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disneyplusfan · 4 years ago

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Revisiting our first viewing of The Mandalorian S01E01

A look back at our reactions to Season 1 episodes as the new season of The Mandalorian begins.

November 24, 2019

The Mandalorian: Chapter 1 recap by K (includes detailed spoilers)

A Mandalorian bounty hunter tracks a target for a well-paying client.

Directed by Dave Filoni

Written by Jon Favreau

Music by Ludwig Gӧransson

Airdate: Nov 12, 2019

As I write this, I have watched the first three episodes of The Mandalorian three times now. I’m hooked. I did not expect to be. I expected to like it well enough — but not to love it.

I’m a Star Wars fan for *cough* many years, since childhood. Adore the original trilogy, intrigued yet annoyed by the prequels, less than wow’ed by the final trilogy. I like Rogue One. I also liked Solo, although I get that I’m one of maybe three people in that camp. I have not watched Clone Wars. So this is my frame of reference.

Boba Fett is perhaps my favorite character. He is one of the best characters in the franchise, and I will die on that hill. You know next to nothing about him, and that adds to his mystique. I read Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Tales of Jabba’s Palace back in the day, and “Last Man Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett” and his showdown with Han Solo will always be the quintessential Boba Fett/Mandalorian story for me, canon or not. I was enraged when they changed his voice in the original trilogy to Jango’s (like he couldn’t just be disguising his voice??).

For me, Boba Fett is the original Mandalorian against whom all others will be measured. I have spoken.

All this to say, my standards were high. My expectations for The Mandalorian in particular would have been even higher, if I wasn’t somewhat disappointed by the final trilogy of films. And this was the first live action Star Wars television series, so it’s uncharted territory.

I also managed not to be spoiled at all for this show going in, which was how I like it. Everything came to me fresh as I watched.

From the establishing shot, the cinematography is like the original series movies. Check. You feel immediately immersed in the Star Wars universe. Check. It’s a snowy ice world, like Hoth but greyer and flatter in terrain.

The titular Mandalorian, who is all but certainly not Boba Fett, as he looks a bit different in his armor (and the show is set 5 years or so after Return of the Jedi, which you don’t know yet in the show itself but meaning Boba Fett should be dead by now, or at least dying in the Sarlacc’s belly), looks good. Same imposing figure, same mysterious-yet-badass immediate impression in his imposing armor and weaponry. Can he pull it off? I mean that for the actor as much as the character. I know nothing about which actor is playing him (Pedro Pascal, from Game of Thrones, I learn later). I’ve remained completely unspoiled.

He’s holding a tracking device. So, also a bounty hunter. Check.

He’s heading for an establishment, a darkened bar, or saloon, or cantina. Inwardly I eyeroll a little. Another cantina?

From inside the bar we see the round spiral blast door opens from the middle outward and the Mandalorian is darkly silhouetted against the icy white exterior landscape.

Nice, iconic character-establishing shot. I am interested.

Simultaneously, the music starts. A soft, repetitive, lulling theme of eight wind notes vaguely Native American in tone that we will come to know quite well. For now, it adds a touch of mystery and suspense. The lulling, almost hypnotic aspect of the music gives the sense this is all just routine, and the Mandalorian’s short, almost imperceptible shake of the head as an insult is hurled at him seems to add to this effect.

Two patrons of the bar, a couple of aliens, have been roughing up a meek, chubby merman guy, some kind of aquatic creature. He’s a new species so that’s interesting. They are bullies, who threatened to cut off his glands, so the violent type, and it feels like Mos Eisley or worse. Inwardly I eyeroll again because we’ve seen this before in the original Star Wars film, A New Hope. Don’t they have any new ideas?

The Star Wars universe has at least one entire galaxy to play with. Yes, establish place as the Star Wars universe with familiar things. But within that we don’t need to keep seeing so many of the same things we have seen before. Give us some easter eggs because we’re fans, but give us new things to love, too. It’s a balance, and I personally want more new than repeat. One of my main gripes with the final trilogy is that it’s too much of the same, just with new characters who aren’t fleshed out and developed enough for me to care about them. But that’s another review.

So it’s a cantina, and they want Star Wars fans who are perhaps not as well versed as me (like say, my sister) to be oriented. Fine, I’ll be patient. I don’t doubt a bounty hunter will frequently find himself in such places.

All the patrons’ eyes are on the Mandalorian as he enters and stands at the bar counter. If you haven’t started to feel vaguely Western elements yet, they start to come now. He’s got his back to the rest of the bar, waiting. Almost baiting. The bullies immediately shift focus leaving the merman alone to go pick on him instead. It’s a mistake and everyone knows it. But they must test our hero. And I too, as if just another patron at this cantina, want to see them test him. I’m curious.

The loud one calls him “Mando!” and we have something of a name to call him for now. But it might be an insult and I’m not quite sure yet.

They seem interested in his armor — Beskar Steel — and this is something I personally have not heard of before. I’m interested.

A bit of Mandalorian taunting and a quick fight later, one of the bullies who tried to escape the bar is pulled into the blast door entryway as the Mandalorian’s grappling hook yanks him halfway back inside, and closes it, severing him in half. I let out a bitter laugh. It wouldn’t be Star Wars without some bully losing a body part in a bar fight, right? Check. And the Mandalorian proved himself badass, so far.

He goes over to the merman, who first just tries to thank him, then bribe him with credits and a drink. The stoic, imposing Mandalorian simply places a disc on the table in front of him, and immediately a holographic image pops up showing his face and name in Basic.

“Is that a bounty puck?” the merman asks. A device that’s new to me, perhaps not to others. Further interested. The weak man tries bargaining some more.

The Mandalorian brings a hand to his blaster and speaks for the first time.

“I can bring you in hot, or I can bring you in cold.”

Cut to opening title credits.

Perfect first line.

The voice itself doesn’t immediately wow me. It’s not as grizzled as Fett’s, it’s younger and somehow... unseasoned? I’m not sure. But it’s not Jango’s voice, so I’m willing to accept it. And again I think, why couldn’t Boba Fett have kept his original Jeremy Bulloch voice?

Title credits. Nice font. The drum beat theme music that also sounds vaguely Western. I like it.

Then we are back outside on the ice world, walking back up the path where we first saw the Mandalorian. He’s got the merman in handcuffs.

“I need passage, to the yards.”

An Ortollan, a species from the original series, plays a little flute and a land speeder comes up piloted by a droid.

“No droids.”

I find it interesting that our Mandalorian would prefer a living creature to a machine as a programmed droid should be more reliable but perhaps machines can be remote controlled, or else there’s a story there that I really want to hear.

The Ortolan plays his flute again and the next speeder comes up, a red one. It's considerably more broken down than the previous one, driven by an older guy in a hooded coat. “Where to?”

They pull up to a silver-colored ship of some kind, bigger than the Slave IV I think. Kind of clunky, really, more like a C-130 cargo transport than an F-16 fighter jet — not what you’d expect to be necessary for a bounty hunter to make quick getaways. Merman agrees with me.

“You’re kidding me, right? I’ll hire us a Livery Cruiser. I’ll pay for it. Just trying to make it pleasant.”

The speeder pilot meanwhile is scanning the horizon anxiously and demands payment. The Mando pays him. “I’d stay off the ice if I were you.” Something’s gonna attack, and probably from beneath the ice. Can’t wait.

Merman is worried and watches the speeder depart into the distance as the Mando readies the ship.

Something launches up from under the ice and consumes the speeder, and a snakelike body with dragon-like spinal plates disappears beneath it again. Merman freaks out and demands they hurry as the ice cracks in their direction.

The Mando yanks him out of the way just in time for a giant walrus-tusked creature with a long body launches out next to the ship. It catches part of the ship’s landing gear in its mouth as they try to take off and there’s a familiar sound effect like the Falcon losing power.

The Mandalorian grabs his tuning-fork weapon from outside the cabin doors (where it stays when it’s not on his back) and heads out to fight. The creature has one of the landing gear legs in its mouth as the music swells very tribal. One zap from the tuning fork weapon and the creature is electrified, immediately lets go, and they escape.

The ship is more impressive in air than on the ground as two enormous jets fire. It seems heavy though. I don’t see any weapons except two forward cannons of some kind, but of course there is probably ample hidden weaponry. Can’t wait.

Once in space the merman starts bargaining and conversing but the Mandalorian is silent, having none of it.

“I like your ship,” the merman says, now trying to butter him up. “She’s classic. Razor Crest, am I right? Pre-Empire?”

So it’s an older ship. The cockpit, entryway and ramp, halls and hull are quite wide and roomy. It makes sense that a bounty hunter needs room to carry cargo. I suppose some quarry may be quite large depending on species. I’d like to see him have to capture something large. I wonder if he has a larger ship because he’s young, and can’t yet afford something speedier. Or perhaps he loves it, despite being old and possibly rickety, like Han loved the Falcon. It doesn’t look like it’s been through the wars, though, so that’s a mystery. Can’t wait to learn more about the ship.

Merman goes below on the pretense of having to use the evacuation tube. There’s some funny toilet humor here. There’s no restroom, the evac tube is in the middle of the floor against a wall--kind of like a New York City basement apartment I viewed once. To the right of the evac tube is a wall with what looks like a palette inside -- I guess that’s where the Mandalorian sleeps? It’s hard to tell.

Merman keeps exploring as he talks. Finds a cache of weapons but surprisingly just closes it again. And then he finds the other bounties.

This actually pissed me off on first viewing. The Mandalorian has several other quarry below deck--all encased in carbonite. I did a massive eyeroll here. Boba Fett (really, Vader) encased Han in carbonite as a matter of convenience at the location they were at in Cloud City. It was a test to see if he could transport Luke that way to the Emperor--IF he survived. But it’s NOT like it was the preferred mode of choice for bounty hunters to transport their quarry. So why would this Mandalorian just happen to have not just bounties in carbon freeze on his ship but has a carbon freezing /chamber/ on the ship, as he shoves the merman into it.

This really annoyed me until a friend suggested maybe the other hunters heard about Fett and Han at Jabba’s Palace and it became a thing once they knew it wouldn’t kill the bounty. After some thought I have accepted this idea, even though it seems quick if this is only set 5 years after Jedi. Still, the other Mandalorians would have been among the first to know, and it’s a more practical mode of transport allowing low risk of escape and not having to address your quarry’s various biological needs. Also easily stackable while protecting them. So okay, I’ve come to accept it.

Mando arrives at a spaceport in a semi-large desert city, that actually looks a lot like Tatooine--both what we’ve seen from the original trilogy and the prequels. They never actually state where we are at any of these locations, but this is my theory. There’s a droid like Red, there are people walking around dressed like Tatooine inhabitants. More evidence comes later in the series.

He enters another drinking establishment that seems to be the meeting place for his contact. The feel is very much like the bar where Han shot Greedo, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even the same one years later. Aliens of all types, again, watching him closely.

He meets his contact and returns the fobs. Payment is arranged. The Mandalorian says the Empire is gone, and he accepts Calamari flan at half than Imperial credits at full payment.

The question of the next job comes up. Guild rates are high. The Mando wants the highest. 5,000 doesn’t cover fuel these days.

The contact says “Well, there is one job.” No puck. Face to face, direct commission. Pays well. “Underworld?” No codes. The Mandalorian accepts the chip.

More of the city. Goes to a back-alley establishment. Arrives at a door with a TT-8L/Y7 gatekeeper droid, like at Jabba’s Palace. Inside is a walking garbage-can droid like in the Jawa’s ship. I take this as more evidence we are on Tatooine, though of course these items could be sold throughout the galaxy.

Inside there are four Stormtroopers. An older man with an Imperial pendant who is clearly the leader and client. “Greef Carga said you were coming.” So that’s the Mando’s contact back at the bar. “He said you were the best in the parsec.” Haha, at least we are using parsec correctly now.

A side door opens, which startles the Mandalorian and he draws his tuning fork weapon (a modified amban phase-pulse blaster rifle). The four Stormtroopers draw also. A younger man with glasses comes in, shielding his face, apologizing profusely. The client introduces him as Doctor Pershing. A scientist. The Mandalorian still has weapons drawn in both hands, facing off with the Stormtroopers. “We have you four to one.” “I like those odds,” he responds. “He also said you were expensive. Very expensive.”

All calms down and the client invites him to sit. He unfolds a block of beskar steel as down payment. He has more upon delivery of the asset -- alive. Proof of termination is also acceptable for a lower fee. The Doctor protests.

No puck. Tracking fob, age, and last known positional data only. The quarry is 50 years old.

“It is good to return the beskar back to the Mandalorians. It is good to restore the natural order of things after so much disarray, don’t you agree?”

The Mandalorian pauses here and almost imperceptibly again cocks his head. He touched a nerve. Amazing how an actor can still convey so much behind a helmet. I still don’t know this actor but he’s pulling it off.

More of the city. Whatever that laughing thing was at Jabba’s feet, two of his species are roasting on a spit. One more is in a cage. (It’s a Kowakian monkey-lizard like Salacious Crumb. I had to look that up.)

The Mandalorian ducks in behind a curtain. Down some steps. Strings here that sound very Star Wars. A long hall with other Mandalorians about. Some have the helmet antenna like Fett. Some are small, running. Children.

At the end of the hall over the archway is a Mandalorian skull emblem. Within is a person working at a forge, hammering metal and heating it over a ring of open gas flames like Bunsen burners. The blacksmith, which IMDB tells me is Armorer, comes forward and sits down with our Mandalorian. There is fur around the collar, the helmet is different, golden with two small horns, and looks more like a gladiator helmet. From the way she moves, and especially once she speaks, this is a woman. I am intrigued, since I have not seen a female Mandalorian before. They nod respectfully to one another. The Mando produces his payment: the Calamari flan--and then, the bar of Beskar steel, marked with an Imperial insignia at one corner. She is visibly surprised and impressed.

“This was gathered in the Great Purge. It is good it is back with the tribe. A pauldron is in order. Has your signet been revealed?”

“Not yet.”

“Soon.”

A pause here to discuss armor. Any show about Mandalorians was going to have certain elements. Ships, weapons, lore, armor.

Mandalorian armor is famous in the Star Wars universe. Beskar steel, the material it is made of, is strong, and can withstand almost anything, yet very light, rather like mithril in the Lord of the Rings universe. It would seem the Great Purge by the Empire included not just Jedi but Mandalorians, and their armor was melted into bars, as currency or for transport. (This is speculation on my part.) And that a goal of the Mandalorians is to reclaim as much beskar as possible, and reforge it back into Mandalorian armor.

The blacksmith does just this and makes him a pauldron, or shoulder cover, from the bar of beskar. She tells him this is extremely generous and the excess will sponsor many foundlings.

“That’s good,” he responds. “I was once a foundling.”

“I know.”

A bit more of our hero’s background.

Her forge is a combination of computerized part designs and heavy iron machinery, like a 3-D printer on steroids. And as it bangs out the new pauldron each loud clang of metal on metal shows us a brief flashback of our Mandalorian’s memories. A battle with fire and sparks all around. A woman in dark red robe carrying a boy also in dark red robe. He is terrified. Presumably this is our hero. She is carrying him, he’s maybe 8-10 years old. A man is with her, her husband? People getting shot--massacred--all around them as they run. Explosions. She opens an underground container of some sort, deposits the boy. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. He reaches for her as the doors close. And then the pauldron is completed; the flashbacks stop.

Having viewed 3 episodes already, this becomes a pattern and I love this device. You get a little more of his backstory with each piece of armor, with each clang of the forge. It’s perfect. It makes sense that in these moments as he waits in this safe place, he might slip into memories. Or perhaps they come unbidden at this time for some reason. There’s also a nice theme of memories being buried beneath his armor, along with his emotions. And only when there’s a chink in the armor, does it show through.

The pauldron goes on, shiny and new, and for the first time I notice the wipes. A center point wipe expanding outward, with fuzzy borders, and so very Star Wars that it makes you smile.

He heads to another planet that looks from space like Tatooine. If we weren’t on Tatooine before, we might be now. We are at least in the vicinity. It’s a desert planet with jagged sandstone cliffs all around. He lands his shiny ship, and gets out with the fob. He looks through his turning-fork weapon’s scope, and spots two distant creatures I can only describe as land grouper with legs and long tails. Suddenly he is attacked by one, sinking its teeth into his arm before he can get a shot off, and then a second, and though he fights with flamethrower and even fists, it looks like we will lose our hero until someone shoots them with taser darts.

It appears our hero is not wounded, but his arm pieces are damaged.

A small man with a piglike face and a kind, wise voice and goggles on his head. An ugnaught. Remember them from the original trilogy? IMDB tells me his name is Kuill, although this is never actually said in the episode, so I will refer to him as the ugnaught.

I suspect anonymity is a running theme in this show, as part of the Western genre. So far we’ve heard almost no character names (which makes writing reviews a little difficult). I’m wondering if there’s any significance to the ones we do know, vs. the ones we don’t.

“You are a bounty hunter. I will help you. I have spoken.” This last part is his trademark line, as we’ll see. I love it.

We go to what looks like a wind or moisture farm. There is, from what I can see, only one sun.

The ugnaught tells the Mandalorian that others have come looking and died. He will show him the way for half of the blurg they caught. Mando will have to learn how to ride them to pass to the compound.

On the first few attempts the blurg throws him. Apparently it’s a female; the males are all eaten during mating. (Thanks for that tidbit, Kuiil.) He gets thrown again and loses patience, asking for a speeder.

The ugnaught challenges him.

“You are a Mandalorian. Your ancestors rode the great mythosaur. Surely you can ride this young blurg.”

Our hero is challenged; the words touched him. He approaches the blurg like a wild horse that needs breaking in, and the Western theme is back, even in the music. Eventually he succeeds, a triumphant moment that impresses the ugnaught, and they’re off across the landscape full of ravines that only the blurg can jump, apparently. The theme music swells until they arrive at a cliff where they can spy on the encampment. This is where the bounty hunter’s quarry is.

Mando tries to pay him off. Ugnaught reveals his motive: it’s been an endless stream of warriors trying to get this quarry, breaking the peace. He’s read the stories about Mandalorians and believes ours can make quick work of it and bring peace back to his land.

Our boy does some recon with a hand telescope and the place is swarming. Then he spots a bounty droid, and groans. The droid is just walking right in, and demands the asset be produced.

The bounty droid looks like IG-88 from The Empire Strikes Back and again, for a moment, I almost eye rolled because really, can’t we see something new? All bounty droids look the same? But whereas IG-88 just stood there, this one moves, and the way he moves is COOL. Although humanoid in appearance like 3PO (head, two arms, two legs), unlike 3PO he appears to operate around a central pole or spine, allowing his parts to rotate 360 degrees. This includes his head, his eyes, his arms and therefore weapons, and his waist/hips. It gives him an amazing advantage as he can just keep spinning and shooting. The way he steps over a body is awesome. He’s also really skinny and thus hard to hit. Whole new respect for the IG series.

This IG unit is also funny, and his repartee with our Mandalorian is instant comedic chemistry. There’s a fantastic shootout, where they team up, and as they are outnumbered, the bounty droid seeing no way out, keeps trying to self-destruct. “Do not self destruct!” our Mando keeps shouting at him, and after a very badass moment with an [ion machine gun], by the end they win, and everyone in the yard lies dead. Mando helps him up, saying “You’re not so bad for a droid,” and the droid replies likewise. I saw a sidekick in the making. They shoot their way inside, kill a few more people until there’s no one left, and determine the quarry is just before them in the corner.

Except there is no one there, just a white ball looking thing with a net over it that the fobs indicate is the target.

They remove the net, and open the ball, which is really more egg-shaped.

And then it opens, it looks more like a bassinet with a blanket inside.

“Wait--” says Mando. “They said 50 years old.”

“Species age differently,” replies the IG unit. And we get our first glimpse over the top of the blanket as he says “Perhaps it could live many centuries. Sadly, we’ll never know.” And as he’s speaking, a little head peeks over the blanket.

Oh. My. God. And in this one moment, I am glued to this show forever.

It’s a baby Yoda.

Except it isn’t Yoda, because Yoda’s dead. But we don’t know Yoda’s species name, and we don’t know the baby’s given name, so we will call it what the internet has dubbed it in the meantime: Baby Yoda.

And this moment, above all, is the biggest reason I am so glad I wasn’t spoiled.

Baby Yoda is the most adorable, most precious, most endearing thing you have ever seen. And in a franchise that has at times been criticized for its more saccharine “cute” creatures that appeal to young children (Ewoks, anyone?), this is one we can all get behind.

Baby Yoda is CUTE. <3

Baby Yoda is everything.

Remember my aversion to anything we’ve seen already? I NO LONGER CARE. Looking at those huge brown eyes and long floppy ears, this doesn’t even cross my mind.

I would give my life for Baby Yoda. I know this all in one second.

And the IG unit is about to kill it.

Apparently our Mando feels something similar.

“Wait,” he says, and reaching out he lowers the IG unit’s weapon. “We’ll bring it in alive.”

“The commission was quite specific. The asset was to be terminated.” The IG unit raises his blaster again, aimed squarely at the crib.

The camera closes in on the Mandalorian’s helmet, fixed on the bassinet, and there is a red blaster flash from his right, reflected in the helmet. The Mando’s head never moves.

But the IG unit falls to the floor, shot in the head. Sizzling. He’s toast.

Our guy shot him without even looking. He’s fixated on Baby Yoda, as we all are. He puts his own blaster away, and tilts his head.

The camera cuts to a gorgeous profile, backlit from a doorway. The Mandalorian stands before the crib, which is now floating in the air at waist height. He raises a finger towards the crib, as a tiny finger comes up from inside it. They don’t quite meet.

End credits.

End credits for this show are a series of beautiful concept drawings and if you know Star Wars at all, these are some stunning art. The whole theme also plays over the end credits and it is hauntingly beautiful. Ludwig Gӧransson’s score is perfect.

Thoughts.

Themes: Space western. Anonymity. (Even the ship still has no name, just a model.) Foundlings. Characters that seem to have no family, but instead bond in other social ways (covert/religion, bounty hunter guild/profession). Remnants. Loss.

I LOVE the concept art at the end. Fans love this concept art, and I have a couple of books of it myself. Nice way to incorporate it into the series. You can see how the original concept and final product differ (very little, in most cases) and a few intriguing pieces that were either filmed but cut from the final edit or never filmed. I love how they add the 3-D effect to some of the drawings, and I still don’t know how Hollywood achieves that.

Concept art round-up:

Mando and Baby Yoda’s ET moment

Some intriguing glow-dice game between two Mandalorians? I need to know more about this.

Mando firing a blaster

Mando entering a cantina

Mando and Kuiil on Blurrback

Mando and IG-11 taking cover during battle

Mando and Kuiil entering Kuiil’s home

Mando walking on the icescape with his back facing the camera

Mando battling the ice creature while hanging out of the Razor Crest

Mando and IG-11 standing shoulder to shoulder

Mando on Blurrgback

Taika Waititi is amazing as the IG unit bounty droid. Never would have guessed it was him.

Werner Herzog is perfect as The Client, I love his voice, and the article/video about him crying over Baby Yoda.

This show is going to get me writing fanfic again, dammit.

*****

The Mandalorian: Chapter 1 recap by K (includes detailed spoilers)

A Mandalorian bounty hunter tracks a target for a well-paying client.

Directed by Dave Filoni

Written by Jon Favreau

Music by Ludwig Gӧransson Airdate: Nov 12, 2019

Run Time: 40m

Greef Karga (Carl Weathers)

The Client (Werner Herzog)

Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi)

Kuiil (Nick Nolte, voice)

IG-11 (Taika Waititi, voice; Rio Hackford, performance artist)

Mythrol (Horatio Sanz)

Alpha Trawler (Tait Fletcher)

Beta Trawler (Ryan Watson)

Quarren Trawler (Dmitrious Bistrevsky)

Armorer (Emily Swallow)

#the mandalorian #the mandalorion season 1 recap #disneyplusfan #tha mandalorion s01e01 #star wars

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dlamp-dictator · 5 years ago

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A Bittersweet Prequel (Akame ga Kill Zero)

Akame ga Kill! Zero is the prequel to Akame ga Kill!, a shounen manga based around a corrupt medieval empire and the group of revolutionary assassins attempting to take the kingdom down from the inside known as Night Raid. This specific spinoff manga focuses on the female lead Akame and her past as an assassin for the Empire. You get to see her interact with her old team, the Elite 7, her earlier missions and life as an Empire Assassin, and how she ended up getting her iconic Murasame blade before betraying the Empire. Overall, I liked this manga a lot, and unlike most things I like I have very few asterisks to put in front of that statement. This is an honest-to-God good manga from start to finish.

But I still have a few asterisks to lay out. Nothing that usually scares people away from things I like. This isn’t Senran Kagura, Rumble Rose, Wanna be the Strongest in the World, or... honestly, half the manga in my collection. No, just a few gripes and annoyances you might have when reading the manga I think knowing in advance would ease the pain a little.

Ultimately, this manga has three big issues for me.

Oh, and I’m using a “read more” for once to see how that goes.

Anyway, like I said, three main issues:

It’s a Seinen

This isn’t the criticism you might be thinking. My issue with this manga is that it’s pushing for a Seinen rating rather than the fact that it simply is one. The original Akame ga Kill was a darker shounen aimed at an older teenage crowd. It had its fair share of dark moments, gore, and violence, and while a lot of it felt like it was done for edge or shock value after about volume 9 or 10, it wasn’t going too far with it in terms of content, at least for my taste. This was a manga about killers, murderers, and assassins at the end of the day, so killings, murders, and assassinations happened. A lot.

But Zero… went further.

Let me put it this way, if I had to give the original Akame ga Kill manga a rating I’d say it’d be rated T, maybe even a 16+ as it had some rather gruesome depictions of blood, gore, general violence, and some light sexual themes. Zero has all of that plus a lot more T&A, and namely uncensored T&A.

Now I’m no prude, seeing anime titties isn’t exactly going to make me go up in arms about the manga. However, this has more to do with demographics and author intent. Like I said, the original Akame ga Kill had a lot of dark moments, but most sexual aspects of it was typical shounen wackiness. Sneaking into the girl’s bath, boob gags, the occasion girl in skimpy clothing, things like that. Zero has all that more, and in much darker showing. At least three characters nearly getting sexually assault, there are several sex scenes both implied and nearly shown, a lot of naked girls walking about at points, and general Seinen wackiness happening.

I wouldn’t say these are bad things, but... they make me raise my eyebrows somewhat. Again, the original had its dark moments, and losing your chastity unwilling was definitely one of them. Hell, one mission of Tatsumi’s was in a brothel. However… that was originally a manga aimed at an older teenage crowd, around 15-18 if I had to take a guess, and the prequel, which was ran alongside the original for a time, was a Seinen aimed at a young adult crowd of 18-20+. This is a somewhat concerning jump in ratings and target audience. I understand the original demographic that’d be curious would have aged to this point, but... it feels like more of a forced decision to add it rather than trying to keep up with the demographic of longtime fans. Again, nothing bad, but curious.

I’ll also add that there’s a different artist tackling this spinoff, a Kei Toru instead of the original’s Tetsuya Tashiro, so this might be a matter of artist preference than the writer’s intent. Still, you take out all the T&A and you’d get a decent manga all the same, so I can’t help but feel the Seinen elements were tacked on to fanservice rather than to show darker elements. It’s not Tsugumomo levels of forced Seinen elements, thank Christ, but it feels tacked on regardless.

But anyway, the second major issue.

The Shingu

The Shingu are basically Teigu that exist to give Akame and the Elite 7 cool weapons without completely retconning the world-building of the original Akame ga Kill. Lore-wise the Shingu are basically knockoff Teigu, an attempt to recreate the great weapons of old but were ultimately inferior compared to the the genuine products. They were still handy and powerful all the same, and are used by trusted and capable fighters within the Empire all the same. However, their existence showed the flaws in trying to do specific world-building, at least if you’re familiar with writing.

To go a little off-topic for a bit, something I often say on my RP blog and when discussing general writing is to never get too specific with your world-building. The more you add, the more you have to adhere to as you write, lest you’re called out on it when retcons happen. And when Akame ga Kill already stated only 48 Teigu exist, but only half of them are even around it destroys any potential to have addition cool weapons in a sequel or prequel without some maneuvering around the lore. It can be done, but it does more to hamstring you in the end, and savvier audience members will notice it.

The Shingu do this to a certain degree. They don’t break the world-building, as the backstory of the Teigu are still intact, but for a savvier reader its pretty clear the Shingu were... unintended. By the logic of Zero, there should be several soldiers, officers, and generals with the weaker,but more numerous Shingu to compensate for the lack of Teigu and still having an edge in battle during the coming revolution. The Shingu honestly are just slightly weaker than a Teigu according to the lore, so it’s no big comparison really unless we’re talking Esdeath-levels of powerful. To shoehorn them in just to give Akame and her friends interesting weapons just... feels annoying to me.

But again, that’s ultimately a small nitpick. They don’t break anything, just lead to a lot of unintended consequences if you think on it too hard like I do.

But onto my last big issue, and it’s not really an issue, but an inevitability that caused the first too issues, which is...

This is a Prequel

I don’t know if there’s an actual term for this, so I’m going to call this the Fate/Zero Effect, in which the prequel of a series is far more superior to the original in terms of writing and is only neutered by the on-rails conclusion that leads to the beginning of the original series. I only call this an issue because there’s so much I like about this manga that the original kind of... feels weaker by comparison. But to talk about how that is I’ll have to talk about all the good things about this manga first. To start with:

Akame’s Characterization was Great

Akame was a very believable character in this series, someone working for her father-figure teacher as an assassin that honestly believes she’s improving her messed up country from within instead of advancing the agendas of the wealthy and powerful. However, she’s sharp enough to realize that people aren’t getting better no matter how many revolutionaries her team kills. She questions it, and her father’s dodgy, almost threatening nature about her doubts only pushes her further to leaving. Her slowly questioning the horrors and cruelty of the world and being the only one in her team to really question her father’s goal is a nice touch.

Another nice touch is that you really do buy that she’s the weakest of the Elite 7. She’s strong, of course, but compared to the rest of her team she’s lacking in some department. She doesn’t have the commanding presence of Najasho, the strategic mind of Green, the absurd strength of Guy, the Levelheadedness and charisma of Cornelia, the instincts and quick-thinking of Pony, or the loyalty and cleverness of Tsukushi. She’s just… Akame, the assassin that’s a decent swordsman and likes meat.

I’ll admit the only thing that felt forced was Merraid pushing her further to see the Empire’s cruelty while captured by her, as Akame was already questioning it to begin with, but that’s just a minor nitpick. All in all, I did enjoy seeing this form of Akame, especially seeing her relationship with Kurome while it was still on good terms. Seeing the sisters actually bond and care for each other really helped show how much Akame cares for her, and how she thought killing her was the best choice in the end if Kurome was too stubborn or brainwashed to leave the Empire. And that’s just the main character, I have to give my respects to the side cast as well. That being said...

The Side Cast

The Elite Seven was a nice addition. They’re about as kooky as Night Raid but keeping them all around the same age was probably for the best. Not to say Night Raid was bad, but having everyone being teenagers following one main adult boss just creates better cohesion. Night Raid was mostly teens too, but the Elite 7 just feel a lot more like friends. I can’t really describe it. Maybe because they were already a unit by the time the series started, maybe because the writer got a lot better at writing banter, I really couldn’t say. They’re all likeable in their own way, and all great fighters when the chips are down. Next to Akame, Pony was my favorite of the group. Both design and personality wise they’re all unique. The writer has a good track record of writing good banter and synergy with a ragtag group. Between Night Raid, the Jaegers, the Elite Seven, and even Hinowa’s regiment in Hinowa ga Crush, they’re very good at making likable characters… right before killing them off.

And that’s the issue with this being a prequel, we know most of the Elite Seven were slated to die. With the two exceptions of Pony and Najasho, which was an honest surprise for me, I think it was fair to say most everyone in the cast were slated for the chopping block due to the nature of the prequel to Akame ga Kill. They can only be characterized so much before the inevitable happens. Fate/Zero had this effect too, as we knew Kotomine and Kiritsugu would at least survive the war, but everyone else was... well, fodder, no matter how charismatic they were. I know this is done to create tension and a bit of bittersweet longing for the what-if, but... I don’t know, I can’t help but be a little annoyed by it.

There’s on more thing I want to talk about before ending this essay, so I’ll talk about...

Art and Story

Now, Fate/Zero had a new writer do its story and a new studio do the animation, but in Akame ga Kill Zero’s case we’ve got the same writer and a different artist. As far as the writing goes it’s a lot better in Zero. It’s still got a tinge of silliness mixed in with the serious, but it’s a lot better paced in more delivery and frequency. Merraid being a useless lesbian at times didn’t completely take over her character or detract from it. The general silly moments with the Elite Seven were almost always during a slow period that could afford a gag here or there to punch out the slow pace. Everything felt a lot more cohesive… which makes the chronological series feel a little weak by comparison. Again, much like Fate/Zero, going back and comparing the original Fate/Stay Night anime to the more mature Fate/Zero really feels like night and day in terms of the writing. I’m actually rewatching the original Stay Night this month and next and while I’ll give a full piece on my opinion next month I’ll at least say while it holds up surprisingly well for a mid-2000s anime, it definitely is dated in a lot of ways.

In the same way, the original Akame ga Kill feels a bit dated as well, a lot the jokes feel more distracting than funny, a lot of the characters feel a little less realized and the plot itself feels a lot more rushed, especially at the climax. The powerscaling is also an issue, but that’s a whole other Rambling. Zero on the other, being a prequel, can only go so far in terms of plot escalation and powerscaling. With a permanent lock on those two things you can afford to tell a much smaller scale story without the worry of having to increase the action to a large degree because you, by design, can’t extend the powerscaling past around the beginning of the first story. Granted there are exceptions. To go back to Fate, Stay Night was a war fought by a majority of high school students and people not too attune to magic with only 3-ish people of actual competence out of the case of 10+, but Akame ga Kill Zero, realistically, can’t do anything bigger than using Muramase in a flashy way, making a lot of the fights more tactical. My favorite part of this series was that Akame had Kiriichimonji, a Shingu whose wounds would never heal. This made Akame’s fights a lot more tactically, strategically wounding enemies to whittle them down or give Akame an opening in the future rather than just a pure one-cut kill.

Art-wise… I’m not much for art critique, but I did prefer the original artist to the one for Akame ga Kill Zero. I couldn’t explain why, but something about the lines just feels… too light. Not bad, but I myself have a preference for dark, thick, and even sketchy lines, and something about this new artist feels a little too clean at times for something as potential dark as Akame ga Kill. Again, not bad, but not my preference either. I do like a lot of the designs like Poney and Merraid, but that’s really it.

Conclusion

Overall, my nitpicks aside, I enjoyed reading this manga a lot. I think I’ll pick it up again next time in the mood for a decent action manga. I’m slowly catching up to Hinowa ga Crush and I’ve got mostly positive feelings about it, so I know the writer still has some gas in the tank in terms of their writer juices and I can’t wait to see more of the world he’s creating.

#your dictator is speaking #akame ga kill

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takerfoxx · 6 years ago

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Gonna knock off some big ones here! The fav(s) of the day are...

BOBA FETT!

Okay guys, let’s get this out straight out of the gate. I grew up as a major Star Wars fan. My dad is an old-school sci-fi nerd and it really rubbed off on me. Classic science fiction was our bread and butter growing up, and the Star Wars movies were no exception. We must’ve watched those suckers a gazillion times.

And the expanded universe? Oh, I was all over that shit! And I mean the old stuff! The Truce at Bakura, the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the Kyp Durron trilogy, both the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies (there were a lot of trilogies), Darksaber, Planet of Twilight, Shadows of the Empire, The Courtship of Princess Leia, Young Han Solo, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the Young Jedi Knight series, all of the Tales books, Galaxy of Fear, even less well regarded stuff like The Crystal Star. All that and more filled my bookshelves.

But like many young Star Wars fans, my boy was the guy that got like four lines of dialogue and quickly gets killed off in the first half of the third film.

It’s hard to really articulate what made Boba Fett so appealing. I think it’s part of the air of mystery around him. In Empire, he strides in with a totally badass design, is the guy to track down and capture the heroes, backtalks Darth Vader and gets away with it, and escapes with one of the main characters in tow. I guess that caused people to become intrigued by him and want to see what he would do in the last film. And sure enough, he shows up looking all cool and mysterious, flies into a direct confrontation with both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, seems to get the upper hand...and is summarily dispatched by a fluke accident.

Lame.

So I guess many who would become Star Wars writers were, like myself, let down by this, and sought to “correct” this by giving ol’ Boba his own mythos, complex history, cast of closely-related characters, and make it so that he escaped the damn worm and would go on to cross paths with the heroes in every obligatory “The one with Boba Fett!” entry in every long-running Star Wars book series ever.

And boy, did I eat it up!

The Bounty Hunter Wars! An entry in both Tales From the Bounty Hunters and Tales From Jabba’s Palace! Endless comics! The aforementioned obligatory Boba Fett books! All of this created a character that became almost revered by the fandom, who cast a shadow over the whole multi-verse. I bought the books, played with the toys, and even wrote a short little Boba Fett story in sixth grade. I mean, this guy was just cool.

Needless to say, I’m not the Star Wars fan I once was. I mean, the only one of these movies since RotJ that I’ve actually liked is also one of the least popular, so that’s a thing. Hell, I was debating putting up a Star Wars entry to begin with. But man, even if I’m not all that into Star Wars anymore, it can’t be denied that for a time it reigned supreme, and Boba Fett was, in my world, the king.

(Though lowkey, it was kind of hilarious watching writers try to reconcile the already established Boba Fett origin with the one created by the prequels after Attack of the Clones dropped)

He’s no good to me dead.

Also...

DARTH REVAN!

So I went from almost not doing a Star Wars entry to doing one with multiple characters. Yeah, go figure.

All right. So, Knights of the Old Republic is probably my last great foray into Star Wars before sort of slipping out of the fandom. It was recommended to me by a work friend, so I popped over to EB Games (remember them?), grabbed up a used copy, popped it into my X-Box, and...

I think I averaged about eight hours a day on those games. Each of them.

It was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had, a wholly new Star Wars story taking place centuries before the films (and yet somehow still having the same technology level) that features none of the classic characters, but still felt very much Star Wars, but also its own thing: a sprawling space adventure as you, the apprentice Jedi, joins up with a ragtag group of companions and travel the galaxy trying to thwart a rogue Sith Lord from finding some long lost superweapon. The worlds you visit! The characters you meet! The quests, the leveling, the force powers, the plot, everything was just so fresh and so cool!

And then you get to the twist, a twist that is now notorious for being one of the best twists in gaming history: finding out that you aren’t just some new Jedi rising up to stop a Sith Lord: you are actually DARTH MOTHERFUCKING REVAN, the Sith Lord that was the master of the current Sith Lord, long thought dead but had actually been captured, mind-wiped and reprogrammed by the Jedi! What do you do with this new information? Well, that’s up to you!

Needless to say, when this was revealed in the game, I started screaming, and screaming loudly. What a twist! What a game-changer!

Now granted, being the PC of an RPG means that Revan’s personality was decided by the player’s choices, so he didn’t get much of a canon personality of his own, but that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s the centerpoint of one of the coolest pieces of the Star Wars EU that there is, and that’s worth a lot in my opinion.

Also, Bastila was bae, just sayin’. Sort of a proto-Serana, if you ask me.

(note: yes, I know about his role in SWTOR and don’t care for it. No, I haven’t read the novels yet, but I do intend to)

Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.

And finally...

GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN!

The Heir to the Empire is the granddaddy of the OG Expanded Universe. I mean, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye technically came first, but no one remembers that. No, it was all about Timothy Zahn’s epic follow-up to the original Star Wars trilogy, which set the gold standard for the series for years to come and also introduced several of its most iconic characters. Mara Jade? She came from here. Talon Kardde? Also here.

And then you have the trilogy’s centerpiece, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

It’s sort of interesting how iconic Thrawn has become as a Star Wars villain, given how different he is from all of them. I mean, he’s not a Sith. Hell, he’s not force sensitive at all. He’s a military officer, in a series where they tend to be treated as expendable underlings. But through actually using his brain, studying his opponents’ strategies and cultures, making use of the resources available to him, and actually being fair to his subordinates, he’s gone on to almost rival Darth Vader in popularity in some circles. A brilliant tactician who managed to (mostly) overcome the Empire’s prejudice against non-humans through sheer efficiency, he came incredibly close to bringing the New Republic to its knees simply by outplaying them at every turn. His knack for figuring out his opponents’ thought process simply through studying their cultures’ works of art was inspired, and those who tried to outsmart him often came to regret it. What was more, he also was surprisingly honorable, having a strict moral code. He simply believed that the Empire was the best way to run things, and acted accordingly. Though don’t let that fool you into thinking that he wasn’t just as ruthless as anyone else in the Empire. He was just smarter than most about it.

While there was admittedly a lot of crap in the EU that Disney was wise to get rid of, losing characters like Thrawn was a major blow, which was why it was so awesome to see him return in the Rebels tv show. I literally have seen videos of grown men crying with joy just through watching his reveal trailer. And while I don’t have the time or means to watch Rebels for myself, I do want to give it a go sometime in the future, and Thrawn is a big part of that.

But it was so artistically done.

#star wars #knights of the old republic #heir to the empire #boba fett #darth revan #grand admiral thrawn #fav of the day

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samcarpnter · 6 years ago

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my endgame thoughts (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Alright so I saw Endgame last night and I have had time to process my feelings about it so be ready for my rant, and again this includes MAJOR ENDGAME SPOILERS

I first want to say that I did really like the movie. After all of the spoilers got loose and people who hadn’t even seen the movie were just slandering it nonstop, I was really scared that I was gonna hate the entire thing. That definitely wasn’t the case. I hate a few of the decisions the Russo brothers made but overall I thought the movie was really good. It’s not going to be my favorite marvel movie, nor do I think it’s the best one, but I think it did have an overall good ending to the Infinity Saga, even if some of the character’s endings weren’t what I liked.

C A R O L. Fuck the Russo brothers for teasing her so much just for her to be in five minutes of it. I will say though, when she was in it, she was the goddess we knew from her own movie and she KICKED ASS. I’m looking forward to seeing her lead the rest of the next chapter of the MCU. And I am really shocked that we actually got Carol in her iconic pixie cut, definitely didn’t think the MCU was gonna give that to us.

I am LIVID at the Russo brothers for saying “oh yeah we have a gay character in the film whoohoo!” AND IT WAS FUCKING JOE RUSSO’S STUPID FACE TALKING ABOUT GOING ON A DATE WITH A MAN. OOH I’m mad, because number one that is QUEERBAITING because we thought it meant Carol but no the Russos don’t want us to have nice things.

Thor. My god that was awful. I knew about his awful hair but I did not know about the beer belly and his weight gain. That pisses me off so goddamn much. It wasn’t necessary, it really fucking wasn’t. There are many other ways they could have depicted his depression without that. As a plus size person, I was disgusted because everyone in the theater was dying of laughter just at the sight of Thor almost anytime he came on screen. He was there just to be a lazy source of humor because people love fat jokes. Obviously, there really isn’t plus size representation in the MCU and I am perfectly fine with that because I mean these are superheroes and aliens and literal gods, it makes sense that they aren’t, and sure there was a fat joke every once in a while but even I find the occasional one funny. When it is pretty much the biggest source of comedy for the movie minus Scott, that crosses a line. It really felt like the only reason Thor was there was to supply constant fat jokes, and honestly that’s just lazy writing on the Russo brother’s parts not that I expected much more let’s be honest

Nat’s death … I mean if you’ve followed me for a while I don’t think it’s a secret that I don’t like Scar Jo and I don’t like MCU Nat because the writers have screwed her over time and time again and then on top of that, Scar Jo just doesn’t … do anything ?? Like I do not see the appeal to her acting if that’s what you want to call it. Hell, I could probably do a better Nat. Honestly I’m pretty happy that they killed her off because that means Nat won’t have to be portrayed poorly anymore and I won’t have to see Scar Jo’s face for the rest of the movies, with the exception of maybe the Black Widow movie if that happens but it’ll probably be a prequel so I am all good with that. I am sad that any version of Natasha dies but I just don’t want to see one of my favorite characters get treated so badly anymore.

Nebula. I was really happy with how big of a part she played in this film, she has always been a favorite of mine and her development has just been amazing. Karen Gillan really did so well in this film and I’m happy she was given the chance to show how important of a character she is.

Where was Okoye ??? Why put her on the poster, why have Danai on this huge press tour, why do any of that if I saw her A TOTAL OF TWO MINUTES?!?! They just baited us the whole time ugh....

I was not a fan of Professor Hulk. I don’t know it was but I just ... it just felt like something was off about him the whole time, and I really hope that it’s the end for Hulk just because I don’t know if I could take that again.

Scott is a gem. Scott is perfect, no one hurt him, no one change him, he stays forever.

The time travel plot wasn’t bad, I thought, it’s basically what we expected even without the spoilers. The little changes when they went back in time to get the stones were great, especially Loki. Like the Tesseract just appeared next to him and he said YEET and left.

The final battle was EPIC especially the moment when all the portals open and everyone appears oh my god that was magical, though I wish we got to see more reunions like Steve should have RAN to hug Bucky :( but Sam saying “on your left” to let him know they fixed the snap was incredible. And the Steve fucking WIELDING MJOLNIR !!! AMAZING. And that scene when all of the super ladies were helping Carol get the gauntlet to the van I mean GODDAMN that was breathtaking. Literally everyone in the theater was cheering and shouting during it which made it so much better too. And Pepper as Rescue, wow I’m so happy I was given that.

I was really happy that we got to see Gamora again, I mean seeing her kick Chris Pratt in the balls was one of the highlights of the movie for me. I hope that maybe they’ll find a way to bring her back but I’m a little hesitant because then that might mean Scar Jo would come back

Tony. As much as his death hurt me and as much as I love him and wish he didn’t die, I really do think that his death was the right way for him to go. We all know Tony, he could pull himself away for a while but he always went back to the fight, and he died to protect the family he found and that is the most Iron Man thing he could’ve done. And the fact that his last words were “I am Iron Man” ?? I mean come on that is how this whole thing started and we’re gonna end with that ?! Oof that was the most beautifully heartbreaking part of the movie. I love you x3000 Tony.

And now we get to the part that I’m most angry about … Steve Rogers. One of the best characters of the MCU (in my opinion) and the Russo brothers gave him That. I was seething when I saw it play out on screen, even though I had known it would happen from spoilers. There is no way, absolutely NO WAY Steve would have gone back and just lived a mundane life while KNOWING that Bucky was out there being brainwashed and tortured and he knew HYDRA was invading S.H.I.E.L.D the whole time, the place that Peggy, the person he went back for, built up and dedicated so much of herself to … and him leaving Bucky after Bucky had just gotten back to him? Nope, that is not the Steve Rogers that we have grown to love and I would rather he had died protecting those he loved than THAT. Yes, I think he deserves to be happy and Peggy is one of many sources of happiness for him, but he has so many more in the timeline he left behind that I just don’t see him risking all of that for Peggy. I really think this was the easiest way for Marvel to establish that Steve is heterosexual and that there is Nothing There with Bucky because they are cowards. And another thing, it just completely goes against literally everything Agent Carter was about. I love Peggy, and I always loved her with Steve, but she moved on and he needed too as well WITH BUCKY OR SAM OR TONY OR REALLY ANYONE ELSE. Agent Carter was basically all about Peggy proving herself to be more than just Captain America’s girlfriend, and Steve going back to disrupt all of that is just so wrong on so many levels. The only good thing that came out of this ending for Steve was that he gave Sam the shield, and I hope in the Falcon and Winter Soldier show we get to see Sam fulfill that role. I love Bucky (if you couldn’t tell from my URL) and I loved him as Cap in the comics and I would love to see him as Cap in the MCU, but I really think Sam should take the mantle from Steve, at least for right now just because Bucky is really still healing from his memories of HYDRA and everything that happened with Civil War, and my baby just needs to rest at least a little bit

I do like that Thor is partnering with the Guardians, I really think they will be a great new family for him. And we were fed well when he crowned Valkyrie the king of Asgard, which is what she deserves. It does worry me that maybe we won’t see her again unless there is another movie with Thor in it, but it’s not really confirmed if Hemsworth is done with the franchise, so if this was it for her, I’m glad she got that ending.

So I’m still pretty heated about Steve and Thor and the fucking Joe Russo queerbaiting cameo, but overall it was a really good movie, and I think a good ending for most of the characters. It was a crazy ride but I am very much looking forward to Far From Home and everything that is to come, I think we have a great lineup of superheroes to fulfill the next phase of the MCU. And also, the America’s ass line was the best thing that happened in the movie.

#endgame spoilers #a4 spoilers #hannah talks #sorry that this is so long #but just had to get my thoughts out there

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dicecast · 6 years ago

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Rethinking of Star Wars: The Character of Darth Vader

In addition to being the most Iconic character in the whole series, Vader is kind of the emotional core of the movie, despite his being the villain and the antagonist. When I talk about the original Star Wars being really weird, this is what I mean, who is the emotional core of these films? You might say its Luke, but the movie is kinda weirdly distant from Luke, we don’t really delve that deeply into his head, the film seems a lot more excited to talk about Han Solo and Leia. So are they the emotional core? Well no, because in the third movie they just kinda stop doing stuff after awhile. Is it the droids? We are with them throughout the earliest bits of the movie, and their perspective seems to dominate about 50% of a New Hope, but not so much the other movies. These movies don’t really have an emotional core the way that the first Matrix movie does, or Pirates of the Caribbean do, its more of a spectacle. Because while these stories are a heroes journey, they are a really distant one (more on that later.

(There are emotional moments but not emotional themes)

The exception to this is Vader, who is a constant presence in all three movies, and in fact it is his decision which decides the final conflict. Rewatch his scenes in the triology, and emotionally the camera is with Vader (except being his first confrontation with Luke), when he chokes the guy mocking his religion, that guy is presented as annoying and you get the anger in the scene. When he is frustrated and obsessive in the second movie, the movie seems to display it, like the scene where the falcon gets away or when he is in his little life pod. The emotional high point of the third movie is Vader’s core. Now I’m not saying this is particularly well done, or even deliberately experimental, only that it’s kinda weird considering how this movie is basically the king of main stream.

(pictured, emotions)

Vader is also the greatest failings of the prequal series, because Anakin from the original doesn’t resemble Vader at all. And I don’t mean “oh Anakin is whiney he isn’t dignified” I mean the emotional logic of Vader’s actions doesn’t synth with the prequals.

(this is more movement that Vader uses than like the entire original trilogy)

See it’s a fallacy to assume that the only way you can devolve a character is by showing their back story (YOU HEAR THAT MARVEL). In that blessed glorious time in the golden days before the prequals existed (aka my elementary school), you could look at Vader and try to imagine what made him into this monster. Because Vader is remarkably well characterized, most of that credit going to his actors, and it is mostly done just through little things, namely his movements. Vader is heavy, he is slow, he is ponderous, all of his movements just feel like this evil glacier in human form is stalking around a space ship*. And this slowness isn’t combined with carefulness or even elegance, Vader feels heavy and brutish, walking straight into reality and just expecting it to get out of his fucking way. All of this movement direction are tied to two core emotions. Anger, and exhaustion.

(guess I will move my arm now)

So I already talked about Vader’s relationship to anger earlier, but summing myself up. There are many different approaches to anger, and Vader’s is not explosive like in the prequels, Vad’ers anger is like a dull constantly burning ember, he is just kinda quitely pissed off all the time, basically moving via his constant hate. But that doesn’t make him a passionately anger fellow, its burnout, he just occasionally snaps when his overwhelming frustration with everyone around him just kinda makes him at somebody not following the rules. Its not explosive rage, nor a cold rage, it’s a constant low boiling frustration that has so consumed Vader that he only keeps going out of spite. I could never picture Vader explosively slaughtering a whole village of people or even dramatically screaming at his mentor, I can see him just making a frustrated scoff and killing everybody in the area out of contempt because they wasted his time.

(Not ever bothering with villain banter, fuck off)

The other emotion that defines Vader is exhaustion, especially in the first movie, because is so fucking zoned out in that first movie. Literally every single interaction he has in that movie except for his duel with Obi One is curt, brusque and dismissive, Leia is like “I defy you” and Vader is like “Yeah what ever, I don’t care move on”. He stands in Tarkin’s meeting room like an extra prop, he feels so superfluous and barely interacts or move until somebody insults his religion, and even then he is like “oh well I guess I’ll hurt you”. He is zonked out, and if you think about it, it makes sense. Vader’s reason for joining the Empire and embracing the Dark Side aren’t clear in the original, but presumably he came out of some sense of believing in something, even if that thing wasn’t good. Well after decades of atrocities and murdering most of his former friends, Vader has won, the empire is in control and he reigns supreme…and he still isn’t happy. He is this massive badass and is just...doing his job because its what he does.

Based on how eager he is to turn Luke, my personal headcanon was that Vader wanted to remake the Jedi order in his new fascist empire, but the process of making the empire basically wiped it out, and now he is alone in an empire where his own subordinates say his religion is sad and outdated to his fucking face. Whatever goal Vader went into this for, it clearly hasn’t worked out for him, he is basically on rage field auto pilot.

(phoning it in)

Compare that to how he behaves in the second movie, Vader has so much fucking energy, he is focused on the task at hand, he is talking to people, it really does feel that for the first time in a decade he has found something worthy living for. Which brings up something else, Vader always felt old to me, in fact he is referred to as old a few times, but he also just felt like an old exhausted man. According to the prequals he is basically in his early 40s, which just feels wrong, Vader doesn’t feel like he is having a midlife crisis, he feels like somebody age is catching up to them and they are just sort of realizing how out of place they are. I always pictured Vader in his early to mid-50s, I mean Obi One was 63 when he played Obi One, though you could believe him being a little older, I thought Vader was like ten years younger, and they had more of a peer relationship, that is what it feels like in their duel, two old men who are the last relic of a conflict which ended over a decade ago. Vader’s fall to evil never felt to me like a dramatic sudden break, rather it felt like a slow steady loss of humanity over the course of decades, like John McCain.

(I wrote this before he died, I have very mixed feelings)

And like a man who earnestly held principles to be valuable while betraying all of them simultaneously, Vader never espouses a morality or a philosopher, but he feels like somebody who’s sense of self is founded upon some sense of duty and purpose, even though both have long ago been lost. He earnestly is deeply religious concerning the force, and in the third movie seems largely ok with the Emperor letting him be killed by Luke in order to cause his son to fall to the dark side (First time I wrote that I wrote Dark Souls and suddenly Star Wars became a lot cooler). He feels like somebody who does everything he does due to duty, even though its meaning is long past, so the Dark Souls reference I accidentally made wasn’t actually all that off point.

(an armored man following rules long past their relevance)

Actually seriously now, do you know which character Vader reminds me of more than anybody else. Leo McGarry from The West Wing, I mean imagine if Leo McGarry’s master wasn’t Barlet but somebody vile and destructive who encouraged his own anger and frustration, and imagine if he didn’t have a family or friends who could help him alienate his own pain, and he just comes this manifestation of a system that he enacts without understanding it.

It’s also interesting to me because Vader is such a Kinetic person, I mean the is basically second in command of the Empire and the main enforcer, why is he flying a Tie fighter around personally? Can’t he delegate this shit, doesn’t he have like administration or something to deal with? For somebody who is trapped in a robot suit which doesn’t move very much, he is clearly somebody who likes to move around, when I was really little I never really got that he was a cyborg just in how human his movements seemed to be. I think Darth Vader isn’t somebody who thinks very critically or questions his decisions once his made them, so when all of his life chocies have made him miserable and hollow, he just kinda distracts himself by going to people’s houses and kicking their doors down, cause you know, its active.

(like, why is he doing this, delegate man, your not commander Shepard)

All this combined actually comes together quite nicely at the ending or rather, it is one of the only two character arcs that are complete in Star Wars, Vader changes in each movie. This is not fantastic story telling by any means, but Vader is the most iconic character for a reason, and his emotional arc is kinda more important than Luke for reasons I will get into later (seriously Luke’s story line is really weird). In the first movie, he is totally burned out, just kinda doing the Empire’s will out of inertia, and is so exhausted he basically on auto-pilot. The only three scenes where he seems like he is paying attention is when somebody insults his religion, Obi One shows up, and Luke gives him a hard time in the Death Star Trench. Rest of the time he just phoning it in.

(weeeeee)

In the second movie, Vader seems alive, active, mobile, like he actually has something to care about, and it is also freakily obsessive. I know there is this meme of Vader murdering people at the drop of a hat, but I think that is less Vader and more this particular point in Vader’s life, he doesn’t kill anybody in the first movie, in fact a guy basically feels so confident that he again..insults Vader’s religion to his face. Sure he gets chocked afterwards, but can you imagine anybody doing that in the second movie? Sometime between New Hope and Empire, Vader seems to have figured out who Luke is and now he has purpose, a goal, turn Luke and remade the Jedi order, since Palpetine seems to not to give a shit, so Vader is heading to that, regardless of how many ships he throws away officers he murders. And at the climax of Empire he just…kinda retreats back into his depression, and mopes away. .

youtube

(jump to 10:35, I couldn’t get the whole sequence)

And while Jedi doesn’t focus that much on its main story (more on that later), Vader here seems to be totally conflicted even before Luke shows up. He is surely and unfocused, and basically is letting the Emperor take the wheels, except of course the Emperor doesn’t give a shit. But it isn’t burnout, it’s the realization tht Vader might have to actually you know…consider an alternative possibility. Before the Prequals corrupt our imagination of the past, the impression I had of Vader was a man who set a goal for himself and basically followed it for decades, even though in the process he kinda destroyed the thing he was trying to protect. He is basically a hyper lawful person who isn’t creative enough to consider alternative possibilities, and only now with his family involved, does Vader actually thinking larger thoughts rather than immediate goals. Going back to my thesis that the Force=Emotional Health, then Vader is finally realizing that his way of coping with the world and his emotions isn’t working at all, and he needs to actually choose what he wants.

(wait...I have autonomy?)

And even so, it takes him so fucking long to make up his mind at the end, because Vader is a really clannish type of person, he values his “Group” over everybody else, and picking between his master and his son is a hard choice. And then he dies, movie over. Honestly, Jedi kinda fails, but it has a pretty good arc for Vader, it’s the story about a fascist who questions “why did I become this?” You know that scene from pan’s Labyrinth where Captain Vidal slices his own reflections throat? That is basically Vader character arc in a single scene

#Rethinking star wars #Star Wars #star wars original trilogy #Darth Vader #Anakin Skywalker #The Force #The Dark Side of the Force #Luke Skywalker #Star wars prequels #Fascism #Captain Vidal

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skywalkersapprentice · 7 years ago

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LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER aka my review of the last jedi

(spoilers)

Contrary to my feelings leading up to the force awakens, I was more nervous than completely excited for this film. I was so terrified that it wasn’t going to be good.

by the end of this movie, those fears had been soothed.

Bad Things(tm)

it’s a shorter list than i thought it would be but it still exists

kylo ren’s entire existence annoys me. like i came out of tfa hating him and now i loathe him.

thAt SHIRTLESS SCENE GOD I HATED THAT. it could have been so much worse and i’m grateful it wasn’t but jeez. i strongly echoed rey’s feelings of ‘put a shirt on’.

the entire fucking force bond thing got on my nerves until i realized it was snoke’s fault. then it was okay.

rey nobody. listen you guys, i’m all for the found family trope usually but you can pry rey skywalker out of my cold, dead hands.

i feel like sometimes this movie didn’t know what it was doing with it’s plot. canto bight was beautiful, but that entire plot ultimately felt meaningless.

same with luke’s purpose, i couldn’t.... really figure out the role he was supposed to be playing.

some of the scenes on the island felt really fucking boring.

why did hux slap finn like yeah mate we already know he’s an asshole

this was the biggest one for me- rey’s character. it could have been done so much better. she felt like she was aimlessly wandering around the island for half the movie and she deserved more than she got. i’m just thankful this is the middle act and that she’ll be back in the safe hands of jj abrams for the final movie.

also finn and rey deserved a better reunion scene but the hug was adorable.

Good Things(tm)

this is a much longer list

ROSE TICO. omg i adore her???? she’s so awkward and tiny and charming. i spent most of the battle of crait thinking ‘omg please don’t die’ and i’m SO HAPPY she didn’t. i ended up not minding finnrose, which i thought i wouldn’t like. she and finn worked so well together.

LUKE THREW THE LIGHTSABER OFF THE CLIFF SDFGHGFDFGH I LAUGHED SO HARD. i immediately knew i was gonna like luke in this movie.

also i dont’ wanna hear a word about ‘bad characterization’ when it comes to luke. it’s been 30 years since we saw him last and people change.

i think it helps that i have read basically none of the post-rotj eu and so i had no expectations of what luke ‘should have’ been like. but anyway.

another thing i laughed so hard at: poe pretending not to know who hux was while he was speaking all pretentiously. that was hilarious.

and then bb8 overextending himself trying to keep the ship working. bb8 was the silent hero of this movie and you all need to appreciate him.

CHEWIE AND THE PORGS. oh my godd when he was eating that one porg and then the rest of them show up with huge eyes and legitimately sad expressions. i was literally aww-ing. i’ve bought into the cute porg marketing. they made me smile every time they were onscreen. sue me.

i really liked what luke had to say about the light side not ‘belonging’ to the jedi, because it’s true. time to think outside the box lads

rey looked so good in that jedi outfit

the golden four (finn, rose, rey and poe) all looked amazing tbh.

i almost liked kylo ren for one (1) second after he killed snoke and then he decided that he wanted to destroy the rest of the galaxy too and i was like Oh My God

also they made a bold move by killing snoke but i really liked that they did. now ren can step into position as the Main Villain, which is what he deserves. (no redemption arc bitch you’ve tried to murder everyone like twice)

also the way!!! snoke died!!!!! was so cool!!!! he could read ren’s intentions like a book, but the way ren deceived him into thinking that rey was his sworn enemy because ‘i can’t be betrayed’ was amazing. and this is coming from someone who despises kylo ren.

lmao @ hux and ren subtly fighting for control over their troops. i wouldn’t be surprised if hux eventually stabs ren in the back.

THAT SCENE WHERE REN AND REY BREAK ANAKIN’S LIGHTSABER

THAT WAS ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING

it would have more meaning if rey was also related to anakin but whatever

holy shit. the entire scene with yoda. i was silently squeeing into my hands the whole time.

this is the first time i have ever been happy to see yoda but oh. my god. that little troll cackling as he destroyed the early jedi texts (‘page turners, they were not’) was AMAZING.

i almost forgot to mention but

LEIA

USING THE FUCKING FORCE

TO SAVE HERSELF AND BRING HER BACK TO THE SHIP WHILE LOOKING LIKE A GODDAMN ANGEL

that was the first time the guy beside me offered me tissues. i was not okay.

also i love her dynamic with poe so much. and that scene where amilyn and leia are discussing him and amilyn says ‘i like him’ and leia goes ‘me too’ is so pure.

also leia and amilyn had one (1) scene together but it still managed to make me emotional. leia has lost so much and this was just one more thing, but their goodbye was good.

also i love my gay mom amilyn tbh. the luna lovegood comparisons were rolling in before the film and tbh i could see that! i’m so sad she had to die but what a fucking way to go. the entire theater was dead silent when she made that jump to hyperspace.

i don’t think i’ve ever sworn this much in my life. whatever.

something i really liked that i didn’t expect to is how so close ren and rey came to leaving their respective sides. the lines between light and dark got so blurry in snoke’s throne room, but eventually what happened seemed to cement their respective positions, pushing them even further away from one another. it was cool.

leia marching onto the bridge of the command ship fresh from unconsciousness and stunning poe wow what an icon

also when will the gays learn to communicate i mean poe and amilyn come on

can we talk about that scene in the falcon when luke and artoo reunite :( omg. artoo still has leia’s old message and i personally want to die.

luke and leia’s (natural) force connection that spans half a galaxy!!!! ‘luke’ ‘leia’ i personally want to die (part 2)

canto bight looked straight out of the prequels and i was Living

i was also living for the way finn and rose destroyed it

“you have always been scum”. “rebel scum” THAT’S MY BOY I LOVE FINN

also there was something that finn said on crait while they were in the mine (i forget what it was) but poe and rose both looked at him like they were falling in love

and also poe’s delight when seeing that finn and rose aren’t dead and immediately going ‘where’s my droid’ :( i love how much he loves bb8, it’s very reminiscent of anakin and artoo.

speaking of crait

LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER

[INCOHERENT YELLING]

when the shadow appeared in the mine i was like..... omg. it can’t be. he wouldn’t.

and then it WAS and i realized that we were actually getting a leia and luke reunion, after i had convinced myself it wouldn’t happen, and then i started really crying. i don’t think i’ve ever cried like that at a movie before. i don’t even remember most of what was said, except for luke’s ‘no one is ever really gone’ (directed at leia, by then i was properly sobbing) and then the forehead kiss. i was a mess. the guy beside me offered me kleenex again.

That was, without a doubt, my favourite scene in the film. Luke and Leia got to say goodbye. I feel like that actually healed something in me that broke when carrie died last year. like, the movie was worth making just for that one fucking scene.

but then it got better.

when ren ordered all the walkers to fire on luke and then luke walked out unscathed someone in front of me actually clapped with glee. from the moment he ignighted his lightsaber, there was an energy of just joy in the theater, and you could tell that scene was exactly what everyone had wanted from luke.

AND THEN KYLO REN TRIED TO CUT HIM IN HALF AND IT DIDN’T FUCKING WORK

I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE DELIGHTED

'amazing. everything you just said was wrong.’ YES LUKE YES

I can’t wait for luke to haunt ren from beyond the grave in episode 9. i don’t know how i feel about the fact that he’s dead, but it’s far from the sadness i felt when han died.

like rey and leia said- there was a sense of peace there.

I just. I just wish Leia could find that peace. She has lost absolutely everyone. And now the movie that was supposed to be about her can’t exist.

‘in loving memory of our princess carrie fisher’ made me halt on the steps and bring my hand to my mouth on the way out of the theater. i’d forgotten that would happen. :(

I don’t want to end this on a sad note. I really did like this movie. It’s not quite good enough for a 9 and i hesitate to rate it as low as a 7 so an 8 it is.

Overall- better than i’d hoped. had some absolutely magical moments that made me remember why i love this franchise so much. there were some truly cool force-related moments, i love the golden four and luke skywalker is fucking awesome. kylo ren is fucking terrible, i wish this movie had progressed it’s characters a little and rey deserves to be a skywalker.

bring on episode nine.

#tlj spoilers #tlj #sw #star wars #the last jedi #the last jedi spoilers #THERE'S SO MUCH SWEARING IN THIS LMAO #shelby reviews movies

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gentlemanbeggarblog · 7 years ago

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review - Warning Spoilers

As a new Star Wars is released, the excitement, intrigue and love for the franchise covers everyone’s eyes in a rose coloured tint. Except this guy. The thing about The Last Jedi is, is it isn’t very good.

Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is familiar yet too different, it is funny when it really shouldn’t be, it is over the top when it should be restrained. Writer/director Rian Johnson has clearly bitten off more than he can chew especially off the backs of his smaller films Brick (2005), The Brothers Bloom (2008) and Looper (2012).

If the world of Star Wars came back in The Force Awakens it has left this universe and gone elsewhere. In a world where Trump is president and racism and social inequality is prevalent more than ever, people are naming this the darkest timeline. This film helps prove that theory. This is not the Star Wars you remember or wanted.

The Force Awakens lived off the nostalgia of the original trilogy while introducing new characters and a not so new story, The Last Jedi seems to throw nostalgia and characterization out the window and launch into what can only be described as fan fiction, that is only legitimized as it is actually a canon film.

It is surprising that after the grief The Force Awakens received for being a replica of A New Hope, that The Last Jedi copies the story beats from The Empire Strikes Back. We start with the rebels leaving a planet as the clutches of the Empire, sorry, First Order close in while our hero is on a distant and barely inhabited planet in search of an old Jedi master who just wants to be left alone. As our hero’s friends travel through space to escape the villains in black, they get to meet new characters and find themselves being betrayed before our hero reunites with them and with newfound power tries to save what is left of the day.

Visually, there are moments that are the most gorgeous in the entire series: Supreme Leader Snoke’s red on black throne room and Vice Admiral Holdo’s Hyperspace sacrifice, but without a strong story and likeable characters to follow, relying on visuals alone is not enough.

The storyline involving Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren is the most interesting and captivating but when it deviates to the other superfluous storylines, it sags and you realize how much the new and newest characters don’t fit into this universe.

Focusing on the original characters, Johnson has altered the way in which they will forever be seen. Leia is now more force trained than ever, even though her power came through emotion and empathy. It could be argued that as she was near death, her unconscious mind took over and saved her, but considering she didn’t do anything for the rest of the film and that Carrie Fisher has passed after filming, it would have been a very effective death for the character.

Luke is now Yoda: crazy, alone and wants to die. His reason for leaving everything is that he felt the darkness in Ben Solo and got caught in the brief moment of attempting to murder him that he left everything he believed in and everything that the original trilogy set the character up as. Here we have a very different man to the one that was willing to sacrifice his life just to prove that there was still good in his father who was the biggest mass murderer in their universe. In Empire Strikes Back Luke leaves his training early to save his friends, here Luke won’t leave his isolation to even be with his family. This turn for the character doesn’t hold true to what was previously built but works within the context of the film, except for Ben Solo’s reason to destroy everything that Luke had built.

Kylo Ren is one of the strongest characters in this film, changing from a petulant child to a soldier that is torn between what he knows is right and his orders. Adam Driver works hard to show the turmoil inside of Ren but when push comes to shove at the end of the film, this turmoil seems to be gone, rendering the power play between light and dark within him moot. It is not explained why he choose to massacre the other padawan’s in Luke’s temple before burning it to the ground after Luke’s attempt at confronting Ben.

Finn and Poe have the most superfluous storylines, so off the mark in fact that they don’t do anything heroic and end up getting more than half of the Resistance fleet killed. Their misadventures introduce us to the newest characters of the Star Wars universe. Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose, Benicio Del Toro’s creatively named DJ and Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo. Both Rose and DJ are tied for the worst character, while Holdo should have been replaced with a character that we cared about, Admiral Ackbar anyone?

Rose seems shoehorned in as Poe can’t journey with Finn to the casino planet (with it’s heavy use of CGI characters, exploration of the world and scenes aimed at children – this felt like it belonged in the prequel trilogy). Here they need to find a hacker and then hack the First Order ship tracking the Resistance convoy. What we’re given is this paper thin character that explains to Finn how war profiteering is bad, gambling is bad and that slave kids are bad. She also delivers the most groan inducing line of this series so far, ‘We’ll beat them by protecting the ones we love’, before kissing a non-reciprocating Finn and passing out or dying. I’m hoping for the latter. This is also after she knocked out both her and Finn’s fighter so Finn doesn’t kamikaze himself into a giant laser beam that would have blown open the base shielding the remaining Resistance fighters.

DJ is a stuttering hacker that is only in this film so that there can be a betrayal. That’s it. We don’t care too much about the character nor his relationship to Finn and Rose, so the shock-horror of his duplicity barely registers as anything too important. Holdo has the most to do here, but the audience has no connection to her, even though she was doing the right thing all along and Poe is actually the traitorous scum that nearly got them all killed.

This film delves deeper into Poe’s character and by that we are shown a shallow rapscallion with a death wish that will do whatever he wants because he believes himself to be a hero. In the end he doesn’t gain the audience’s trust back but doesn’t seem to have any guilt over his terrible decisions. Holdo’s sacrifice should have been swapped out with Poe, resulting in a more emotive moment over a loss of a mainstay character.

After two films, I still don’t get who Finn is. What I know about him is that he was kidnapped as a child, brainwashed by space Nazi’s, became their janitor, worked his way up to a soldier, then during his first mission out his indoctrination didn’t work, decided it wasn’t for him and ran away. This film adds little else to the character. He likes to make light of most situations but most importantly he has no idea what he is doing and doesn’t really seem like someone who was groomed to be a soldier.

John Williams is back again as composer but here the music doesn’t seem to be iconic or special and that really sums up this film, there is nothing special about it.

The Force Awakens opened up so many questions and possibilities that aren’t actually answered here but swept under the rug to not be explored again. Supreme Leader Snoke, who we only saw via giant hologram last time, makes his full appearance where we see that he is actually a powerful Sith Lord and …. That’s all. We don’t know who he is, where he came from or why he cares about Rey and Ren nor will we find out. The possible love story between Rey and Finn is now gone, replaced by Rose’s affections for Finn and the complicated feelings between Rey and Ren as they try to convince each other that their side is the best.

The film tries to create a serious tone around the theme of failure. Everyone fails in this film or reflects on their failures; Luke failing Ben Solo, Leia failing the galaxy, Kylo Ren failing Supreme Leader Snoke. This theme fits with the second movie of trilogies being the lowest point for all the characters. It is the turn before the heroic ending, except this film is so light hearted and filled with jokes that the weight of characters failures fail to land. The film starts on a joke, rendering earnest and serious characters into baffled and bumbling idiots that were only reserved for droids in the original. There are also ridiculous moments that leave the audience unable to suspend their disbelief any more because these moments don’t belong; BB-8 controlling an AT-ST or the one lone ship among wreckage and flame that is unarmed on the horizon and in Finn and Rose’s line of sight.

The use of the force in this film is overused and everyone is over-powered. If you reflect on the original trilogy Luke had a tenuous grasp of his telekinetic powers after two years of training. Here Rey, and even a little slave boy, can use these powers on a whim. Anakin Skywalker, who was apparently the most powerful Jedi and the Chosen One, didn’t even have this power without training. It’s moments like these that lack credibility in the already well-constructed franchise. Even though these things aren’t real and don’t exist they still need to conform to their own rules and sense of believability, it’s why Superman flying backwards to change time doesn’t make sense.

Episode IX needs to hurry up and be released so that this entire trilogy can be ignored like that fourth Indiana Jones film that never came out.

Fans of Star Wars will flock to the film and so will most regular cinema goers, so it isn’t about whether it is worth seeing the film but really its worth in the mythology that is the Star Wars universe. So given that, it’s worth? Wait until the New Year where audiences will die down, find your cheapest cinema and see it there, or just wait until it is on Netflix.

#star wars #the last jedi #episode VIII #review #spoilers #gentelmanbeggar

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ramajmedia · 5 years ago

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10 Things In Sci-Fi Movies You Didn't Know Were CGI | ScreenRant

From early pioneers like Tron and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to game changers like Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and The Matrix trilogy, CGI has been used to augment the ideas and themes presented in science-fiction films. Science fiction as a genre provides different perspectives on how we think of everything from the future of our race, to the perils of technological advancement and the complexities of space travel. Computer graphic imagery and the advancements in that field help filmmakers realize their visions in ways that weren't possible with practical effects alone.

These days, CGI is more prevalent in science-fiction films than ever before. We're used to seeing the big spectacle of space battles in the latest Star Wars film. We've become accustomed to the exotic aliens of Star Trek films. But what about when CGI is used so subtly you don't even notice it? Or for things other than giant spaceships and strange extraterrestrials? Below you'll find ten things in sci-fi movies you didn't know were CGI.

10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Sometimes the CGI in sci-fi films is used not for huge battles or giant creatures, but to fix mistakes or recreate common objects. CGI has become a staple in the latest Star Wars films, especially for obvious things like ships, planets, space. But it was also used rather subtly and to great effect in The Force Awakens.

RELATED: Star Wars: Kylo Ren's 10 Best Moments (So Far)

The dialogue between Supreme Leader Snoke and Kylo Ren about Ren really being Ben Solo, Han Solo's only son, was meant to be later on in the film. Therefore, it was filmed with Ren's helmet off. JJ Abrams decided the reveal should come sooner, and the scene had to be reshot, with a CGI mask placed over Adam Driver's face. You can't tell it isn't a real helmet.

9 Deus Ex Machina

Deus Ex Machina is a genre film that relies more heavily on ideas than visual effects, as implied by the nature of its title, which implies a plot contrivance. Alicia Vikander stars as the cybernetic artificial intelligence unit that is created by the minds of a brilliant programmer and a Dr. Frankenstein-like engineer.

While in many scenes it appears Vikander is wearing some sort of suit that might simulate her cybernetic bodyform, she isn't. Only her face, hands, and feet are her own; everything else is CGI. It moves with such synchronicity to her own body movements as to appear virtually indistinguishable.

8 E.T.

One of Spielberg's landmark films, E.T. didn't make a flashy use of CGI in 1982, with the renowned filmmaker electing to use puppetry and practical effects wherever possible (save of course for the iconic bicycles-to-the-moon-shot). All bets were off when it came to the 2002 DVD release, however.

RELATED: Steven Spielberg's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Spielberg had often said that if he could go back and "fix" anything in the film, it would be the guns used by the police who go after the escaping kids. He felt it was distasteful for officers of the law to draw weapons on children, and used CGI to swap the guns for walkie-talkies.

7 Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is known for pioneering some incredible CGI effects, many of them the result of blending techniques used in stop-motion film making with modern innovations in computer graphic design. But the dinosaurs weren't the only things being rendered that way.

In the scene where Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, and John Hammond's grandchildren are forced to escape into the air ducts of the Visitor's Center, Lex nearly plunges to her doom. The moment where she nearly falls from the edge of the duct to the hungry velociraptor below featured a stunt girl that inadvertently looked into the camera. CGI had to be used to put the actress's face over hers rather than reshoot the scene.

6 War For The Planet Of The Apes

While audiences know that the talking bipedal apes featured in the new Planet of the Apes trilogy aren't real (and also not all played by Andy Serkis), they may not know how CGI is utilized in the rest of the films. Some of the most impressive uses of it are featured in the third film, War for the Planet of the Apes.

While CGI specialists were busy using programs to individually create strands of ape hair, they were also using them to create individual droplets of water, and leaves on trees. A great deal of the forest the apes used as their hideout area, as well as the terrain featured during the battle sequences, was entirely made of CGI despite looking incredibly life-like.

5 Children Of Men

Children of Men was a universally celebrated sci-fi movie when it debuted, in large part due to its visceral vision of a dystopian future. In a time when children aren't born due to infertility reasons, one man must protect the last child of humankind and defend it from a myriad of dangers.

RELATED: 10 Sci-Fi Movies To Watch If You Like Children Of Men

The last baby that Clive Owen's character protects wasn't a real baby at all due to the hazardous nature of the scenes it was featured in (especially him running and jumping across rooftops or amidst gunfire). Therefore it was necessary to use a CGI baby that's so life-like it fooled audiences completely.

4 Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

While most wouldn't classify Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as a sci-fi film, the ending would solidly place it in that category. It features the beginning of the Atomic Age, and positions Indy in a world that's beginning to become completely immersed in what lies among the stars.

RELATED: Indiana Jones 5: 10 Scrapped Ideas From Previous Sequels It Should Use

In the opening sequence involving two hot-rods racing (a 1950 Ford Deluxe Army Staff Car vs a 1932 Ford Model B Roadster), one of them rides over a gopher hole. The little critter almost gets himself decapitated by the Model B, before scampering off. That gopher was entirely CGI...for some reason.

3 Waterworld

Waterworld was an ambitious project, some would say too ambitious for a sci-fi film. It was plagued by every conceivable problem on set, had an incredibly bloated budget, problems filming on oceanic locations, as well as hazardous working conditions. It also spent a hundred thousand dollars on making the ocean CGI.

Despite the fact that aerial shots exist, there are scenes in Waterworld where the ocean is CGI, and while it looks fantastic, this contrasts pretty spectacularly with shots of the real thing. This is why the budget ballooned from $100 million to $175 million.

2 Supernova

It's General Hospital, in space! Or it's Supernova, a sci-fi thriller that positions a hospital ship in deep space. Their continuing mission? To answer intergalactic 911 calls. When the Nightingale 229 answers a distress call from another ship, the survivor they bring on board and his alien artifact may trigger a supernova that will wipe out the galaxy.

RELATED: 10 Weirdest Places That Movie Characters Have Sex

Before that catastrophic event happens, there's time for a little hanky-panky. In zero gravity, Angela Bassett and James Spader's character have a sex scene, except they weren't on set to do it. It's really their co-stars, Peter Facinelli and Robin Tunney, with Tunney's skin tone altered in post-production to match Bassett's.

1 Return Of The Jedi

While some Star Wars fans found things to gripe about in the original trilogy's third installment it was, on the whole, a fitting climax to one of the most beloved saga's in sci-fi history. George Lucas would later come out with a trilogy of prequels for Star Wars fans to complain about and, armed with new advancements in CGI, he would go back and alter their beloved film. If you've never seen any other version of the film, you may think the alterations were normal.

When Luke takes Vader's mask off so he can see his son with his own eyes, we see that Vader has no eyebrows in the 2004 Blu-Ray edition. This is because Lucas felt they should've been burned off on Mustafar where he sustained the injuries that put him in the mask to begin with, so CGI was used to remove them. Too bad he didn't stop there...

NEXT: 10 Amazing Movie Scenes That Did Not Use CGI

source https://screenrant.com/sci-fi-movies-cgi-surprise/

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thechurchillreview · 8 years ago

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Contains SPOILERS for Alien (1979), Prometheus (2012), and Alien: Covenant (2017).

The problem I have with both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is that the Alien proto-Xenomorph (Stupid unconvincing and not scary CGI! No suspense or terror with it this time around...) never needed anything resembling an origin story. These aren't questions I had. Nor answers I ever thought of seeking before. Sometimes, the mysterious should stay, well, a mystery. Alien comic by the always fantastic @faitherinhicks.

In Alien, those aboard the Nostromo are woken up and diverted far away from their charted course home to investigate a message of unknown origin. Kane enters a vagina-shaped looking entrance of a found spaceship, becomes a figurative sperm, touches a mystery egg that a Facehugger then emerges from. From that point forward, Kane’s body serves as an incubator for the titular Alien until some early spoken dialogue comes back to violently haunt him (“I feel dead”). The chestburster ripping out of Kane is one of the most iconic scenes in Alien. It is messy, frightening, and bloody. I mean, jeez, Kane was a victim of clear sexual assault and an unwanted pregnancy kills him in the process! Viewers are given glimpses of something grisly occurring (“Bones are bent outwards...Like he exploded from inside”), but the full disturbing magnitude of the parasitic sexual predator is observed here. Prior to, simultaneously, the audience and Nostromo crew learn that the organism has put Kane into a coma, possesses a defense mechanism of molecular acid-like blood, and can survive adverse environmental conditions.

Heck Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon said so himself in the Alien Saga documentary released in 2002. "One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex... I said 'That's how I'm going to attack the audience; I'm going to attack them sexually. And I'm not going to go after the women in the audience, I'm going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number." The more you know right?

See, Alien chiefly works because of its claustrophobic horror atmosphere combined with its characters being in the dark as much as we too stumble about spliced with the subtext I already mentioned earlier. You feel the tension. You fear and totally envision what the “alien” could be capable of. The human mind's perception of a mysterious horror combined with imagination is ridiculous: hence the strength of the withheld image. This is especially heightened throughout the air ducts scenes. Due to this, akin to the malfunctioning mechanical shark named Bruce in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), the less the Alien’s Xenomorph is visibly seen, the more compelling and terrifying the reveal moment is.

And even when information is gathered about the "alien" the humans are still stuck grasping at straws.

Always one step behind.

Another cadaver.

Eventually, Nostromo’s seven crew members is whittled down to one. Leaving Ellen Ripley, a science-fiction icon, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, the last one. Where everyone else failed with attempted teamwork, Ripley triumphs alone.

Look, Ripley’s function in Alien is to carry the story forward. That it is her story was and remains a big deal in the big Hollywood picture. Ripley is seen briefly (...Sorry) in her underwear towards the conclusion to signify the “conclusion” of her terrible ordeal (the removal of battle attire, how we change out of work clothing and slip into something more comfortable). I used to have a problem with this, but over the years I saw it more as Ripley foolishly lowering her guard too soon (became too cocky before truly winning) while the exposure of her flesh reflects her vulnerability. Earlier in Alien, the men are seen in their underwear too when they’re awakening. The comatose Kane in his underwear medically make sense I believe, yet could be additionally stating his level of vulnerability at the time. I don’t sleep in solely underwear with a shirt. Nope, I prefer jeans and a shirt, always.

She stealthily and quickly dons astronaut attire, bravely impales the Xenomorph with a harpoon gun shot that sends it into the void of space, and fries it with the engines of the ship burning up the cable to leave it adrift out there. The nightmare is no more. Now mourning, reporting, and sleeping is next. So, through the aforementioned sexual assault subtext, Ripley isn't depicted as powerless or weak in Alien. She courageously kept her composure and survives against the lethal threat that killed the rest of the Nostromo’s crew.

Yeah, the one key aspect that both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant have utterly failed is generating another woman on equal footing with Alien’s Ripley. The freaking focus of the Alien prequels is a male robot designed by a male creator. His creator should’ve of comprehended the deeper implications of David’s piano piece selection of instead of outright criticizing his choice. *Shudders* I don’t study music compositions and I know the meaning behind what David chose, jeez. Should’ve destroyed him immediately. Nope, too dumb to think of that.

We do get female characters and in the kindest way possible that I’m typing they’re essentially awful. Elizabeth Shaw has her uterus cut open (courtesy of David poisoning/killing her boyfriend), repairs him, and is experimented/tortured upon. In comparison, after discovering that Ash isn’t human, Ripley finds out all she can before pulling his plug. Shaw fixed an already proven to be duplicitous android…? What a fool. In Covenant, Daniels “Dany” Branson putting too much trust in Walter backfires when the painfully obvious twist towards the end rears its ugly head. Daniels not verbally battling harder for Christopher Oram to reconsider his position before landing on a trap which also goes against the purpose of the Covenant? The fact that Daniels was allowed to speak a famous Ripley line still baffles and enrages me! You’re not her. Neither is that moron Shaw.

Don’t get me started on Oram following David to a lair of Facehuggers after the android tried to befriend an alien that decapitated Covenant crew member Rosenthal. Or Oram abandoning the mission because they perhaps found another suitable colonization location that isn’t seven years away? His choice kicks off the unspeakable horrors his crew faces against. He jeopardized the lives of his crew and almost 2,000 innocent others inside of the Covenant! Oram, you’re seriously an atrocious captain! Or how about Rosenthal not following orders about staying close by whilst freshening up despite witnessing an alien ripping another crew member’s jaw off with a tail swipe? Or Maggie Faris freaking out at the sight of blood, locking Karine Oram inside with the very deceased transforming Ledward, coming back with a weapon, slipping on blood which makes her miss her target, unable to save the being mauled to death Karine, breaking her ankle when running away then falling down often, missing with every shot except for a bunch of exposed blasting explosives than in turn blow up a ship and herself?! Once again, Ripley follows proper quarantine protocol with her captain Dallas, the infected Kane, and Lambert...Until Ash undermines her and lets them inside the ship. Every crew member lacking a helmet since the air is apparently (that’s not suspicious to anyone? Really?) breathable leads to the demises of Ledward and Hallett plus the freshly born alien killing machines. It was their fault for intentionally touching something or stomping around without a care in the world.

Yes, the sheer idiocy on display in Alien: Covenant is unbearable. Hilarious even. Er, sadly.

The truth is that there’s a barbarous beauty to Alien and with Ridley Scott insisting on prequels to the original classic he's hurting what made Alien so special in the first place.

Look Covenant isn't entirely bad...Just absolutely needless. The ideas within its DNA have considerable merit (same with the previous installment Prometheus) and Scott should of established a new IP instead of piggybacking off of an existing mostly looked upon favorably motion picture brand-name. It is confusing and complex for the sake of it. Covenant notoriously introduces some stuff and then doesn't bother to follow-up on any of them to a degree where it matters in the narrative being told! Such as the theme of love versus duty, to name an example. “Here’s a gay couple! Lope and Hallett! After the fact. Enjoy that cake everyone! Unless you viewed The Last Supper prologue video on Youtube that is.” Um, that is not how you garner praise. Just more deserved derision. Having and reinforcing the script’s couple concept crew might have been interesting. If only Alien: Covenant had bothered to color those finalized paper-thin cut-outs masquerading as genuine individuals and actually followed this angle.

The alien existing as its own damn unmanufactured species in the depths of space apparently isn’t good enough anymore. The “perfect mysterious organism” has been ruined by Covenant: that’s the truth. Dagnabit! No, the world must have at least three prequels to Alien (Scott hinted at six in all). What the French toast?! Basically, the ideas/themes in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant deserve or should've been in a franchise that isn't remotely connected to Alien. We’re eight entries in (counting the AVP movies). EIGHT! With it would seem six more planned to go, oh my goodness. In other words, don’t waste your breath on Prometheus or Alien: Covenant. They offer misplaced themes, awe from certain gorgeous visuals alongside vexation, bafflement, and unintentional hilarity.

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thegamefulguru · 8 years ago

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Gameful Guru Review: Final Fantasy XV (PS4, XBONE, Square Enix)

Genre: Action RPG

Difficulty: Moderate (Story) Moderate to High (Sidequests)

Plays Like: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), Kingdom Hearts (various)

Gameful Skills Built: Independent Decision Making, Curiosity

“A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers.”

These words spread across the screen in front of me as I prepare, after ten years of waiting, to embark upon my latest adventure in the Final Fantasy series. I am a fan, to be sure. Despite not playing many of them to completion, I’ve explored many a Fantasy in my time as a gamer, and have often been enamored with their characters, their holistic design, their worlds. When I was not quite a teenager, I fell in love with Final Fantasy X’s Spira, its tale of hope, despair and sacrifice, and the way its creators brought that world, and that story to life. Final Fantasy 9, though I have yet to completely finish it, captured my heart and compelled me thoroughly with its humor, pathos and sense of wonder. Final Fantasy XIII, for all its flaws, gripped me with its beauty and its willingness to approach hard emotional territory. My love for RPGs has never wavered, though my devotion to Final Fantasy has waned over the years.

Final Fantasy XV will cause me to fall in love again. I just don’t know it yet.

Despite being conceived more than ten years ago, Final Fantasy XV feels very much on the cutting edge of what Japanese RPGs are and are becoming. In the decade since the story of Prince Noctis was first teased, under the title Final Fantasy Versus XIII, RPGs from both sides of the pond strayed from their roots in intriguing ways. Being a JRPG fan, I have paid more attention to the way that Japanese developers have looked to the games being produced by western companies for inspiration, and have created fresh, fabulous games accordingly. We saw Japanese developers embrace open world gameplay with Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii), to great critical acclaim. We have also seen companies like Mistwalker, headed up by ex-Final Fantasy director Hironobu Sakaguchi, create linear but ambitiously designed games like The Last Story and Lost Odyssey, to similar reception.

All the while, Square Enix remained, undeniably alive but docile, a drowsy Titan of the gaming industry. They released a trilogy of Final Fantasy XIII games, two versions of Final Fantasy XIV, and numerous Kingdom Hearts spin-offs and prequels–and many of these releases were met warmly. But there’s been a creeping fear among diehard fans that Final Fantasy, in the face of a broadening RPG landscape, might be losing its footing, its seat at the JRPG throne.

Final Fantasy XV may not be perfect, but for me, at least, it does a lot to assuage these fears.

There are a lot of things to love about this game, not the least of which is the excellent ensemble cast and the myriad ways that the game, with great success, gets you to care about them. There’s an ongoing debate among RPG fans–and Final Fantasy fans in particular–about which kinds of stories make for the best games. Many people engaged in this debate focus on the tension between a story being “character-centric” or “plot-centric.” Most games are a mix of both, and Final Fantasy XV is no exception, but as we know from the way Final Fantasy XII’s overtly political narrative was received, when a game veers too far toward one end of the spectrum, fans opinions tend to polarize.

The delicate balance of developing characters while progressing the plot forward in interesting ways is not one that Final Fantasy XV always nails, but for the most part, no matter how the plot threads have tangled and frayed, the player has an anchor in the core four protagonists: Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum and his retainers, Gladiolus Amicitia, Ignis Scientia and Prompto Argentum. We meet this band of brothers pushing their broken down, but still luxurious car down the road of an as-yet unknown countryside, and immediately dynamics reveal themselves. This is not a ragtag bunch of strangers pulled together by fate. The familiarity and the increasingly familial bond these characters show does much to endear the player to them, and consequently, the game’s greater world and plot concerns. As the game progresses, we see them fight, laugh, eat, grow and even cry together. By the end, if you’ve truly taken your time with the game’s adventure, the player is left with a sense of having known, having lived with these characters, even if not many of the game’s supporting players get as much time in the spotlight.

There are many great reasons to take your time with Final Fantasy XV, not the least of which is the fact that its world map is huge and rich with rewarding sidequests and secrets. Apart from the quest line that makes up the game’s main story, there are countless mini-games, optional dungeons, monster hunts and other diversions to keep you busy, and although some of them feel like tedious fetch quests, the game finds ways to curb this sense of tedium.

A lot of these ways involve the skills that each of your party members develop simply by engaging with the world. From Gladio’s Survival skills, which develop the more you explore the world on foot and can net you some pretty sweet free items from battles, to Ignis’ Cooking, which enables you to create stat-boosting meals whenever you camp outside, to Prompto’s Photography, which chronicles your adventure and gives you something to reflect on at the end of each in-game day, there’s ample reason to tromp around on foot and go searching for trouble. I was surprised to find Noctis’ Fishing skill to be particularly rewarding to build, as the fishing mini-game has plenty of depth and can be a relaxing break from monster hunting and loot finding, as well as a source of valuable cooking ingredients for Ignis’ gourmet seafood dishes.

Much of your travel across the sprawling map of Lucis takes place with the help of the Regalia, the group’s trusty steed which just happens to take the form of a sleek luxury vehicle. Without the Regalia, traveling from outpost to outpost and quest to quest would eventually grow to be an unbearable slog. Luckily, the Regalia can serve as a waypoint and a means of fast traveling to and from far off locations (for a nominal fee of gil) once you’ve been there before. If you want to explore new locations, however–and you will–you will spend some time traversing the countryside in real time, either in the Regalia, on foot or, after completing one of the game’s more memorable side missions, on the backs of chocobos. On long car rides you can listen to a selection of songs from various Final Fantasies past, purchased at various outposts across the map, and while riding chocobo-back you are treated to the latest variant of the chocobo theme music that is as ubiquitous in the series as Phoenix Downs and guys named Cid.

On foot, and in battle, however, Final Fantasy XV’s musical score truly shines. Yoko Shimomura, already revered by fans for her work on the Kingdom Hearts series, has truly created a masterwork of modern video game music. Exploration themes evoke feelings of tranquility and adventurous mystique, while battle themes lend gravitas and nervous tension to even the most minor of enemy mobs, especially in dungeons, where enemies often appear out of nowhere. Battling and exploring aren’t the only places where Shimomura’s talents are on display. True to Final Fantasy tradition, and fitting given Final Fantasy XV’s dual engagement with the epic and intimate, some of the most memorable tracks are reserved for key moments in the game’s story. There may not be an iconic answer to Final Fantasy VII’s Aerith’s Theme, but there are several songs that in my playthrough, I wanted to just stop everything and listen to.

Of course, this was not always possible, as the battle system in Final Fantasy XV rewards aggression and quick tactical moves. A departure from turn-based and active-time battle systems of games past, gameplay in Final Fantasy XV feels much more like Kingdom Hearts than Final Fantasy proper. Though it lacks much of the nuance and challenge that has made Kingdom Hearts, over time, grow to be one of the more beloved action RPG series, slaying daemons with Noctis and company is often satisfying and only occasionally frustrating. The game attempts to add depth to the combat through various abilities unlocked and refined through the game’s growth system, but I found myself using many of the same tactics and techniques I used in the game’s early chapters well into the late game.

Final Fantasy is a series known for being a leader in cinematic storytelling in games, with nearly all of them challenging the graphical limitations of the systems they reside on, so no one should be surprised that this game is visually gorgeous. But in a gaming landscape where nearly every major game company has a handle on creating hyper realistic graphics, Final Fantasy XV stands out. The game’s world is well-realized and believable, and though it never reaches the grandiose scale of Skyrim, this is not a bad thing. Even after 45 hours of non-stop exploration and questing, there were still corners of the game’s world I hadn’t seen, and as a gamer who often is intimidated by non-linearity, I was excited to get a little lost in the game’s weeds.

The main trouble with Final Fantasy XV’s story–and the game as a whole–arrives in the latter third of the game’s story chapters, which for me accounted for a very small fraction of my overall playtime. Although you are given opportunities to return to your earlier questing grounds, retaining all current equipment and abilities, you do so risking ruining the narrative tension being built by the game’s final act. As far as final acts go, Noctis’ tale has its flaws, to be sure: large events take place between chapters and are quickly recapped in passing or through newspaper clippings found on train car seats, and the joys of exploration experienced in the first chunk of the game are traded in for drab corridor strolls peppered with light stealth and puzzle sequences. The game’s story builds to a satisfying conclusion, but the path to the end feels much less fleshed out than the earlier chapters, and much of how one experiences the finale of the game relies on how one spent time in its beginnings.

In many ways, Final Fantasy XV is more of a response to Final Fantasy XIII’s reception than even that game’s sequels. By beginning the game with giving players agency and freedom to explore (within certain limits) Square Enix bucked the potential critique that they cared more about their story’s transmission than about making a gameplay experience that each player could make their own, and so, too, avoided accusations often cast at Japanese RPGs: that they’re too linear, unchallenging and don’t give players much of a say in how they play out. It doesn’t completely avoid these criticisms–I only had one Game Over in my entire playthrough and it happened largely due to some screwy camera in a timed mission–but this is a Final Fantasy unlike any I’ve played before. The game tries to have its cake and eat it too, by narrowing the focus of its latter chapters, while also giving players the option of removing themselves from the game’s plot for a while to return to the side quest grind. The problem is, the most fun parts of the game have little to do with the plot and much more to do with spending time with the game’s main characters and exploring the game’s world. Even if you are fully invested in the game’s main story progression, it’s an odd feeling to reach the final boss of the game and feel over-prepared.

Fortunately, there is a truly robust amount of content that becomes available to you after you complete the main story, including more challenging bosses, sidequests and a few dungeons that have to be experienced to be believed. Square plans to release DLC and free patches to the game in the coming months, adding story and gameplay content, and this intention is heartening to say the least. After such a long development cycle, one is led to wonder what content was left on the editing room floor, and what of that content we might one day get to have our hands on.

Until that DLC starts rolling in, gamers have access to New Game+, where they can replay the game retaining certain achievements and with the addition of items such as the Nixperience Band, which prevents you from leveling up when you rest, that can offer some much needed challenge to completing the game’s main story. The hope seems to be that Final Fantasy XV will be an entry that will keep gamers playing for months, even years to come. I, for one, am excited to see what Square comes up with to fulfill that hope.

The game has reached its close, and I am at a loss for words. Even knowing there is more adventuring to be had, I am in awe of what I have already experienced and more than a little heartbroken that, to a certain extent, the tale that I began tens of hours ago is over. Maybe it happened when I reassured Prompto about his worth to me, or when Gladio challenged me to a footrace in the sand at dawn, or when Ignis invited me to help him prepare breakfast, but I fell in love with this game. I have so many people I want to thank for this experience, and more than that, there are so many emotions I have to process. I take a few days to collect myself, leaving Lucis to explore other worlds. But then I return, determined to carry on loving and living in this virtual world, if only for hours at a time. I am pleased to find I am welcomed with open arms.

There is word of earthquakes taking place near Hammerhead. I begin my journey anew.

#gamefulguru #game review #final fantasy xv #rpg #jrpg

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