As Mystery Wrestler; Jay White Rumors Flying; NJPW on Eurosport India Starting Today; Podcast Recording This Evening

After taking the holiday period off, a new episode of NJPW Strong was shown last night on NJPWWorld. This is night one of another “event,” Road to Lion’s Break Contender, whatever that may be. Team Filthy promised an X member going in and... well, find out now!

Clark Connors d. Kevin Knight (Boston Crab, 7:37)

Rocky Romero [CHAOS] d. The DKC (Diablo Armbar, 8:32)

JR Kratos, Danny Limelight & Chris Dickinson [Team Filthy] d. Brody King [ROH], Logan Riegel & Sterling Riegel (Limelight > Logan, Running DVD, 9:42)

The mystery member of Team Filthy hyped before this show was “Dirty Daddy” Chris Dickinson, which hey, good for him! Danny Limelight appears to still be working these shows, in addition to AEW Dark episodes, however I have no idea when this cycle of episodes were taped. I’m hoping more recently than the last run of shows, especially towards the end.

Rumors were flying hot and heavy yesterday about Jay White legit leaving NJPW, most likely for NXT. I’m just going to say, I don’t buy them. I don’t think he’s leaving. He just main evented the Tokyo Dome. He’s one of the top guys in NJPW, leading a (still!) money-making stable with a worldwide name value. 

Another reason I call bullshit: Kenny Omega said much the same thing after his loss to Kazuchika Okada at WK11. This is, literally, the same story. While there is always a chance that Jay may leave, knowing the history of angles past, as well as Jay being a dojo boy, whom tend to stick around for life more or less... yeah. I don’t think Jay is going anywhere. It makes for clicks tho.

I’m a little late on this by a few hours, but NJPW is now being shown on Eurosport India on Saturdays & Sundays 6pm India Standard Time:

Mumbai, January 07, 2021: Eurosport and Eurosport HD India, the premium sports channels from the house of Discovery, are all set to captivate the Indian pro-wrestling fans with high octane action from Japan’s No.1 and World’s second largest pro-wrestling property – New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) with the dawn of the New Year. The addition of NJPW expands Eurosport’s portfolio of Pro-Wrestling offerings with the exclusive India broadcast slated to begin from January 09, 2021 from 6 PM IST with weekly episodes to be telecast every Saturday and Sunday from 6:00 PM IST onward.

[...]

Eurosport India, and with it New Japan Pro-Wrestling broadcasts across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Afghanistan and Bhutan.

When I saw this, I thought it sounded a little familiar, and I was right: I wrote about NJPW in India back in 2017, when King Of Pro Wrestling 2017 was being shown on DSport in India. DSport is now Eurosport, as of early 2020. So I’m not sure what the timeline of events here is, whether NJPW has consistently been in India since that time. Whatever the case, NJPW has a twice-weekly show in the Indian/Pakistani etc. market now.

Later today, we’ll be recording the next episode of the Podcast, with myself, @damascenocs​ and a couple of guests talking WK15. There still are no New Beginning lineups, so likely those will get announced tomorrow after we’ve posted the show. Not a big deal, but kind of irritating. We’ll talk then.

[sjrresearch]

From Wireframes to 3D Demons: The History of the First-Person Shooter

What game do you think was the first first-person shooter (FPS)? You probably have a title in mind, but there’s a good chance you’re thinking too contemporary. It’s common for games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D to take the spotlight as pioneers of the genre, but id Software’s 3D romps came years after ambitious minds introduced players to the true first FPS.

To follow the history of any video game genre, you almost always have to go back to the beginning. Long before expansive worlds and high-def visuals became the norm, studios were merely struggling to make gaming work. Computers weren’t built to play on. They were intended to crunch numbers and process words. However, savvy minds constantly sought innovation - and during the 1970s, gaming was starting to stir curiosities. Enter three high school students - Steve Colley, Howard Palmer, and Greg Thompson - tinkering on an Imlac PDS-1 at the NASA Ames Research Center. 

First-Person Shooters in Their Infancy

By 1973, gaming was already a known medium, with titles like The Oregon Trail, Pong, and Galaxy Game showcasing the wonders of technology. Colley took things a step further by creating a 3D environment built out of a 16x32 wireframe and providing the framework for Maze War. It was a simple concept that even Colley admits “quickly became boring.” The future nCUBE founder has a fuzzy memory over what happened next, but he knows either Palmer or Thompson came up with the idea of inserting people into the maze. A shooting mechanic came soon after, followed by the ability to play against a human opponent using a serial cable. They didn’t know it at the time, but Colley, Palmer, and Thompson had just released the earliest incarnations of the first-person shooter.

While the three students were working on Maze War, halfway across the country at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, student Jim Bowery was busy with his own wireframe space shooter. The basis of his idea used the PLATO computer network and followed the green outline of a spaceship across a 3D environment. Spasim, short for “space simulator,” officially released in March 1974, putting it only months behind Maze War. Since the development timeline for Colley’s Maze War is a little murky, the two games are often both considered the trailblazers of first-person shooters.

The 80s Advance the Genre

Maze War and Spasim gave the genre a footing on computer platforms, but come the turn of the decade, Atari was ready to bring it into a more public setting. In November 1980, Battlezone entered arcades across the United States. Using a gimmicky “periscope” viewfinder, players took control of a tank in a wireframe environment. Other tanks and hazards littered the playing field, which was fully 3D and allowed players to navigate fluidly across a 360-degree horizontal plane.

Battlezone became a hit and, starting in 1983, was ported onto the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, and VIC-20. It was the first game of this still juvenile genre to release to a mass market, and it did so with success, making it the first 3D game to garner much attention.

The concept of 3D mazes introduced in Maze War reemerged in 1987 with MIDI Maze. Xanth Software F/X replaced wireframing with solid, untextured walls and allowed players to move freely rather than relegate them to 90-degree turns. The cutesy shooter featured AI-controlled smiley-faced drones and a 16-player multiplayer mode made possible via the Atari ST’s MIDI ports. The game received ample praise and was named by CNET Gamecenter as one of the “10 most innovative computer games of all time.”

Developers may have made great strides in the FPS genre during the 80s, but it was the 1990s that ultimately gave its inception a bloody, controversial face.

Heavy-Metal Popularizes First-Person Shooters

John Romero had an extensive library of games under his belt before he, programmer John Carmack, and the small team that became id Software set their sights on bringing fully immersive 3D experiences to the computer. It’s easy to mistake Wolfenstein 3D and Doom as Romero’s first attempts at revolutionizing first-person shooters, but games like Hovertank 3D served as the framework for these pioneers. Set across multiple maze-like levels, Hovertank pits players against enemies that look like early versions of classic Doom demons. The goal is simple: maneuver a tank through levels to save human sprites from certain death.

It’s a game largely forgotten by time, but it was a stepping stone for Romero that ultimately led to Wolfenstein 3D. The base game looked very familiar to Hovertank, with levels divided into rooms by now-textured walls. Additionally, players could finally see their weapon, which featured unique firing animations for each firearm. Wolfenstein may have predated Doom, but the demonic first-person shooter and its heavy metal soundtrack really drove the popularity behind the first-person shooter. Other games, like Bungie’s Pathways into Darkness (1993), tried to cash in on Wolfenstein’s model, but never garnered the popularity needed. Doom may seem like a simple concept today, but in the early 90s, PC gaming was still very basic. It proved the power and capabilities of 3D gaming by delivering a smooth, fully-immersive world that heightened what Romero and Carmack accomplished with Wolfenstein.

The demon killing-spree that ultimately gave life to the FPS genre became an inspiration for developers. It didn’t take long for copy cats to start popping up, like Gary Design Associates’ Nitemare 3D (1994) and Bungie’s Marathon (1994). Even id Software tried to recapture the that magic with Heretic and Hexen, but kept coming up short. In 1996, Romero and id revamped their 3D engine, brought on Trent Reznor’s musical talents, and delivered Quake. Its real-time rendering and 3D acceleration added another technically impressive layer to 3D gaming. The success of Quake didn’t quite reach that of Doom’s, but one can argue it paved the way for machinima, or creating cinematic experiences using real-time graphics.

First-Person Shooters of Today

After id Software laid the groundwork for 3D first-person shooters, it was only a matter of time before a developer would craft an experience that further advanced the genre. As it turns out, there were quite a few coming down the pipeline. The mid to late-90s - 1998 in particular - were ripe with FPS games, including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Epic Games’ Unreal, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Half-Life, System Shock, and one of the first successful multiplayer titles, GoldenEye 007. The importance of story and immersion was on the rise, and each of these iconic games played their own role in shaping the future of first-person shooters.

Without Half-Life, we wouldn’t have Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, Portal, or Left 4 Dead. Without Rainbow Six, players wouldn’t have the competitive outlet of Siege. System Shock (1999) later gave life to the BioShock series. Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Halo, Crysis, Far Cry, Outlast, Overwatch, and any other first-person shooter that graces your gaming library wouldn’t exist if not for the efforts of the incredible minds that created and advanced the genre.

First-person shooters have come a long way since their wireframe beginning, and there’s still always room for advancements. Virtual reality and whole-body immersion are on the map as the next to find their way into the average household. But no matter how advanced the genre gets, we’ll always find ourselves downloading our umpteenth copy of Doom and gleefully slaying our way through id Software’s demonic horde.

At SJR Research, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse SJR Research’s service on our site at SJR Research.

[nitratestock]

One by one, like a painful slow drip from a finite source, we lose people to time, people who contributed positively to the world in ways political, artistic, scientific. One by one. Considering the sum total is simply too great, we need stagger. For those who share my year of birth by a margin of three years give or take on either side, we’ve been lucky. Lucky in the sense that the stagger has been long and wide. Over the last decade we’ve lost some important people, particularly important to our early life, the exit of our single digits and the early part of our teens. Early on I was crushed by the death of Sidney Lumet, in 2011, a giant of the film community. I wrote about his passing back then, at the point of worst emotional pain, as bad as one can feel without being a family member or close friend. Since then we’ve lost Cimino. We’ve lost Nichols. We’ve lost Varda. We’ve lost Akerman. We’ve lost Hooper and Romero. As we brine in our Gen X jar, we unfortunately transition from sniper fire to machine gun spray. Legato becomes staccato. People of my age group watch in horror as heroes depart. It’s no different of any other age group, perhaps only more enhanced by the increased prevalence of mass media over the course of the last century and into ours. Distance and folklore becomes nearness and screens. In either case we involve ourselves in the lives of others, in ways good and bad. At worst we connect through this urge to pillory those who are guilty of our very same sins. At best, we mourn the passing of a public figure we’ve come to acknowledge, without their knowledge, as a friend. Hopefully out of benevolent interest, that last part.

So I say with the melancholy of a film fanatic that came of age in the 80’s and the heft of a life, if averages count, mostly lived at this point, that the recent passing of one Alan Parker left me despondent. Perhaps not for the fate of the world, but definitely for the fate of film as a malleable form that might struggle with the twin purposes of art and commerce and succeed somehow. Film fanatics, or as I prefer to refer to myself and others, Cinegeeks, often find themselves drawn to figures within the film world considered 2nd or 3rd tier interviews, whose body of work might contain two or three masterpieces amongst a body of mediocrity, or who might have a mostly or even highly successful box office record but never get critical acclaim. Fanatics like to champion the underdog. It’s our nature. To a degree Alan Parker found himself in this category. Partially because his CV didn’t fit neatly into the Auteur Theory folder. Partially because he didn’t play the normal Hollywood game. It’s sometimes overlooked that the boldest outsiders during that New Hollywood era knew how to play the studio/PR angle and did so like sawing a harp from hell. I’m looking at YOU, Coppola and Scorsese.

Parker had artistic ambitions, some would even say pretentious ambitions, and yet I defy anyone to observe his body of work and not see a blue-collar hardscrabble mentality etching away at the base of all his films. He failed sometimes, but in all endeavors he struggled not just to ensure proper light diffusion, but to connect the audience to the scene that was unfolding and the characters within all of that art direction and brilliant cinematography. In his debut feature, the cult classic BUGSY MALONE, he invited audiences to indulge in the lark of basically watching an updated Little Rascals film as whipped-cream St. Valentine’s massacre. With an infectious soundtrack by Paul Williams. And it worked and still works. In MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, he sought nothing less than to put you through the Turkish prison system at its most barbaric. And damn, did he succeed. In FAME, he sought to enroll you in La Guardia High, the School for the Performing Arts, partially ushered in by one Mr. Lumet, and he brought you into the NYC streets to join the dance. In SHOOT THE MOON, he dragged you through the broken glass and nails that is a brutal divorce. Most critics still feel it’s the film that’ll never be topped on that topic. And yeah. It’s punishing to this day.

That’s just his first four films. He followed MOON in the same year with his cinematic distillation of PINK FLOYD’S THE WALL, as ambitious, reckless, insane, obtuse and inspiring as any art film dared to be. He waged one of the bravest, constant battles between the band, their label, his studio and the inevitable lash or backlash from the critics and the crowds as any director dared in that decade, which had now, even by 1992, belonged to Reagan and Thatcher’s crowd. It worked, it was a success on its own terms. It stood with QUADROPHENIA as one of the few successful adaps of a “RockOpera” to screen. And it would serve as an insanely influential piece of cinema/album mashup. I can’t think of another film that’s even attempted to match it to this day.

Parker’s true gift was that of exploration, and this was evinced by his sojourn from cinematic genre to cinematic genre. Like great directors before him, he felt the need to examine and exult in them all. He turned after 1982’s twin trials to what many referred to as William Wharton’s “un-filmable” novel. Parker found a way to film it, and in the process crafted a minor masterpiece, and the first film in his American Gothic trilogy. BIRDY is about so many things; the horror of war, the futility of grand romantic dreams, the last days of glorious, unweighted childhood. It succeeds in all those ambitions, but what it is squarely about is the healing power of friendship, of that bond between brothers that even the trauma of battle cannot best. He accomplished this in two different time periods and two different venues; the 60’s early and late, as disparate as a decade could get from itself; then the wide, economically depressed funland expanse of post-WW2 Brooklyn, against the claustrophobic, chiaroscuro lit cell of the VA, where the only shadow to hide within lies beneath the mottled cot. All of Parker’s CV can be described as character studies of one form or another. Here he began a three film sojourn into America’s pockets, its secret soul and even its original sins. He’d leave the punishing abandonment of what once was the City of Brooklyn as it stood circa 1962, for a far more insidious and painful abandonment, one of a whole swath of the country and of its stolen populace.

ANGEL HEART was ostensibly a mashup of horror and noir, a neat trick that any successful director would’ve been drawn to, especially in the MTV 80’s, a music video era (greatly inspired by directors like Parker, I might add) that found itself drawing on the tropes of past cinema genres in a highly stylized way. The synopsis implies a simple morality tale, a private eye hired by a seemingly nefarious talent agent to track down the client who’s eluded him. Perhaps by supernatural means. Parker expanded on the location by quickly resetting the action from Brooklyn to New Orleans, after a quick trip through Harlem. White culture has to answer to and for black culture in America, and Parker employed this almost caricature smoke-and-topcoat shamus to do this investigation. There is great butchery in ANGEL HEART, which I’ve always believed reps the butchery of slavery and the Jim Crow era. There are bold implications and terrible consequences for what we now term “cultural appropriation”, from Johnny Favorite’s Depression-era crooner stealing from black artists to the Krusemark’s adoption of the patchwork voodoo religion. Above all, there is guilt. There is a clear through line, as clear as Capt. Willard’s river to Kurtz, toward White America’s brutality, ongoing. Harry is our surrogate, should we choose. He goes on his own journey of discovery that becomes, unwittingly and surely unwillingly, one of SELF-discovery. His final manic, desperate denial is the same as any who enjoy white privilege to this day while at the same time being wholly unaware of it: I know who I am. If ANGEL HEART is the one he’s going to be remembered for, I believe it’s this subtext, unplanned or otherwise, that will allow it the test of time well over the brilliant cinematography and perhaps Mickey Rourke’s finest performance. Parker would next attempt to expand on this subtext and present it as text, with very, VERY mixed reactions.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING was a project begun with noble intent, I believe. In an era where white men still got to tell the black narrative in America. While I forgive a lot of the film’s dramatic license, I fully agree with its detractors as well. 1988 was a tipping point for tone-deafness in the film industry. Had Parker made BURNING a decade or so prior, it might enjoy a better rep in the context of its time. The end of the 80’s demanded better. I’m a fan of this film, as a film, not as a history. In the same way I’m a fan of well-crafted cinematic narratives that have dated very poorly. The tragedy of MISSISSIPPI BURNING is not just that he made so well-crafted a film at a point in the timeline when something more inclusive, honest, and better representative of history was possible, it’s that he chose fiction for fiction’s sake. Nevertheless, it was the second and final Oscar nomination for direction he’d receive.

Parker remained in this wheelhouse of American guilt for 20th century wrong-doing. COME SEE THE PARADISE was an earnest attempt to depict, to REMIND America really, of the awful Japanese internment camps of the WW2 years, the venerable FDR’s greatest sin. At the height of his filmmaking powers he was unerring in his balance between stylistic pursuit and substance. Alas, with this effort and his previous, glow softened suffer, and the heart of the tale proved elusive as a result.

Maybe he had a moment of clarity then, after these ambitious but perhaps stultifying efforts, and decided to return to a genre that had stood him in good stead. Parker turned to the homespun Celtic kick of Roddy Doyle and decided to create a real-life soul/funk/r&b band from scratch for THE COMMITMENTS, which most will agree is his last great film, though his later fare has its champions, and fair play to them. For a director so well known for his meticulous prep and focus he fared incredibly well in filming wild abandon. Maybe it was a mode he needed to consciously shift into gear for, but once there he cooked quite a stew. The film delighted both critics and audiences, and also helped re-start a soul music resurgence, helped in no little way by the film’s pre-fab ensemble, who’d take to the road for a series of live shows with various members of the celluloid iteration in tow. Some might argue that he retreated to a stance that shied from his previous inquiries regarding the separation of cultures white and other, and the theft perpetrated by one on the other, and in doing crafted so populist an entertainment as to render the argument moot. That’s a fair assessment. Some others might argue that a truthful, passionate depiction of people inspired by others different from their living experience, plaintively plying their art, is honest work as well, no matter their skin color. The debate won’t go away. And it shouldn’t. In terms of moviemaking, though, Parker had fired on all cylinders. Perhaps for the last time.

The remaining decade-plus of his work was, in most estimations, workmanlike, with the odd Parker flourish here and there recognizable to his fans. THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE was an eccentric choice as follow-up, and also as navigation through the early days of a new and unsure decade (He’d already travelled the biz director-driven, to producer-driven, and was now in the who-the-hell’s-driving 90’s). It features several fine performances, from recent and deserved Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins to the still-finding-their-way Matthew Broderick and John Cusack, and its huckster-health theme does still resonate, or at least it SHOULD, as well today as then as late 19th century. If it ultimately found no target to spear, it remains a well crafted and intentioned work. EVITA was no sleepwalk-to the-Oscar gig, even though the resulting film is at best assessed as a dreamily-hued mess. Parker took on the challenge of a legendary broadway smash, one that Hollywood had been desperate to film for well over a decade. A lesser director would’ve turned the camera on and yelled “Sing!”. But Parker was one of the few who’d found success in the post-studio era with one of its warhorse genres, the musical, which had diminished, and decidedly felled such giants as Coppola and Bogdanovich at their peak or near-peak. It’s a noble effort, if it comes up short. It’s not quite empty Oscar-bait, but it’s well shy of a film with a purpose. He either directed or was gifted a great Antonio Banderas perf, and he did his damnedest with Madonna, which is sorta the theme of her career don’t send hate mail. He got a hard-won, decent turn out of her, perhaps not the magnetic dying star that the role demanded, but an actor giving her all. That’s still worth something, even if they’re miscast. For further evidence I direct you toward Matt Damon in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY.

And here’s the part that I always hate to talk about. Parker was a director who, in my estimation, never sought validation, but always inspiration. It’s the source of his greatest works, and they remain some of the greatest of the post-studio years. He took his best swipe at an unlikely best-seller, Frank McCourt’s wildly successful but impossibly depressing ANGELA’S ASHES. Like EVITA, it had “prestige” built into it. Like EVITA, it was a package deal. Like EVITA, the studio expected some love from the Academy at the end of the day. I feel like Parker was thwarted from the start, tasked with this take of utter poverty and despondency while asked to chase the gold. Had the book come out sometime early in his career, had he discovered it and championed it, and then saw it through production and release, we may have been gifted something along the lines of a Ken Loach or even Buñuel at his most honest. The gilt and geld of the Hollywood studios, especially at that time competing with the newly-found prestige of the indies, precluded any chance at that, despite next-level perfs from Stephen Rea and Emily Watson. It’s a not-unworthy effort to seek out, especially if you're a Parker fan, but in some ways it may have signaled his ultimate abandonment of this art form. Maybe he felt he’d said enough. Maybe he felt he wouldn’t be allowed to say his piece on his terms anymore. Maybe he looked ahead at filmmaking in the new millennium and decided he’d not update his passport to this new continent. For reasons we never fully received, Parker was leaving.

His last film would be THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE, an anti-capital punishment screed that felt out of joint, and not due to the lack of effort from its stars, Kate Winslet and Christopher Plummer. But it’s an aimless effort, deprived of any real bite on a subject molten to a wide swath of the citizenry. It was met with mixed box office and mixed reviews. It left with nary a trace. And then, whether we realized it or not, so did Alan Parker.

It seemed to be a welcome retirement. At least in my following of my filmmaker heroes. I don’t believe I saw one item, one gossip piece, about a new Alan Parker project, about a studio extending him an offer on a prestige or even indie film. He popped up as interview subject and fairly frequently, and seemed to enjoy his status as thus. He’d crafted a remarkable body of work, and by all witness enjoyed remarking on it. He occasionally served as mentor, as when Christopher Nolan reached out to him. He’d definitely serve as defense attorney, especially when the subject of Mickey Rourke came up. He absolutely and most magnificently served as beacon to a whole generation of film lovers and future filmmakers, kids who were desperate in the corporate/production team/CAA 80’s to cling to films of their generation they could call their own. At a time when art and the so-called “auteur” was a dirty word in Hollywood he was able to put the work he’d crafted into your head and into your heart. I’m not sure if we’re gonna see another Alan Parker, and he’d be most upset by that notion, but if you’re reading this, and you find this possibility unacceptable, go grab a camera and be another Alan Parker. We’re waiting.

[tuxovia]

TH game: your oc is sitting next to the one above

Having a heated paper cup of coffee in his right hand, Slinky lifted it up to his mouth to take a tired sip, while having his ears bound against his head facing behind him. Usually, he would get a full nights rest, but something had been keeping him up very late. He wasn't even sure what it was himself. He would glance over to the sight of bright orange wavy hair that would shimmer and glow in the morning sunlight, she seemed to had been carrying a sketchbook or some kind of book.

Slinky liked books, especially the historical ones, or just random ones with fictional stories. He kept a lot of his medical books in there with him in his office in case he needed to brush up on some notes. Dustin's son, Axel, really enjoyed the ones about outer space. He didn't fully understand why he was so fascinated about them. Maybe it was the planets? The stars? Or the never-ending void of blackness that was rather terrifying to imagine the more you'd think about it? Axel always had extraordinary knowledge about Jupiter and its 300-year-old storm, or Pluto, the ninth and smallest planet to ever be documented.* Every time Axel and his father would visit for check-ups, the little boy would always have his purple starry blanket to help him be positive whenever he would be nervous.

He had a warm smile on his face before it quickly disappeared while the woman next to him presented with a drawing of a sun. He blinked, admiring it and her little scribbles. He glanced at her face respectively then back at the sheet of paper. "It looks nice," he said warmly, but not truly sure how to respond as it was rather sudden. He wasn't really expecting to interact with someone random he was sitting next to, but it was fairly nice to be noticed in this world.

"My friend's son really adores everything about space. He would love your sun drawing," he said, thinking back to Axel and his little space doodles in his office waiting room. He took another sip at his morning coffee before falling silent to his thoughts.

* (Slinky, Dustin, and Axel’s  timeline is before Pluto was considered not a planet. Their story takes place a few years after it was discovered in the 1930s!)

Slinky belongs to me: https://toyhou.se/5671583.slinky-dion-carver

Axel belongs to me: https://toyhou.se/5673347.axel-romero

Dustin belongs to me (isnt on TH yet!)

[thefeministbibliothecary]

I'm still doing a lot of movie bingeing, so I'm hoping to do more filmposting to share some of my thoughts on what I've been watching lately. Some 70s and 80s horror this time around, as I've been on something of a genre binge lately. Clockwise from top left: Friday the 13th (1980, dir. Sean S. Cunningham) is one of the classics that I managed to not get around to watching until recently, minus part I saw on tv in my early teens. I can see why it spawned such a successful franchise, although I confess I wasn't that into it. The pacing wasn't enjoyable for me, and I just couldn't get my whole head in it. I didn't dislike it though. Hoping I have better results with the second one. Day of the Dead (1985, dir. George A. Romero) is the third in Romero's Night of the Living Dead series, and although it is the weakest entry so far, it is a ton of fun, offering some interesting looks at the ethics of experimentation while still being a goofy and decent zombie flick. The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi) is a bit of a mixed bag. The stop motion gore is solid, the story is goofy and fun, and the demonic possession works for me. I also liked the way it was constructed (for example, seemingly irrelevant shots mirrored in the second half to great effect). It really didn't give two shits about a single woman in the story though, and the tree rape was heinous. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir. Tobe Hooper) is a stunningly shot and artistic work, with some truly great subtext, especially regarding ableism. It is also interesting to view in the context of the horror movie history timeline. The sequel isn't technically as good of a movie, but I enjoyed it a lot as well, especially when viewed as a horror comedy. #films #filmwatching #filmposting #movies #moviewatching #horrormovies https://www.instagram.com/p/CDIXSgnAr0V/?igshid=1lwfwsdkg56gf

[lostboy-4life-blog]

ESSAY III: Race and Gender Stereotyped in the Zombie Sub-Genre

The first time the horror genre saw the emergence of zombies in westernized civilizations was in 1932 with the film White Zombie, a movie that changed the genre of horror forever. The zombie was a new creature that would become a staple in the genre for almost ninety years now. In 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, another film in the zombie category, we begin to see reoccurring themes such as race and gender stereotypes of this genre. In 2002, the movie 28 Days Later, which was a critically acclaimed film, saw this same themes that have been in zombie films since the beginning. In each of these films a theme of racial and gender stereotyping is seen, and through the generations of the zombie genre a freedom from these stereotypes evolves.

The majority of White Zombie takes place in Haiti where a white “voodoo master” is in control of what could only be considered a representation of African American slaves as the zombies. Historically many native Haitians and imported Africans were put into slavery due to the French and Spanish plantations. During the time of filming and the release of the film in America, African Americans were still considered second class citizens and were being controlled by the government through Jim Crow Laws. African Americans were still feared by the majority of white American, this fear came from centuries of stereotypes that African American’s don’t have control of their anger, rage and mental capacity. Just as the voodoo master takes control of his zombie slaves, this control was still wanted by white Americans. Here we see African Americans represented as zombie slaves and this would their lowest point in representation in zombie film genre. They are represented as complete stereotypes based on their race. Being represented as actual slave and having no control or ability to think for themselves a notion that many white Americans watching the film would have probably wanted at this time.

The film Night of the Living Dead took a total 180 compared to White Zombie. This film was the first time ever that an African American had the lead role in a film not only did he receive the lead role but was the hero of the film. He was an African American who ended up protecting all the white people in the film. The director George Romero has stated many times that Duane Jones was just the best choice to play the Ben, the lead character and that film was never meant to be a political or racial statement. Ironically at this time in the United States the Civil Rights Movement was going on. Now, for the first time an African American was starting to break stereotypes in the zombie genre and horror films in general, even though it was not intentionally supposed to be that way. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s saw the start of change both good and bad for African Americans. The timeline of the 1960s saw; sit-ins, freedom rides, the Birmingham church bombing, Martin Luther King give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the Loving v Virginia ruling (legalizing interracial relationships), and the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X. By the time this movie came out in the late 60s most of these examples of the Civil Rights Movement had already taken place. Duane Jones’ character Ben was not the stereotypical representation of an African American in movies. The part of Ben could have been played by a white person and it wouldn’t have changed the character at all. The film really showed that for the first time that African Americans were no different than their white peers, specifically in that Romero left the scene where Ben a black man slaps Barbara a white women. As stated in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond, “The film has often been praised for never making an issue of its black hero’s color (it is nowhere alluded to, even implicitly). Yet it is not true that his color is arbitrary and without meaning: Romero uses it to signify his difference from the other character and set him apart from their norms” (Wood, 104) Even though the part wasn’t stereotypical of an African American, Ben still doesn’t end up surviving till the end. Showing that he still isn’t totally free of these stereotypes to African Americans in the past but, has seen a freedom from being the controlled and enslaved and become a more positive role in the film genre.

Often African Americans up until this point in zombie and other horror films really have not gained complete freedom from their stereotyped past, they still had not survived till the credits roll in 2002 in 28 Days Later, this all changed. Unlike Night of the Living Dead where Ben does not live till the credits, Selena survives and ends up as one of the only three surviving cast members at the end of the movie, which is interesting because stereotypically it is the African Americans or minorities in generally usually die first. So this film is certainly different in that way, even though the cast as a whole is pretty much all white. This is a British film so the difference in countries between there and here may have something to do with it. This is the culmination of race through the age of zombie films up until this point. African Americans have gained total freedom and the choice to live. African Americans have gone from total enslavement by a white leader in White Zombie to helping lead a group of white people to survival in 28 Days Later.  

Additionally Selena represents the concept of a New Women, which Ann Kordus describes as “The stereotypical New Woman, who appeared in the united states in the late nineteenth century- and early twentieth centuries, was a young women who delighted in engaging in pursuits that previously though acceptable only by men” (Kordus, 26)   and   Zombie films show through their history that women gain more freedom for themselves. In White Zombie Madeline is one of these New Women and Beuroment, one of the most villainous characters in the film, doesn’t much like it and tries to woo and control her. This doesn’t work out to well for him as she wants to go through with her wedding and this leads to him poisoning her. The film suggests that being a New Women could be seen as her own fault for becoming a zombie and because she wouldn’t listen to these dominating men in her life she needed to be put in line. Her power to be a strong women is stolen from her by an evil man she wanted nothing to do with. Madeline reacts to the real life women during the time the movie was released and Margaret (Molly) Brown was one of these real life New Women. She was strong, independent and totally free of all previous stereotypes that where put on women. She ran multiple house holds, companies, survived the Titanic and gave tons of money to philanthropy after her divorce. At the end of the movie the death of the voodoo master Legendre releases her back to being to the new strong woman she was before. Even though she is a New Woman when she becomes a zombie she is totally under the control of the voodoo master and has no freedom or will. At the same time even when she was human, she was still being controlled by men and their different needs each wanted from her. Thus, although she was able to have some sense of freedom, ultimately she was still not free from the stereotypes of the female gender.

Night of the Living Dead didn’t see a strong woman who was alive, what it did see was the youngest cast member Karen become a New Woman with freedom but only when she became a zombie. At this point, she is featured in the most gruesome scenes of the film, when she finally stands up for herself and kills her mother and ends up eating her father. This film being released in 1968 it was the height of the hippie counter culture and many teenagers and women at this time were finding their own path in life and escaping their families’ expectations of them. It was the decade of free love and life. We could see in the film that it is Karen not being a human that gives her the ability to be free and self-sufficient at a young age. In this film it is only when Karen becomes a zombie that she gets this freedom to stand up for herself and be independent. The women in zombie films still have not been freed from their stereotypes Karen has to be a monster to gain her independence and freedom from from men and in this case her controlling father. It is not until the 21st century that we see the true break down of stereotypes in film genre both in terms of race and gender.

In 2002, 28 Days Later is the first time we see a New Women gain total freedom from her female stereotype and as a human. Selena is the epitome of definition of a New Woman and what the movie White Zombie started. Throughout the whole movie Selena is not only the strongest women but maybe even the strongest character both mentally and physically, always coming though in the clutch to save her group and herself. Blogger MaggieCat states “Selena is a very rare character in this kind of film- in her very first appearance she saves Jim’s life, yells at him for being foolish, and gives him a crash course in the rules for surviving in a world that has broken down completely. Bravery, direct action, and thorough competence from her first seconds on screen. Not only is she a strong female character, she’s a strong female character of color which is even more rare” (MaggieCat) She certainly has some of the most gruesome zombie kills in the movie and maybe the most kills in general. Selena is not just the culmination of the freedom of the gender stereotype but, also the freedom of racial stereotype in zombie films.

Through the three films there is an evolution of freedom from the stereotypes of race and gender as show in zombie films. African Americans and women are seen to gain more and more freedom to choose how their lives end up in zombie films. In the beginning, African Americans and women were trapped in a sate of slavery either literally in the case of the Haitian zombies and in Madeline’s case by men. Thirty years after that in Night of the Living Dead, we see an advancement in the freedom of both African Americans and women again, with Ben being a main character and surviving almost till the end and Karen finding her freedom on when she becomes zombie.  Finally in 28 Days Later, the character of Selena not only shows total freedom of the stereotypes of African American and a woman in zombie films by being one of the strongest and most bad ass characters but also being one of the only characters to survive as the credits roll.  

MaggieCat. “28 Days Later...” The Hathor Legacy, 25 July 2007, thehathorlegacy.com/28-days-later/.

Moreman, Christopher M., and Cory Rushton. Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2011.

Wood, Robin. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan -and Beyond. Columbia University Press, 2003.

[darylleverette-blog]

Survivor Archives

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Appear no even further compared to Wolfenstein 3D if you lately participated in the brand-new Doom video game and are actually questioning where creator id Program acquired its own begin. Though that had not been the 1st title to find from video game super star duo John Carmack and also John Romero, Wolfenstein 3D participated in an essential part in heavily motivating an entire genre from computer game: such as the obscenely popular first-person shooter (FPS). This was actually revealed by Telltale and boxart for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Profile variations has been detected at multiple retailers featuring Amazon.com and GameStop. That performance would be actually the specific opposite from one from Season 5, and will deserve it only to find Cersei swilling her gigantic wine cup and ruining her rival with a dreadful put-down. Potential Updates: This section is secured for potential updates like Episode 3 screenshots and also the Episode 3 launch trailer. Kerr, that plainly had not been really feeling properly on Friday prior to the crew departed for Rose city, hadn't skipped a video game this time prior to Sunday, when he likewise skipped shootaround. If you liked this short article and you would such as to get additional information regarding getbitto.info kindly see our web-site. Football Physics, the massively preferred physics-based arcade game is actually currently cost-free up until the end from the month. Typically in these conditions, the modifications that are created create the video game other, however certainly not better. In the sentimental prelude Wenger remembered outlawing Mars pubs before his very first game in charge, back in 1996. You observe, this is just what I really love concerning Salinger's so usually contended work - its capacity to stir notions and also opinions that go beyond the publication and also the plot document and also make you assume, and possibly -only perhaps - be a contact rebellious, as well. I constantly considered pre purchasing as a strategy to purchase a game and also you gone on a budget. Don't permit the fairytale specifying fool you, this is actually a violent, mature game as well as this's one where your choices possess effects, affecting not simply what the other personalities think about you but likewise which lives and that dies. Within this 2nd manual of the collection, this begins promptly where manual one's timeline ended along with the extension of Rochelle's disappearance from the activity. Apart from right here's the problem and remedy: they join love (arrrrr!) This book would not be actually total without the love elements; that meets this, even if that is actually a little foreseeable. This manual would certainly have been actually a whole lot briefer without the needless analogies for everything. Answer: When you are actually already playing the game in any type of level, push the time out switch and also in the menu that shows up you will definitely find the Most likely to Area" option. In between its futuristic Planet and also its impressive dream realm, the video game is consistently having you to unexpected new areas. But lately this was starring in Activity Of Thrones, that made him popular to millions worldwide.