I, Spy

I saw the new Spy.

It’s a Melissa McCarthy movie.

Accessed from http://cdn.film-book.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/gold-melissa-mccarthy-spy-movie-poster-01-2025x3000.jpg

Spy is a Chernin Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Feigco Entertainment movie directed by Paul Feig. They own it, not I.

Actually, that’s not accurate. As Derek described it, it’s someone trying to do a two hour Archer episode focused solely on Pam and Cheryl. Which, on one hand I really like Archer but it’s a bit much for two straight hours.

I make reference to it being a Melissa McCarthy movie since the only point of comparison I have is Bridesmaids. I liked Bridesmaids but there’s a tendency for that type of humour to devolve into the lowest common denominator kind of jokes. Which is to say there’s a fair bit of toilet humour or people falling down shticks. The toilet humour was definitely prevalent in Bridesmaids and the people falling down rode strong in Spy.

It’s also a movie that is quite fond of swearing. I’m not a Victorian prude but that gag certainly wore itself out much faster than the movie thought it did. Jason Stathom’s character nearly hinges on basically being loud and obscene for most of his moments and there’s a second act turn when Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) relies on some quick improvisation to rescue her rather flimsy cover and goes with a foul mouthed body-guard explanation which overstays its welcome.

Overall, it’s an okay movie. I had some laughs with it, at it and then at the audience.

What it is not, however, is a good satire of the spy movie genre.

I think that’s the biggest disappointment for me. Granted, I knew little about the film and it wouldn’t have registered at all on my radar had I not heard that it was scoring so well on critic reviews. It’s hardly the first to take jabs at the genre which holds James Bond as one of the defining movie franchises. Even Kingsman takes many a potshot at international espionage and men of mystery.

Generally speaking, I find that spoofs of the spy genre end up falling a bit flat. The best of the bunch–in my opinion–is Archer and it keeps itself going by leaving a lot of the spy elements as dressing and dipping in and out of a half-serious, half-joking action motif. The few other success stories follow a similar pattern: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Red or even Burn After Reading. They certainly have a lot of tongue-in-cheek moments but they still treat their narrative with just the right amount of gravitas that it doesn’t devolve entirely into a Three Stooges type slapstick farce.

And I think that’s the tricky part of doing spoofs of spy movies. As I’ve mentioned, James Bond is really the big flagship for the genre but–and I say this as a massive James Bond fan–the series is half a joke. It’s filled with its own cliches and tropes that it pokes fun at enough times that it’s often times a parody of itself. It’s hard to satire something that’s already making fun of itself and certainly hard to keep it up for an entire original piece.

The best satires usually work by pointing out the flaws of genres or trends which are popular and unaware of their own weaknesses. Murder by Death and Clue work as great spoofs of the mystery detective genre because it takes all the dowdy seriousness and spins it on its head. It can stick its tongue out at the irritating habits that crop up in those genres. like detectives taking incredible leaps of logic, confusing final reveals designed solely to bedazzle its readership or the oft times mindless pile of bodies that accrue in an investigation because the original works pull those tricks again and again without even being aware of stereotypes they’re fulfilling.

The spy genre, unfortunately, doesn’t have these ubiquitous elements to lampoon because they, themselves, are not ubiquitous. Sure, we can make fun of James Bond tropes but those tropes aren’t universal amongst the handful of spy movies that get released. For example, a common scene to parody in these types of movies is the James Bond gets new equipment from Q moments. And while there’s plenty of standard elements amongst the Bond series for how these scenes play out, you’re not going to find them anywhere in things like the Bourne Identity, Cambridge Spies or Argo. But sure enough, the scene crops up in Spy like clockwork, focusing its time on pointing out how ludicrous a meeting with some technowizard like division would be in a spy agency despite the fact that it’s almost always played for cheese laughs in the Bonds in the first place.

Thus what ends up happening is that the laughs feel rather cheap. It’s a lot of going through the motions in Spy without really bringing anything to the table. A number of the jokes also hinge on the fact that Melissa McCarthy is a large woman and puts emphasis on how “gross” that is, either through constantly giving her undesirable and socially outcast cover identities or filling her gadget gear with things like haemorrhoid wipe pads.

It’s very American in its comedy, so if we’re not talking about stool solvents or rodent scat, we’re dropping vulgarity for the sake of padding out dialogue or flashing photographs of a person’s genitalia. And when you’re right out of ideas about what to do next, have an incredibly awkward and incongruous celebrity guest appearance and milk that for a few empty laughs more.

Which is a shame, because there is a workable concept in there. There’s a couple of times when Melissa McCarthy does do some decent action-spy elements that, had it been a greater focus, would have worked better. There’s a scene where she gets her handler to cut the power to a casino so that she can take out a squad of armed thugs in the dark without blowing her cover which, had the movie decided to lean on that trope more, I feel could have been a stronger narrative.

On the other hand, this could simply be me just wanting there to be more spy movies because it’s a genre that’s basically died out. This movie certainly found its audience and is pleasing someone despite how cheap it is most of the time. It could very well be a case of “not for me” with a side dash of “wanting what’s not around any more.”

But I don’t think I’m alone. Sure, Archer is hardly the definition of high-brow comedy but it still works. I think there’s interest in the spy genre outside of slapstick American comedy.

We’ll probably have to wait for the superhero craze to die out before that sees a resurgence though. The action genre is pretty dominated by that subculture for the moment and they’re unrelenting in their stranglehold on the comedy-action scene. One day, though… one day.

Retelling of the Tales

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I read a book!

Ok, so no one is actually surprised by this statement as I have been reading a great deal of books lately. I just finished the latest novel by Sarah J Maas called A Court of Thorns and Roses. It is a very good retelling of several fairy tales.

The cover image taken from the internet.

Most obviously for me was the retelling of Beauty and the Beast – who could miss the obvious connection between Feyre and Belle? The story starts with Feyre hunting in the forest for her family, who have fallen on impossibly hard times. It is winter and the once prosperous merchant family (father and two sisters of dubious character) are near starving. Feyre is doing all she can to save her family and keep the promise she made to her dying mother. I think it was in the description of the family’s fall from wealth to the pathetic cottage that I linked immediately with Beauty and the Beast. Of course, the entrance of the Beast, raving and vengeful only a couple of chapters rather clinched that connection.

I should perhaps have picked up the elements of Tamlin sooner. After all, the ‘Beast’ in A Court of Thorns and Roses is called Tamlin. However, I am not quite as familiar with Tamlin’s story to have had an immediate reaction to the name. It was not until nearly the end I saw the influence: the High Queen who wants to keep Tamlin as her own consort and the trials Feyre must suffer in order to free her true love from the evil Fairy.

It was not until I was poking around on the internet I discovered the third influence that helped to shape A Court of Thorns and Roses. Woven into the novel are elements of East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Again, I am not as familiar with this classic tale. That is to say I have only read a few versions of the story, as I have only read a couple versions of Tamlin. However, the hunt for the ‘Beast’, who was taken from his castle, and the help that Feyre gains on her quest to save her true love have the flavour of East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

This is not to say that A Court of Thorns and Roses is simply a mish-mash of other fairy tales. It is an excellently woven story that combines elements and threads from three classic tales into one cohesive novel. However, because it is true to its inspiration (and rightly so), it is very predictable. Not all the details, those are original, but the over all feel of the story and the general idea of what is going to happen next is unsurprising.

That is my primary complaint. The characters themselves are strongly written. The secondary and tertiary characters bring much life to the story. The world is beautifully crafted. While I am not always fond of the Fey as a separate … creature, race, species? … they were handled well in this tale. The magic was generic, but the imagery was effectively constructed. The growth of the main character was simple and elegant in its arch. The narrative built and progressed as a good story should.

If this review seems a trifle lack-luster, then it is because the story is familiar – not in the details, but the over all plot. As most of the story followed Beauty and the Beast, which itself is well know, there is very little more to comment on. For those that like fairy tales, particularly those who love the reworking of classics, this is an amazing book. This is a book I recommend.

Narrative, Video Games and You

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Accessed from http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/11/25/fallout3_dogmeat.jpg

Fallout 3 belongs to Bethesda Studios, Zenimax and whoever.

“Let’s go, pal.”

These immortal words set the world on fire. At least, they did in my small corner of the intertubes that deals with video games as fans the country over rejoiced at the announcement of the long awaited Fallout 4.

You see, over the last week the video game industry has been holding their annual trade fair show: the Electronic Entertainment Expo (better known as E3). This is little more than console developers and big publishing studios’ chance to put out a metric tonne of advertising and build hype for upcoming titles meant to push units and sales. It’s big. It’s glamourous and it’s entirely not for me.

You see, I’m a PC gamer which means I primarily enjoy my little hobby on my personal computer instead of utilizing one of the many handheld and dedicated machines built to solely play these morsels of amusement. I am primarily stuck to this “one console” lifestyle due to an element of cost. It’s not financially feasible for me to purchase every single platform which can run these video games and so I stick with the one that has the broadest options and the lowest cost. The fact that I need to have a computer anyway makes this a no brainer in terms of decision making.

As a PC gamer, however, E3 has spent most of its years quite joyfully ignoring me.

I don’t begrudge them by any means. The show is what it’s meant to be: a massive marketing ploy funded by the big companies willing to throw enough money at it. I pay a little attention to the trade fair for the select few games that would be ported to the PC a year later.

Well, this year things were different! This year they had a PC conference! And then they went and promptly showed multi-platform games that are primarily console focused and will be ported to PC later. Needless to say, I didn’t watch.

I did hear that Bethesda finally announced Fallout 4 and I did watch the trailer.

And now, here we are.

For the world’s quickest summary on the Fallout franchise and why I’m discussing it now: Fallout was originally a isometric role-playing game produced by Interplay and developed by Black Isle Studios back in the days when Interplay existed and Black Isle Studios was still around. The franchise was inspired by Wasteland which, in turn, was inspired by Mad Max in dropping the player into a world ravaged by a massive nuclear apocalypse. The primary difference between Fallout and Wasteland is the visual aesthetic. Wasteland projected a world that was created when the bombs landed during the grim and gritty 1980s. Fallout envisioned a world lost in the far more incongruous 1950s.

Needless to say, I’ve enjoyed Fallout more than Wasteland because of the anachronistic element that, for the most part, was better executed in the original Fallout and Fallout 2. However, Interplay died as video game companies are wont to do and the IP sort of floated in limbo for many years until Bethesda snatched it up.

Bethesda then released a rather successful third person shooter/action role-playing game Fallout 3 that, outside of sharing the visual elements, setting and lore had really nothing else in common with its prior games. It was… ok. I enjoyed it when it first released but it’s certainly not aged well. It’s a mixed bag made all the worse by the fact that Obsidian Entertainment got to do a spin-off of sorts in Fallout: New Vegas.

Accessed from http://games.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/dialogue_wheel.jpg

Mass Effect and its wonderful wheel belongs to BioWare and EA and whatnot.

This ended up being everything that Fallout 3 was not. I loved it and you can read my reviews on its DLC somewhere in these archives.

That’s a long story short. So what does this have to do with the opening quote?

Well, Bethesda’s reveal trailer for their next instalment ends with the protagonist uttering those lines to his faithful canine companion.

And that has me in a furor.

I do not like voice acting. It has been an ever expanding and ever popular development in video games. People praise it for increasing their immersion with the medium. Companies spend big bucks hiring named actors to read a handful of lines so they can advertise that Sean Bean or Patrick Stewart or whoever is in their latest release. The player then gets to listen to upwards of twenty to forty hours of Nolan North voicing the main character and then a handful of three or four people voicing every single other person that you meet. Which wouldn’t be a problem if you only ever meet three or four other people but by the time you’ve come across your third city populated with the uncannily same voiced citizens you either wonder if the world has developed instantaneous transportation or why mimicry seems to be the past-time of choice for its minor characters.

I understand the love for voice acting. It lets people forget for a moment that they’re playing a video game and buy into the illusion that they’re playing a really lengthy movie. The problem is that video games aren’t movies and shouldn’t ever have made that their goal.

Now, I’m not going to try and argue that voice acting can’t bring value to the medium. One of my most cherished games is Baldur’s Gate and it has voice acting. It has some of the best and I can’t help but still recall some of the more powerful speeches given by its primary antagonist and just how spot on the actor delivered them. But for every Baldur’s Gate, there’s a dozen Deus Ex games where it’s distracting, aggravating and possibly controversial.

And much like everything else, the real use of voice acting needs to be focused on playing to the medium’s strength rather than trying to co-adopt techniques from elsewhere wholesale without any concern for its impact on the product. This brings me to the reason why I loathe seeing voice acting. In role-playing games–a genre that’s already well beyond a movie’s experience as those that are twenty hours in length are generally considered “too short”–the addition of full voice acting for every character heavily detracts from the main draw of the game. For every line that needs to be voiced, there is way more than a dozen of lines that have to be cut due to file size and cost of production reasons. Voice acting really bloats the memory usage of a game and pushes against the technological limits that our current computers can maintain. It also puts monetary strain on developer’s budgets that now have to pay actors for every line delivered. So, to increase the ever popular “immersion” of a play, the developer must sacrifice options and length.

If I’m ever given a choice between depth of experience or “ermersion,” well I think my choice would be rather clear.

The irony, of course, is that people always bemoan how the modern role-playing games are often filled with cliches and shallow plots. Well, part of the reason for this is your demands to have everything voice necessitates that your options are extremely reduced down to an inconsequential option between three “attitudes” that all say the same but let you say it nicely, neutrally, or dickishly.

However, even if we were somehow able to handwave away the practicality of voicing every piece of dialogue and somehow made it a non-issue (whether through the magic of technology or accepting that unvoiced is superior) it, ultimately, wouldn’t address why video game stories can’t compete with novels.

The real reason plots are paper thin and contradictory while characters are shallow and stereotypical is because there is no environment in the video game industry for producing great stories. Unlike a novel where the focus is placed primarily on character interactions, motivations and world pressures, the onus first and foremost for games is being games. Thus, the majority of the development is placed on rendering and bringing to life all the game systems, physics, lightning and technical doodads that bring a digital environment to life. We’re looking at an industry that has teams of hundreds of people working to create a project. How many of those are going to be writers? Probably less than 1%.

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Deus Ex belongs to Eidos though it’s best Chinese voice acting is still in Ion Storm’s hands.

And if we chose to solely focus on role-playing games, the genre that arguably has the most people working as writers in it, things become even more bleak. While we will have more people working together to give words to voices scattered all across the wasteland, the sheer organizational and manpower requirements necessary to fill them all with good voices is practically impossible. The reason that novels work is because there are few “cooks in the kitchen” so to speak. You can keep consistent voice and tone when you have one or two people overseeing it. When you need three writers just to fill one city and start including the writers that are tasked with creating the companion characters, major quests, major locations, minor locations, minor quests, primary villains and whatnot… well the number of competing voices starts to create a traffic jam of different hands in the pot.

So, yeah, I’m disappointed to see Bethesda opt to create their new game with a voiced protagonist because it places an emphasis on writing that they never were capable of achieving in the first place. Having actors try in vain to bring non-nonsensical writing to life simply makes the experience awkward. On the other hand, Bethesda doesn’t really have the ability to make a strong story experience without voice acting either so it’s really a moot issue in the end.

So what’s the solution? Ultimately, I don’t know. I know I’ve been scaling back my expectations and I’m no longer looking for improvement in narrative and writing within video games. I think that expectation was wrong in the first place. I’ve ranted before about how the nature of television creates poor story structure and it’s unfortunate that video games share a similar fate. This isn’t to say some of it can’t be interesting, however. I still enjoy Obsidian’s work and there are a handful of talented writers in the industry. The simple fact is, however, when someone says they want a game with a “good story” and I hear a person reply back with “well, read a book” I don’t think I’m going to argue that response.

Our expectations for what makes a good story simply cannot be met in a digital space. However, I do think there is room to grow. The one element that video games beat out all other mediums is in that dreaded “immersion” factor. Nothing else lets you get in there, get your hands dirty and shift the pieces around quite like video games do. So, perhaps in the future there will be a way to really deliver some truly reactive and compelling writing. Until then, however, I think we’re going to have to simply smile and enjoy the few nuggets that appear and get repeated over and over again.

Because war, war never changes.

The Emperor’s Edge – Book Review

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Can you buy a book if it is free?

Bored (but don’t tell anyone or they will want me to do things), I went to peruse the fantasy section of amazon. This is not an advertisement for the store. However, I have discovered amazon will have ebooks (kindle version only) on for $0.00. Well, I like free stuff. It makes taking a gamble on unknown authors and their novels risk free.

So I bought(?) The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker. It was surprisingly good.

It is not a bad cover – it would look quite nice on a book shelf. But it does make for a rather uninspired picture. Image from the internet.

The Plot Summary:

Amaranthe Lokdon is an enforcer (police) in the Emperor’s (northern and winter locked) capital. She is female, a new trait for the city’s enforcers and looked down upon by nearly everyone. She is also dedicated to the throne. When Amaranthe is brought to the Emperor’s Chief Advisor’s (and previous Regent) notice she is offered a chance to prove her skills and advance her position in the force. Obviously, when the mission is to kill the most notorious assassin, the job is less of an opportunity for her career and more of an attempt on her life.

Sicarius is credited with numerous kills, escapes and other assassin credentials. He is deadly. He is also in the city.

Amaranthe goes in search of the assassin, only to have entire life turned upside down. While she is not killed (cause we wouldn’t have a story otherwise), she is also not successful. Sicarius points out the obvious trap the Chief Advisor had set and Amaranthe starts to put together the notion the Emperor is not safe. In fact, the Emperor is being poisoned by his Chief Advisor. This is the problem that pulls Amaranthe and Sicarius together. They must protect the Emperor and dispose of the Chief Advisor.

Our feisty heroine my not have all the deadly skills of an assassin, but she is able to devise crazy plans and recruit a rag-tag team to carry them out.

The selling feature of the book was the humour. It was a lark. Amaranthe is amusing the way she charges forward, sometimes blindly, but always with the best intentions. She is the moral compass for their small band of criminals, who are trying to do the right thing by protecting the Emperor. Of course, since they are operating outside of the law as fugitives with wanted posters, some of their methods are questionable at best.

The tone of the book reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven. There is just the right balance between serious moments, potential death, successful fighting and quips to keep the story rolling forward. The pacing is strong the story is solid and the characters are entertaining. There is not a lot of character growth, but then apparently there are some 7 books in this serial, so hopefully character growth comes over time.

Finally, a quick note on the world: it is cold – at least it is winter when this first story takes place. I get the feeling of some fantasy Scandinavian/Russian-esq world. Obviously it is not our world. But the Empire has a long history of war and culture built around war. They clearly have deep, cold, frozen winters. There is an element of steam punk or early mechanized technology with trolleys, clinkers and factories. There is also magic (mostly foreign) or as some might say: Mental Sciences. The world is fine, felling more modern than medieval. But it was not the world that held my attention throughout the story, it was the interactions between the characters and the entertainment of the situations.

Over all I enjoyed the Emperor’s Edge; it was a good romp with an engaging female lead. I may even purchase the sequel to see if it holds up.

Darkly Dreaming

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Sadly, I have no interesting thoughts or musings to share with you today, world. I’m busy working, recovering from a rather eventful weekend and haven’t had anything noteworthy happen in the last few days to write some comment on.

I suppose I’ll wax on about my current work.

Accessed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnos#/media/File:Waterhouse-sleep_and_his_half-brother_death-1874.jpg

Sleep and his Half-Brother Death by John William Waterhouse (1874).

I’m picking away at a short story that was, ultimately, inspired by a dream. It’s a little trite, but every now and then I’ll have a narratively interesting and coherent midnight imagining that could actually be turned into a decent story. I think if we looked over the long history of the human race, we’d find that dreams are a common source of inspiration. There’s just something about the completely unhinged and unhindered way our minds work while in the throes of Hypnos and his three children that produces some wonderfully strange and bizarre ideas.

This particular idea seems appropriately spawned by a dream as well. I’ve commented before on my experimentations into the horror genre. As a classification of fiction, it has a rather curious relationship with science fiction and fantasy. It’s like that awkward half-brother that everyone isn’t entirely certain belongs but recognizes that he can’t be put anywhere else. One of my favourite horror authors is the much celebrated Lovecraft who, purportedly, got much of his Elder Mythos from nightmarish inspiration. My story revolves around similar elements of Lovecraftian horror. In particular, I always enjoyed Lovecraft’s masterful use of uncertainty and the disquieting effect the unknown can have on an individual.

There are short falls to his fiction, however, and part of that crops up in the aftermath of his exciting tales. While it’s a running trope in Lovecraftian fiction that relatives and like will usually take the the charge of a prior individual in the fight against the Elder Gods, this usually extended until the troubles facing the protagonists were solved. The colour out of space is banished. Unspeakable things are sealed away. Individuals are driven mad and locked away, the terrible artifacts or locations which became their undoing are confiscated or destroyed.

And the story ends and the world moves on. For all of the Cthulu Mythos’ intervening of concepts and beings, rarely do the personal mysteries or intrigues are ever examined further.

Ultimately, I was left with the curious idea of what it would be like to be one of these relatives waiting in the wings for their turn to be drawn forth by destiny to deal with the supernatural horrors pressing in from elsewhere. Only, their chance never comes because their kin did succeed in tying up those unsettling little plots on their own. Thus, the family is left with only so many questions and not a single answer in the desolate ruins of the dark battlegrounds on which an unknowable war was raged. They could feel something was certainly wrong, the disappearance of their relatives prime amongst this. There would be the ever present touch of things just being a little off. But, ultimately, there would be nothing to discover. For how could we hope to make sense of a Lovecraftian horror when even those that see them can not.

I’m not entirely certain if this story will succeed. Primarily, it has an unsatisfactory conclusion–something which shouldn’t hold a horror story back but… we’ll see. There’s no grand revelation. There’s no turning point for the protagonist where they learn of the fate that almost befell the world had their kin not given the most noble of sacrifices. There’s really… well… nothing. Nothing but a sense, a feeling. It’s that ephemeral sensation of the last disappearing gossamer threads of a dream which we dreamt so wild and vividly but is chased away by the searing light of the morning’s rays. We wake, having only the barest gasp of what was or could have been and by the time we can find someone to share these feelings with, we have already forgotten.

The Dust Settles

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Alright, world, this is the last Summoner Wars post for some time, I promise. Just bear with me.

After my review of the new Alliance Master Set expansion for Summoner Wars, my sister and I ran a tournament to pit the old against the new. Course, with upwards of twenty different factions, that’s far too many players to do the round-robin format that we’ve been perfecting with the smaller releases. Over time, we’ve accumulated several of the single releases to add to the fourteen decks in the master boxes which leads to quite a bit of variety and a staggering number of potential match-ups.

The original goal of the tournament, aside from getting more games in against each other, was to create a comprehensive “tier list” of the factions fueled by actual tournament results to represent what we felt was a sequential list of the base factions and how strong they were relative to everyone else.

Yes, I shall continue using this image until the damn thing comes out

Summoner Wars and its art belongs to Plaid Hat Games and Cupidsart. Find Alliances at their website http://www.plaidhatgames.om

Of the first goal to get more games in, the tournament was a resounding success. We had forty different battles in a double elimination format where the participating decks were seeded based on a loose ranking system estimated from their performances from past tournaments. Our brand spanking new factions, the Cave Goblin Frick, Mercenary Rallul and Jungle Elf Abua Shi were estimated around the middle. This gave as best a randomized format and, with a double elimination arrangement, no one deck would be removed from a single bad match-up. In order to motivate each other to try our best with whoever we used, the winner of the prior round would have first pick of the two scheduled opponents. Naturally, we favoured our favourite factions but it became increasingly clear that the better decision was to try and pick the more powerful faction in a match-up in order to assure the success of our few favourites in later matches.

So, the first issue of the tournament, of course, relies on the fact that my sister and I have different playstyles and prefer different summoners over others. There’s enough variation in Summoner Wars for some factions to perform better with a player that is more inclined to play to their strengths. Vlox, for example, requires knowing all the abilities in your deck and being able to set up scenarios that can prove favourable with a fortunate draw if you can keep careful count of what your deck can do and the probabilities of drawing the card you need to copy next. I enjoy this sort of predictive logic puzzle whereas Kait is far more reactionary and comes up with the best plays based on the cards in her hand on those on the board.

But while our original goal was to find out which faction was truly the strongest, it became rather obvious that this is the wrong way to look at the match-ups. Since our tournament did not allow deck building (for the simplicity of us not owning all the different cards while avoiding the awkwardness that would arise from within faction match-ups and arguments over who gets to draft the elephants), it only took the end of the first loser’s round for us to realize that what a deck was capable of did not matter nearly as much as what a deck was capable of against its current opponent. Some decks are just inherently better geared at beating other decks as could be demonstrated with the match-up between the Demagogue (a slow, late game focused faction based on very powerful but few units) and Frick (a fast, early game focused faction based on a ton of cheap, weak but overwhelming units). The results of our little experiment yielded some rather surprising victors that spurred a number of interesting discussions. Here are our results:

1. The Warden

2. Abua Shi

3. Krusk

4. Selundar

5. Frick/Tundle

7. Endrich/Rallul

9. Glurblub, Immortal Elien, Mugglug

12. Demagogue, Marek, Moyra, Tacullu

16. Geirroth, Hogar, Melundak, Sunderved, Vlox

Notes: the order within a “tier” is not indicative of anything, they’re only listed by alphabetic order. Don’t worry too much about the Geirroth entry, it was a custom deck to test some ideas and prove a point.

On one hand, if you’ve read the reviews for the different factions in the Alliances Master Set, it should come as no surprise that The Warden ranks top in our Summoner Wars throw-down. He’s the only faction to go entirely undefeated, though there were a few very close games. What should be more surprising, however, is that fourth place Selundar and third place Krusk. Krusk was ranked eighteenth going into the tournament but my sister apparently had a Renaissance when it came to understanding his deck as she mopped the floor with him in several rather aggravating battles. Selundar is more surprising since, outside of tournaments, any time we play with the deck it always falls apart.

But I think Selundar underscores our dissatisfaction with the whole concept of tier lists for this game. As I’ve mentioned before, the game is very chance dependent. Lucky rolls and lucky draws will determine quite a large portion of a game’s outcome when played between two individuals of matched skill. That might seem intuitively to be obvious–if both players are of equal talent than surely outside factors will decide the outcome of the match. Unfortunately, with Summoner Wars, this isn’t the case. You can be in a very strong and commanding position and have all that taken away because you end up rolling nine misses over two turns while your opponent successfully hits with theirs. Due to the nature of the tournament set-up, Selundar benefited quite strongly from Lady Luck. His first match was against Vlox who, by all accounts, is one of the worst decks in the game and soundly beat him. His next match was against Mugglug, a deck that should have trounced him soundly. However, timely Into Darkness’ cleared the board of pesky and expensive Savagers while Kait’s draws saw most of her Vine Growths stashed at the bottom of her deck. Couple with that some extraordinarily unfortunate turns on her rolling and the Swamp Orcs were sent quickly to the lower bracket. Another set of poor draws saw a very close game against Frick finally go Selundar’s way before his luck ran out and he got eliminated in a hilariously one-sided match against Krusk.

Thus, in order to balance the heavy effect of chance on the game, we would be required to play these tournaments over and over again for results to normalize. Such a thing is not going to happen because we’re only human and time is a limited commodity for us. And even if we were, I still don’t know how valuable the results of a tournament could mean. Whereas Selundar got through on some fortunate rolls and forgiving match-ups, two top contenders in the Demagogue and Tacullu were eliminated rather quickly because they faced much harder opponents. Abua Shi, much like Frick, is very fast and early-mid focused and knocked the Demagogue immediately to the lower bracket. There, the Demagogue faced against Tundle as a showdown between the two late-game heavy-weights. Variance once again struck and Demagogue was eliminated.

Analyzing our results, we debated amongst ourselves how we could organize these games to show who was the strongest and baddest in Summoner Wars. But the more we bickered, the more we realized this was an unhelpful way of viewing the game. While its easy to tease apart the factions that stand at the top and bottom of the list (Warden is obviously stronger than Vlox), there is an issue when you address the vast majority of the decks that reside in the middle. How do you rank Tacullu and Krusk? Going by these results, Krusk is clearly the better deck. However, if we went by our first tournament, Tacullu was head and shoulders above the Sand Goblins. Really, the more helpful discussion was circulated around who does better against who. It’s really self defeating trying to say whether Krusk is #3 in a list or #8. What do those placements mean? Is he just better than all those below him? Would we expect him to dominate the likes of Mugglug, Tundle or Frick? Both Kait and I would argue otherwise.

What seems more helpful is discussing the real culprit of matches–the odds of a faction beating another. That’s what it is ultimately about. If I sit down with Krusk in my hands, it seems more valuable to think and discuss how well his specific match-up is against my opponent’s Mugglug than trying to simply compare ordering on a list. Perhaps Krusk can beat Mugglug a majority of the time but he loses to Abua Shi who in turn loses more often than not to Mugglug. It’s more a game of rock-paper-scissors. It seems silly to try and make a tier list over which is the best choice in that game. Rock isn’t inherently better than both scissors or paper and saying that it’s number one is, ultimately, meaningless in a discussion in that game.

The best these results can do is point out systemic issues in certain decks. Once again, these sort of lists are better at finding the poles–those that do unerringly better than everyone else and those that doing far worse. Vlox, Hogar, Melundak, Marek and Sunderved stand out as consistent underachievers over multiple tournaments. Whereas The Warden seemingly stands above the others. Course, how much is the next pertinent question and that’s one I don’t have an answer. Further testing and analysis would certainly be required. The Warden could simply be marginally better than the top performers. He certainly feels that way. His victories against Endrich in the Alliance tournament and Abua in this one weren’t obvious sweeps. The same can’t be said for those on the bottom.

The nice thing about Summoner Wars, however, is that this isn’t the end of the story. With the potential to deck build–to a limited degree–there’s a possibility that the shortcomings of many factions can be addressed by replacing their lackluster components. After the tournament, we’ve certainly been playing with more crazy decks carrying combinations that seem to make some of them a lot scarier in more match-ups. We’re currently working on a possible custom tournament format to test some of these decks and hopefully we’ll have some more ideas to share on this game in the future.

A Turn of Light – Book Review

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Book cover found on the internet.

Ok, so my brother has been nagging me to post on the website. Apparently he feels sad he is the only doing work.

I would argue that I haven’t read anything lately, hence the lack of posts. However, that would be a lie. Rather, I have not read anything remarkable. Do not expect much from this review.

The book is entitled A Turn of Light. The author is Julie E. Czerneda. My overall assessment: it is good with a rating of 8 out 10.

A Turn of Light is a very traditional fantasy novel. The world has been entirely and competently created in a mix of monstrous and magical creatures, swords and wild elements. It has a pioneer/settler vibe in a world that is not stuck in mediaeval fantasy land. Elsewhere in the world tracks are being laid for trains while distant large cities are busy with politics, learning and religion. Our story, however takes place in the wild lands at the very edge of the inhabited land. I liked the way the author incorporated magic into Marrowdell. I also feel the connection between the magical world of the Verge and the physical world of Marrowdell were nicely woven together.

The story is restricted to the small valley village of some eight homes and few interconnected families. Yet there remains a greater sense of world beyond the sheltered wilderness. The village and its inhabitants are important characters. They generally get along, yet each has its own personality and faults.

When boiled to its basic components, the story is a coming of age for a protagonist Jenn Nalynn. She is not an orphan, but has a loving and capable family: father, older sister and visiting Aunt. I like that the family is involved in Jenn’s life and she in turn is a part of theirs. This is not a story of an isolated individual setting out on their quest. This is adventure found in the shadowed nooks of the valley and the Verge overlapping it.

To shake things up there are also two newly arrived strangers. They add different points of view and a connection to the world beyond that helps to transform Jenn’s world view.

My biggest complaint is the length. The story in paperback is 800 pages. There is a lot of description, a lot of slow character building, a lot of words. It is slowly paced, plodding even. As much as the author works to weave different threads of story together, the narrative is long.

Close-up of the cover – there is not a lot of image choices on the internet.

Still, the story is solid. The characters are reasonable. The world itself is beautiful crafted, making it the best part. Over all it was good.

Hell Hath No Fury

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Confession time: I have not seen a Mad Max film before.

Shocking, I know. Somehow, through my formative youth, I managed to not once have any installment of this series grace the screens of the collective households in which I was raised. Granted, it is an Australian series, so maybe my family was simply holding fast to a “No Foreign Film” policy. Or–more likely–they were simply not popular enough to pierce the isolating cultural bubble of small town Canada. We only had one movie theatre at the time and–from all reports–said theatre has long since closed after I had moved from those alpine heights.

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Mad Max: Fury Road and all rights and images belong to Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, George Miller and all the rest.

Well, I have rectified this injustice over the weekend by seeing the much lauded Fury Road. I was quite excited to see this film after watching a trailer before a movie I’ve long since forgotten. An action movie, that takes place on a single road, in post apocalyptic setting and simple, unabashed back-to-back action? I could not sign up any faster. Alas, I hit a snag when the only friend I had that held any interest wandered off on opening night and saw it without me. My family were all less than enthused to see this film and so I had to search through my achingly meagre list of friends to find someone willing to indulge me and my lust for violence and carnage. Thankfully, I found someone. I can summarize the good and parts of Fury Road as thus:

Bad: It was in 3D.

Good: Everything else.

Alright, that is not true. However, I feel it adequately sums up my feelings about the movie. I can’t help but be reminded of Dredd (the 2012 release) while watching Fury Road. Similar to the Judge Dredd reboot, it wasn’t some over-the-top narrative mess that tried to be more than what it really was: that is an over-the-top action movie. Action movies have a tendency for injecting too much gravitas into their hearts. Movies like the Mission Impossibles and Die Hards kind of get lost in their own convoluted narratives as they attempt to keep the audience guessing about what the hell is going on in the story while jumping from set piece to set piece. Dredd stripped all of that away, keeping its story focus square on the single day in the life of the Judge as he went about breaking up an opportunistic drug cartel that had overtaken one of the megalithic apartment complexes in the Dredd universe. There wasn’t grandiose flashbacks of Dredd’s past, there wasn’t overly dramatic explanations for how the villain was going to change the face of the world, there wasn’t deep and evolving character arcs for the characters. And it all simply worked. You know almost as much about Karl Urban’s gruff Dredd by the end as you do at the start. Which is fine. This is an action movie, not a character drama. All we need to know of the character is expressed through, appropriately, his actions.

Fury Road follows the same formula. As I said, I’ve never seen a Mad Max film so I knew nothing about the character. At the end of the day, I can boldly say I still know next to nothing about the character. The basics are explained as quickly as possible (world went to shit, Max lost his family and is haunted by that loss) and then the action just starts. Within five minutes of the film, we’ve been introduced to a character and then a car chase followed up with a failed escape attempt. Within fifteen minutes, we’ve been introduced to all the main characters before yet another car chase begins (Note: I didn’t actually time this, all these are estimates). There’s no plodding about before we kick of the action. There’s no long narrative overlays to explain this strange and violent world. There’s no rehashing of whatever the hell was covered in the prior three movies of the series. This is it. Here we go. Welcome to Fury Road.

It may be strange for someone like me–someone who loves narrative and character–to adore this approach. And that’s one thing I do want to cover explicitly. While the action is centre stage to the performance, it doesn’t come at the expense of either these two elements. Simply put, Fury Road shows its characters and story instead of telling it. I learn quite a lot about Furiosa, Nux and Angharad without requiring long soliloquies or lengthy pauses to communicate clumsily their personalities. Often you’ll get the advice when writing that one should “show and not tell” without any real indication of what that means. I would point to Fury Road as an example. George Miller lets us know quite a lot about Furiosa and Max without saying any words. There’s a scene where Max is holding the Imperator at gunpoint, along with her entourage, while he systematically searches through the entire cabin of the giant warmachine for every hidden firearm. That Max keeps his weapon trained on unarmed civilians tells us a lot of his practicality over morality. That Furiosa keeps way more weapons around her than necessary tells us a lot of her preparation and fear of being disarmed. That Max fails to find the knife kept in the gear shift and Furiosa checks it the moment he leaves gives us indications for the faults of either character.

The movie is full of all these moments. Perhaps the most interesting and best use of this is with Nux, the fanatical lackey of Immortan Joe who has perhaps the most complex character development throughout the entire piece. When we were first introduced to him, his interactions with Max and his fellow outriders was so well done that I hoped he wouldn’t be some nameless mook to just fill up a few minutes of screen time before being murdered in spectacular fashion. I was more than pleased to see that wasn’t the case. Typically, important characters have grandiose introductions and that this one character could be introduced in such a fashion that you’re left unsure whether he is important or not was–simply put–quite elegant.

So, yeah, Fury Road isn’t just some “stupid action movie” though it’s got lots of wonderful stupid action in it. The set design–if one can really call it that–continues this subtle but extremely effective means of conveying character through subtle indicators. Near every vehicle that rides onto the screen is personalized for its driver. This is important when we start into several of the three faction skirmishes in the movie, giving the audience an immediate shorthand for who is who while explosions and car parts fill the air. The different gangs are given their own aesthetic that helps differentiate while the main bosses of the three pivotal cities (Gas Town, Bullet Town and I can only assume Water Town) ride in on their own unique chariots that convey their personal philosophies. The boss of Gun Town drives a converted muscle car with tank treads, trading efficiency and speed for military bulk. Gas Town, on the other hand, is more concerned with appearances and driving a large and impressive vehicle than something that’s truly combat ready.

And that stereo/war-drum contraption was utterly fantastic! Of course, the main warmachine is designed with various hidden compartment and entrances–another quick shorthand for the unexpected and surprising routes its drivers develop across the feature–while maintaining enough complexity to be the main set for the majority of the movie.

Of course, I feel that I can’t properly comment on Fury Road without making some comment about all that feminism hoopla prior to its release. There was clearly much attention given to the fact that a prominent feminist author was involved with the script or worked on set. Honestly, you wouldn’t really notice and I feel that’s kind of the point. Furiosa does not really stand out as some sort of highly crafted piece of philosophical propaganda. Amongst the likes of Ridley Scott or The Bride of Kill Bill fame, there’s nothing really different about Furiosa. She’s isn’t some sort of bra-burning femi-nazi who constantly shouts for equality or women’s rights. She’s just a woman trying to do what she feels is right in a world that’s gone utterly mad. She’s a product of her upbringing and heritage which has turned her into a capable fighter despite the loss of a limb. And while it makes her rather cold and stand-offish, this is hardly surprising given how long Max holds people at gun-length. Had there been no mention of feminist involvement, I suspect no one would really think anything of Furiosa other than her being a damn good action hero.

And she is a great action hero. She is essentially the central figure of the movie (it is called Fury Road after all), as Max has presumably gone through his character growth in his first movie. Some of the most annoying clichés of serialized fiction is this pressing need to constantly put the main character through the standard “hero’s journey” of character development. There’s only so much that someone like Max can learn in a world as crazed as the one he occupies. After awhile, him constantly getting some sort of moral lesson from all his gallivanting becomes very eye-rolling. I’m always a fan of shifting these sort of character developments to new faces who have the opportunity to learn the lessons the main character simply can not.

So, while Fury Road wasn’t two and half hours of pure car chase shenanigans, it simply and effective delivers on every other expectation and hope that it’s all the better for it. It’s a fantastic movie and I can see immediately where all the inspiration for Wasteland and Fallout derived. It’s so good that I’m going to try and get a hold of its prior installments… just as soon as I find someone to watch them with me.

Big City Heart

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So, continuing on our tour of late 2014 reviews, I have recently seen Big Hero 6 by Disney Studios. I hadn’t any intention of watching the movie, especially after feeling rather chilly towards the children’s entertainment giant and their lacklustre Frozen mega-hit which served to demonstrate just how out-of-touch I am with the rest of the world. It also didn’t help that whatever fledgling interest I may have had for the flick evaporated after having to sit through Guardians of the Galaxy.

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Big Hero 6 belongs to Marvel, Disney and a bunch of other people and stuff.

Yes, yes, I hate super hero movies–or as I like to call them “Stupid Hero Movies”–and was quite frankly ready to give popular blockbusters a skip since it seems the public is going through a really weird phase and I feel it’s safer to hunker down and wait it out. Of course, avoiding the megalithic reach of Disney and his cold, dead fingers is a near impossible task, especially as I have a habit of speaking to a number of women in my life. I was assured–quite voraciously I might add–that both Wreck-it-Ralph and Big Hero 6 were great movies. People even dared to go so far as to recommend I watch them even after I expressed my disdain for the unanimously adored flick about the Swedish girls and their boring life.

You’ll notice I didn’t write anything on Wreck-it-Ralph and that’s probably for the best.

Big Hero 6, however, is the more noteworthy of the two. I’ll jump right to the point: I think it’s “okay.” The biggest failings of Big Hero 6 is that it’s a Stupid Hero Movie released in a climate where movie-goers are tripping over costumed weirdos every other weekend. Narratively, it does nothing truly new or extraordinary. If you try and tease it’s characters and plot apart, it unravels rather easily. It’s competent, which is perhaps the best thing I can say. But it’s competency arises from it re-treading quite beaten ground at this point.

There is one thing, however, that Big Hero 6 does fantastically. Perhaps more than any other movie I’ve seen recently, and truly the only reason I kept at it and look at it fondly, is that the world of Big Hero 6 is just so damn interesting.

For those not in the know, Big Hero 6 was a comic at one point in time–thus explaining it’s unfortunate plotline. However, it takes place not on Earth. Well, more accurately, it does not take place on any reasonable facsimile of Earth. One thing that stupid hero movies do–and must do in order for the picture to work–is spend a gross amount of time grounding their comic book worlds in a very recognizable and verisimilitude world. We’ve long passed the days of George Clooney’s Batman nipple suits and a Gotham City that looks like it was ripped straight from Lovecraft’s most hideous cyclopean nightmares. The X-Men movies set the stage for comic book adaptations that are filmed with an intense grounding in our day-to-day familiarity and it has apparently produced a “gritty and realistic” aesthetic that has resonated with movie-goers. Thus, Nolan’s Gotham is very clearly New York. Iron Man unabashedly lives in Malibu.

Big Hero 6, however, is not. It’s location is San Fransokyo–some curious and compelling hybrid of San Francisco and Tokyo. It’s a world that’s strange and captivating. I found it hard not to get sucked in as we’re pulled over the Golden Torii Gate Bridge, the once familiar landmark carved into the iconic images of a Shinto shrine’s entrance. Great wind turbines bob in the air, tethered like enormous balloons and painted to inspire the recollections of the flying Koi during the Children’s Festival. Red lanterns hang from street cars while enormous neon signs in bright katakana fixate to the sides of downtown skyscrapers. The movie is very indulgent in its wide spanning shots of this inventive skyline where the old and the exotic are mixed into something almost familiar.

It’s really a brilliant mix of cultures done in such painstaking way to make the seams tying the two together indistinguishable. This extends to the main characters and their obvious Japanese heritage despite the movie’s stylistic renderings. Tanaka and Hiro are undeniably American for all intents and purposes, even as the engage in robotic sumo competitions or advanced robotics.

The best character of the show is the city itself and it’s a shame that something more couldn’t be done with it. Ultimately, the backdrop isn’t used for any clever thematic or even stylistic blending. The main villain runs around in a kabuki mask without drawing on traditional kabuki elements or traditions. There’s a heavy use of robotics throughout the film–echoing Japan’s leading edge in the field–without actually exploring any themes of robotics (displaced human workforces, moralistic questions of advanced artificial intelligences). There could have even been some exploration of the universality of the human condition by pulling on the shared elements of American and Japanese mythology and history but all of these things were missed.

At the end of the day, Big Hero 6 is a bunch of stupid action with some shoehorned morality shoved in at the last second that makes no sense. But it’s world creation is very intricate with painstaking detail done to even the smallest references. It’s a visual feast just as much as it’s a cognitive snore. I think it showcases just how samey and unremarkable this super hero phase really is. At any other release, at any other time, this movie would have been fantastic. As it stands, it’s kind of forgettable in a vast sea of similar faces. It’s a shame they couldn’t take this setting and do something really fascinating.

As is, it’s a really brilliant example of some clever world-building. Check it out for that.

Murphy’s Law

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The great outdoors are anything but great. I do not understand the appeal. It’s hot. It’s bright. And at any moment a tree will just shower you in its reproductive bits.

It also smells.

At any rate, what better way is there to discuss Christopher Nolan’s recent movie Interstellar than making a post on it nearly six months late. There’s a certain poetic irony about covering a film about time dilation and relativity and dredging up its existence long after people cared about it.

But I only saw it recently so, whatever. This is happening. Get used to it.

As some a priori information, I’m a big fan of Nolan’s work. Even before the Batmans launched him into the public sphere so astronomically, he had been creating films that entertained and intrigued. Even when I wasn’t fully on board with the final product (Insomnia), I could still appreciate what he was trying to do. And, generally, speaking, he was doing things no one else was.

For that, I love his output. He’s a director that focuses on themes and ideas more than gaudy explosions and cheap thrills. Not to say that he doesn’t have them at all. Memento has plenty of exciting scenes interwoven around it’s basic premise of a man with anterograde amnesia, what with his involvement in crime and murder. Insomnia still follows a detective and his hunt for a despicable serial killer. It’s just that he flavours these clichés and tired conventions with a fresh perspective or novel idea.

For this reason, I’m a big fan of The Prestige and Inception which I think are both examples of Nolan at his best. That they were some of his most recent work, and occurring while he was still making blockbuster comic book hero movies was all the more intriguing.

Thus, I was excited to see Interstellar when it was announced. Unfortunately, it had fallen victim to Hollywood’s recent attempts at starting a hype train and I “learned” about the movie a year before it was even releasing. My issue with such advance marketing is, by the time the movie actually comes out, I’ve already forgotten about my initial interest and almost never see it in theatres. I’m not that invested into the movie industry to plan my entertainment around release schedules and whatnot.

So, here we are. Me having just finally seen the film which everyone has already discussed and reached their own conclusions about with nary a helpful voice to raise to the topic. Well, I have my thoughts and I’m going to share them regardless of whether these points were mentioned before or not.

Let’s start with the big picture.

I’m pretty luke-warm to Interstellar. It’s not Nolan’s worse (which I still maintain is a distinction which belongs to Insomnia) but it isn’t his best either. There were a number of elements that I enjoyed and about an equal number which I did not. That’s perhaps the most vague description one could possibly give for a film.

But before I go on my huge whinge fest, let’s discuss those elements that I enjoyed. There’s something really interesting about the opening of the movie. The way it’s present and the slow reveal of information I found to be a compelling way to introduce a world set far into the future and very different from our own. The documentary talking heads ground us in a video framework of which is all too familiar to anyone that has stepped into a museum. We’re simultaneously greeted with a recording format that immediately conveys a sense of “past” and familiarity while the subject matter is weird and captures our attention. What is this dust that seems to settle everywhere? What is this blight that’s affecting the neighbour’s crops?

The basic premise for the setting is initially shown as so mundane that we are almost slow to realize how science fiction the work really is. You don’t realize that this story is taking place in the far future, after some inexplicable war/population collapse and a possible post-apocalyptic time. However, the tragedy of whatever has occurred (and thankfully the disaster is kept hidden to allow our imagination to fill the blanks) is conveyed in understandable imagery that evokes memories and studies of the Great Depression. We know things are bad without needing characters to list generically how bad things really are compared to the world in which we actual live.

There’s a real elegance to how the audience begins to learn of the troubles facing the planet yet also realizes this takes place in a time far removed from our own so when we do reach the titular interstellar portions, it doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere. What’s more, I absolutely love the way that artificial intelligence and advance robotics are integrated into this future. They’re relics of that same indescribable past, with many of them slowly falling apart and descending from the skies as their computational innards decay and bring them down to earth. Then, the survivors scoop these old relics up and re-purpose them as automated farming tractors.

Oh, and this information is revealed while the main character and his offspring are heading to parent/teacher interviews.

It’s unfortunate, then, that all this time slowly introducing the world truly feels like a waste later. It’s so well crafted that I found it really frustrating how little of it is important for the narrative. In fact, the elements that are key to the rest of the story–Murph’s mysterious ghost and her father’s interaction with the “paranormal activity” happening in her room–is probably the least interesting and most shoehorned part. The magic bookcase serves blatantly as a story deus ex machina, required solely to move the plot forward because there was no elegant solution present.

Even more maddening is, in the later acts, when the Nolans attempt to bring the story back to these humble beginnings as part of an overarching plot. It really exposes how the whole backstory for Matthew McConnaughey’s NASA astronaut is made really flimsy in order to give the character wide-spread appeal and make him “relatable.”

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Interstellar belongs to Paramount Pictures, Christopher Nolan, Legendary Pictures and a whole slew of other people that aren’t me.

Truly, the story doesn’t really begin until Farmer Cooper and his precocious daughter are sent on some wild geo-cache trip given by co-ordinates provided by the magic bookcase in Morse code. There, we discover that the fabled NASA research institute wasn’t abandoned but went underground (for reasons) and Agent Cooper is press-ganged into joining a rather rag-tag and dubious mission through a recently discovered wormhole to find a world on which humanity could relocate.

It’s at this time that we’re presented with the weakest explanation for how the planet is going to shit. Some mysterious disease is killing off all the delicious vegetables and possibly eating the nitrogen in the atmosphere and/or the oxygen and pooping out nitrogen? Michael Cain doesn’t spend a lot of time making the excuse clear and it’s hard not to think–as he waxes to great lengths about the difficulty of space travel and the effects on time by relativity–that it wouldn’t be easier to… you know… cure the blight. Maybe in this unmentionable disaster all the biologists were killed or something.

Anyway, after delivering the first of many repeated quotes of Dylan Thomas’ pretty forgettable poem, Cosmonaut Cooper is convinced to pilot the last remaining spacecraft on earth since he’s the only one alive to have done so (even though his last mission barely left the atmosphere). Course, we learn later that he isn’t really necessary, since twelve other shmucks flew ahead of him, and it’s hard not to wonder why all the fuss is made about him joining a mission that has been years in planning and quite happy to execute without anyone even being aware that he existed.

This ends up being a troubling trend of really poorly conceived or explained character motivations that pop up continuously for the rest of the movie. With great reluctance, Cooper agrees to this mission even though he knows it will take a lot of time and he’ll likely not see his soon to be orphaned children grow up and become adults. He hops on board with Catwoman and a pair of disposable extras and rattles his way into space and the great beyond, all the while maintaining some ineffectual stoicism that’s meant to make the audience feel pride over the fact that the world is going to shit and only those unrelenting Americans can ever truly keep it alive. Or something. There’s a few moments where it feels like I missed having my accompanying flag to wave throughout the film.

Once we get to space, we hit Interstellar’s second strength and that’s in creating absolutely gorgeous visuals. Nolan really hits the cgi cinematography as we’re transported through wormholes and explore some really alien planets. In fact, it feels a lot of the time like I’m watching some futuristic Blue Planet series and the only thing I’m lacking is Attenborough’s soothing voice-over. We learn… things while the spaceship meanders on its ten year journey with the crew kept in cryogenic storage so we don’t have to hire another actor that looks like old Matthew McConnaughey. Presiding over this delegation are two robot companions who are perhaps the best members of the crew and certainly my favourite characters.

Once we’re through the blackhole, the band of adventurers have to decide on three returned signals over prospective planets that they want to visit which will become humanity’s new home. Since Nolan wants to play with time as a theme, they hit up the closest one first–and the one where even if the mission were to progress according to plan would also take upwards of seven years, relatively speaking to Earth. And while the planet is pretty cool, the action on it is pretty dumb and the explorers find that after their little foibles have been resolved, nearly twenty four years have elapsed. That’s twenty four years of aimless puttering around space “learning all we can about blackholes” and still struggling to come up with a half-decent pesticide at home.

Grumpy and forlorn, the crew then hit up the second planet on the list because they’re reluctant to indulge reason because the characters would rather quibble over nonsense like “the power of love” than actually doing their mission. Here is the movie’s most egregious offence. Since there hasn’t been any truly villainous entity for us to hate, we’re introduced to Matt Damon that decides to spend the next twenty minutes needlessly twirling his moustache than actually following a compelling plot.

Interstellar’s best strengths are when it’s not following traditional movie structure. It’s weakest moments are whenever it falls back on “established wisdom.” A lot of the action beats and “raising the stakes” moments are forced and illogical. The cheap emotional manipulation is some of the laziest I’ve ever seen. There’s lots of arguing and misdirection that’s entirely unnecessary all so we can have a “third act twist.” It’s the farm opening all over again, where the film structure motivates the plot instead of the internal character designs and desires.

By the end of the film, it’s hard to shake the ever growing pile of “Whys” accumulating as you watch. Why did the random third guy on the water world stand outside the ship even though he was the first to return to it before the water mountain descended? Why did their fourth member of the crew spend twenty four years bombing around on a ship when he knew even a five minute delay–certainly a reasonable amount of time considering the away team is searching an entire planet for a single individual–would cost him a few years? Why did Michael Cain spend his entire life “working” on an equation that he’d already solved when he could have just plainly told everyone the situation and still got enough people to volunteer (he did get twelve for the original mission so he only needed three more). Why did Matt Damon program a bomb in his robot co-pilot and why didn’t he just outright tell them he lied about his data when they showed up to thaw him? Did he think they would shoot him with their non-existent guns? Did he think they’d leave him behind even though their mission is to desperately save humanity and they already wasted all their fuel getting to him? Like… what was the plan?

Also, the tesseract was stupid. I’m certain plenty of people have argued over it when the movie first came out. I can’t help but feel that this was the weakest “interesting” element of a Nolan movie. Future humans built a time machine but only for Cooper to radio his daughter random zeroes and ones recorded by the robot TARS. And they did it in such a manner that Cooper would be the instrument behind all the random messages delivered from Murph’s Magic Bookcase trusting that “love will lead the way” was a good enough lampshade to explain away all these lingering questions and arbitrariness.

It’s a shame, too, since the movie is strongest when it’s following a hard science fiction route and eschewing traditional story elements. The most powerful “human” scene is after a few minutes on the water planet, Cooper and Catwoman return to their ship to discover that their loved ones back home have lived their lives in the intervening minutes. We didn’t need pointless deaths to feel sad when you have your secondary characters literally ageing before your eyes. We don’t need Matt Damon to try and kill everyone in some weird mad struggle to open an airlock (speaking of which, how does an astronaut know how to make a bomb but not open an airlock?) when we could have easily had more powerful and interesting conflict by the team bickering his selfishness and the cost it accrued to them and their mission.

There was plenty of ideological debate to be had without Michael Cain having to intentionally lie about his plan to rescue the people of Earth on a magic spacecraft. It seemed like there were a lot of missed opportunities in Interstellar as the story shot for the lowest hanging fruit. What we ended up with was morsels that were rotting on the vine instead of the delicious treats that were just within reach if only we had dared to go just a bit further.

It was pretty though.