#deus-ex-machina ass mcguffin

[four-color-words]

*heavy, exhausted sigh*... ...Yeah.

how it feels being a hawkman fan

[luckystarchild]

“Breath of the Wild” was a Narrative Disappointment

Don’t get me wrong. Loved the graphics, gameplay and open world concept. But the storyline sucked such a major boatload of ass that I’m left with a feeling of intense disappointment upon completing a playthrough. I honestly feel that the game was an overall waste of time, at least when I take into consideration the amount of hours I put into it. Playing for a few dozen hours gives you a glimpse of what the game can offer; unlocking all of it became a slog, and the ending made me want to flip a table. “I wasted all this time killing mobs for THAT?” I literally yelled at the screen after staring at the credits for ten minutes in silence.

Spoilers below. Here’s my review of the game’s writing, specifically.

For all her supposed importance, Zelda may as well have been absent throughout the game OR replaced with a magical object/McGuffin that Link could use to defeat Ganon, as that's all she really amounted to by the end of the game. She spends the game locked in a tower occasionally whispering to Link through his memories/through mild hallucinations... and that’s it. She has no other role. We’re told that she’s keeping Ganon locked in the castle, but... that’s it (and it’s a bad case of “telling, not showing” to boot). She might as well be a magical padlock. Since the game revolves around rescuing her and defeating Ganon before her magic can fail and let him loose, AND since she’s the one who must strike the final blow in a big moment of Deus ex Machina grandeur, she’s heavily objectified both as both the Object of Power that Link needs to recover to save the day AND the princess who needs rescuing. Her lack of agency is just plain bad writing.

Which is a shame, because this Zelda might be the best-developed Zelda in this series so far, BUT she’s not even that well-developed by objective standards! Because all of her character development happens in flashbacks, she couldn't grow or evolve during the story; none of the storyline’s events impact her whatsoever. And while the game allows you to discover “memories” that unlock cut-scenes of Link’s past experiences with Zelda, the flashbacks are too disconnected (and viewable out of order) for us to see her growth on-screen in any meaningful way.

Plus, the game spoils its own plot where Zelda is concerned! In the flashbacks, we see her struggling to unlock the powers that are supposed to be her birthright, and the tension lies in whether or not she’ll unlock them... but we KNOW she’ll do so because in the present timeline, she’s clearly powerful enough to seal Ganon away with magic. The central mystery of whether or not she developed her magic abilities is rendered moot given we learn nearly immediately upon Link’s awakening that she must've developed powers since she was able to seal away Ganon.

Also, everything in her backstory is really textbook “young woman must inherit a caretaker role from her mother while her father overprotects her” bit of trope and cliche, which is rooted in sexist stereotyping... but honestly, the fact that it’s BORING is the part I really can’t stand. 

Ganon himself was also a faceless evil entity without any menace; he was just "chaos incarnate" and some nameless evil floating around in castle, and while that's not a huge departure for the series’ writing, necessarily, it didn't give me any sense of stakes whatsoever. Given you can play the game for eons and he never breaks free as consequence for your delays in reaching him, he's just... toothless. The tension of “Will Zelda be able to contain Ganon long enough for Link to become strong enough to kill Ganon?” is, once again, rendered moot by the mechanics of the game itself!

And Link is, true to form, a cardboard cutout of a person. You can say it’s because he has amnesia OR because he’s a silent protagonist in the vein of typical JRPGs OR that that’s just normal for Link, but again... BORING. The worst crime a story can commit is to be boring, and Breath of the Wild committed that crime in spades. And before someone accuses me of not understanding these games, let me say this: I think LoZ's simplistic storytelling worked in past games! These sins are typical of this franchise. But at this point as we move into more and more storytelling-focused and narrative-heavy games, especially where RPGs are concerned, those missteps with Zelda and Ganon were disappointing at worst and lackluster at best. They really could have done so much more with their material, and this franchise is going to need to evolve if it hopes to be more than what it currently is: A technical marvel saddled with soulless storytelling. I'm just hoping BotW2 has a stronger narrative. Hopefully the first game was just a means for them to test the open world and combat systems... like a really formal beta, if you will. But I’m going to be eyeing reviews of it very closely, and if I can’t be assured that the writers were allowed to break the mold, it’s a game I will have to skip.

If you play games for the combat and worldbuilding, you’ll love Breath of the Wild. It truly is great in those aspects. But if, like me, you play for the story first and foremost, you’ll come away feeling hollow.

(Also the game is really really shitty to trans people and it was absolutely AWFUL in that respect; had to put the whole game away for a month and I only came back to it because I’m a completionist.)

[gunnerpalace]

I've got one. Even though I see the aesthetic/poetic value of holy silver, and I kinda love the idea of Yuha being defeated by the 'heart' of a woman he murdered, the whole thing was still contrived as hell... what's ur take on the still silver arrow situation?

It was indeed contrived and it was also exclusionary.

First of all, it was a McGuffin. It does the thing (kill Yhwach) because we’re on the clock (‘cause the manga’s cancelled).

Second, its delivery was a deus ex machina. Isshin and Ryuuken just show up as errand boys to deliver it and… that’s it. Really, neither of them wants to have any part in killing the dude who killed their wives? That seems very in-character. I’d have cared a little less if Isshin had like, distracted Yhwach, and then Ryuuken had finally gotten off of his ass and actually fucking done something and been the one to shoot Yhwach with it. But no, they give their little speech and peace out to have a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas road trip or some shit and seal the deal as being terrible fathers.

Third, it only represents vengeance for Kanae. Like, you know, Hollow powers are supposed to be poisonous to Quincy? As we observed with Masaki and White? Yhwach literally took Ichigo’s Hollow powers too?? Why wasn’t he affected by Zangetsu??? Why was that not something weakening him as Masaki’s revenge too????

Fourth, everything else about the final fight was bullshit. Like, yeah yeah, Uryuu is the deuteragonist, but Rukia wasn’t there and we were literally told it would be Ichigo and Rukia tag-team choke-slamming this bastard. No, instead it’s Renji and Aizen, because… I remember joking around 682 or so that it would be Aizen, Tsukishima, and Giriko fighting Yhwach as Team Mind and Time Fuckery, and honestly that wasn’t so far off what we actually got.

Fifth, we never got a fucking answer on what Mugetsu and Ichigo’s powers in general were really supposed to be, and there was also implied to be some spooky shit going on with Rukia’s powers. No, fuck you, fuck hundreds of chapters of mystery and buildup, all of that is all cancelled, Yhwach is a stereotypical European monster now and dies to silver of all things. Fuck, they could’ve just sent Geralt of Rivia to kill his bitch ass.

It was shit, a non sequitur, and beyond utterly anticlimactic, making it a perfect fit for that Ultimate Trash-Tier Non-Ending. If it had been a minor component of something much grander and more satisfying, then fine I guess, but it wasn’t, and I’m not awarding partial credit today.

[desperatelyseekingdennis]

Captain Marvel

I went into this expecting mediocrity, and was not disappointed. About on par with Ant Man and the Wasp, but without Paul Rudd to make it enjoyable.

Surprisingly, the soundtrack is absolutely the worst part of the movie. That's usually one area Marvel nails, but but here. They kept trying to use pop songs to tie the movie to the 90s, but none of them really fit the scenes. It's obviously possible to pull this off (Edgar Wright comes immediately to mind for another Ant Man comparison, or else various Iron Man scenes) so there's really no excuse.

Action and effects were passable, and the plot not the worst I've seen but still pretty bland. Despite getting a lot of screen time, I never noticed Jackson's de-aging. All told it wasn't a complete waste of money, but I definitely wish my girlfriend hadn't insisted on seeing it in the theater.

From here on out spoilers ahoy as I did deeper into my feelings about specific scenes.

(I started this right after the movie was released, and wrote a giant ten page analysis of the entire plot scene by scene.  I saved it to my drafts, forgot about it, then just now erased the entire thing and am going to try and be more focused on just the bits that don’t make sense to me)

So first of all, the “surprise twist” that drives the entire plot doesn’t work in the MCU.  The Kree have been villains in several live action properties at this point.  The entire plot to the first Guardians was that the Kree are so militaristic that a bunch of them refused to honor a peace treaty.  That they’re the put upon victims of the oppressive Skrulls just doesn’t work in this context.  Maybe if you’re a comic book fan who knows the Skrulls are *also* villains, but most viewers aren’t going to know that.  So it was obvious before they even reached Earth that Jude Law was the bad guy. They’d have been better served picking some other random alien race for her to be a part of.  Yes, I know Mar Vell is historically Kree, but he’s also historically male so clearly they don’t care that much about source material.  In a pinch, just make Mar Vell a Kree and these new guys are after her research.  

The premise that Danvers doesn’t know she’s human also doesn’t make much sense.  Did she never bleed in the six years of combat training?  Also, and maybe I’m overlooking something, but have there ever been any other white Kree?  There’s the one black guy, but even he has a sort of bluish tint.  Then there’s Jude Law and Carol being straight crackers.  ?????  Again, making not making them all Kree would have gone a long way towards fixing this.

Why did SHIELD show up at all?  Fury doesn’t believe Danvers is an alien when she claims to be one, so what exactly did they think was worth investigating?  They should have MIBed this bitch.  Either Fury is a cop that gets taken into SHIELD as a result of him killing a Skrull without training, or he’s the SHIELD agent that takes over after the cop on the scene does so.  I’m pretty sure Agents of SHIELD established that Coulson was an analyst before becoming a field agent, so using him for that roll doesn’t work well.  But given this was a GURL POWER movie, this would have been a fantastic opportunity to give Agent Hill some back story. 

In the train scene, how did she know to punch the old lady?  They’ve already established the Skrulls are so good at pretending that the Kree have to implant safe words deep in your subconscious to prove your identity, but for some reason she can spot one in a crowd of (what to her are) aliens?  For that matter, if they are telepathic, why could the one guy not identify that Fury doesn’t go by Nicholas?  That whole scene where he specifies that he only goes by Fury should have been pretty close to the surface. Even so, that scene was so bad.  It was so obviously tacked on to use as a plot device later.  The writers are aware that Fury has appeared in other movies, right? That he’s not an original character? What happened in the next twenty years that made him reevaluate people calling him Nick?  <Danvers reads his ID> “Thank’s Nicholas” “Only one person calls me Nicholas, and you aren’t my momma.  Its Fury.” Was that so hard?  

The scene with the biker was so bad.. It could have worked if they’d done something with the “why don’t you smile” line, but they didn’t.  He said it, end scene. ??? It also felt like it might have been a Terminator reference that also fell flat, but that might just be my imagination.  As it stands, it only serves as a wink and a nudge at their SJW targets, without actually providing anything for the rest of the audience.

Why is the light speed engine so important?  Mar Vell seems convinced it will bring peace to the galaxy, and Jude Law at least pretends to think it will allow them to conquer it.  But they already have the weird window portal things.  I guess the weird portals are static in space, so I can see where FTL travel independent of them would be beneficial, but hardly the game changer its being made out to be.

On the subject of pointless McGuffins, lets review the history of the Tesseract prior to this movie.  Odin loses it on Earth, where Red Skull discovers it  The Real Captain steals it from Red Skull, but loses it in the ocean where eventually Howard Stark will recover it and give it to SHIELD.  It stays with SHIELD until Loki steals it in the opening scene of the Avengers.  Its stolen like five more times before eventually Thanos uses it to murder Spiderman.  Nice chain of possession, no unexplained gaps.

Post Captain Marvel, we learn that along the way somehow the Air Force gets hold of it, where an alien managed to steal it and hide it on her space ship for at least six years before SHIELD, completely unaware of its existence, stumbles upon it.  Again, the writers are aware that there were other MCU movies before this one, right?  This isn’t really a problem per se, its just dumb.  Its answering a question nobody had, complicating a narrative for no reason except that they couldn’t come up with a non-Infinity Stone McGuffin.

When they fly into space and can’t find the space ship, Danvers is just like “Open sesame” and the ship decloaks.  ???  How worthless is Kree cloaking technology if it can be turned off remotely by somebody who doesn’t even know its there?  

It was pointed out on Twitter that the song the Supreme Intelligence dances to that she pulled out of Danver’s memories would have been released after Danvers moved to Hela. I can’t confirm that because I don’t remember what song was playing, but if true that’s pretty bad writing.  People will write it off as “she probably heard it in the car with Fury” but you can’t just invent a scene to fill in a plot hole.  That’s the writers’ job, and they didn’t do it.

There’s more to unpack in that Supreme Intelligence scene, but they mostly come down to “what are the rules of this technology?”  

Then the climax.  Oh my god the climax.  She thinks real hard and destroys the little chip that’s been blocking her powers (bee the dubs, until they explained otherwise I thought the little chip was the source of her powers), then suddenly she’s God.  No ramping up, no learning curve.  Just “oh, I can fly now and direct fire from a fucking attack cruiser doesn’t hurt me” and the movie is over.  What the actual fuck.  I can’t even put into words how bad the last act was.  

So I won’t.  Instead, I’ll talk about Thor: Ragnarok.  At the beginning of the movie, he’s cocky as hell.  He’s stupid over powered, and he knows it.  So when his sister appears he ends up losing his hammer because he’s so sure of himself that he doesn’t take a moment to think about the situation.  Then he winds up on the Junk Planet, and he’s still cocky.  He’s going to fight the champion and get off the planet then go kill his sister no big deal.  But he loses there, too.  He’s starting to lose faith in himself, but it doesn’t matter because he’s the only one that can do what needs to be done.  Finally he’s able to get off planet and back to his sister... Where he loses again. Now he’s hit rock bottom.  His people are going to die because he wasn’t strong enough to save them.  At that moment, he has a literal deus ex machina moment (in that Odin is a literal god) and regains all his power and proceeds to kick all the names and take all the ass.  (that was meant to be an Infinity War reference and not a suggestion about what his intentions re: Valkyrie, honest)  

At this point in the movie, he’s basically at the same level Danvers is at the end of hers.  Completely unstoppable, unreasonable power levels all around.  The difference is he earned his position.  He fought for it, almost died for it several times. Danvers just... thought real hard.  At any point in the movie did she lose a fight?  Was she ever in any real danger?  Even in the opening scene when she’s sparring with Jude Law its made clear that he’s incapable of beating her which is why he’s pushing her to learn to hold back.  And that’s with the power dampener.  Thor Ragnarok has *so* many problems, but at least they gave the hero a journey to go on.  And that’s accounting for the fact that he starts off pretty ridiculously powerful.  

I’m officially out of time and this is getting out of hand so I’m just going to wrap this up.  This was actually shorter than what I originally had.

[desperatelyreviewingdennis]

“Emissary: Parts 1 & 2″

After getting so upset with The Boys, I decided to watch something episodic.  Decided on Deep Space 9.  I’ve never watched it, except the occasional episode back when it was airing live.  And, because why the hell not, I’m going to discuss every episode as I watch it.

All I really know about is that there’s a dude that can shapeshift, Principal Snyder is my fav, and Gul Dukat did nothing wrong.  I don’t know who Gul Dukat is, but I’m quite certain his actions were all above reproach.

So lets get to it.  The pilot two parter, “Emissary.”

Gonna be frank: if I were watching this episode live, I probably wouldn’t bother tuning in for the next one.  I dug it at the beginning.  Tying Sisco’s history in with Locutus was clever.  I’m pretty sick of the Borg, so hopefully they aren’t a recurring thing in this show, but its still a neat bit of world building.  It also fun that they took such a universally loved character (Captain Picard) and made the protagonist of the spinoff show hate him.  

Their meeting sort of confused me, though.  Picard was definitely taking the position of a superior officer, but wouldn’t they both be Captains?  Picard is arguably more respected than Sisco, but hat doesn’t extend to actual rank.

They introduced all the support characters well.  I guess Odo is the dude that can shape shift.  Kira is awesome, I look forward to learning more about her.  As head of Security, I’m a little concerned she’ll get Yar’ed, but until then I’ll just watch her kick ass.  I meet Gul Dukat, and predictably he does nothing wrong.

But then they get to the actual plot, and things sort of fall apart.  So Sisco needs to find a bunch of magical balls in order to get the support of the Bajoran church?  Am I watching Star Trek or Dragon Ball Z? (I assume they hunt down balls in that show, I don’t do the anime thing)  That’s super weird, and I’m not jiggy with it.  They discover a worm hole, and then discover people living in the worm hole.  I enjoyed the bits inside the worm hole.  Sisco interacting with the worm hole people was well done.

By the way, that guy is always dialed to 11.  Was he a stage actor?  Dude can command a room.

Where it fell apart for me was after the worm hole.  So Gul Dukat goes into the worm hole, which closes for some reason and sets up the tension between DS9 and the Cardassians.  But then the worm hole opens, and out comes Sisco with Gul Dukat’s ship in tow.  Did I miss a scene?  Where did that come from?  The interaction with the worm hole people ended pretty abruptly as it was, then they just forgot to show whatever was going on with the cardassian ship all together.  I’d call it Deus Ex Machina, but I think the worm hole people are supposed to legit be gods so I’m not sure if that’s a little too on the nose.

So yeah, between the rushed climax, and the weird McGuffin hunt they’ve set up, so far I’m not committed.  I really hope the first season isn’t all about hunting down magic balls.