"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite blog on the Internet."

I loved the first Mass Effect despite hating certain design decisions: driving the floaty Mako to collect rocks that had insignificant money and xp values; playing Simon Says for rocks and lockers; unlimited ammo; the utter lack of variety in non-storytime quests, and the overabundance of items and navigation of items. With the exception of Skip Dialogue still being the same button as Confirm, all of this has been addressed in the much superior sequel.

Combat: ammo count is the big change here, and what I find most satisfying is the feedback when baddies are hit with firearms. In the first outing, shooting a baddie was like shooting a wall. Not only do the weapons in ME2 feel considerably heavier, the weight can be seen when baddies are pushed or stunned with each well-placed bullet. The submachine gun is a welcome addition; good as a fallback weapon or for killing swarms of baddies that don’t drop ammo since this gun has the highest max ammo count of the bunch. Plus, I’m getting sick of shotguns even if accompanied by the space adjective.

The biotics (haven’t used tech yet) also seem much more useful this time around; faster cooldown, and now with attacks differentiated by effectiveness against a defense type there is another combat tactic with utility – mainly because biotics don’t consume resources.

My only complaint is one I have with all cover-based games: it’s easy, to the point of tiring, to see an upcoming battle simply by the presence of cover. If I’m running down a hall that contains nothing for me to hide behind, that’s a guarantee I won’t be attacked.

Equip: strange not to have an Equip screen in an RPG yet the absence works. The first game had way too many items – as does every Bioware game. The lack of any true item collecting in ME2 means you spend less time in the Pause menu. In fact, even though the layout of the Pause menu is the same, the only reason to ever bring it up is to save and load. The majority of missions can now be seen on the galaxy map (Christ it was annoying tracking quests in the first game), and all upgrades are done through another menu.

No Mako: I mean, come on. Who the fuck actually liked driving this pile?

Space Dungeon Variety: the game is a lot more segmented. Gone are the elevators, the backtracking in missions. Missions are separate from hubs – unlike the first where, for example, you arrive at Zhu’s Hope only to have to walk to the Mako so you can drive to the Exogeni HQ. If this mission were in the sequel, you’d land on Zhu’s Hope, talk to the quest-giver and then the game would load Exogeni since the HQ would be a different map. I guess the game pampers you, but Christ, I’d rather sit through a loading screen than walk, which is just a poor attempt to invoke a grand adventure.

And what ties the experience together is the ability to import your ME1 saves. Sure, nothing you collected carries over. And yes, importing also makes checks for certain decisions you had made. Yet for me, the look of my character plays a big part. I spent a lot of time customizing my Shepard, and I invested a lot of time into both genders. I’m playing as my Shepard, not the Shepard Bioware created. Customizing appearance is important to me and even more so since this is a space opera, even more so since you see your Shepard from the front more than you do from behind (I never understood the point in changing your char’s appearance in Oblivion or Fallout 3). Usually I’m indifferent about character designs for protagonists – even with Bioware’s Shepard: Marketing Version. Perhaps indifference is too weak; it takes a lot for me to like a char design. The less flash the better. I’m not an adolescent – a woman who covers up can be just as sexy as a woman exposes.

And I have to say, I wouldn’t have invested as much time as I have if the voice actors for Shepard were less than stellar. Jennifer Hale in particular – mesmerizing.

Let me first get my complaints out of the way because there are so few. THIS POST IS ALL SPOILERS:

-The hammerhead creature: when Jake encounters this rhino, there is an angled profile shot of it stomping and growling. It looks out of place because it looks like something you’d see in a museum-produced documentary.

-20 mil a kilo: Selfridge explaining to Grace the reason they are on Pandora. It sounds like an info dump for us made more apparent because she’d already know the reason for the party.

-Last Shadow: Neytiri tells Jake that they nickname the greater banshee Last Shadow, and he follows up with “cuz it’s the last shadow you’ll ever see.” Seems like an unnecessary line since we already know this particular kind of banshee is king predator of the sky.

-Rally Call: wasn’t feeling Jake or Quaritch’s call to arms.

Now let’s start the love:

+Playful flying: my favorite scene is the sequence following Jake bonding with his banshee, particularly when him and Neytiri are diving full speed along the mountainside.

+Badass: the scene where Quaritch is escaping from the exploding Dragon, and when it crashes behind him when he lands. In the hands of a lesser director, the display of badassery would be Quaritch walking away tall from the explosion. Instead we get a cut to a close up of a cut up Quaritch, mad as fuck at Jake.

+Hometree collapse: very Titanic.

+The cut from the cremation of Jake’s brother to the shuttle diving through the clouds of Pandora.

+Concussive forces: the missiles that fire from the Scorpions, I love how the people and environment react. Bad special effects is when the only reaction from the actor is simply turning away. Explosions are not just fire. There is a violent rush of air. Not only do the Navi get thrown, debris gets blown outward also.

+The first time Jake runs in his Avatar. Awesome.

+The first time seeing Grace in her Avatar. Sexy.

+Neytiri has her hair loose in the mating scene. Awesome sexy.

+You’re like a child: and then those seedlings float towards Jake, who flicks one away. Neytiri grabs his hand. Jake then uses his free hand to smack another away. And later as he follows her, he smacks those bioluminescent petals.

+When Jake falls off the horse for the first time, his expression when Tsutey gallops in.

+When Wes Studi (forget his char’s name) has Jake and Grace bound. The scene ends with Jake closing his eyes, the Navi hollering because they are going to attack the sky people and show them how much damage a Navi war party can deal. And then it cuts to a squadron of Scorpions and Samsons led by the Dragon.

+Jake-Grace relationship: I like how she keeps having to force him to eat because all he wants to do is run around in his avatar. whoo whee hee.

+AMP design: the last movie I saw that got this concept right was Aliens.

+Hold your breath: during the final fight, Jake wakes up in the pod because the research base has a hull breach. He struggles to hold his breath. He finally closes his eyes, but before the camera cuts to Jake’s avatar, there is a quick cut to the tunnel of light that indicates transfer.

+The fact this movie doesn’t have a moment where the damsel is in distress. Sure you could say Jake saved Neytiri when the thanator is killed, but the moment is never drawn out long enough for it to matter. Actually, Jake is probably the one who could be labeled the damsel since Neytiri saves him more than he saves her.

+Zoe Saldana is fucking fantastic. Her expressions: when she meets up with Jake when he’s about to bond with a banshee; her wide-eyed relief after she and Jake escape from the Last Shadow; her mixture of anger and defeat when she decides to take on the chorus line of soldiers and AMPs; her petulant growl when her mother orders her to teach Jake the ways of her people.

ooh, just thought of a complaint: where’s Bill Paxton?

Twelve years I’ve been waiting for the next James Cameron movie. Two years I’ve been waiting for his vision of a scifi epic adventure in a time where, hell, I can’t name you the a recent example of its kind. Did Avatar live up to the hype? Is the technology behind the movie a game changer?

It sure is. And man do I fucking love this movie.

I’ve probably lost some of you already – sometimes a man with an erection for a director and his/her films is just not attractive. I’m passionate for only a few things, and when it comes to James Cameron movies, I don’t fuck around. So let me stroke one out for you because there are now four of his movies in my top five.

…Star Wars! There’s that scifi epic adventure example I was hunting for. Not really fair to compare Avatar and the original trilogy (because of their eras, not because geek culture says I should guard the pedestal), but the prequel trilogy is a recent example – and also one that went big for the computer-generated at the expense of everything else.

Both Avatar and the Star Wars prequels have excellent computer generated effects. Given enough time and money, the prequels could look as great as Avatar’s. What separates the two is the blending of what’s real and what’s post production. Computer effects that involve people, for the most part, looks awkward in the prequels; look at Episode 3’s opening space battle and then watch Count Dooku somersault off the balcony to fight the Jedi. The photorealism in Avatar is fantastic, but if people and objects don’t move like they should, then the whole presentation looks dooku.

And movement is where Avatar dances. What Avatar, what The Volume, have given us is a new kind of prosthetic – one that can be anything, one that imposes nothing on the actors so that they can do what they excel at without worrying about dress. We believe in Pandora because even though it’s a world created by designers on their machines, beneath the Navi are actors, their performances captured.

I’ve ranted about the motion-emotion capture in previous posts, and what we saw in the trailer aren’t even the highlights. Despite Cameron’s need to push technology (and not just on the computer side, because remember, for Aliens Stan Winston’s company built the fourteen foot tall Alien Queen; and even though Digital Domain and ILM generated the effects, an actual full-scale Titanic was built albeit a functioning interior) he knows movies are not just about extravagant sets and explosions, that if you don’t give the audience a believable story and characters, then what’s the point? Every other director says character drives their movies, and most of the time we either don’t care for the performances or the story or both. With Avatar, performances are even more important because while the actor’s movements and expressions have been captured, for the most part they look nothing like their character. For us to care about them we need something familiar to hold on to. We see movies to be entertained; to see people act.

And nothing looks like Avatar because no other movie has had The Volume to work with; in short, The Volume allows Cameron to view a rough rendered world the actors perform in, meaning he has complete freedom to adjust shots instead of unnaturally shifting actors or effects in post. Another way of looking at The Volume – think what Peter Jackson did with Gollum, but on a larger scale. Nothing looks like Avatar because the shots Cameron sets up doesn’t have to conform to what will be added later; a scene’s environment is already created on the computer, so while in production he already knows what the actors will look in relation to what is actually not there on the set. Everything looks uniform. If there is one thing I desperately want to get across, this is it. Know the reasons for Avatar looking the way it does and the reasons for Cameron pushing this technology.

Cameron has always been a clean director in terms of speed and camera angle. His action tends to run at normal speed, and the rare slow motion is used to heighten tension or a mood instead of allowing us a frame-by-frame as though the projectionist was working the machine like Quicktime. Look at how he uses slow motion in T2, when both Terminators have found John at the Galleria; look at how nothing slows down in the Operations scene in Aliens. As for the camera, Cameron doesn’t go for the artsy or gimmicky angles, which pleases me to no end, and he also doesn’t go documentary – for the most part I’m not a fan of this style because I like to see action framed clean and clear.

Put aside the technical. Avatar is just a goddamn fun movie.

So what if the story is space Dances With Wolves. So what if it has action movie tropes, particularly the kind where a gunpowder civilization abuses the tree-hut warrior culture. Sure it’s reductive to say all action movies are the good guys versus the bad. Broad strokes does not equal blah story. What makes Avatar exciting is the way it’s executed; the way it looks; the way the actors emote despite their appearance. The writing might not be as sharp as The Dark Knight’s, but Avatar doesn’t fall apart in the third act because of a convoluted plot and characters whose motivations flip flop in the absence of a rationale collision. Telling is more important than story.

Cameron described Avatar as a scifi fantasy adventure. And what a fun ride it is. There are no complicated setups or mythologies you have to know beforehand. Even though this is a big budget studio movie, it doesn’t have to please all demographics to make its money back; there are no kids to save-the-day; there are no funny sidekicks to entertain morons. Characters live in the moment, are not troubled by their past or at least there are no dedicated scenes a monologue for sympathy.

So for now let’s stop this essay, and in the next post I’ll talk as though we’re dining after having watched the movie.

Thank you, James Cameron and the cast and crew of Avatar.

I’ve always wanted to play a Diablo-type game set in a gunpowder world.

The story of Borderlands – does it really matter? I’m sure the quest descriptions are fine, but that’s not engaging me; I see it simply as information, unimportant since it’s not the facts that take me to the objective. If this game had a minimap on the HUD, I wouldn’t know what the game looks like.

The whole bazillion weapons aspect doesn’t bother me. After all this is a randomized item-drop game, and with this kind of play, a large variety is best. That’s the whole point. You want gear that’s different than what your friends have. You go on the same adventures but you want different rewards; maybe to brag, maybe to define your char. I’m not playing this game for the story or well-structured single-player experience. I want progressively better gear to kill mobs.

And while the randomness of the drops is entertaining Pandora is not, mainly because the world is static. I can always count on those three bandits that hop the fence just outside Fyrestone; that locker opposite the skag arena always has weapons with requirements greater than my character level. Sure Diablo 2 had fixtures, but their maps always had a randomized layout and to a lesser degree different monsters; seeing the same tile sets never bothered me, probably because from a technical point it’s more efficient to play with the arrangement of the map than have a giant catalog of cycling tile sets.

Diablo 2 had a flat map, pockets of baddies whose locations were randomized. In Borderlands, though the map is much larger and varied in elevation, you will always find the same pockets in the same areas. Farming consists mostly of opening chests. A baddie can drop anything; a weapons chest will always give you guns and ammo.

Diablo Diablo Diablo.

I’m also not fond of the vehicle. I do appreciate its purpose as a fast travel option – I don’t think a town portal scroll would work well since progression is not a straight line, one area to the next and no reason to look back. I just don’t like having to drive to a destination and then get out to fight. Which is strange since while I also got tired of Far Cry 2’s I didn’t mind the GTAs’. Perhaps it had something to do with the former being an FPS; perhaps it had something to do with the same issue as Borderlands, in that, there were always outposts on the roads that always had baddies, and while you could sometimes drive past them, it was always best to kill them. Nothing in GTA consistently blocked your path to the next mission other than traffic and the law, but nothing ever pulled you over without a reason.

Too bad. As an uncommon occurrence racial profiling could be entertaining.

And because I’ve started a playthrough with coop and everything is shared, I’ve been having to buy ammo from the vendors. When I have 0/1020 SMG rounds and can only buy in quantities of 72, that’s a lot of clicking that could be simplified to “click here to refill entire count.” I mean, come on – have you ever stopped short of buying all the ammo you could carry and say “that’s enough for me, I like being one clip light”?

I had fun the first time around. I just don’t see myself going through another playthrough because even though the loot will get better, killing the same type and number of baddies and navigating the static world are just tiresome.

Spoilers ahead…

Terminator Salvation enjoys showing off its eye candy, and this is why the movie is needlessly fat. This is apparent from the start. The opening title sequence with its colossal block letters sliding across the background is a variation of the first movie’s sequence. Yet whereas its end is the title reveal, Salvation indulges in two grand openings – one in the same size and font as the credits and the other a pull-back of the block letters. Why do something twice when once will do?

Is this being picky? Of course. But sloppy is sloppy, and the movie never stops to clean itself up.

Let’s start with a sampling of inconsistencies before getting to the meat of the review. Little girl Star – or as I’m sure what the writers called her in the first draft, Early Warning Detection System – is able to hear or feel the vibrations of Machines. When the camera cuts to her stunned expression, get ready for some action. She is able to hear that spy Machine which is the size of a frisbee, but absolutely nobody can hear the Harvester stomp up to the gas station until it punches through the roof?

Or what about the lazy editing? The scene where John gets on the radio to convince the Resistance to delay bombing Skynet; it steadily gains momentum and then all of a sudden cuts off as quickly as John ends transmission. And the subsequent scene of Christian Bale delivering THE line that defines the Terminator franchise feels like a rehearsal take. AND the following scene begins with another nod to a previous Terminator movie. This is an excessive and poorly paced sequence. It feels like there were either extended or extra scenes removed for the theatrical release, and I’m not sure if I care enough to rent the DVD to find out because even if a director’s cut puts back the scenes, they won’t save the movie.

So why does this movie fail to entertain? Some of the credit goes to the character of Blair, played by Moon Bloodgood. She is a cliche: the survivalist that has to be rescued from horny savages, the heroine who falls for her rescuer – in a scene where she intimately embraces him so that they can keep warm through shared body heat. Good lord.

The relationship she forms with Marcus Wright is the passionate part of the movie – Connor is already married to Kate, who has about as much purpose as the movie’s title appearing twice, and Connor doesn’t meet Reese until the end. Perhaps Blair would have served better as the character who simply detours Marcus to the Resistance base instead of being the love interest. Blair is an artificial sweetener.

Salvation could have been a popcorn flick (like Die Hard or Taken) yet it takes itself seriously, making its characters announce to the audience the theme through idiotic dialogue and laughable scenes.

And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why Skynet had to use Reese as bait. To kill John Connor? But if Reese dies, doesn’t that prevent John from sending him back? Wouldn’t killing Reese kill John? And how exactly would John die? Slumps to the floor? Fades away? What happens to Kate and her baby? Do they cease to exist also?

And this here is my problem with the Terminator franchise. The story falls apart when you start to show and analyze what happens during Judgment Day. And at the same time this is the beauty of Cameron’s Terminators, especially the second one. Yes, the movie is scifi action-adventure, but the genre is only the setting for a story about the value of human life. And even with the scifi and time travel elements, Cameron focused on one aspect so that he could tell the most interesting story. Not a story about a post-apocalyptic or temporal war but a story about how a boy has to become a great military leader and how he teaches his Machine to be human. “If a Terminator can learn the value of a human life, maybe we can too.”

T2 isn’t a great movie just because of its message and how it’s framed. Cameron’s sequel is a fantastic action movie because it is lean, because every bullet, explosion, and collision has a purpose. There is no excess, there are no twists. Look at the structure of T2. The first half hour sets up the major characters and their agendas: the T-800 has to find and protect John; the T-1000 has to find and kill John; John wants to rescue his mother; and Sarah wants to prevent Judgment Day. We get all this upfront so that the rest of the movie can focus on the trio of good guys and deliver a third act composed entirely of one action scene. Since there are no mysteries – like Marcus Wright – there doesn’t need to be coy and convoluted setups that as a consequence will make the audience analyze the film and find details to tear apart.

Not only is the action in T2 clearly defined, they are also framed in a specific way. Again, look at the structure of T2, only this time focus on the choreography of the action. How many melee scenes are there between human and Machine? Two – versus the bikers, versus the Pescadero employees. But more importantly, none were between the major cast of characters, and the reason is that in such an exchange, the Machine will always win. Arnold breaks the biker’s hand without so much as twitching. Arnold breaks open doors by pushing them. Young John is able to call his foster parents because Arnold uses his hand to smash quarters out of the pay phone. So why does the T-800 in Salvation have such a difficult time killing John? Why does it resort to tossing him around? Why doesn’t it simply grab John and cave his face in? Going hand-to-hand against a Machine is the equivalent of letting go of the dryer while taking a bath. James Cameron knows this, and it’s why he never wrote a situation where the human will out-punch a Machine (look at what happened to Reese at the end of the first Terminator).

And putting aside logic, the Terminator throwing John around the factory is just not exciting. Neither is the way he gets the scar on his face.

There is a reason Sam Worthington shares space with Bale above the title. The story of Salvation is more his than Bale’s, and Worthington is the best part of the movie. His performance is strong; he is charismatic, able to convey the right amount of emotion through dialogue and facial expressions. He can be a powerful presence (scene where he is chained up and talking to Bale), and he can display desperation – when Bale growls “what are you,” Worthington responds with a convincing helplessness: “I don’t know.”

I didn’t have a problem with Marcus as the main character, but I felt Connor’s story was underwhelming. I had been under the impression (as in I vaguely remember reading this in an interview) that John’s purpose in this movie is to prove that he has the knowledge and skills to lead the Resistance. And I guess to a point they do get into this territory, but the way it’s executed with the cliched military leader (General Ashdown played by Michael Ironside) unwilling to listen to the advice of his officer, it’s more like the writers got us here by sleepwalking.

And while I never cared for Kate’s character in Terminator 3, there was an opportunity in Salvation for her to be the welcome constant in John’s life, for her to be his last thought at the end of the day.

But instead the intimacy is placed between Marcus and Blair. Because as a plot device to help him escape the Resistance base? Yes, unfortunately. And because at the end of the movie Marcus finds redemption, and the best way to milk the scene is to have Marcus and Blair stare lovingly into each others eyes and cry tragedy while the rest of the cast watch so they too can have their eye-fucking moment with the hero. It’s so goddamn cheesy. Not only that, the message of that scene is a giant curd; whereas in T2 “the Tin Man gets his heart,” Salvation’s gives up his to save John Connor.

_
*the quotations in the last line is James Cameron’s, from the book Four Screenplays (Syd Field, 1994). the full quote: “Essentially you’ve got a character associated with being the quintessential killing machine; that is his purpose in life. Devoid of any emotion, remorse, or any kind of human social code, he suddenly finds himself in the strangest dilemma of his career. He can’t kill anybody, and he doesn’t even know why. He’s got to figure it out. He’s got to, because he’s half human. And he figures it out at the end. The Tin Man gets his heart.”

The Star Trek reboot opened on Friday. Did I like it? Do you care?

Spoilers ahead…

As a JJ Abrams movie, Star Trek is eyeball sound effects entertaining. As a movie written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, it’s an absolute groan-fest.

The movie starts out with phasers on stunning. The USS Kelvin feels like a submarine in space; the bridge is tight quarters, the crew look busy, terrified when under attack yet still in control at their consoles. We get a sampling of the reboot’s visual and sound effects when Nero’s ship multi-torpedoes the Kelvin to surrender. When the computer announces Captain Robau has been terminated, we are then given a full serving of torpedoes and phasers, which are more spit out than surgical like Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country’s.

And then for the rest of the movie the pie gets thrown in our face.

Star Trek has way too many comedy moments that serve no purpose other than to make you chuckle or clap howl – just like Orci and Kurtzman’s Transformers. Kirk running around the Enterprise hands swollen the size of pillows and then tongue swelling up – unnecessary, not at all funny. Other gags weaken the movie: Anton Yelchin’s accent and his inability to authorize his command codes because of said accent; all of Simon Pegg’s scenes, especially the scene where he gets transported in the water pipe, such a goddamn waste of time.

The worst scene in the entire movie is young Kirk driving the car off the cliff. When I saw the first trailer I thought – and hoped – it was just a scene filmed for the trailer, but as soon as I saw that car accelerate down the road, I wanted to toss my popcorn at the screen. I won’t go as far as saying this scene makes no fucking sense whatsoever – because it does set up the symmetry with young Spock and how he spent his childhood. Putting aside the execution of the scene, there is no need for the kid to scream out his full name because the previous scene already announced his name – yes, only as Jim and only as a newborn, but the idea is still the same when he’s a kid. It’s like they couldn’t make up their minds on which introduction of the iconic character was better so they simply used both.

The introduction of Hikaru Sulu – played on John Cho – is another comedic moment, but whereas the ones mentioned above are over-the-top and eye-rolling, this scene succeeds in every way possible. As the rest of the fleet warps to Vulcan, Sulu throttles but the starship crackles out an unwillingness to engage. After reassuring Captain Pike that he is the helmsman and Spock asking if he disengaged the magnetic field (or something to that effect), Cho delivers a subtle expression of disbelief for such an oversight on his part. And that’s the thing; for us the oversight isn’t obvious but Quinto’s inflection and Cho’s response tells us it is something he should have caught. Not only is the reaction chuckle-worthy it also serves a purpose because later on the Enterprise warps into the debris field comprised of the fleet that had warped on ahead.

Like Cho, solid performances come from Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana. Eric Bana – always terrific.

The one performance that is perfection: Karl Urban. Not only does he have the best lines (“space is a disease wrapped in darkness and silence”), he is never quirky, and the mannerisms he takes from the original McCoy (played by Deforest Kelley) never feel forced like a fanboy service; when he first meets Kirk and explains the consequences of a compromised hull plate, he projects the rhythms of Kelley right down tot he eye bulge. And when Urban has to deliver the famous line “are you out of your Vulcan mind?” he says it with a realistic urgency as opposed to a wink nod to the audience.

Unfortunately, like other Star Trek movies, the Enterprise does little in the way of showing off its armaments; and with this aside, I’d say this Enterprise has the least screen time. There are very few flyby or impulse-speed shots of the starship which is a shame since even though it’s not as sexy as the Undiscovered Country Enterprise, it is still a slick design.

Despite my many complaints, Star Trek is entertaining and worth repeat viewings because it begins and ends strong. The ending, specifically the moment Nero’s mining ship is caught in the Red Matter, is a showcase for the Enterprise to fire everything. But more importantly, the strength of the ending is what doesn’t get elaborated through melodramatic edits and effects. After all, if the person who killed your father was dying, would you sit back and watch without inflicting your own damage?