#it fit tonally with the first halloween movie in this trilogy

[fatherramiro]

so not to be a weirdo on main but ive got so many conflicting thoughts about halloween ends that just boil down to that people in the movies need to hire me to look over their script and be like “okay but have you thematically earned this yet”

[maxsmusicmacrology]

Album Analysis: Best of Crush 40

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

Children’s media! I’m of the opinion that there are two main categories that children’s media can fall into: there’s media that is specifically made for children, like Blue’s Clues or Peppa Pig or those licensed Sesame Street games. Then there’s kid-friendly media that, while made for and marketed towards children, can still appeal to adults. This would be most Pixar movies, shows like Phineas and Ferb, and the object of today’s article, the Sonic franchise.

While there’s some pretty huge differences between children’s media and kid-friendly media, one thing they both have in common is the goal of teaching children a moral lesson. With varying degrees of success. This can be something simple like “stealing is bad”, but oftentimes there’s some greater nuance, like how the protagonist of Inside Out learns to value sadness and other “negative” emotions. But when working with hardware that has some intense limitations, like the NES or Sega Genesis, telling a complex story isn’t easy, which is why Save the Princess plots (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, the opening to Final Fantasy) were so common: it allowed for a moral hero without requiring any deeper discussion. Sonic the Hedgehog went with a bit more of an environmentalist message- saving animals from an evil scientist- which was easy enough to portray in only 16 bits.

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

I’m going to review this album out of order. This is a “Best of” album, so rather than being a picture of the band’s musical vision at any given time, it contains some of their best work from over a decade-long span. What I’m especially interested in is how the music interacts with its respective game and how it evolves with the franchise, so let’s take a look at song #15 first.

Open Your Heart kicks off Sonic Adventure with a bang. It’s the first thing you hear when you boot the game up and it accompanies the final battle. Well, most of it, anyway- part 1 of the battle gets Open Your Heart and part 2 gets generic “tense orchestral music”, which is a flat-out awful decision, but I digress. Tonally, it’s perfect- it starts out tense, preparing you for the fight ahead, and then the guitars kick in to pull you forward. But more importantly… this is why I brought up the moral conflict earlier. The story is simple, so the game leans on the song to deliver its message.

Much of the lyrics are as relevant today as they probably were for most of human history: the quieter intro bit describes various catastrophes, and describes the fear and confusion that follows (much like the one we’ve been living in for the past few months). The song’s chorus is built around a dialectic: Can’t hold on much longer/but I will never let go, but then ends with Open your heart, it’s gonna be alright. Together, these components combine the fear of catastrophe with the innate desire to make things better. It instills the idea that it’s okay to have conflicting feelings about a course of action, then promises that your heart will make the right choice.

Live and Learn is the main theme of the direct sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, and fills the same roles as Open Your Heart. The opening riff plays when the game is launched, the full song plays over the final battle, and it delivers the moral lesson of the game. If Open Your Heart introduces a lesson about conflict, then Live and Learn teaches you what to do when you’ve made the wrong choice. What happens if you trust the wrong people, stay when you should’ve run or run when you should’ve stayed, let something important fall into the wrong hands?

The very title of the song hints at its message- you learn from your mistakes and do better- but to me the line that really hits comes in the second verse. But you can’t save your sorrows/you’ve paid in trade. It recontextualizes all the regret someone feels from a mistake as a sort of currency: it’s not to be saved, kept in your mind and dwelled on- you’ve exchanged it, traded it for valuable life experience. If you focus on the mistake instead of the lesson, you’ll never grow, and it’ll all have been a waste. Not only is it a natural progression from the last song, it’s an absolute banger of a track.

Next up is Sonic Heroes, the intro track to… Sonic Heroes. That won’t be confusing. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, it’s not the big moral apex of the game and it’s much more of a title theme than the song the game wants you to walk away from. It’s goofy as hell to listen to, but it always puts a smile on my face.

What I’m Made of is the final battle theme to Sonic Heroes and is, in my opinion, the finale of the Open Your Heart trilogy. Looking at the three songs is a sort of rudimentary 3-act structure: you have the introduction and first conflict, the dark part at the end of act 2, and the triumphant closer. The protagonist takes the lesson they learned through the story and uses it to defeat their opponent. What I have in my two hands is enough to set me free. Use the lessons you’ve learned through hardship to better yourself. The songs form a very nice trilogy when viewed like this that parallels the games quite nicely, and I’m confused as to why they’re all out of order on the album.

That finishes off the Adventure and Heroes saga, and now onto… Shadow the Hedgehog… god. I Am… All of Me is the opening track to the game and also the first song on the album, and it’s so goofy. It tries to be all dark and intimidating because Shadow is the dark and edgy character, who has guns and says “damn” because he has a tragic backstory, and the character isn’t edgy because he’s a cartoon hedgehog and and the song isn’t edgy because it’s a song about a cartoon hedgehog.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, mind you. I enjoy it, and in a way it’s a perfect fit for the game. It’s like a kid wearing a vampire costume on halloween: they can try to scare you all they want, but the worst they can do is make you smile.

All Hail Shadow is the next Shadow the Hedgehog piece. This one was originally by a group called Magna-Fi, and was covered by Crush 40 for use in later games when the band broke up. Shadow the Hedgehog features multiple paths and multiple endings, and this is the “true hero” ending when the player makes all the heroic choices. This song does a good job painting Shadow as Sonic’s foil: both of them are heroes from this point forward, but while Sonic is more of a classical hero, Shadow is an anti-hero. Somewhere in chaos we all find ourselves/this destruction is the only tale we tell. The game features Shadow trying to recover his memories and find his true self, figure out who he really is, and this is the song that has him rediscover himself as a hero.

Finally, Never Turn Back is the true ending theme for the game, and the last Shadow the Hedgehog song in the album. This is the “moral lesson” song I’ve been on about so much, and it’s a damn good one. It starts with a slow cover that samples I am… All of Me, then it gets a powerful kick that rings in the rest of the song. The message in the song is similar to Live and Learn about not repeating mistakes, but Never Turn Back gives a sense of a much more arduous period in one’s life. If Live and Learn is about recovering from a mistake, Never Turn Back is about recovering from a long series of them. It’s been a long rough road but I’m finally here/Move an inch forward, feels like a year. It’s very much about cutting yourself free of a bad period in your life and how difficult it can be to even stay put, but the positive vibe of the song reminds us to celebrate the small victories. It’s a bit more mature of a message for a game that… at least tried to be more mature.

I haven’t talked a whole lot about how the music interacts with the events of the game partially because this is a music review, but partially because it’s gone perfectly hand and hand with the music so far. There hasn’t been much dissonance between “rock music that gives life advice” and “young-ish hedgehog learning how to live life”. That’s about to change, though, because it’s time for Sonic 06. At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic declared that he was no one special, “just a guy who loves adventure”. This is when that ceased to be true.

The first three songs we discussed weren’t about Sonic. The singer was a nameless narrator occasionally fighting a nameless opponent. They were relevant to the series, but they could be about anyone. That’s what made them so versatile. His World is the main theme of Sonic 06, and where the other 2 versions of the song existed more to hype up Sonic as a character, the Crush 40 cover was more about the events of the game. As a song, it’s pretty good: it’s a more intense version of the original song, and it’s got a slower but steadier pace to it. But here’s what sets it apart from the other main themes: it’s about Sonic. It’s not a lesson about facing conflict and overcoming adversity wrapped up in an upbeat rock song, it’s about the events of the game and how awesome Sonic is. He isn’t the everyman anymore, he’s an important figure, a chosen one to save the world from this point forward. The music reflects that.

To really drive home this new direction they were going, Sega released two games for the Wii called “Sonic Storybook” games, where Sonic would become the main character of two classic stories: Arabian Nights and the legend of King Arthur. They’re both terrible in… just about every aspect, but the first entry Sonic and the Secret Rings is godawful. The main theme Seven Rings in Hand wasn’t written or originally performed by Crush 40, but for some reason they decided to cover it for their album, so I have to talk about it: it’s trash. It’s a bunch of empty lyrics about nothing with some pretty subpar mixing.

While Sonic and the Black Knight isn’t much better, it at least has a killer main theme. Knight of the Wind as a song is pretty badass, but it suffers the same issues as His World. There’s no more important meaning, it’s just about Sonic being a knight and saving people. It has a few familiar “never give up” themes, but it doesn’t do anything as well as Open Your Heart or Live and Learn. It falls into the Sonic Heroes mold where it’s fun to listen to and less fun to really take apart and analyze. The ending theme (which strangely precedes Knight of the Wind) Live Life samples Knight of the Wind, but that’s pretty much the coolest thing it does. It’s slow and pensive, making a sense of faux-thoughtfulness to cover mostly shallow lyrics.

With Me (Massive Power Mix) is the last Sonic and the Black Knight theme here, and was originally written by Crush 40 and performed by singers from the band “All Ends”. The album features a version performed by the band itself, and the song is unique in that it’s sung from the POV of the game’s villain. As a result, it features a look into a character who walked a “dark path”, weighed down by the mistakes they made. Don’t blame [me] for what I have become. It’s an ideological clash against the values in the other songs, arguing that anyone can be tempted to become evil. It’s deeper than anything in the game, but it’s shockingly good considering its source material.

That does it for the main series themes, but there’s a few others on here- a couple tracks for the racing games, an oddly placed cover of Fire Woman, and a too-slow ballad-sounding original song called Is It You. However, I think I’ve gone on long enough, and I’ve discussed everything I wanted to: how the songs showcased on this album elevate the messages given in the games.

Ultimately, all these songs are mirrors of the game they’re in, for better or worse. For that, I have to applaud the band’s versatility- even if most of the songs are the same genre, they cover a wide range of moods and messages depending on what the game demands. They can write a kick-ass guide to getting over failure or a fun little romp to introduce a game. Even divorced from their source material, many of the songs stand well on their own, and there’s a very good reason why fans of the franchise want Crush 40 to return for future installments.

Videos cited:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYxYzxFyZw Peppa Pig - Caddicarus (warning: weird shit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWYDUYqhlc&list=PL5F29F0909BF08B56&index=15 - Best of Crush 40 Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voI-9TdS0Jw - Seven Rings in Hand (Crush 40 Ver)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HrOjyltyEM - With Me (Massive Power Mix)

[smokeybrand]

This is Snyder

I don’t care for Zack Snyder. I don’t hate his craft as much as i hate Michael Bay, Snyder actually tries to make good movies, but i don’t find his schlock entertaining. He’s not a bad director, i guess, but his movies are always scatter-brained messes. I think Snyder is more a creative than a crafter. He’s the guy you want in your development stages, throwing out ideas and boarding those massive action scenes. If i were to equate him to a sports analogy, Snyder is the Offensive Coordinator on an American Football team. He’s the guy that builds the visual aspects of your scenes, the car who sets up the set pieces. He’s Mr. Battlemaster, the Attack Master, the guy you call in to adds little spice to your drama and conflict laden plot, not the guy you give the keys to an entire cinematic universe where you have to humanize godlike heroes. Emotional subtlety has never been Snyder’s strong point. Since the only DCEU film that was passable was Wonder Woman, the one flick that Snyder didn’t really have his hands on too much, i wanted to take some time and kind of dissect why i hate almost everything Snyder has ever made.

Dawn of the Dead

It’s been years since i’ve seen this movie but i recall enjoying it considerably. But it’s a zombie movie. And it wasn’t written by Snyder. That’s going to be a running theme in this; Other people’s stuff, Snyder is okay. His own stuff, not so much... Zack was only a Director on this flick which meas he just got to bring a script to life. He just got to pick the best scenes and build a cool looking movie. That’s Snyder at his best and it shows. For my money, DoD is his best film.

300

This was his breakthrough. 300 lends itself to Snyder’s style even more than DoD. The comic it’s based on is literally revisionist history written by 80s comic madman, Frank Miller. It is literally a series of splash pages with cool sh*t on them. In comic book speak, it’s literally a series of action set pieces. Splash pages are used to fill every inch of paper with dynamic, poignant, information. When every page of your book is a splash page, it conveys a sense of aggressive action. That is right up Snyder’s alley. There’s no room for plot or character development but that slow-mo buster kick to that persion dude was crazy dope, son! “THIS! IS! SPARTA!” It’s also a superficial, special FX laden, popcorn movie that is borderline sexist with all of the half naked dudes about but still, i had a good time.

Watchmen

Watchmen was the first Snyder movie i saw where i realized he was kind of out of his depth. Dude did his best to bring this unfimable story to the screen, and in some spots i think he did a really good job (Comedian’s arc was okay and that change toward the end made all of the sense to me) but overall, it lacked the emotional, philosophical, and political depth from the source material, you know, literally the reason why Watchmen is so goddamn brilliant. Snyder shot this movie like a mid 2000s cape flick. Think Raimi’s Spider-Man or X2 but infinitely more superficially, which is ridiculous because the Watchmen novel is infinitely more rich. WB kind of let up on Snyder’s leash a bit and he focused way too much on the sh*t that shouldn’t have been focused on. At it’s core, Watchmen is a character study of those old timey 80s archetypes and an indictment of the destructive materialism infecting society at that time. There’s a visceral moral question that my brother and i argue about all of the time and i believe Snyder stuck the landing, but he kept falling off the bar to get there.

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch is one of the worst movies i have ever seen. The mechanics, the technical aspects of this movie, are just the worst. I can go into how this is basically a shittier version of Inception with the dream in a dram aspects or how that sh*t doesn’t make any sense in the movies established lore or timeline. I can go into how this thing technically takes place in between the five minutes that Babydoll is being moved from her cell to the lobotomy chair so none of it matter or how f*cking ridiculous it is that this woman’s name is f*cking “Babydoll”. Sucker Punch is wildly problematic and i’ve written at length about how i feel about it before, i think, but my point with this entry is to high light how messy this movie feels. This is Snyder wit h no brakes. This is Snyder unleashed, When left to his own design. THIS, Sucker Punch, is the type of movie Zack Syder wants to make. He wanted to explore the psychology behind being in such dire straights, the emotional and psychological rationale of those terrible circumstances but he also wanted naked chick, a dragon, and giant robot samurai in it. How does that work? You can’t put Nazi Zombies in Girl, Interrupted, man. that dog don’t hunt. i know because Sucker Punch tried it and IT was AWFUL!

The DCEU

I thought about doing these thing individually but considering he basically directed all of these f*cking movies (except Wondy) i can lump them all into one entry. WB mistook the success of the Grimdark Nolan Batman Trilogy as audiences wanted a bunch of edgelord superheroes. So they gave the Batman Begins treatment to f*cking Superman. And, to bring this car crash of an idea to the big screen, they give the reigns to Snyder. I don’t like Superman. I think he’s a terrible hero. How do you right him? What aspects do you focus on when the guy and turn back time by flying real fast? How do you make that asshole compelling? Snyder’s solution? Uncle Ben his ass! Guilt trip him into becoming the world’s savior! sh*t’s lazy son! Man of Steel was adequate though. it was good enough for the WB suits to hand the entire reigns of the DCEU over to this asshat and, oh boy, was that dumb! My chick is the biggest Superman fan and she hated this movie. For her, someone versed in the Kal-El mythos, this was an affront. From what little i know about Supes, i’d agree.

SO Snyder double-downs on his Batmanfication of Superman by literally introducing Batman into a Superman story. BvS is an abortion of a film. It destroys the archetype of what all of these heroes represent. Batman is a psychopath killer. Superman is a morose pussy. Lex Luthor is the goddamn Riddler from Batman Forever. It’s a goddamn mess. Which sucks because, at it’s core, there are a lot of good ideas here. I liked how Luthor was more Zuckerburg than Rockefeller. I liked the introduction of Wonder Woman, even if it felt a little forces at times. I liked at the whole “Punished Messiah” story line for Supes, even if it never got deeper than a puddle. I hated everything else. Everything was just too Snyder-y. Cool sh*t to look at as opposed to deep sh*t to identify with. But that’s what happens when you forgone character development for mech fights and a Doomsday story line that should have bookend a phase one of pictures. Seriously, Doomsday in the second goddamn movie of your fledgling franchise? No! no, im not going to get into that. We’ll address that later.

Suicide Squad was a goddamn mess. I know David Ayer directed that, and one day i hope we get to see that sh*t, but the studio brought Snyder in to fix what they felt was an unwatchable film. Seriously, Snyder is considered a “guest Director” on that film and it shows. Justice League is the same way but Joss Whedon kind of added a bunch of levity to this ridiculous film. While i think Justice League is trash, i also believe it’s the second best that the DCEU has produced, mostly because there was reprieve to ll of Snyder’s grimdark bullsh*t. Whedon was able to bring out the best of these characters. I eve liked Superman in this and i f*cking hate Superman. But that’s kind of my point. If you remove Snyder from the equation, you get solid sh*t! like Wonder Woman!

Everything about Wonder Woman screams dope. It reminds me of a Phase one MCU outing, which is a fitting tone for Diana’s adventures. It’s not a perfect movie, there area ton of issues with it, but overall, it is a delight. I think Gal Gadot gave her best performance and someone finally used Chris Pine in an advantageous manner. I think going full on Ares was a mistake but, in the context of the world, i get it. I thought this was a decent ride until the end. The climax was whack. Seeing as how Snyder is credited as a writer, i assume he wrote this part because it feels wildly Snyderish. Literally the worst pat of this film is the ending. Tonally, it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t fit. It’s poorly executed. But it’s fun to watch, i guess. That’s Snyder in a nutshell.

Ultimately, putting this guy in charge of the entire DCEU, which wanted to be a direct competitor to the MCU, was a mistake. His vision is ridiculous. He has too many ideas for any one film and with no one to reel that in, you get the mess that we have now. There are certain things that needed to happen in order for the DCEU to be relevant, to be good. Snyder doesn’t have the patience to execute like this though. He doesn’t want to put in the time to world build. He just wants to throw awesome looking sh*t on screen and move on. That, a good movie, does not make. If i had a say, i’d probably loosely follow the MCU Phases. That sh*t worked and gave ample time to develop a proper story. As an example, i’d have done something like this:

Phase One - Trinity

Movie 0: House of El. Prequel to the entire DCEU set in the final days of Krypton. You could establish all of the requisite Supermann necessities while also planting seeds for Brainiac, Doomsday, Apokolips, and Darkseid. This would be the backbone for the first three phases of your DCEU. Think Star Wars but with Krpytonians instead of Jedi.

Movie 1: The Batman or Gotham, dunno about that title yet, Definitely a Year one or Year Two Bat-story. I’d want to introduce The Long Halloween arc. Make it a noir, focus on the assumed Batman doing his detective thing, until the climax which would be an amalgamation of No Man’s Land and The Man Who Laughs. Like, Joker is holding the city hostage and all of the holiday murders were a distraction while he planted his trap. Batman would have to choose between his morals or vengeance in the end.

Movie 2: Superman Sequel. Calling this one Man of Steel as it would have both Superman and Metallo as the primary antagonist. I figure having Clark and Corbin duke it out makes for a clever title, you know? You can introduce Luthor as the mastermind, secretly collaborating with his miraculous AI that turns out to be Brainiac. Deathstroke could be hired muscle. Cadmus can be introduced. You get to see the introduction of Superman on a world wide scale as he and Metallo duke it out in the open. This would feel like that old Superman cartoon on the WB way back when. Light-hearted yet serious tone. Actual stakes. Sub plot of Lois figuring out Luthor is the reason all of the trauma occurs.

Movie 3: Wonder Woman. It will probably be a period peace set against WW1. It would pit her against Aries and the preconceptions of women during those bleaker times. The battle would be against disillusionment; trying to find a reason why Man should be defended or something of that nature. Wonder Woman would be more or less what we already got from Patty Jenkins, with a much better ending. Like, an actual pgysical fight with Aries seems dumb. If we have to go that course because of executive meddling, at least cast a better Ares. Make him more menacing and less inept. Motherboxes and a bit more of Apokolips will be introduced in this movie.

Movie 4: World’s Finest. Basically Batman against Superman while WW actually solves the real issues behind the scene. Like, she uncovers the underlying plot of the Motherboxes and actually tries to prepare for the coming of Steppenwolf. I really like the idea of Wonder Woman adapting her skill set to covert ops kind of like Motoko Kusanagi does. Also, you know, dudes is dumb and punchy. While Supes and Bats are having their tiff, Steppenwolf actually appears and engages the two of them. Ultimately, Wonder Woman arrives and the three of them, the Trinity, send ol boy packing back to Apokolips and the Motherboxes go dead. The Trinity is established, the seeds of Apokolips have been sown, and we can move into Phase Two - Justice League with the first movie of the lot; Death of Superman. Opening with the sidelining of the most powerful hero opens up a reason for Batman, having an established relationship with Winder Woman and Superman, realizing there are bigger things out there and a team might be necessary to combat them.

See, four movies, five if you count the Krypton prequel, and you’ve established the world, the main characters, the underlying conflict, and you have room to grow. You’ve developed characters, established the backbone to your entire universe, and given each of your principal heroes, Batman, Superman, ad Wonder Woman, their own outing, in the vein of their own themes. Grimdark works for Batman because he IS grimdark. Sh*t doesn’t fly with Superman or Wonder Woman. Diana is a warrior, set her story to the backdrop of a conflict to showcase her strengths. Superman wold spend his time trying to save Metallo, not murder him at the end of the goddamn movie because Supes is about believing in the good, not killing troubled assholes. Snyder didn’t have the patience to do this. He wasn’t building anything. He just wanted to put cool sh*t on the screen while trying to make everything dark and deep. He failed at both.

In closing, i don’t think Zack Snyder is a terrible director. I don’t. I think he has too may ideas and no one to reel him in when left to his own devices. When he is making someone else’s material, when he has a guidelines to follow and people keeping his rampant creative energy in check, he can be pretty good at his job, a la DOD or 300. Hell, i’d even give him Watchmen. But, left to his own devices, we get nonsense like Sucker Punch and BvS. Zack Snyder is everything that’s wrong with modern American cinema and it galls me to the core.